[greek: homôs de kai en toutois dialampei to kalon, epeidan pherê tis eukolôs pollas kai megalas atychias, mê di analgêsian, alla gennadas ôn kai megalopsychos.] aristotle's 'ethics,' i., xi. . [illustration: diptych representing narius manlius boethius, father of anicius manlius severinus boethius. the inscription in full would run thus:-- narivs manlivs boethivs vir clarissimvs et inlvstris expraefectvs praetorio praefectvs vrbis et comes consvl ordinarivs et particivs (_for description vid. preface, p. vi_)] the consolation of philosophy of boethius. translated into english prose and verse by h.r. james, m.a., ch. ch. oxford. quantumlibet igitur sæviant mali, sapienti tamen corona non decidet, non arescet. melioribus animum conformaveris, nihil opus est judice præmium deferente, tu te ipse excellentioribus addidisti; studium ad pejora deflexeris, extra ne quæsieris ultorem, tu te ipse in deteriora trusisti. london: elliot stock, , paternoster row. . preface. the book called 'the consolation of philosophy' was throughout the middle ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. it has been translated into every european tongue, and into english nearly a dozen times, from king alfred's paraphrase to the translations of lord preston, causton, ridpath, and duncan, in the eighteenth century. the belief that what once pleased so widely must still have some charm is my excuse for attempting the present translation. the great work of boethius, with its alternate prose and verse, skilfully fitted together like dialogue and chorus in a greek play, is unique in literature, and has a pathetic interest from the time and circumstances of its composition. it ought not to be forgotten. those who can go to the original will find their reward. there may be room also for a new translation in english after an interval of close on a hundred years. some of the editions contain a reproduction of a bust purporting to represent boethius. lord preston's translation, for example, has such a portrait, which it refers to an original in marble at rome. this i have been unable to trace, and suspect that it is apocryphal. the hope collection at oxford contains a completely different portrait in a print, which gives no authority. i have ventured to use as a frontispiece a reproduction from a plaster-cast in the ashmolean museum, taken from an ivory diptych preserved in the bibliotheca quiriniana at brescia, which represents narius manlius boethius, the father of the philosopher. portraiture of this period is so rare that it seemed that, failing a likeness of the author himself, this authentic representation of his father might have interest, as giving the consular dress and insignia of the time, and also as illustrating the decadence of contemporary art. the consul wears a richly-embroidered cloak; his right hand holds a staff surmounted by the roman eagle, his left the _mappa circensis,_ or napkin used for starting the races in the circus; at his feet are palms and bags of money--prizes for the victors in the games. for permission to use this cast my thanks are due to the authorities of the ashmolean museum, as also to mr. t.w. jackson, curator of the hope collection, who first called my attention to its existence. i have to thank my brother, mr. l. james, of radley college, for much valuable help and for correcting the proof-sheets of the translation. the text used is that of peiper, leipsic, . proem. anicus manlius severinus boethius lived in the last quarter of the fifth century a.d., and the first quarter of the sixth. he was growing to manhood, when theodoric, the famous ostrogoth, crossed the alps and made himself master of italy. boethius belonged to an ancient family, which boasted a connection with the legendary glories of the republic, and was still among the foremost in wealth and dignity in the days of rome's abasement. his parents dying early, he was brought up by symmachus, whom the age agreed to regard as of almost saintly character, and afterwards became his son-in-law. his varied gifts, aided by an excellent education, won for him the reputation of the most accomplished man of his time. he was orator, poet, musician, philosopher. it is his peculiar distinction to have handed on to the middle ages the tradition of greek philosophy by his latin translations of the works of aristotle. called early to a public career, the highest honours of the state came to him unsought. he was sole consul in a.d., and was ultimately raised by theodoric to the dignity of magister officiorum, or head of the whole civil administration. he was no less happy in his domestic life, in the virtues of his wife, rusticiana, and the fair promise of his two sons, symmachus and boethius; happy also in the society of a refined circle of friends. noble, wealthy, accomplished, universally esteemed for his virtues, high in the favour of the gothic king, he appeared to all men a signal example of the union of merit and good fortune. his felicity seemed to culminate in the year a.d., when, by special and extraordinary favour, his two sons, young as they were for so exalted an honour, were created joint consuls and rode to the senate-house attended by a throng of senators, and the acclamations of the multitude. boethius himself, amid the general applause, delivered the public speech in the king's honour usual on such occasions. within a year he was a solitary prisoner at pavia, stripped of honours, wealth, and friends, with death hanging over him, and a terror worse than death, in the fear lest those dearest to him should be involved in the worst results of his downfall. it is in this situation that the opening of the 'consolation of philosophy' brings boethius before us. he represents himself as seated in his prison distraught with grief, indignant at the injustice of his misfortunes, and seeking relief for his melancholy in writing verses descriptive of his condition. suddenly there appears to him the divine figure of philosophy, in the guise of a woman of superhuman dignity and beauty, who by a succession of discourses convinces him of the vanity of regret for the lost gifts of fortune, raises his mind once more to the contemplation of the true good, and makes clear to him the mystery of the world's moral government. index of verse interludes. book i. the sorrows of boethius. song page i. boethius' complaint ii. his despondency iii. the mists dispelled iv. nothing can subdue virtue v. boethius' prayer vi. all things have their needful order vii. the perturbations of passion book ii. the vanity of fortune's gifts. i. fortune's malice ii. man's covetousness iii. all passes iv. the golden mean v. the former age vi. nero's infamy vii. glory may not last viii. love is lord of all book iii. true happiness and false. i. the thorns of error ii. the bent of nature iii. the insatiableness ok avarice iv. disgrace of honours conferred by a tyrant v. self-mastery vi. true nobility vii. pleasure's sting viii. human folly ix. invocation x. the true light xi. reminiscence xii. orpheus and eurydice book iv. good and ill fortune. i. the soul's flight ii. the bondage of passion iii. circe's cup iv. the unreasonableness of hatred v. wonder and ignorance vi. the universal aim vii. the hero's path book v. free will and god's foreknowledge. i. chance ii. the true sun iii. truth's paradoxes iv. a psychological fallacy v. the upward look book i. the sorrows of boethius. summary. boethius' complaint (song i.).--ch. i. philosophy appears to boethius, drives away the muses of poetry, and herself laments (song ii.) the disordered condition of his mind.--ch. ii. boethius is speechless with amazement. philosophy wipes away the tears that have clouded his eyesight.--ch. iii. boethius recognises his mistress philosophy. to his wondering inquiries she explains her presence, and recalls to his mind the persecutions to which philosophy has oftentimes from of old been subjected by an ignorant world. ch. iv. philosophy bids boethius declare his griefs. he relates the story of his unjust accusation and ruin. he concludes with a prayer (song v.) that the moral disorder in human affairs may be set right.--ch. v. philosophy admits the justice of boethius' self-vindication, but grieves rather for the unhappy change in his mind. she will first tranquillize his spirit by soothing remedies.--ch. vi. philosophy tests boethius' mental state by certain questions, and discovers three chief causes of his soul's sickness: ( ) he has forgotten his own true nature; ( ) he knows not the end towards which the whole universe tends; ( ) he knows not the means by which the world is governed. book i. song i. boethius' complaint. who wrought my studious numbers smoothly once in happier days, now perforce in tears and sadness learn a mournful strain to raise. lo, the muses, grief-dishevelled, guide my pen and voice my woe; down their cheeks unfeigned the tear drops to my sad complainings flow! these alone in danger's hour faithful found, have dared attend on the footsteps of the exile to his lonely journey's end. these that were the pride and pleasure of my youth and high estate still remain the only solace of the old man's mournful fate. old? ah yes; swift, ere i knew it, by these sorrows on me pressed age hath come; lo, grief hath bid me wear the garb that fits her best. o'er my head untimely sprinkled these white hairs my woes proclaim, and the skin hangs loose and shrivelled on this sorrow-shrunken frame. blest is death that intervenes not in the sweet, sweet years of peace, but unto the broken-hearted, when they call him, brings release! yet death passes by the wretched, shuts his ear and slumbers deep; will not heed the cry of anguish, will not close the eyes that weep. for, while yet inconstant fortune poured her gifts and all was bright, death's dark hour had all but whelmed me in the gloom of endless night. now, because misfortune's shadow hath o'erclouded that false face, cruel life still halts and lingers, though i loathe his weary race. friends, why did ye once so lightly vaunt me happy among men? surely he who so hath fallen was not firmly founded then. i. while i was thus mutely pondering within myself, and recording my sorrowful complainings with my pen, it seemed to me that there appeared above my head a woman of a countenance exceeding venerable. her eyes were bright as fire, and of a more than human keenness; her complexion was lively, her vigour showed no trace of enfeeblement; and yet her years were right full, and she plainly seemed not of our age and time. her stature was difficult to judge. at one moment it exceeded not the common height, at another her forehead seemed to strike the sky; and whenever she raised her head higher, she began to pierce within the very heavens, and to baffle the eyes of them that looked upon her. her garments were of an imperishable fabric, wrought with the finest threads and of the most delicate workmanship; and these, as her own lips afterwards assured me, she had herself woven with her own hands. the beauty of this vesture had been somewhat tarnished by age and neglect, and wore that dingy look which marble contracts from exposure. on the lower-most edge was inwoven the greek letter [greek: p], on the topmost the letter [greek: th],[a] and between the two were to be seen steps, like a staircase, from the lower to the upper letter. this robe, moreover, had been torn by the hands of violent persons, who had each snatched away what he could clutch.[b] her right hand held a note-book; in her left she bore a staff. and when she saw the muses of poesie standing by my bedside, dictating the words of my lamentations, she was moved awhile to wrath, and her eyes flashed sternly. 'who,' said she, 'has allowed yon play-acting wantons to approach this sick man--these who, so far from giving medicine to heal his malady, even feed it with sweet poison? these it is who kill the rich crop of reason with the barren thorns of passion, who accustom men's minds to disease, instead of setting them free. now, were it some common man whom your allurements were seducing, as is usually your way, i should be less indignant. on such a one i should not have spent my pains for naught. but this is one nurtured in the eleatic and academic philosophies. nay, get ye gone, ye sirens, whose sweetness lasteth not; leave him for my muses to tend and heal!' at these words of upbraiding, the whole band, in deepened sadness, with downcast eyes, and blushes that confessed their shame, dolefully left the chamber. but i, because my sight was dimmed with much weeping, and i could not tell who was this woman of authority so commanding--i was dumfoundered, and, with my gaze fastened on the earth, continued silently to await what she might do next. then she drew near me and sat on the edge of my couch, and, looking into my face all heavy with grief and fixed in sadness on the ground, she bewailed in these words the disorder of my mind: footnotes: [a] [greek: p] (p) stands for the political life, the life of action; [greek: th] (th) for the theoretical life, the life of thought. [b] the stoic, epicurean, and other philosophical sects, which boethius regards as heterodox. see also below, ch. iii., p. . song ii. his despondency. alas! in what abyss his mind is plunged, how wildly tossed! still, still towards the outer night she sinks, her true light lost, as oft as, lashed tumultuously by earth-born blasts, care's waves rise high. yet once he ranged the open heavens, the sun's bright pathway tracked; watched how the cold moon waxed and waned; nor rested, till there lacked to his wide ken no star that steers amid the maze of circling spheres. the causes why the blusterous winds vex ocean's tranquil face, whose hand doth turn the stable globe, or why his even race from out the ruddy east the sun unto the western waves doth run: what is it tempers cunningly the placid hours of spring, so that it blossoms with the rose for earth's engarlanding: who loads the year's maturer prime with clustered grapes in autumn time: all this he knew--thus ever strove deep nature's lore to guess. now, reft of reason's light, he lies, and bonds his neck oppress; while by the heavy load constrained, his eyes to this dull earth are chained. ii. 'but the time,' said she, 'calls rather for healing than for lamentation.' then, with her eyes bent full upon me, 'art thou that man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the nourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a manly spirit? and yet i had bestowed such armour on thee as would have proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. dost thou know me? why art thou silent? is it shame or amazement that hath struck thee dumb? would it were shame; but, as i see, a stupor hath seized upon thee.' then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: 'there is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. for awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me. and that he may do so, let me now wipe his eyes that are clouded with a mist of mortal things.' thereat, with a fold of her robe, she dried my eyes all swimming with tears. song iii. the mists dispelled. then the gloom of night was scattered, sight returned unto mine eyes. so, when haply rainy caurus rolls the storm-clouds through the skies, hidden is the sun; all heaven is obscured in starless night. but if, in wild onset sweeping, boreas frees day's prisoned light, all suddenly the radiant god outstreams, and strikes our dazzled eyesight with his beams. iii. even so the clouds of my melancholy were broken up. i saw the clear sky, and regained the power to recognise the face of my physician. accordingly, when i had lifted my eyes and fixed my gaze upon her, i beheld my nurse, philosophy, whose halls i had frequented from my youth up. 'ah! why,' i cried, 'mistress of all excellence, hast thou come down from on high, and entered the solitude of this my exile? is it that thou, too, even as i, mayst be persecuted with false accusations?' 'could i desert thee, child,' said she, 'and not lighten the burden which thou hast taken upon thee through the hatred of my name, by sharing this trouble? even forgetting that it were not lawful for philosophy to leave companionless the way of the innocent, should i, thinkest thou, fear to incur reproach, or shrink from it, as though some strange new thing had befallen? thinkest thou that now, for the first time in an evil age, wisdom hath been assailed by peril? did i not often in days of old, before my servant plato lived, wage stern warfare with the rashness of folly? in his lifetime, too, socrates, his master, won with my aid the victory of an unjust death. and when, one after the other, the epicurean herd, the stoic, and the rest, each of them as far as in them lay, went about to seize the heritage he left, and were dragging me off protesting and resisting, as their booty, they tore in pieces the garment which i had woven with my own hands, and, clutching the torn pieces, went off, believing that the whole of me had passed into their possession. and some of them, because some traces of my vesture were seen upon them, were destroyed through the mistake of the lewd multitude, who falsely deemed them to be my disciples. it may be thou knowest not of the banishment of anaxagoras, of the poison draught of socrates, nor of zeno's torturing, because these things happened in a distant country; yet mightest thou have learnt the fate of arrius, of seneca, of soranus, whose stories are neither old nor unknown to fame. these men were brought to destruction for no other reason than that, settled as they were in my principles, their lives were a manifest contrast to the ways of the wicked. so there is nothing thou shouldst wonder at, if on the seas of this life we are tossed by storm-blasts, seeing that we have made it our chiefest aim to refuse compliance with evil-doers. and though, maybe, the host of the wicked is many in number, yet is it contemptible, since it is under no leadership, but is hurried hither and thither at the blind driving of mad error. and if at times and seasons they set in array against us, and fall on in overwhelming strength, our leader draws off her forces into the citadel while they are busy plundering the useless baggage. but we from our vantage ground, safe from all this wild work, laugh to see them making prize of the most valueless of things, protected by a bulwark which aggressive folly may not aspire to reach.' song iv. nothing can subdue virtue. whoso calm, serene, sedate, sets his foot on haughty fate; firm and steadfast, come what will, keeps his mien unconquered still; him the rage of furious seas, tossing high wild menaces, nor the flames from smoky forges that vesuvius disgorges, nor the bolt that from the sky smites the tower, can terrify. why, then, shouldst thou feel affright at the tyrant's weakling might? dread him not, nor fear no harm, and thou shall his rage disarm; but who to hope or fear gives way-- lost his bosom's rightful sway-- he hath cast away his shield, like a coward fled the field; he hath forged all unaware fetters his own neck must bear! iv. 'dost thou understand?' she asks. do my words sink into thy mind? or art thou dull "as the ass to the sound of the lyre"? why dost thou weep? why do tears stream from thy eyes? '"speak out, hide it not in thy heart." if thou lookest for the physician's help, thou must needs disclose thy wound.' then i, gathering together what strength i could, began: 'is there still need of telling? is not the cruelty of fortune against me plain enough? doth not the very aspect of this place move thee? is this the library, the room which thou hadst chosen as thy constant resort in my home, the place where we so often sat together and held discourse of all things in heaven and earth? was my garb and mien like this when i explored with thee nature's hid secrets, and thou didst trace for me with thy wand the courses of the stars, moulding the while my character and the whole conduct of my life after the pattern of the celestial order? is this the recompense of my obedience? yet thou hast enjoined by plato's mouth the maxim, "that states would be happy, either if philosophers ruled them, or if it should so befall that their rulers would turn philosophers." by his mouth likewise thou didst point out this imperative reason why philosophers should enter public life, to wit, lest, if the reins of government be left to unprincipled and profligate citizens, trouble and destruction should come upon the good. following these precepts, i have tried to apply in the business of public administration the principles which i learnt from thee in leisured seclusion. thou art my witness and that divinity who hath implanted thee in the hearts of the wise, that i brought to my duties no aim but zeal for the public good. for this cause i have become involved in bitter and irreconcilable feuds, and, as happens inevitably, if a man holds fast to the independence of conscience, i have had to think nothing of giving offence to the powerful in the cause of justice. how often have i encountered and balked conigastus in his assaults on the fortunes of the weak? how often have i thwarted trigguilla, steward of the king's household, even when his villainous schemes were as good as accomplished? how often have i risked my position and influence to protect poor wretches from the false charges innumerable with which they were for ever being harassed by the greed and license of the barbarians? no one has ever drawn me aside from justice to oppression. when ruin was overtaking the fortunes of the provincials through the combined pressure of private rapine and public taxation, i grieved no less than the sufferers. when at a season of grievous scarcity a forced sale, disastrous as it was unjustifiable, was proclaimed, and threatened to overwhelm campania with starvation, i embarked on a struggle with the prætorian prefect in the public interest, i fought the case at the king's judgment-seat, and succeeded in preventing the enforcement of the sale. i rescued the consular paulinus from the gaping jaws of the court bloodhounds, who in their covetous hopes had already made short work of his wealth. to save albinus, who was of the same exalted rank, from the penalties of a prejudged charge, i exposed myself to the hatred of cyprian, the informer. 'thinkest thou i had laid up for myself store of enmities enough? well, with the rest of my countrymen, at any rate, my safety should have been assured, since my love of justice had left me no hope of security at court. yet who was it brought the charges by which i have been struck down? why, one of my accusers is basil, who, after being dismissed from the king's household, was driven by his debts to lodge an information against my name. there is opilio, there is gaudentius, men who for many and various offences the king's sentence had condemned to banishment; and when they declined to obey, and sought to save themselves by taking sanctuary, the king, as soon as he heard of it, decreed that, if they did not depart from the city of ravenna within a prescribed time, they should be branded on the forehead and expelled. what would exceed the rigour of this severity? and yet on that same day these very men lodged an information against me, and the information was admitted. just heaven! had i deserved this by my way of life? did it make them fit accusers that my condemnation was a foregone conclusion? has fortune no shame--if not at the accusation of the innocent, at least for the vileness of the accusers? perhaps thou wonderest what is the sum of the charges laid against me? i wished, they say, to save the senate. but how? i am accused of hindering an informer from producing evidence to prove the senate guilty of treason. tell me, then, what is thy counsel, o my mistress. shall i deny the charge, lest i bring shame on thee? but i did wish it, and i shall never cease to wish it. shall i admit it? then the work of thwarting the informer will come to an end. shall i call the wish for the preservation of that illustrious house a crime? of a truth the senate, by its decrees concerning me, has made it such! but blind folly, though it deceive itself with false names, cannot alter the true merits of things, and, mindful of the precept of socrates, i do not think it right either to keep the truth concealed or allow falsehood to pass. but this, however it may be, i leave to thy judgment and to the verdict of the discerning. moreover, lest the course of events and the true facts should be hidden from posterity, i have myself committed to writing an account of the transaction. 'what need to speak of the forged letters by which an attempt is made to prove that i hoped for the freedom of rome? their falsity would have been manifest, if i had been allowed to use the confession of the informers themselves, evidence which has in all matters the most convincing force. why, what hope of freedom is left to us? would there were any! i should have answered with the epigram of canius when caligula declared him to have been cognisant of a conspiracy against him. "if i had known," said he, "thou shouldst never have known." grief hath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that i should complain because impious wretches contrive their villainies against the virtuous, but at their achievement of their hopes i do exceedingly marvel. for evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while god beholdeth, is verily monstrous. for this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, "if god exists, whence comes evil? yet whence comes good, if he exists not?" however, it might well be that wretches who seek the blood of all honest men and of the whole senate should wish to destroy me also, whom they saw to be a bulwark of the senate and all honest men. but did i deserve such a fate from the fathers also? thou rememberest, methinks--since thou didst ever stand by my side to direct what i should do or say--thou rememberest, i say, how at verona, when the king, eager for the general destruction, was bent on implicating the whole senatorial order in the charge of treason brought against albinus, with what indifference to my own peril i maintained the innocence of its members, one and all. thou knowest that what i say is the truth, and that i have never boasted of my good deeds in a spirit of self-praise. for whenever a man by proclaiming his good deeds receives the recompense of fame, he diminishes in a measure the secret reward of a good conscience. what issues have overtaken my innocency thou seest. instead of reaping the rewards of true virtue, i undergo the penalties of a guilt falsely laid to my charge--nay, more than this; never did an open confession of guilt cause such unanimous severity among the assessors, but that some consideration, either of the mere frailty of human nature, or of fortune's universal instability, availed to soften the verdict of some few. had i been accused of a design to fire the temples, to slaughter the priests with impious sword, of plotting the massacre of all honest men, i should yet have been produced in court, and only punished on due confession or conviction. now for my too great zeal towards the senate i have been condemned to outlawry and death, unheard and undefended, at a distance of near five hundred miles away.[c] oh, my judges, well do ye deserve that no one should hereafter be convicted of a fault like mine! 'yet even my very accusers saw how honourable was the charge they brought against me, and, in order to overlay it with some shadow of guilt, they falsely asserted that in the pursuit of my ambition i had stained my conscience with sacrilegious acts. and yet thy spirit, indwelling in me, had driven from the chamber of my soul all lust of earthly success, and with thine eye ever upon me, there could be no place left for sacrilege. for thou didst daily repeat in my ear and instil into my mind the pythagorean maxim, "follow after god." it was not likely, then, that i should covet the assistance of the vilest spirits, when thou wert moulding me to such an excellence as should conform me to the likeness of god. again, the innocency of the inner sanctuary of my home, the company of friends of the highest probity, a father-in-law revered at once for his pure character and his active beneficence, shield me from the very suspicion of sacrilege. yet--atrocious as it is--they even draw credence for this charge from _thee_; i am like to be thought implicated in wickedness on this very account, that i am imbued with _thy_ teachings and stablished in _thy_ ways. so it is not enough that my devotion to thee should profit me nothing, but thou also must be assailed by reason of the odium which i have incurred. verily this is the very crown of my misfortunes, that men's opinions for the most part look not to real merit, but to the event; and only recognise foresight where fortune has crowned the issue with her approval. whereby it comes to pass that reputation is the first of all things to abandon the unfortunate. i remember with chagrin how perverse is popular report, how various and discordant men's judgments. this only will i say, that the most crushing of misfortune's burdens is, that as soon as a charge is fastened upon the unhappy, they are believed to have deserved their sufferings. i, for my part, who have been banished from all life's blessings, stripped of my honours, stained in repute, am punished for well-doing. 'and now methinks i see the villainous dens of the wicked surging with joy and gladness, all the most recklessly unscrupulous threatening a new crop of lying informations, the good prostrate with terror at my danger, every ruffian incited by impunity to new daring and to success by the profits of audacity, the guiltless not only robbed of their peace of mind, but even of all means of defence. wherefore i would fain cry out: footnotes: [c] the distance from rome to pavia, the place of boethius' imprisonment, is roman miles. song v. boethius' prayer. 'builder of yon starry dome, thou that whirlest, throned eternal, heaven's swift globe, and, as they roam, guid'st the stars by laws supernal: so in full-sphered splendour dight cynthia dims the lamps of night, but unto the orb fraternal closer drawn,[d] doth lose her light. 'who at fall of eventide, hesper, his cold radiance showeth, lucifer his beams doth hide, paling as the sun's light groweth, brief, while winter's frost holds sway, by thy will the space of day; swift, when summer's fervour gloweth, speed the hours of night away. 'thou dost rule the changing year: when rude boreas oppresses, fall the leaves; they reappear, wooed by zephyr's soft caresses. fields that sirius burns deep grown by arcturus' watch were sown: each the reign of law confesses, keeps the place that is his own. 'sovereign ruler, lord of all! can it be that thou disdainest only man? 'gainst him, poor thrall, wanton fortune plays her vainest. guilt's deserved punishment falleth on the innocent; high uplifted, the profanest on the just their malice vent. 'virtue cowers in dark retreats, crime's foul stain the righteous beareth, perjury and false deceits hurt not him the wrong who dareth; but whene'er the wicked trust in ill strength to work their lust, kings, whom nations' awe declareth mighty, grovel in the dust. 'look, oh look upon this earth, thou who on law's sure foundation framedst all! have we no worth, we poor men, of all creation? sore we toss on fortune's tide; master, bid the waves subside! and earth's ways with consummation of thy heaven's order guide!' footnotes: [d] the moon is regarded as farthest from the sun at the full, and, as she wanes, approaching gradually nearer. v. when i had poured out my griefs in this long and unbroken strain of lamentation, she, with calm countenance, and in no wise disturbed at my complainings, thus spake: 'when i saw thee sorrowful, in tears, i straightway knew thee wretched and an exile. but how far distant that exile i should not know, had not thine own speech revealed it. yet how far indeed from thy country hast thou, not been banished, but rather hast strayed; or, if thou wilt have it banishment, hast banished thyself! for no one else could ever lawfully have had this power over thee. now, if thou wilt call to mind from what country thou art sprung, it is not ruled, as once was the athenian polity, by the sovereignty of the multitude, but "one is its ruler, one its king," who takes delight in the number of his citizens, not in their banishment; to submit to whose governance and to obey whose ordinances is perfect freedom. art thou ignorant of that most ancient law of this thy country, whereby it is decreed that no one whatsoever, who hath chosen to fix there his dwelling, may be sent into exile? for truly there is no fear that one who is encompassed by its ramparts and defences should deserve to be exiled. but he who has ceased to wish to dwell therein, he likewise ceases to deserve to do so. and so it is not so much the aspect of this place which moves me, as thy aspect; not so much the library walls set off with glass and ivory which i miss, as the chamber of thy mind, wherein i once placed, not books, but that which gives books their value, the doctrines which my books contain. now, what thou hast said of thy services to the commonweal is true, only too little compared with the greatness of thy deservings. the things laid to thy charge whereof thou hast spoken, whether such as redound to thy credit, or mere false accusations, are publicly known. as for the crimes and deceits of the informers, thou hast rightly deemed it fitting to pass them over lightly, because the popular voice hath better and more fully pronounced upon them. thou hast bitterly complained of the injustice of the senate. thou hast grieved over my calumniation, and likewise hast lamented the damage to my good name. finally, thine indignation blazed forth against fortune; thou hast complained of the unfairness with which thy merits have been recompensed. last of all thy frantic muse framed a prayer that the peace which reigns in heaven might rule earth also. but since a throng of tumultuous passions hath assailed thy soul, since thou art distraught with anger, pain, and grief, strong remedies are not proper for thee in this thy present mood. and so for a time i will use milder methods, that the tumours which have grown hard through the influx of disturbing passion may be softened by gentle treatment, till they can bear the force of sharper remedies.' song vi. all things have their needful order he who to th' unwilling furrows gives the generous grain, when the crab with baleful fervours scorches all the plain; he shall find his garner bare, acorns for his scanty fare. go not forth to cull sweet violets from the purpled steep, while the furious blasts of winter through the valleys sweep; nor the grape o'erhasty bring to the press in days of spring. for to each thing god hath given its appointed time; no perplexing change permits he in his plan sublime. so who quits the order due shall a luckless issue rue. vi. 'first, then, wilt thou suffer me by a few questions to make some attempt to test the state of thy mind, that i may learn in what way to set about thy cure?' 'ask what thou wilt,' said i, 'for i will answer whatever questions thou choosest to put.' then said she: 'this world of ours--thinkest thou it is governed haphazard and fortuitously, or believest thou that there is in it any rational guidance?' 'nay,' said i, 'in no wise may i deem that such fixed motions can be determined by random hazard, but i know that god, the creator, presideth over his work, nor will the day ever come that shall drive me from holding fast the truth of this belief.' 'yes,' said she; 'thou didst even but now affirm it in song, lamenting that men alone had no portion in the divine care. as to the rest, thou wert unshaken in the belief that they were ruled by reason. yet i marvel exceedingly how, in spite of thy firm hold on this opinion, thou art fallen into sickness. but let us probe more deeply: something or other is missing, i think. now, tell me, since thou doubtest not that god governs the world, dost thou perceive by what means he rules it?' 'i scarcely understand what thou meanest,' i said, 'much less can i answer thy question.' 'did i not say truly that something is missing, whereby, as through a breach in the ramparts, disease hath crept in to disturb thy mind? but, tell me, dost thou remember the universal end towards which the aim of all nature is directed?' 'i once heard,' said i, 'but sorrow hath dulled my recollection.' 'and yet thou knowest whence all things have proceeded.' 'yes, that i know,' said i, 'and have answered that it is from god.' 'yet how is it possible that thou knowest not what is the end of existence, when thou dost understand its source and origin? however, these disturbances of mind have force to shake a man's position, but cannot pluck him up and root him altogether out of himself. but answer this also, i pray thee: rememberest thou that thou art a man?' 'how should i not?' said i. 'then, canst thou say what man is?' 'is this thy question: whether i know myself for a being endowed with reason and subject to death? surely i do acknowledge myself such.' then she: 'dost know nothing else that thou art?' 'nothing.' 'now,' said she, 'i know another cause of thy disease, one, too, of grave moment. thou hast ceased to know thy own nature. so, then, i have made full discovery both of the causes of thy sickness and the means of restoring thy health. it is because forgetfulness of thyself hath bewildered thy mind that thou hast bewailed thee as an exile, as one stripped of the blessings that were his; it is because thou knowest not the end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be happy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the earth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow without the restraint of a guiding hand. these are serious enough to cause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the author of our health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee utterly. in thy true judgment concerning the world's government, in that thou believest it subject, not to the random drift of chance, but to divine reason, we have the divine spark from which thy recovery may be hoped. have, then, no fear; from these weak embers the vital heat shall once more be kindled within thee. but seeing that it is not yet time for strong remedies, and that the mind is manifestly so constituted that when it casts off true opinions it straightway puts on false, wherefrom arises a cloud of confusion that disturbs its true vision, i will now try and disperse these mists by mild and soothing application, that so the darkness of misleading passion may be scattered, and thou mayst come to discern the splendour of the true light.' song vii. the perturbations of passion. stars shed no light through the black night, when the clouds hide; and the lashed wave, if the winds rave o'er ocean's tide,-- though once serene as day's fair sheen,-- soon fouled and spoiled by the storm's spite, shows to the sight turbid and soiled. oft the fair rill, down the steep hill seaward that strays, some tumbled block of fallen rock hinders and stays. then art thou fain clear and most plain truth to discern, in the right way firmly to stay, nor from it turn? joy, hope and fear suffer not near, drive grief away: shackled and blind and lost is the mind where these have sway. book ii. the vanity of fortune's gifts summary ch. i. philosophy reproves boethius for the foolishness of his complaints against fortune. her very nature is caprice.--ch. ii. philosophy in fortune's name replies to boethius' reproaches, and proves that the gifts of fortune are hers to give and to take away.--ch. iii. boethius falls back upon his present sense of misery. philosophy reminds him of the brilliancy of his former fortunes.--ch. iv. boethius objects that the memory of past happiness is the bitterest portion of the lot of the unhappy. philosophy shows that much is still left for which he may be thankful. none enjoy perfect satisfaction with their lot. but happiness depends not on anything which fortune can give. it is to be sought within.--ch. v. all the gifts of fortune are external; they can never truly be our own. man cannot find his good in worldly possessions. riches bring anxiety and trouble.--ch. vi. high place without virtue is an evil, not a good. power is an empty name.--ch. vii. fame is a thing of little account when compared with the immensity of the universe and the endlessness of time.--ch. viii. one service only can fortune do, when she reveals her own nature and distinguishes true friends from false. book ii. i. thereafter for awhile she remained silent; and when she had restored my flagging attention by a moderate pause in her discourse, she thus began: 'if i have thoroughly ascertained the character and causes of thy sickness, thou art pining with regretful longing for thy former fortune. it is the change, as thou deemest, of this fortune that hath so wrought upon thy mind. well do i understand that siren's manifold wiles, the fatal charm of the friendship she pretends for her victims, so long as she is scheming to entrap them--how she unexpectedly abandons them and leaves them overwhelmed with insupportable grief. bethink thee of her nature, character, and deserts, and thou wilt soon acknowledge that in her thou hast neither possessed, nor hast thou lost, aught of any worth. methinks i need not spend much pains in bringing this to thy mind, since, even when she was still with thee, even while she was caressing thee, thou usedst to assail her in manly terms, to rebuke her, with maxims drawn from my holy treasure-house. but all sudden changes of circumstances bring inevitably a certain commotion of spirit. thus it hath come to pass that thou also for awhile hast been parted from thy mind's tranquillity. but it is time for thee to take and drain a draught, soft and pleasant to the taste, which, as it penetrates within, may prepare the way for stronger potions. wherefore i call to my aid the sweet persuasiveness of rhetoric, who then only walketh in the right way when she forsakes not my instructions, and music, my handmaid, i bid to join with her singing, now in lighter, now in graver strain. 'what is it, then, poor mortal, that hath cast thee into lamentation and mourning? some strange, unwonted sight, methinks, have thine eyes seen. thou deemest fortune to have changed towards thee; thou mistakest. such ever were her ways, ever such her nature. rather in her very mutability hath she preserved towards thee her true constancy. such was she when she loaded thee with caresses, when she deluded thee with the allurements of a false happiness. thou hast found out how changeful is the face of the blind goddess. she who still veils herself from others hath fully discovered to thee her whole character. if thou likest her, take her as she is, and do not complain. if thou abhorrest her perfidy, turn from her in disdain, renounce her, for baneful are her delusions. the very thing which is now the cause of thy great grief ought to have brought thee tranquillity. thou hast been forsaken by one of whom no one can be sure that she will not forsake him. or dost thou indeed set value on a happiness that is certain to depart? again i ask, is fortune's presence dear to thee if she cannot be trusted to stay, and though she will bring sorrow when she is gone? why, if she cannot be kept at pleasure, and if her flight overwhelms with calamity, what is this fleeting visitant but a token of coming trouble? truly it is not enough to look only at what lies before the eyes; wisdom gauges the issues of things, and this same mutability, with its two aspects, makes the threats of fortune void of terror, and her caresses little to be desired. finally, thou oughtest to bear with whatever takes place within the boundaries of fortune's demesne, when thou hast placed thy head beneath her yoke. but if thou wishest to impose a law of staying and departing on her whom thou hast of thine own accord chosen for thy mistress, art thou not acting wrongfully, art thou not embittering by impatience a lot which thou canst not alter? didst thou commit thy sails to the winds, thou wouldst voyage not whither thy intention was to go, but whither the winds drave thee; didst thou entrust thy seed to the fields, thou wouldst set off the fruitful years against the barren. thou hast resigned thyself to the sway of fortune; thou must submit to thy mistress's caprices. what! art thou verily striving to stay the swing of the revolving wheel? oh, stupidest of mortals, if it takes to standing still, it ceases to be the wheel of fortune.' song i. fortune's malice. mad fortune sweeps along in wanton pride, uncertain as euripus' surging tide; now tramples mighty kings beneath her feet; now sets the conquered in the victor's seat. she heedeth not the wail of hapless woe, but mocks the griefs that from her mischief flow. such is her sport; so proveth she her power; and great the marvel, when in one brief hour she shows her darling lifted high in bliss, then headlong plunged in misery's abyss. ii. 'now i would fain also reason with thee a little in fortune's own words. do thou observe whether her contentions be just. "man," she might say, "why dost thou pursue me with thy daily complainings? what wrong have i done thee? what goods of thine have i taken from thee? choose an thou wilt a judge, and let us dispute before him concerning the rightful ownership of wealth and rank. if thou succeedest in showing that any one of these things is the true property of mortal man, i freely grant those things to be thine which thou claimest. when nature brought thee forth out of thy mother's womb, i took thee, naked and destitute as thou wast, i cherished thee with my substance, and, in the partiality of my favour for thee, i brought thee up somewhat too indulgently, and this it is which now makes thee rebellious against me. i surrounded thee with a royal abundance of all those things that are in my power. now it is my pleasure to draw back my hand. thou hast reason to thank me for the use of what was not thine own; thou hast no right to complain, as if thou hadst lost what was wholly thine. why, then, dost bemoan thyself? i have done thee no violence. wealth, honour, and all such things are placed under my control. my handmaidens know their mistress; with me they come, and at my going they depart. i might boldly affirm that if those things the loss of which thou lamentest had been thine, thou couldst never have lost them. am i alone to be forbidden to do what i will with my own? unrebuked, the skies now reveal the brightness of day, now shroud the daylight in the darkness of night; the year may now engarland the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, now disfigure it with storms and cold. the sea is permitted to invite with smooth and tranquil surface to-day, to-morrow to roughen with wave and storm. shall man's insatiate greed bind _me_ to a constancy foreign to my character? this is my art, this the game i never cease to play. i turn the wheel that spins. i delight to see the high come down and the low ascend. mount up, if thou wilt, but only on condition that thou wilt not think it a hardship to come down when the rules of my game require it. wert thou ignorant of my character? didst not know how croesus, king of the lydians, erstwhile the dreaded rival of cyrus, was afterwards pitiably consigned to the flame of the pyre, and only saved by a shower sent from heaven? has it 'scaped thee how paullus paid a meed of pious tears to the misfortunes of king perseus, his prisoner? what else do tragedies make such woeful outcry over save the overthrow of kingdoms by the indiscriminate strokes of fortune? didst thou not learn in thy childhood how there stand at the threshold of zeus 'two jars,' 'the one full of blessings, the other of calamities'? how if thou hast drawn over-liberally from the good jar? what if not even now have i departed wholly from thee? what if this very mutability of mine is a just ground for hoping better things? but listen now, and cease to let thy heart consume away with fretfulness, nor expect to live on thine own terms in a realm that is common to all.' song ii. man's covetousness. what though plenty pour her gifts with a lavish hand, numberless as are the stars, countless as the sand, will the race of man, content, cease to murmur and lament? nay, though god, all-bounteous, give gold at man's desire-- honours, rank, and fame--content not a whit is nigher; but an all-devouring greed yawns with ever-widening need. then what bounds can e'er restrain this wild lust of having, when with each new bounty fed grows the frantic craving? he is never rich whose fear sees grim want forever near. iii. 'if fortune should plead thus against thee, assuredly thou wouldst not have one word to offer in reply; or, if thou canst find any justification of thy complainings, thou must show what it is. i will give thee space to speak.' then said i: 'verily, thy pleas are plausible--yea, steeped in the honeyed sweetness of music and rhetoric. but their charm lasts only while they are sounding in the ear; the sense of his misfortunes lies deeper in the heart of the wretched. so, when the sound ceases to vibrate upon the air, the heart's indwelling sorrow is felt with renewed bitterness.' then said she: 'it is indeed as thou sayest, for we have not yet come to the curing of thy sickness; as yet these are but lenitives conducing to the treatment of a malady hitherto obstinate. the remedies which go deep i will apply in due season. nevertheless, to deprecate thy determination to be thought wretched, i ask thee, hast thou forgotten the extent and bounds of thy felicity? i say nothing of how, when orphaned and desolate, thou wast taken into the care of illustrious men; how thou wast chosen for alliance with the highest in the state--and even before thou wert bound to their house by marriage, wert already dear to their love--which is the most precious of all ties. did not all pronounce thee most happy in the virtues of thy wife, the splendid honours of her father, and the blessing of male issue? i pass over--for i care not to speak of blessings in which others also have shared--the distinctions often denied to age which thou enjoyedst in thy youth. i choose rather to come to the unparalleled culmination of thy good fortune. if the fruition of any earthly success has weight in the scale of happiness, can the memory of that splendour be swept away by any rising flood of troubles? that day when thou didst see thy two sons ride forth from home joint consuls, followed by a train of senators, and welcomed by the good-will of the people; when these two sat in curule chairs in the senate-house, and thou by thy panegyric on the king didst earn the fame of eloquence and ability; when in the circus, seated between the two consuls, thou didst glut the multitude thronging around with the triumphal largesses for which they looked--methinks thou didst cozen fortune while she caressed thee, and made thee her darling. thou didst bear off a boon which she had never before granted to any private person. art thou, then, minded to cast up a reckoning with fortune? now for the first time she has turned a jealous glance upon thee. if thou compare the extent and bounds of thy blessings and misfortunes, thou canst not deny that thou art still fortunate. or if thou esteem not thyself favoured by fortune in that thy then seeming prosperity hath departed, deem not thyself wretched, since what thou now believest to be calamitous passeth also. what! art thou but now come suddenly and a stranger to the scene of this life? thinkest thou there is any stability in human affairs, when man himself vanishes away in the swift course of time? it is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance will abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all remaining fortune. what difference, then, thinkest thou, is there, whether thou leavest her by dying, or she leave thee by fleeing away?' song iii. all passes. when, in rosy chariot drawn, phoebus 'gins to light the dawn, by his flaming beams assailed, every glimmering star is paled. when the grove, by zephyrs fed, with rose-blossom blushes red;-- doth rude auster breathe thereon, bare it stands, its glory gone. smooth and tranquil lies the deep while the winds are hushed in sleep. soon, when angry tempests lash, wild and high the billows dash. thus if nature's changing face holds not still a moment's space, fleeting deem man's fortunes; deem bliss as transient as a dream. one law only standeth fast: things created may not last. iv. then said i: 'true are thine admonishings, thou nurse of all excellence; nor can i deny the wonder of my fortune's swift career. yet it is this which chafes me the more cruelly in the recalling. for truly in adverse fortune the worst sting of misery is to _have been_ happy.' 'well,' said she, 'if thou art paying the penalty of a mistaken belief, thou canst not rightly impute the fault to circumstances. if it is the felicity which fortune gives that moves thee--mere name though it be--come reckon up with me how rich thou art in the number and weightiness of thy blessings. then if, by the blessing of providence, thou hast still preserved unto thee safe and inviolate that which, howsoever thou mightest reckon thy fortune, thou wouldst have thought thy most precious possession, what right hast thou to talk of ill-fortune whilst keeping all fortune's better gifts? yet symmachus, thy wife's father--a man whose splendid character does honour to the human race--is safe and unharmed; and while he bewails thy wrongs, this rare nature, in whom wisdom and virtue are so nobly blended, is himself out of danger--a boon thou wouldst have been quick to purchase at the price of life itself. thy wife yet lives, with her gentle disposition, her peerless modesty and virtue--this the epitome of all her graces, that she is the true daughter of her sire--she lives, i say, and for thy sake only preserves the breath of life, though she loathes it, and pines away in grief and tears for thy absence, wherein, if in naught else, i would allow some marring of thy felicity. what shall i say of thy sons and their consular dignity--how in them, so far as may be in youths of their age, the example of their father's and grandfather's character shines out? since, then, the chief care of mortal man is to preserve his life, how happy art thou, couldst thou but recognise thy blessings, who possessest even now what no one doubts to be dearer than life! wherefore, now dry thy tears. fortune's hate hath not involved all thy dear ones; the stress of the storm that has assailed thee is not beyond measure intolerable, since there are anchors still holding firm which suffer thee not to lack either consolation in the present or hope for the future.' 'i pray that they still may hold. for while they still remain, however things may go, i shall ride out the storm. yet thou seest how much is shorn of the splendour of my fortunes.' 'we are gaining a little ground,' said she, 'if there is something in thy lot wherewith thou art not yet altogether discontented. but i cannot stomach thy daintiness when thou complainest with such violence of grief and anxiety because thy happiness falls short of completeness. why, who enjoys such settled felicity as not to have some quarrel with the circumstances of his lot? a troublous matter are the conditions of human bliss; either they are never realized in full, or never stay permanently. one has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble birth. another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the embarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. a third, richly endowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life. another, though happily married, is doomed to childlessness, and nurses his wealth for a stranger to inherit. yet another, blest with children, mournfully bewails the misdeeds of son or daughter. wherefore, it is not easy for anyone to be at perfect peace with the circumstances of his lot. there lurks in each several portion something which they who experience it not know nothing of, but which makes the sufferer wince. besides, the more favoured a man is by fortune, the more fastidiously sensitive is he; and, unless all things answer to his whim, he is overwhelmed by the most trifling misfortunes, because utterly unschooled in adversity. so petty are the trifles which rob the most fortunate of perfect happiness! how many are there, dost thou imagine, who would think themselves nigh heaven, if but a small portion from the wreck of thy fortune should fall to them? this very place which thou callest exile is to them that dwell therein their native land. so true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity. who is so blest by fortune as not to wish to change his state, if once he gives rein to a rebellious spirit? with how many bitternesses is the sweetness of human felicity blent! and even if that sweetness seem to him to bring delight in the enjoying, yet he cannot keep it from departing when it will. how manifestly wretched, then, is the bliss of earthly fortune, which lasts not for ever with those whose temper is equable, and can give no perfect satisfaction to the anxious-minded! 'why, then, ye children of mortality, seek ye from without that happiness whose seat is only within us? error and ignorance bewilder you. i will show thee, in brief, the hinge on which perfect happiness turns. is there anything more precious to thee than thyself? nothing, thou wilt say. if, then, thou art master of thyself, thou wilt possess that which thou wilt never be willing to lose, and which fortune cannot take from thee. and that thou mayst see that happiness cannot possibly consist in these things which are the sport of chance, reflect that, if happiness is the highest good of a creature living in accordance with reason, and if a thing which can in any wise be reft away is not the highest good, since that which cannot be taken away is better than it, it is plain that fortune cannot aspire to bestow happiness by reason of its instability. and, besides, a man borne along by this transitory felicity must either know or not know its unstability. if he knows not, how poor is a happiness which depends on the blindness of ignorance! if he knows it, he needs must fear to lose a happiness whose loss he believes to be possible. wherefore, a never-ceasing fear suffers him not to be happy. or does he count the possibility of this loss a trifling matter? insignificant, then, must be the good whose loss can be borne so equably. and, further, i know thee to be one settled in the belief that the souls of men certainly die not with them, and convinced thereof by numerous proofs; it is clear also that the felicity which fortune bestows is brought to an end with the death of the body: therefore, it cannot be doubted but that, if happiness is conferred in this way, the whole human race sinks into misery when death brings the close of all. but if we know that many have sought the joy of happiness not through death only, but also through pain and suffering, how can life make men happy by its presence when it makes them not wretched by its loss?' song iv. the golden mean. who founded firm and sure would ever live secure, in spite of storm and blast immovable and fast; whoso would fain deride the ocean's threatening tide;-- his dwelling should not seek on sands or mountain-peak. upon the mountain's height the storm-winds wreak their spite: the shifting sands disdain their burden to sustain. do thou these perils flee, fair though the prospect be, and fix thy resting-place on some low rock's sure base. then, though the tempests roar, seas thunder on the shore, thou in thy stronghold blest and undisturbed shalt rest; live all thy days serene, and mock the heavens' spleen. v. 'but since my reasonings begin to work a soothing effect within thy mind, methinks i may resort to remedies somewhat stronger. come, suppose, now, the gifts of fortune were not fleeting and transitory, what is there in them capable of ever becoming truly thine, or which does not lose value when looked at steadily and fairly weighed in the balance? are riches, i pray thee, precious either through thy nature or in their own? what are they but mere gold and heaps of money? yet these fine things show their quality better in the spending than in the hoarding; for i suppose 'tis plain that greed alva's makes men hateful, while liberality brings fame. but that which is transferred to another cannot remain in one's own possession; and if that be so, then money is only precious when it is given away, and, by being transferred to others, ceases to be one's own. again, if all the money in the world were heaped up in one man's possession, all others would be made poor. sound fills the ears of many at the same time without being broken into parts, but your riches cannot pass to many without being lessened in the process. and when this happens, they must needs impoverish those whom they leave. how poor and cramped a thing, then, is riches, which more than one cannot possess as an unbroken whole, which falls not to any one man's lot without the impoverishment of everyone else! or is it the glitter of gems that allures the eye? yet, how rarely excellent soever may be their splendour, remember the flashing light is in the jewels, not in the man. indeed, i greatly marvel at men's admiration of them; for what can rightly seem beautiful to a being endowed with life and reason, if it lack the movement and structure of life? and although such things do in the end take on them more beauty from their maker's care and their own brilliancy, still they in no wise merit your admiration since their excellence is set at a lower grade than your own. 'does the beauty of the fields delight you? surely, yes; it is a beautiful part of a right beautiful whole. fitly indeed do we at times enjoy the serene calm of the sea, admire the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun. yet is any of these thy concern? dost thou venture to boast thyself of the beauty of any one of them? art _thou_ decked with spring's flowers? is it _thy_ fertility that swelleth in the fruits of autumn? why art thou moved with empty transports? why embracest thou an alien excellence as thine own? never will fortune make thine that which the nature of things has excluded from thy ownership. doubtless the fruits of the earth are given for the sustenance of living creatures. but if thou art content to supply thy wants so far as suffices nature, there is no need to resort to fortune's bounty. nature is content with few things, and with a very little of these. if thou art minded to force superfluities upon her when she is satisfied, that which thou addest will prove either unpleasant or harmful. but, now, thou thinkest it fine to shine in raiment of divers colours; yet--if, indeed, there is any pleasure in the sight of such things--it is the texture or the artist's skill which i shall admire. 'or perhaps it is a long train of servants that makes thee happy? why, if they behave viciously, they are a ruinous burden to thy house, and exceeding dangerous to their own master; while if they are honest, how canst thou count other men's virtue in the sum of thy possessions? from all which 'tis plainly proved that not one of these things which thou reckonest in the number of thy possessions is really thine. and if there is in them no beauty to be desired, why shouldst thou either grieve for their loss or find joy in their continued possession? while if they are beautiful in their own nature, what is that to thee? they would have been not less pleasing in themselves, though never included among thy possessions. for they derive not their preciousness from being counted in thy riches, but rather thou hast chosen to count them in thy riches because they seemed to thee precious. 'then, what seek ye by all this noisy outcry about fortune? to chase away poverty, i ween, by means of abundance. and yet ye find the result just contrary. why, this varied array of precious furniture needs more accessories for its protection; it is a true saying that they want most who possess most, and, conversely, they want very little who measure their abundance by nature's requirements, not by the superfluity of vain display. have ye no good of your own implanted within you, that ye seek your good in things external and separate? is the nature of things so reversed that a creature divine by right of reason can in no other way be splendid in his own eyes save by the possession of lifeless chattels? yet, while other things are content with their own, ye who in your intellect are god-like seek from the lowest of things adornment for a nature of supreme excellence, and perceive not how great a wrong ye do your maker. his will was that mankind should excel all things on earth. ye thrust down your worth beneath the lowest of things. for if that in which each thing finds its good is plainly more precious than that whose good it is, by your own estimation ye put yourselves below the vilest of things, when ye deem these vile things to be your good: nor does this fall out undeservedly. indeed, man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself; but he is brought lower than the beasts if he lose this self-knowledge. for that other creatures should be ignorant of themselves is natural; in man it shows as a defect. how extravagant, then, is this error of yours, in thinking that anything can be embellished by adornments not its own. it cannot be. for if such accessories add any lustre, it is the accessories that get the praise, while that which they veil and cover remains in its pristine ugliness. and again i say, that is no _good_, which injures its possessor. is this untrue? no, quite true, thou sayest. and yet riches have often hurt those that possessed them, since the worst of men, who are all the more covetous by reason of their wickedness, think none but themselves worthy to possess all the gold and gems the world contains. so thou, who now dreadest pike and sword, mightest have trolled a carol "in the robber's face," hadst thou entered the road of life with empty pockets. oh, wondrous blessedness of perishable wealth, whose acquisition robs thee of security!' song v. the former age. too blest the former age, their life who in the fields contented led, and still, by luxury unspoiled, on frugal acorns sparely fed. no skill was theirs the luscious grape with honey's sweetness to confuse; nor china's soft and sheeny silks t' empurple with brave tyrian hues. the grass their wholesome couch, their drink the stream, their roof the pine's tall shade; not theirs to cleave the deep, nor seek in strange far lands the spoils of trade. the trump of war was heard not yet, nor soiled the fields by bloodshed's stain; for why should war's fierce madness arm when strife brought wound, but brought not gain? ah! would our hearts might still return to following in those ancient ways. alas! the greed of getting glows more fierce than etna's fiery blaze. woe, woe for him, whoe'er it was, who first gold's hidden store revealed, and--perilous treasure-trove--dug out the gems that fain would be concealed! vi. 'what now shall i say of rank and power, whereby, because ye know not true power and dignity, ye hope to reach the sky? yet, when rank and power have fallen to the worst of men, did ever an etna, belching forth flame and fiery deluge, work such mischief? verily, as i think, thou dost remember how thine ancestors sought to abolish the consular power, which had been the foundation of their liberties, on account of the overweening pride of the consuls, and how for that self-same pride they had already abolished the kingly title! and if, as happens but rarely, these prerogatives are conferred on virtuous men, it is only the virtue of those who exercise them that pleases. so it appears that honour cometh not to virtue from rank, but to rank from virtue. look, too, at the nature of that power which ye find so attractive and glorious! do ye never consider, ye creatures of earth, what ye are, and over whom ye exercise your fancied lordship? suppose, now, that in the mouse tribe there should rise up one claiming rights and powers for himself above the rest, would ye not laugh consumedly? yet if thou lookest to his body alone, what creature canst thou find more feeble than man, who oftentimes is killed by the bite of a fly, or by some insect creeping into the inner passage of his system! yet what rights can one exercise over another, save only as regards the body, and that which is lower than the body--i mean fortune? what! wilt thou bind with thy mandates the free spirit? canst thou force from its due tranquillity the mind that is firmly composed by reason? a tyrant thought to drive a man of free birth to reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy, but the prisoner bit off his tongue and threw it into the furious tyrant's face; thus, the tortures which the tyrant thought the instrument of his cruelty the sage made an opportunity for heroism. moreover, what is there that one man can do to another which he himself may not have to undergo in his turn? we are told that busiris, who used to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest, hercules. regulus had thrown into bonds many of the carthaginians whom he had taken in war; soon after he himself submitted his hands to the chains of the vanquished. then, thinkest thou that man hath any power who cannot prevent another's being able to do to him what he himself can do to others? 'besides, if there were any element of natural and proper good in rank and power, they would never come to the utterly bad, since opposites are not wont to be associated. nature brooks not the union of contraries. so, seeing there is no doubt that wicked wretches are oftentimes set in high places, it is also clear that things which suffer association with the worst of men cannot be good in their own nature. indeed, this judgment may with some reason be passed concerning all the gifts of fortune which fall so plentifully to all the most wicked. this ought also to be considered here, i think: no one doubts a man to be brave in whom he has observed a brave spirit residing. it is plain that one who is endowed with speed is swift-footed. so also music makes men musical, the healing art physicians, rhetoric public speakers. for each of these has naturally its own proper working; there is no confusion with the effects of contrary things--nay, even of itself it rejects what is incompatible. and yet wealth cannot extinguish insatiable greed, nor has power ever made him master of himself whom vicious lusts kept bound in indissoluble fetters; dignity conferred on the wicked not only fails to make them worthy, but contrarily reveals and displays their unworthiness. why does it so happen? because ye take pleasure in calling by false names things whose nature is quite incongruous thereto--by names which are easily proved false by the very effects of the things themselves; even so it is; these riches, that power, this dignity, are none of them rightly so called. finally, we may draw the same conclusion concerning the whole sphere of fortune, within which there is plainly nothing to be truly desired, nothing of intrinsic excellence; for she neither always joins herself to the good, nor does she make good men of those to whom she is united.' song vi. nero's infamy. we know what mischief dire he wrought-- rome fired, the fathers slain-- whose hand with brother's slaughter wet a mother's blood did stain. no pitying tear his cheek bedewed, as on the corse he gazed; that mother's beauty, once so fair, a critic's voice appraised. yet far and wide, from east to west, his sway the nations own; and scorching south and icy north obey his will alone. did, then, high power a curb impose on nero's phrenzied will? ah, woe when to the evil heart is joined the sword to kill! vii. then said i: 'thou knowest thyself that ambition for worldly success hath but little swayed me. yet i have desired opportunity for action, lest virtue, in default of exercise, should languish away.' then she: 'this is that "last infirmity" which is able to allure minds which, though of noble quality, have not yet been moulded to any exquisite refinement by the perfecting of the virtues--i mean, the love of glory--and fame for high services rendered to the commonweal. and yet consider with me how poor and unsubstantial a thing this glory is! the whole of this earth's globe, as thou hast learnt from the demonstration of astronomy, compared with the expanse of heaven, is found no bigger than a point; that is to say, if measured by the vastness of heaven's sphere, it is held to occupy absolutely no space at all. now, of this so insignificant portion of the universe, it is about a fourth part, as ptolemy's proofs have taught us, which is inhabited by living creatures known to us. if from this fourth part you take away in thought all that is usurped by seas and marshes, or lies a vast waste of waterless desert, barely is an exceeding narrow area left for human habitation. you, then, who are shut in and prisoned in this merest fraction of a point's space, do ye take thought for the blazoning of your fame, for the spreading abroad of your renown? why, what amplitude or magnificence has glory when confined to such narrow and petty limits? 'besides, the straitened bounds of this scant dwelling-place are inhabited by many nations differing widely in speech, in usages, in mode of life; to many of these, from the difficulty of travel, from diversities of speech, from want of commercial intercourse, the fame not only of individual men, but even of cities, is unable to reach. why, in cicero's days, as he himself somewhere points out, the fame of the roman republic had not yet crossed the caucasus, and yet by that time her name had grown formidable to the parthians and other nations of those parts. seest thou, then, how narrow, how confined, is the glory ye take pains to spread abroad and extend! can the fame of a single roman penetrate where the glory of the roman name fails to pass? moreover, the customs and institutions of different races agree not together, so that what is deemed praise worthy in one country is thought punishable in another. wherefore, if any love the applause of fame, it shall not profit him to publish his name among many peoples. then, each must be content to have the range of his glory limited to his own people; the splendid immortality of fame must be confined within the bounds of a single race. 'once more, how many of high renown in their own times have been lost in oblivion for want of a record! indeed, of what avail are written records even, which, with their authors, are overtaken by the dimness of age after a somewhat longer time? but ye, when ye think on future fame, fancy it an immortality that ye are begetting for yourselves. why, if thou scannest the infinite spaces of eternity, what room hast thou left for rejoicing in the durability of thy name? verily, if a single moment's space be compared with ten thousand years, it has a certain relative duration, however little, since each period is definite. but this same number of years--ay, and a number many times as great--cannot even be compared with endless duration; for, indeed, finite periods may in a sort be compared one with another, but a finite and an infinite never. so it comes to pass that fame, though it extend to ever so wide a space of years, if it be compared to never-lessening eternity, seems not short-lived merely, but altogether nothing. but as for you, ye know not how to act aright, unless it be to court the popular breeze, and win the empty applause of the multitude--nay, ye abandon the superlative worth of conscience and virtue, and ask a recompense from the poor words of others. let me tell thee how wittily one did mock the shallowness of this sort of arrogance. a certain man assailed one who had put on the name of philosopher as a cloak to pride and vain-glory, not for the practice of real virtue, and added: "now shall i know if thou art a philosopher if thou bearest reproaches calmly and patiently." the other for awhile affected to be patient, and, having endured to be abused, cried out derisively: "_now_, do you see that i am a philosopher?" the other, with biting sarcasm, retorted: "i should have hadst thou held thy peace." moreover, what concern have choice spirits--for it is of such men we speak, men who seek glory by virtue--what concern, i say, have these with fame after the dissolution of the body in death's last hour? for if men die wholly--which our reasonings forbid us to believe--there is no such thing as glory at all, since he to whom the glory is said to belong is altogether non-existent. but if the mind, conscious of its own rectitude, is released from its earthly prison, and seeks heaven in free flight, doth it not despise all earthly things when it rejoices in its deliverance from earthly bonds, and enters upon the joys of heaven?' song vii. glory may not last. oh, let him, who pants for glory's guerdon, deeming glory all in all, look and see how wide the heaven expandeth, earth's enclosing bounds how small! shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory may not fill this narrow room! why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones! to escape your mortal doom? though your name, to distant regions bruited, o'er the earth be widely spread, though full many a lofty-sounding title on your house its lustre shed, death at all this pomp and glory spurneth when his hour draweth nigh, shrouds alike th' exalted and the humble, levels lowest and most high. where are now the bones of stanch fabricius? brutus, cato--where are they? lingering fame, with a few graven letters, doth their empty name display. but to know the great dead is not given from a gilded name alone; nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten, 'tis not _you_ that fame makes known. fondly do ye deem life's little hour lengthened by fame's mortal breath; there but waits you--when this, too, is taken-- at the last a second death. viii. 'but that thou mayst not think that i wage implacable warfare against fortune, i own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well--i mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. strange is the thing i am trying to express, and for this cause i can scarce find words to make clear my thought. for truly i believe that ill fortune is of more use to men than good fortune. for good fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; ill fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconstancy. the one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. finally, good fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; ill fortune ofttimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons. again, should it be esteemed a trifling boon, thinkest thou, that this cruel, this odious fortune hath discovered to thee the hearts of thy faithful friends--that other hid from thee alike the faces of the true friends and of the false, but in departing she hath taken away _her_ friends, and left thee _thine_? what price wouldst thou not have given for this service in the fulness of thy prosperity when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate? cease, then, to seek the wealth thou hast lost, since in true friends thou hast found the most precious of all riches.' song viii. love is lord of all. why are nature's changes bound to a fixed and ordered round? what to leaguèd peace hath bent every warring element? wherefore doth the rosy morn rise on phoebus' car upborne? why should phoebe rule the night, led by hesper's guiding light? what the power that doth restrain in his place the restless main, that within fixed bounds he keeps, nor o'er earth in deluge sweeps? love it is that holds the chains, love o'er sea and earth that reigns; love--whom else but sovereign love?-- love, high lord in heaven above! yet should he his care remit, all that now so close is knit in sweet love and holy peace, would no more from conflict cease, but with strife's rude shock and jar all the world's fair fabric mar. tribes and nations love unites by just treaty's sacred rites; wedlock's bonds he sanctifies by affection's softest ties. love appointeth, as is due, faithful laws to comrades true-- love, all-sovereign love!--oh, then, ye are blest, ye sons of men, if the love that rules the sky in your hearts is throned on high! book iii. true happiness and false. summary ch. i. boethius beseeches philosophy to continue. she promises to lead him to true happiness.--ch. ii. happiness is the one end which all created beings seek. they aim variously at (_a_) wealth, or (_b_) rank, or (_c_) sovereignty, or (_d_) glory, or (_e_) pleasure, because they think thereby to attain either (_a_) contentment, (_b_) reverence, (_c_) power, (_d_) renown, or (_e_) gladness of heart, in one or other of which they severally imagine happiness to consist.--ch. iii. philosophy proceeds to consider whether happiness can really be secured in any of these ways, (_a_) so far from bringing contentment, riches only add to men's wants.--ch. iv. (_b_) high position cannot of itself win respect. titles command no reverence in distant and barbarous lands. they even fall into contempt through lapse of time.--ch. v. (_c_) sovereignty cannot even bestow safety. history tells of the downfall of kings and their ministers. tyrants go in fear of their lives. --ch. vi. (_d_) fame conferred on the unworthy is but disgrace. the splendour of noble birth is not a man's own, but his ancestors'.--ch. vii. (_e_) pleasure begins in the restlessness of desire, and ends in repentance. even the pure pleasures of home may turn to gall and bitterness.--ch. viii. all fail, then, to give what they promise. there is, moreover, some accompanying evil involved in each of these aims. beauty and bodily strength are likewise of little worth. in strength man is surpassed by the brutes; beauty is but outward show.--ch. ix. the source of men's error in following these phantoms of good is that _they break up and separate that which is in its nature one and indivisible_. contentment, power, reverence, renown, and joy are essentially bound up one with the other, and, if they are to be attained at all, must be attained _together_. true happiness, if it can be found, will include them all. but it cannot be found among the perishable things hitherto considered.--ch. x. such a happiness necessarily exists. its seat is in god. nay, god is very happiness, and in a manner, therefore, the happy man partakes also of the divine nature. all other ends are relative to this good, since they are all pursued only for the sake of good; it is _good_ which is the sole ultimate end. and since the sole end is also happiness, it is plain that this good and happiness are in essence the same.--ch. xi. unity is another aspect of goodness. now, all things subsist so long only as they preserve the unity of their being; when they lose this unity, they perish. but the bent of nature forces all things (plants and inanimate things, as well as animals) to strive to continue in life. therefore, all things desire unity, for unity is essential to life. but unity and goodness were shown to be the same. therefore, good is proved to be the end towards which the whole universe tends.[e]--ch. xii. boethius acknowledges that he is but recollecting truths he once knew. philosophy goes on to show that it is goodness also by which the whole world is governed.[f] boethius professes compunction for his former folly. but the paradox of evil is introduced, and he is once more perplexed. footnotes: [e] this solves the second of the points left in doubt at the end of bk. i., ch. vi. [f] this solves the third. no distinct account is given of the first, but an answer may be gathered from the general argument of bks. ii., iii., and iv. book iii. i. she ceased, but i stood fixed by the sweetness of the song in wonderment and eager expectation, my ears still strained to listen. and then after a little i said: 'thou sovereign solace of the stricken soul, what refreshment hast thou brought me, no less by the sweetness of thy singing than by the weightiness of thy discourse! verily, i think not that i shall hereafter be unequal to the blows of fortune. wherefore, i no longer dread the remedies which thou saidst were something too severe for my strength; nay, rather, i am eager to hear of them and call for them with all vehemence.' then said she: 'i marked thee fastening upon my words silently and intently, and i expected, or--to speak more truly--i myself brought about in thee, this state of mind. what now remains is of such sort that to the taste indeed it is biting, but when received within it turns to sweetness. but whereas thou dost profess thyself desirous of hearing, with what ardour wouldst thou not burn didst thou but perceive whither it is my task to lead thee!' 'whither?' said i. 'to true felicity,' said she, 'which even now thy spirit sees in dreams, but cannot behold in very truth, while thine eyes are engrossed with semblances.' then said i: 'i beseech thee, do thou show to me her true shape without a moment's loss.' 'gladly will i, for thy sake,' said she. 'but first i will try to sketch in words, and describe a cause which is more familiar to thee, that, when thou hast viewed this carefully, thou mayst turn thy eyes the other way, and recognise the beauty of true happiness.' song i. the thorns of error. who fain would sow the fallow field, and see the growing corn, must first remove the useless weeds, the bramble and the thorn. after ill savour, honey's taste is to the mouth more sweet; after the storm, the twinkling stars the eyes more cheerly greet. when night hath past, the bright dawn comes in car of rosy hue; so drive the false bliss from thy mind, and thou shall see the true. ii. for a little space she remained in a fixed gaze, withdrawn, as it were, into the august chamber of her mind; then she thus began: 'all mortal creatures in those anxious aims which find employment in so many varied pursuits, though they take many paths, yet strive to reach one goal--the goal of happiness. now, _the good_ is that which, when a man hath got, he can lack nothing further. this it is which is the supreme good of all, containing within itself all particular good; so that if anything is still wanting thereto, this cannot be the supreme good, since something would be left outside which might be desired. 'tis clear, then, that happiness is a state perfected by the assembling together of all good things. to this state, as we have said, all men try to attain, but by different paths. for the desire of the true good is naturally implanted in the minds of men; only error leads them aside out of the way in pursuit of the false. some, deeming it the highest good to want for nothing, spare no pains to attain affluence; others, judging the good to be that to which respect is most worthily paid, strive to win the reverence of their fellow-citizens by the attainment of official dignity. some there are who fix the chief good in supreme power; these either wish themselves to enjoy sovereignty, or try to attach themselves to those who have it. those, again, who think renown to be something of supreme excellence are in haste to spread abroad the glory of their name either through the arts of war or of peace. a great many measure the attainment of good by joy and gladness of heart; these think it the height of happiness to give themselves over to pleasure. others there are, again, who interchange the ends and means one with the other in their aims; for instance, some want riches for the sake of pleasure and power, some covet power either for the sake of money or in order to bring renown to their name. so it is on these ends, then, that the aim of human acts and wishes is centred, and on others like to these--for instance, noble birth and popularity, which seem to compass a certain renown; wife and children, which are sought for the sweetness of their possession; while as for friendship, the most sacred kind indeed is counted in the category of virtue, not of fortune; but other kinds are entered upon for the sake of power or of enjoyment. and as for bodily excellences, it is obvious that they are to be ranged with the above. for strength and stature surely manifest power; beauty and fleetness of foot bring celebrity; health brings pleasure. it is plain, then, that the only object sought for in all these ways is _happiness_. for that which each seeks in preference to all else, that is in his judgment the supreme good. and we have defined the supreme good to be happiness. therefore, that state which each wishes in preference to all others is in his judgment happy. 'thou hast, then, set before thine eyes something like a scheme of human happiness--wealth, rank, power, glory, pleasure. now epicurus, from a sole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the highest good to be pleasure, because all the other objects seem to bring some delight to the soul. but to return to human pursuits and aims: man's mind seeks to recover its proper good, in spite of the mistiness of its recollection, but, like a drunken man, knows not by what path to return home. think you they are wrong who strive to escape want? nay, truly there is nothing which can so well complete happiness as a state abounding in all good things, needing nothing from outside, but wholly self-sufficing. do they fall into error who deem that which is best to be also best deserving to receive the homage of reverence? not at all. that cannot possibly be vile and contemptible, to attain which the endeavours of nearly all mankind are directed. then, is power not to be reckoned in the category of good? why, can that which is plainly more efficacious than anything else be esteemed a thing feeble and void of strength? or is renown to be thought of no account? nay, it cannot be ignored that the highest renown is constantly associated with the highest excellence. and what need is there to say that happiness is not haunted by care and gloom, nor exposed to trouble and vexation, since that is a condition we ask of the very least of things, from the possession and enjoyment of which we expect delight? so, then, these are the blessings men wish to win; they want riches, rank, sovereignty, glory, pleasure, because they believe that by these means they will secure independence, reverence, power, renown, and joy of heart. therefore, it is _the good_ which men seek by such divers courses; and herein is easily shown the might of nature's power, since, although opinions are so various and discordant, yet they agree in cherishing _good_ as the end.' song ii. the bent of nature. how the might of nature sways all the world in ordered ways, how resistless laws control each least portion of the whole-- fain would i in sounding verse on my pliant strings rehearse. lo, the lion captive ta'en meekly wears his gilded chain; yet though he by hand be fed, though a master's whip he dread, if but once the taste of gore whet his cruel lips once more, straight his slumbering fierceness wakes, with one roar his bonds he breaks, and first wreaks his vengeful force on his trainer's mangled corse. and the woodland songster, pent in forlorn imprisonment, though a mistress' lavish care store of honeyed sweets prepare; yet, if in his narrow cage, as he hops from bar to bar, he should spy the woods afar, cool with sheltering foliage, all these dainties he will spurn, to the woods his heart will turn; only for the woods he longs, pipes the woods in all his songs. to rude force the sapling bends, while the hand its pressure lends; if the hand its pressure slack, straight the supple wood springs back. phoebus in the western main sinks; but swift his car again by a secret path is borne to the wonted gates of morn. thus are all things seen to yearn in due time for due return; and no order fixed may stay, save which in th' appointed way joins the end to the beginning in a steady cycle spinning. iii. 'ye, too, creatures of earth, have some glimmering of your origin, however faint, and though in a vision dim and clouded, yet in some wise, notwithstanding, ye discern the true end of happiness, and so the aim of nature leads you thither--to that true good--while error in many forms leads you astray therefrom. for reflect whether men are able to win happiness by those means through which they think to reach the proposed end. truly, if either wealth, rank, or any of the rest, bring with them anything of such sort as seems to have nothing wanting to it that is good, we, too, acknowledge that some are made happy by the acquisition of these things. but if they are not able to fulfil their promises, and, moreover, lack many good things, is not the happiness men seek in them clearly discovered to be a false show? therefore do i first ask thee thyself, who but lately wert living in affluence, amid all that abundance of wealth, was thy mind never troubled in consequence of some wrong done to thee?' 'nay,' said i, 'i cannot ever remember a time when my mind was so completely at peace as not to feel the pang of some uneasiness.' 'was it not because either something was absent which thou wouldst not have absent, or present which thou wouldst have away?' 'yes,' said i. 'then, thou didst want the presence of the one, the absence of the other?' 'admitted.' 'but a man lacks that of which he is in want?' 'he does.' 'and he who lacks something is not in all points self-sufficing?' 'no; certainly not,' said i. 'so wert thou, then, in the plenitude of thy wealth, supporting this insufficiency?' 'i must have been.' 'wealth, then, cannot make its possessor independent and free from all want, yet this was what it seemed to promise. moreover, i think this also well deserves to be considered--that there is nothing in the special nature of money to hinder its being taken away from those who possess it against their will.' 'i admit it.' 'why, of course, when every day the stronger wrests it from the weaker without his consent. else, whence come lawsuits, except in seeking to recover moneys which have been taken away against their owner's will by force or fraud?' 'true,' said i. 'then, everyone will need some extraneous means of protection to keep his money safe.' 'who can venture to deny it?' 'yet he would not, unless he possessed the money which it is possible to lose.' 'no; he certainly would not.' 'then, we have worked round to an opposite conclusion: the wealth which was thought to make a man independent rather puts him in need of further protection. how in the world, then, can want be driven away by riches? cannot the rich feel hunger? cannot they thirst? are not the limbs of the wealthy sensitive to the winter's cold? "but," thou wilt say, "the rich have the wherewithal to sate their hunger, the means to get rid of thirst and cold." true enough; want can thus be soothed by riches, wholly removed it cannot be. for if this ever-gaping, ever-craving want is glutted by wealth, it needs must be that the want itself which can be so glutted still remains. i do not speak of how very little suffices for nature, and how for avarice nothing is enough. wherefore, if wealth cannot get rid of want, and makes new wants of its own, how can ye believe that it bestows independence?' song iii. the insatiableness of avarice. though the covetous grown wealthy see his piles of gold rise high; though he gather store of treasure that can never satisfy; though with pearls his gorget blazes, rarest that the ocean yields; though a hundred head of oxen travail in his ample fields; ne'er shall carking care forsake him while he draws this vital breath, and his riches go not with him, when his eyes are closed in death. iv. 'well, but official dignity clothes him to whom it comes with honour and reverence! have, then, offices of state such power as to plant virtue in the minds of their possessors, and drive out vice? nay, they are rather wont to signalize iniquity than to chase it away, and hence arises our indignation that honours so often fall to the most iniquitous of men. accordingly, catullus calls nonius an "ulcer-spot," though "sitting in the curule chair." dost not see what infamy high position brings upon the bad? surely their unworthiness will be less conspicuous if their rank does not draw upon them the public notice! in thy own case, wouldst thou ever have been induced by all these perils to think of sharing office with decoratus, since thou hast discerned in him the spirit of a rascally parasite and informer? no; we cannot deem men worthy of reverence on account of their office, whom we deem unworthy of the office itself. but didst thou see a man endued with wisdom, couldst thou suppose him not worthy of reverence, nor of that wisdom with which he was endued?' 'no; certainly not.' 'there is in virtue a dignity of her own which she forthwith passes over to those to whom she is united. and since public honours cannot do this, it is clear that they do not possess the true beauty of dignity. and here this well deserves to be noticed--that if a man is the more scorned in proportion as he is despised by a greater number, high position not only fails to win reverence for the wicked, but even loads them the more with contempt by drawing more attention to them. but not without retribution; for the wicked pay back a return in kind to the dignities they put on by the pollution of their touch. perhaps, too, another consideration may teach thee to confess that true reverence cannot come through these counterfeit dignities. it is this: if one who had been many times consul chanced to visit barbaric lands, would his office win him the reverence of the barbarians? and yet if reverence were the natural effect of dignities, they would not forego their proper function in any part of the world, even as fire never anywhere fails to give forth heat. but since this effect is not due to their own efficacy, but is attached to them by the mistaken opinion of mankind, they disappear straightway when they are set before those who do not esteem them dignities. thus the case stands with foreign peoples. but does their repute last for ever, even in the land of their origin? why, the prefecture, which was once a great power, is now an empty name--a burden merely on the senator's fortune; the commissioner of the public corn supply was once a personage--now what is more contemptible than this office? for, as we said just now, that which hath no true comeliness of its own now receives, now loses, lustre at the caprice of those who have to do with it. so, then, if dignities cannot win men reverence, if they are actually sullied by the contamination of the wicked, if they lose their splendour through time's changes, if they come into contempt merely for lack of public estimation, what precious beauty have they in themselves, much less to give to others?' song iv. disgrace of honours conferred by a tyrant. though royal purple soothes his pride, and snowy pearls his neck adorn, nero in all his riot lives the mark of universal scorn. yet he on reverend heads conferred th' inglorious honours of the state. shall we, then, deem them truly blessed whom such preferment hath made great? v. 'well, then, does sovereignty and the intimacy of kings prove able to confer power? why, surely does not the happiness of kings endure for ever? and yet antiquity is full of examples, and these days also, of kings whose happiness has turned into calamity. how glorious a power, which is not even found effectual for its own preservation! but if happiness has its source in sovereign power, is not happiness diminished, and misery inflicted in its stead, in so far as that power falls short of completeness? yet, however widely human sovereignty be extended, there must still be more peoples left, over whom each several king holds no sway. now, at whatever point the power on which happiness depends ceases, here powerlessness steals in and makes wretchedness; so, by this way of reckoning, there must needs be a balance of wretchedness in the lot of the king. the tyrant who had made trial of the perils of his condition figured the fears that haunt a throne under the image of a sword hanging over a man's head.[g] what sort of power, then, is this which cannot drive away the gnawings of anxiety, or shun the stings of terror? fain would they themselves have lived secure, but they cannot; then they boast about their power! dost thou count him to possess power whom thou seest to wish what he cannot bring to pass? dost thou count him to possess power who encompasses himself with a body-guard, who fears those he terrifies more than they fear him, who, to keep up the semblance of power, is himself at the mercy of his slaves? need i say anything of the friends of kings, when i show royal dominion itself so utterly and miserably weak--why ofttimes the royal power in its plenitude brings them low, ofttimes involves them in its fall? nero drove his friend and preceptor, seneca, to the choice of the manner of his death. antoninus exposed papinianus, who was long powerful at court, to the swords of the soldiery. yet each of these was willing to renounce his power. seneca tried to surrender his wealth also to nero, and go into retirement; but neither achieved his purpose. when they tottered, their very greatness dragged them down. what manner of thing, then, is this power which keeps men in fear while they possess it--which when thou art fain to keep, thou art not safe, and when thou desirest to lay it aside thou canst not rid thyself of? are friends any protection who have been attached by fortune, not by virtue? nay; him whom good fortune has made a friend, ill fortune will make an enemy. and what plague is more effectual to do hurt than a foe of one's own household?' footnotes: [g] the sword of damocles. song v. self-mastery. who on power sets his aim, first must his own spirit tame; he must shun his neck to thrust 'neath th' unholy yoke of lust. for, though india's far-off land bow before his wide command, utmost thule homage pay-- if he cannot drive away haunting care and black distress, in his power, he's powerless. vi. 'again, how misleading, how base, a thing ofttimes is glory! well does the tragic poet exclaim: '"oh, fond repute, how many a time and oft hast them raised high in pride the base-born churl!" for many have won a great name through the mistaken beliefs of the multitude--and what can be imagined more shameful than that? nay, they who are praised falsely must needs themselves blush at their own praises! and even when praise is won by merit, still, how does it add to the good conscience of the wise man who measures his good not by popular repute, but by the truth of inner conviction? and if at all it does seem a fair thing to get this same renown spread abroad, it follows that any failure so to spread it is held foul. but if, as i set forth but now, there must needs be many tribes and peoples whom the fame of any single man cannot reach, it follows that he whom thou esteemest glorious seems all inglorious in a neighbouring quarter of the globe. as to popular favour, i do not think it even worthy of mention in this place, since it never cometh of judgment, and never lasteth steadily. 'then, again, who does not see how empty, how foolish, is the fame of noble birth? why, if the nobility is based on renown, the renown is another's! for, truly, nobility seems to be a sort of reputation coming from the merits of ancestors. but if it is the praise which brings renown, of necessity it is they who are praised that are famous. wherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou hast none of thine own. so, if there is any excellence in nobility of birth, methinks it is this alone--that it would seem to impose upon the nobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors.' song vi. true nobility. all men are of one kindred stock, though scattered far and wide; for one is father of us all--one doth for all provide. he gave the sun his golden beams, the moon her silver horn; he set mankind upon the earth, as stars the heavens adorn. he shut a soul--a heaven-born soul--within the body's frame; the noble origin he gave each mortal wight may claim. why boast ye, then, so loud of race and high ancestral line? if ye behold your being's source, and god's supreme design, none is degenerate, none base, unless by taint of sin and cherished vice he foully stain his heavenly origin. vii. 'then, what shall i say of the pleasures of the body? the lust thereof is full of uneasiness; the sating, of repentance. what sicknesses, what intolerable pains, are they wont to bring on the bodies of those who enjoy them--the fruits of iniquity, as it were! now, what sweetness the stimulus of pleasure may have i do not know. but that the issues of pleasure are painful everyone may understand who chooses to recall the memory of his own fleshly lusts. nay, if these can make happiness, there is no reason why the beasts also should not be happy, since all their efforts are eagerly set upon satisfying the bodily wants. i know, indeed, that the sweetness of wife and children should be right comely, yet only too true to nature is what was said of one--that he found in his sons his tormentors. and how galling such a contingency would be, i must needs put thee in mind, since thou hast never in any wise suffered such experiences, nor art thou now under any uneasiness. in such a case, i agree with my servant euripides, who said that a man without children was fortunate in his misfortune.'[h] footnotes: [h] paley translates the lines in euripides' 'andromache': 'they [the childless] are indeed spared from much pain and sorrow, but their supposed happiness is after all but wretchedness.' euripides' meaning is therefore really just the reverse of that which boethius makes it. see euripides, 'andromache,' il. - . song vii. pleasure's sting. this is the way of pleasure: she stings them that despoil her; and, like the wingéd toiler who's lost her honeyed treasure, she flies, but leaves her smart deep-rankling in the heart. viii. 'it is beyond doubt, then, that these paths do not lead to happiness; they cannot guide anyone to the promised goal. now, i will very briefly show what serious evils are involved in following them. just consider. is it thy endeavour to heap up money? why, thou must wrest it from its present possessor! art thou minded to put on the splendour of official dignity? thou must beg from those who have the giving of it; thou who covetest to outvie others in honour must lower thyself to the humble posture of petition. dost thou long for power? thou must face perils, for thou wilt be at the mercy of thy subjects' plots. is glory thy aim? thou art lured on through all manner of hardships, and there is an end to thy peace of mind. art fain to lead a life of pleasure? yet who does not scorn and contemn one who is the slave of the weakest and vilest of things--the body? again, on how slight and perishable a possession do they rely who set before themselves bodily excellences! can ye ever surpass the elephant in bulk or the bull in strength? can ye excel the tiger in swiftness? look upon the infinitude, the solidity, the swift motion, of the heavens, and for once cease to admire things mean and worthless. and yet the heavens are not so much to be admired on this account as for the reason which guides them. then, how transient is the lustre of beauty! how soon gone!--more fleeting than the fading bloom of spring flowers. and yet if, as aristotle says, men should see with the eyes of lynceus, so that their sight might pierce through obstructions, would not that body of alcibiades, so gloriously fair in outward seeming, appear altogether loathsome when all its inward parts lay open to the view? therefore, it is not thy own nature that makes thee seem beautiful, but the weakness of the eyes that see thee. yet prize as unduly as ye will that body's excellences; so long as ye know that this that ye admire, whatever its worth, can be dissolved away by the feeble flame of a three days' fever. from all which considerations we may conclude as a whole, that these things which cannot make good the advantages they promise, which are never made perfect by the assemblage of all good things--these neither lead as by-ways to happiness, nor themselves make men completely happy.' song viii. human folly. alas! how wide astray doth ignorance these wretched mortals lead from truth's own way! for not on leafy stems do ye within the green wood look for gold, nor strip the vine for gems; your nets ye do not spread upon the hill-tops, that the groaning board with fish be furnishèd; if ye are fain to chase the bounding goat, ye sweep not in vain search the ocean's ruffled face. the sea's far depths they know, each hidden nook, wherein the waves o'erwash the pearl as white as snow; where lurks the tyrian shell, where fish and prickly urchins do abound, all this they know full well. but not to know or care where hidden lies the good all hearts desire-- this blindness they can bear; with gaze on earth low-bent, they seek for that which reacheth far beyond the starry firmament. what curse shall i call down on hearts so dull? may they the race still run for wealth and high renown! and when with much ado the false good they have grasped--ah, then too late!-- may they discern the true! ix. 'this much may well suffice to set forth the form of false happiness; if this is now clear to thine eyes, the next step is to show what true happiness is.' 'indeed,' said i, 'i see clearly enough that neither is independence to be found in wealth, nor power in sovereignty, nor reverence in dignities, nor fame in glory, nor true joy in pleasures.' 'hast thou discerned also the causes why this is so?' 'i seem to have some inkling, but i should like to learn more at large from thee.' 'why, truly the reason is hard at hand. _that which is simple and indivisible by nature human error separates_, and transforms from the true and perfect to the false and imperfect. dost thou imagine that which lacketh nothing can want power?' 'certainly not.' 'right; for if there is any feebleness of strength in anything, in this there must necessarily be need of external protection.' 'that is so.' 'accordingly, the nature of independence and power is one and the same.' 'it seems so.' 'well, but dost think that anything of such a nature as this can be looked upon with contempt, or is it rather of all things most worthy of veneration?' 'nay; there can be no doubt as to that.' 'let us, then, add reverence to independence and power, and conclude these three to be one.' 'we must if we will acknowledge the truth.' 'thinkest thou, then, this combination of qualities to be obscure and without distinction, or rather famous in all renown? just consider: can that want renown which has been agreed to be lacking in nothing, to be supreme in power, and right worthy of honour, for the reason that it cannot bestow this upon itself, and so comes to appear somewhat poor in esteem?' 'i cannot but acknowledge that, being what it is, this union of qualities is also right famous.' 'it follows, then, that we must admit that renown is not different from the other three.' 'it does,' said i. 'that, then, which needs nothing outside itself, which can accomplish all things in its own strength, which enjoys fame and compels reverence, must not this evidently be also fully crowned with joy?' 'in sooth, i cannot conceive,' said i, 'how any sadness can find entrance into such a state; wherefore i must needs acknowledge it full of joy--at least, if our former conclusions are to hold.' 'then, for the same reasons, this also is necessary--that independence, power, renown, reverence, and sweetness of delight, are different only in name, but in substance differ no wise one from the other.' 'it is,' said i. 'this, then, which is one, and simple by nature, human perversity separates, and, in trying to win a part of that which has no parts, fails to attain not only that portion (since there are no portions), but also the whole, to which it does not dream of aspiring.' 'how so?' said i. 'he who, to escape want, seeks riches, gives himself no concern about power; he prefers a mean and low estate, and also denies himself many pleasures dear to nature to avoid losing the money which he has gained. but at this rate he does not even attain to independence--a weakling void of strength, vexed by distresses, mean and despised, and buried in obscurity. he, again, who thirsts alone for power squanders his wealth, despises pleasure, and thinks fame and rank alike worthless without power. but thou seest in how many ways his state also is defective. sometimes it happens that he lacks necessaries, that he is gnawed by anxieties, and, since he cannot rid himself of these inconveniences, even ceases to have that power which was his whole end and aim. in like manner may we cast up the reckoning in case of rank, of glory, or of pleasure. for since each one of these severally is identical with the rest, whosoever seeks any one of them without the others does not even lay hold of that one which he makes his aim.' 'well,' said i, 'what then?' 'suppose anyone desire to obtain them together, he does indeed wish for happiness as a whole; but will he find it in these things which, as we have proved, are unable to bestow what they promise?' 'nay; by no means,' said i. 'then, happiness must certainly not be sought in these things which severally are believed to afford some one of the blessings most to be desired.' 'they must not, i admit. no conclusion could be more true.' 'so, then, the form and the causes of false happiness are set before thine eyes. now turn thy gaze to the other side; there thou wilt straightway see the true happiness i promised.' 'yea, indeed, 'tis plain to the blind.' said i. 'thou didst point it out even now in seeking to unfold the causes of the false. for, unless i am mistaken, that is true and perfect happiness which crowns one with the union of independence, power, reverence, renown, and joy. and to prove to thee with how deep an insight i have listened--since all these are the same--that which can truly bestow one of them i know to be without doubt full and complete happiness.' 'happy art thou, my scholar, in this thy conviction; only one thing shouldst thou add.' 'what is that?' said i. 'is there aught, thinkest thou, amid these mortal and perishable things which can produce a state such as this?' 'nay, surely not; and this thou hast so amply demonstrated that no word more is needed.' 'well, then, these things seem to give to mortals shadows of the true good, or some kind of imperfect good; but the true and perfect good they cannot bestow.' 'even so,' said i. 'since, then, thou hast learnt what that true happiness is, and what men falsely call happiness, it now remains that thou shouldst learn from what source to seek this.' 'yes; to this i have long been eagerly looking forward.' 'well, since, as plato maintains in the "timæus," we ought even in the most trivial matters to implore the divine protection, what thinkest thou should we now do in order to deserve to find the seat of that highest good?' 'we must invoke the father of all things,' said i; 'for without this no enterprise sets out from a right beginning.' 'thou sayest well,' said she; and forthwith lifted up her voice and sang: song ix.[i] invocation. maker of earth and sky, from age to age who rul'st the world by reason; at whose word time issues from eternity's abyss: to all that moves the source of movement, fixed thyself and moveless. thee no cause impelled extrinsic this proportioned frame to shape from shapeless matter; but, deep-set within thy inmost being, the form of perfect good, from envy free; and thou didst mould the whole to that supernal pattern. beauteous the world in thee thus imaged, being thyself most beautiful. so thou the work didst fashion in that fair likeness, bidding it put on perfection through the exquisite perfectness of every part's contrivance. thou dost bind the elements in balanced harmony, so that the hot and cold, the moist and dry, contend not; nor the pure fire leaping up escape, or weight of waters whelm the earth. thou joinest and diffusest through the whole, linking accordantly its several parts, a soul of threefold nature, moving all. this, cleft in twain, and in two circles gathered, speeds in a path that on itself returns, encompassing mind's limits, and conforms the heavens to her true semblance. lesser souls and lesser lives by a like ordinance thou sendest forth, each to its starry car affixing, and dost strew them far and wide o'er earth and heaven. these by a law benign thou biddest turn again, and render back to thee their fires. oh, grant, almighty father, grant us on reason's wing to soar aloft to heaven's exalted height; grant us to see the fount of good; grant us, the true light found, to fix our steadfast eyes in vision clear on thee. disperse the heavy mists of earth, and shine in thine own splendour. for thou art the true serenity and perfect rest of every pious soul--to see thy face, the end and the beginning--one the guide, the traveller, the pathway, and the goal. footnotes: [i] the substance of this poem is taken from plato's 'timæus,' - . see jowett, vol. iii., pp. - (third edition). x. 'since now thou hast seen what is the form of the imperfect good, and what the form of the perfect also, methinks i should next show in what manner this perfection of felicity is built up. and here i conceive it proper to inquire, first, whether any excellence, such as thou hast lately defined, can exist in the nature of things, lest we be deceived by an empty fiction of thought to which no true reality answers. but it cannot be denied that such does exist, and is, as it were, the source of all things good. for everything which is called imperfect is spoken of as imperfect by reason of the privation of some perfection; so it comes to pass that, whenever imperfection is found in any particular, there must necessarily be a perfection in respect of that particular also. for were there no such perfection, it is utterly inconceivable how that so-called _im_perfection should come into existence. nature does not make a beginning with things mutilated and imperfect; she starts with what is whole and perfect, and falls away later to these feeble and inferior productions. so if there is, as we showed before, a happiness of a frail and imperfect kind, it cannot be doubted but there is also a happiness substantial and perfect.' 'most true is thy conclusion, and most sure,' said i. 'next to consider where the dwelling-place of this happiness may be. the common belief of all mankind agrees that god, the supreme of all things, is good. for since nothing can be imagined better than god, how can we doubt him to be good than whom there is nothing better? now, reason shows god to be good in such wise as to prove that in him is perfect good. for were it not so, he would not be supreme of all things; for there would be something else more excellent, possessed of perfect good, which would seem to have the advantage in priority and dignity, since it has clearly appeared that all perfect things are prior to those less complete. wherefore, lest we fall into an infinite regression, we must acknowledge the supreme god to be full of supreme and perfect good. but we have determined that true happiness is the perfect good; therefore true happiness must dwell in the supreme deity.' 'i accept thy reasonings,' said i; 'they cannot in any wise be disputed.' 'but, come, see how strictly and incontrovertibly thou mayst prove this our assertion that the supreme godhead hath fullest possession of the highest good.' 'in what way, pray?' said i. 'do not rashly suppose that he who is the father of all things hath received that highest good of which he is said to be possessed either from some external source, or hath it as a natural endowment in such sort that thou mightest consider the essence of the happiness possessed, and of the god who possesses it, distinct and different. for if thou deemest it received from without, thou mayst esteem that which gives more excellent than that which has received. but him we most worthily acknowledge to be the most supremely excellent of all things. if, however, it is in him by nature, yet is logically distinct, the thought is inconceivable, since we are speaking of god, who is supreme of all things. who was there to join these distinct essences? finally, when one thing is different from another, the things so conceived as distinct cannot be identical. therefore that which of its own nature is distinct from the highest good is not itself the highest good--an impious thought of him than whom, 'tis plain, nothing can be more excellent. for universally nothing can be better in nature than the source from which it has come; therefore on most true grounds of reason would i conclude that which is the source of all things to be in its own essence the highest good.' 'and most justly,' said i. 'but the highest good has been admitted to be happiness.' 'yes.' 'then,' said she, 'it is necessary to acknowledge that god is very happiness.' 'yes,' said i; 'i cannot gainsay my former admissions, and i see clearly that this is a necessary inference therefrom.' 'reflect, also,' said she, 'whether the same conclusion is not further confirmed by considering that there cannot be two supreme goods distinct one from the other. for the goods which are different clearly cannot be severally each what the other is: wherefore neither of the two can be perfect, since to either the other is wanting; but since it is not perfect, it cannot manifestly be the supreme good. by no means, then, can goods which are supreme be different one from the other. but we have concluded that both happiness and god are the supreme good; wherefore that which is highest divinity must also itself necessarily be supreme happiness.' 'no conclusion,' said i, 'could be truer to fact, nor more soundly reasoned out, nor more worthy of god.' 'then, further,' said she, 'just as geometricians are wont to draw inferences from their demonstrations to which they give the name "deductions," so will i add here a sort of corollary. for since men become happy by the acquisition of happiness, while happiness is very godship, it is manifest that they become happy by the acquisition of godship. but as by the acquisition of justice men become just, and wise by the acquisition of wisdom, so by parity of reasoning by acquiring godship they must of necessity become gods. so every man who is happy is a god; and though in nature god is one only, yet there is nothing to hinder that very many should be gods by participation in that nature.' 'a fair conclusion, and a precious,' said i, 'deduction or corollary, by whichever name thou wilt call it.' 'and yet,' said she, 'not one whit fairer than this which reason persuades us to add.' 'why, what?' said i. 'why, seeing happiness has many particulars included under it, should all these be regarded as forming one body of happiness, as it were, made up of various parts, or is there some one of them which forms the full essence of happiness, while all the rest are relative to this?' 'i would thou wouldst unfold the whole matter to me at large.' 'we judge happiness to be good, do we not?' 'yea, the supreme good.' 'and this superlative applies to all; for this same happiness is adjudged to be the completest independence, the highest power, reverence, renown, and pleasure.' 'what then?' 'are all these goods--independence, power, and the rest--to be deemed members of happiness, as it were, or are they all relative to good as to their summit and crown?' 'i understand the problem, but i desire to hear how thou wouldst solve it.' 'well, then, listen to the determination of the matter. were all these members composing happiness, they would differ severally one from the other. for this is the nature of parts--that by their difference they compose one body. all these, however, have been proved to be the same; therefore they cannot possibly be members, otherwise happiness will seem to be built up out of one member, which cannot be.' 'there can be no doubt as to that,' said i; 'but i am impatient to hear what remains.' 'why, it is manifest that all the others are relative to the good. for the very reason why independence is sought is that it is judged good, and so power also, because it is believed to be good. the same, too, may be supposed of reverence, of renown, and of pleasant delight. good, then, is the sum and source of all desirable things. that which has not in itself any good, either in reality or in semblance, can in no wise be desired. contrariwise, even things which by nature are not good are desired as if they were truly good, if they seem to be so. whereby it comes to pass that goodness is rightly believed to be the sum and hinge and cause of all things desirable. now, that for the sake of which anything is desired itself seems to be most wished for. for instance, if anyone wishes to ride for the sake of health, he does not so much wish for the exercise of riding as the benefit of his health. since, then, all things are sought for the sake of the good, it is not these so much as good itself that is sought by all. but that on account of which all other things are wished for was, we agreed, happiness; wherefore thus also it appears that it is happiness alone which is sought. from all which it is transparently clear that the essence of absolute good and of happiness is one and the same.' 'i cannot see how anyone can dissent from these conclusions.' 'but we have also proved that god and true happiness are one and the same.' 'yes,' said i. 'then we can safely conclude, also, that god's essence is seated in absolute good, and nowhere else.' song x. the true light. hither come, all ye whose minds lust with rosy fetters binds-- lust to bondage hard compelling th' earthy souls that are his dwelling-- here shall be your labour's close; here your haven of repose. come, to your one refuge press; wide it stands to all distress! not the glint of yellow gold down bright hermus' current rolled; not the tagus' precious sands, nor in far-off scorching lands all the radiant gems that hide under indus' storied tide-- emerald green and glistering white-- can illume our feeble sight; but they rather leave the mind in its native darkness blind. for the fairest beams they shed in earth's lowest depths were fed; but the splendour that supplies strength and vigour to the skies, and the universe controls, shunneth dark and ruined souls. he who once hath seen _this_ light will not call the sunbeam bright. xi. 'i quite agree,' said i, 'truly all thy reasonings hold admirably together.' then said she: 'what value wouldst thou put upon the boon shouldst thou come to the knowledge of the absolute good?' 'oh, an infinite,' said i, 'if only i were so blest as to learn to know god also who is the good.' 'yet this will i make clear to thee on truest grounds of reason, if only our recent conclusions stand fast.' 'they will.' 'have we not shown that those things which most men desire are not true and perfect good precisely for this cause--that they differ severally one from another, and, seeing that one is wanting to another, they cannot bestow full and absolute good; but that they become the true good when they are gathered, as it were, into one form and agency, so that that which is independence is likewise power, reverence, renown, and pleasant delight, and unless they are all one and the same, they have no claim to be counted among things desirable?' 'yes; this was clearly proved, and cannot in any wise be doubted.' 'now, when things are far from being good while they are different, but become good as soon as they are one, is it not true that these become good by acquiring unity?' 'it seems so,' said i. 'but dost not thou allow that all which is good is good by participation in goodness?' 'it is.' 'then, thou must on similar grounds admit that unity and goodness are the same; for when the effects of things in their natural working differ not, their essence is one and the same.' 'there is no denying it.' 'now, dost thou know,' said she, 'that all which is abides and subsists so long as it continues one, but so soon as it ceases to be one it perishes and falls to pieces?' 'in what way?' 'why, take animals, for example. when soul and body come together, and continue in one, this is, we say, a living creature; but when this unity is broken by the separation of these two, the creature dies, and is clearly no longer living. the body also, while it remains in one form by the joining together of its members, presents a human appearance; but if the separation and dispersal of the parts break up the body's unity, it ceases to be what it was. and if we extend our survey to all other things, without doubt it will manifestly appear that each several thing subsists while it is one, but when it ceases to be one perishes.' 'yes; when i consider further, i see it to be even as thou sayest.' 'well, is there aught,' said she, 'which, in so far as it acts conformably to nature, abandons the wish for life, and desires to come to death and corruption?' 'looking to living creatures, which have some faults of choice, i find none that, without external compulsion, forego the will to live, and of their own accord hasten to destruction. for every creature diligently pursues the end of self-preservation, and shuns death and destruction! as to herbs and trees, and inanimate things generally, i am altogether in doubt what to think.' 'and yet there is no possibility of question about this either, since thou seest how herbs and trees grow in places suitable for them, where, as far as their nature admits, they cannot quickly wither and die. some spring up in the plains, others in the mountains; some grow in marshes, others cling to rocks; and others, again, find a fertile soil in the barren sands; and if you try to transplant these elsewhere, they wither away. nature gives to each the soil that suits it, and uses her diligence to prevent any of them dying, so long as it is possible for them to continue alive. why do they all draw their nourishment from roots as from a mouth dipped into the earth, and distribute the strong bark over the pith? why are all the softer parts like the pith deeply encased within, while the external parts have the strong texture of wood, and outside of all is the bark to resist the weather's inclemency, like a champion stout in endurance? again, how great is nature's diligence to secure universal propagation by multiplying seed! who does not know all these to be contrivances, not only for the present maintenance of a species, but for its lasting continuance, generation after generation, for ever? and do not also the things believed inanimate on like grounds of reason seek each what is proper to itself? why do the flames shoot lightly upward, while the earth presses downward with its weight, if it is not that these motions and situations are suitable to their respective natures? moreover, each several thing is preserved by that which is agreeable to its nature, even as it is destroyed by things inimical. things solid like stones resist disintegration by the close adhesion of their parts. things fluid like air and water yield easily to what divides them, but swiftly flow back and mingle with those parts from which they have been severed, while fire, again, refuses to be cut at all. and we are not now treating of the voluntary motions of an intelligent soul, but of the drift of nature. even so is it that we digest our food without thinking about it, and draw our breath unconsciously in sleep; nay, even in living creatures the love of life cometh not of conscious will, but from the principles of nature. for oftentimes in the stress of circumstances will chooses the death which nature shrinks from; and contrarily, in spite of natural appetite, will restrains that work of reproduction by which alone the persistence of perishable creatures is maintained. so entirely does this love of self come from drift of nature, not from animal impulse. providence has furnished things with this most cogent reason for continuance: they must desire life, so long as it is naturally possible for them to continue living. wherefore in no way mayst thou doubt but that things naturally aim at continuance of existence, and shun destruction.' 'i confess,' said i, 'that what i lately thought uncertain, i now perceive to be indubitably clear.' 'now, that which seeks to subsist and continue desires to be one; for if its oneness be gone, its very existence cannot continue.' 'true,' said i. 'all things, then, desire to be one.' 'i agree.' 'but we have proved that one is the very same thing as good.' 'we have.' 'all things, then, seek the good; indeed, you may express the fact by defining good as that which all desire.' 'nothing could be more truly thought out. either there is no single end to which all things are relative, or else the end to which all things universally hasten must be the highest good of all.' then she: 'exceedingly do i rejoice, dear pupil; thine eye is now fixed on the very central mark of truth. moreover, herein is revealed that of which thou didst erstwhile profess thyself ignorant.' 'what is that?' said i. 'the end and aim of the whole universe. surely it is that which is desired of all; and, since we have concluded the good to be such, we ought to acknowledge the end and aim of the whole universe to be "the good."' song xi. reminiscence.[j] who truth pursues, who from false ways his heedful steps would keep, by inward light must search within in meditation deep; all outward bent he must repress his soul's true treasure to possess. then all that error's mists obscured shall shine more clear than light, this fleshly frame's oblivious weight hath quenched not reason quite; the germs of truth still lie within, whence we by learning all may win. else how could ye the answer due untaught to questions give, were't not that deep within the soul truth's secret sparks do live? if plato's teaching erreth not, we learn but that we have forgot. footnotes: [j] the doctrine of reminiscence--_i.e._, that all learning is really recollection--is set forth at length by plato in the 'meno,' - , and the 'phædo,' - . see jowett, vol. ii., pp. - and - . xii. then said i: 'with all my heart i agree with plato; indeed, this is now the second time that these things have been brought back to my mind--first i lost them through the clogging contact of the body; then after through the stress of heavy grief.' then she continued: 'if thou wilt reflect upon thy former admissions, it will not be long before thou dost also recollect that of which erstwhile thou didst confess thyself ignorant.' 'what is that?' said i. 'the principles of the world's government,' said she. 'yes; i remember my confession, and, although i now anticipate what thou intendest, i have a desire to hear the argument plainly set forth.' 'awhile ago thou deemedst it beyond all doubt that god doth govern the world.' 'i do not think it doubtful now, nor shall i ever; and by what reasons i am brought to this assurance i will briefly set forth. this world could never have taken shape as a single system out of parts so diverse and opposite were it not that there is one who joins together these so diverse things. and when it had once come together, the very diversity of natures would have dissevered it and torn it asunder in universal discord were there not one who keeps together what he has joined. nor would the order of nature proceed so regularly, nor could its course exhibit motions so fixed in respect of position, time, range, efficacy, and character, unless there were one who, himself abiding, disposed these various vicissitudes of change. this power, whatsoever it be, whereby they remain as they were created, and are kept in motion, i call by the name which all recognise--god.' then said she: 'seeing that such is thy belief, it will cost me little trouble, i think, to enable thee to win happiness, and return in safety to thy own country. but let us give our attention to the task that we have set before ourselves. have we not counted independence in the category of happiness, and agreed that god is absolute happiness?' 'truly, we have.' 'then, he will need no external assistance for the ruling of the world. otherwise, if he stands in need of aught, he will not possess complete independence.' 'that is necessarily so,' said i. 'then, by his own power alone he disposes all things.' 'it cannot be denied.' 'now, god was proved to be absolute good.' 'yes; i remember.' 'then, he disposes all things by the agency of good, if it be true that _he_ rules all things by his own power whom we have agreed to be good; and he is, as it were, the rudder and helm by which the world's mechanism is kept steady and in order.' 'heartily do i agree; and, indeed, i anticipated what thou wouldst say, though it may be in feeble surmise only.' 'i well believe it,' said she; 'for, as i think, thou now bringest to the search eyes quicker in discerning truth; but what i shall say next is no less plain and easy to see.' 'what is it?' said i. 'why,' said she, 'since god is rightly believed to govern all things with the rudder of goodness, and since all things do likewise, as i have taught, haste towards good by the very aim of nature, can it be doubted that his governance is willingly accepted, and that all submit themselves to the sway of the disposer as conformed and attempered to his rule?' 'necessarily so,' said i; 'no rule would seem happy if it were a yoke imposed on reluctant wills, and not the safe-keeping of obedient subjects.' 'there is nothing, then, which, while it follows nature, endeavours to resist good.' 'no; nothing.' 'but if anything should, will it have the least success against him whom we rightly agreed to be supreme lord of happiness?' 'it would be utterly impotent.' 'there is nothing, then, which has either the will or the power to oppose this supreme good.' 'no; i think not.' 'so, then,' said she, 'it is the supreme good which rules in strength, and graciously disposes all things.' then said i: 'how delighted am i at thy reasonings, and the conclusion to which thou hast brought them, but most of all at these very words which thou usest! i am now at last ashamed of the folly that so sorely vexed me.' 'thou hast heard the story of the giants assailing heaven; but a beneficent strength disposed of them also, as they deserved. but shall we submit our arguments to the shock of mutual collision?--it may be from the impact some fair spark of truth may be struck out.' 'if it be thy good pleasure,' said i. 'no one can doubt that god is all-powerful.' 'no one at all can question it who thinks consistently.' 'now, there is nothing which one who is all-powerful cannot do.' 'nothing.' 'but can god do evil, then?' 'nay; by no means.' 'then, evil is nothing,' said she, 'since he to whom nothing is impossible is unable to do evil.' 'art thou mocking me,' said i, 'weaving a labyrinth of tangled arguments, now seeming to begin where thou didst end, and now to end where thou didst begin, or dost thou build up some wondrous circle of divine simplicity? for, truly, a little before thou didst begin with happiness, and say it was the supreme good, and didst declare it to be seated in the supreme godhead. god himself, too, thou didst affirm to be supreme good and all-complete happiness; and from this thou didst go on to add, as by the way, the proof that no one would be happy unless he were likewise god. again, thou didst say that the very form of good was the essence both of god and of happiness, and didst teach that the absolute one was the absolute good which was sought by universal nature. thou didst maintain, also, that god rules the universe by the governance of goodness, that all things obey him willingly, and that evil has no existence in nature. and all this thou didst unfold without the help of assumptions from without, but by inherent and proper proofs, drawing credence one from the other.' then answered she: 'far is it from me to mock thee; nay, by the blessing of god, whom we lately addressed in prayer, we have achieved the most important of all objects. for such is the form of the divine essence, that neither can it pass into things external, nor take up anything external into itself; but, as parmenides says of it, '"in body like to a sphere on all sides perfectly rounded," it rolls the restless orb of the universe, keeping itself motionless the while. and if i have also employed reasonings not drawn from without, but lying within the compass of our subject, there is no cause for thee to marvel, since thou hast learnt on plato's authority that words ought to be akin to the matter of which they treat.' song xii. orpheus and eurydice. blest he whose feet have stood beside the fount of good; blest he whose will could break earth's chains for wisdom's sake! the thracian bard, 'tis said, mourned his dear consort dead; to hear the plaintive strain the woods moved in his train, and the stream ceased to flow, held by so soft a woe; the deer without dismay beside the lion lay; the hound, by song subdued, no more the hare pursued, but the pang unassuaged in his own bosom raged. the music that could calm all else brought him no balm. chiding the powers immortal, he came unto hell's portal; there breathed all tender things upon his sounding strings, each rhapsody high-wrought his goddess-mother taught-- all he from grief could borrow and love redoubling sorrow, till, as the echoes waken, all tænarus is shaken; whilst he to ruth persuades the monarch of the shades with dulcet prayer. spell-bound, the triple-headed hound at sounds so strangely sweet falls crouching at his feet. the dread avengers, too, that guilty minds pursue with ever-haunting fears, are all dissolved in tears. ixion, on his wheel, a respite brief doth feel; for, lo! the wheel stands still. and, while those sad notes thrill, thirst-maddened tantalus listens, oblivious of the stream's mockery and his long agony. the vulture, too, doth spare some little while to tear at tityus' rent side, sated and pacified. at length the shadowy king, his sorrows pitying, 'he hath prevailèd!' cried; 'we give him back his bride! to him she shall belong, as guerdon of his song. one sole condition yet upon the boon is set: let him not turn his eyes to view his hard-won prize, till they securely pass the gates of hell.' alas! what law can lovers move? a higher law is love! for orpheus--woe is me!-- on his eurydice-- day's threshold all but won-- looked, lost, and was undone! ye who the light pursue, this story is for you, who seek to find a way unto the clearer day. if on the darkness past one backward look ye cast, your weak and wandering eyes have lost the matchless prize. book iv. good and ill fortune. summary. ch. i. the mystery of the seeming moral confusion. philosophy engages to make this plain, and to fulfil her former promise to the full.--ch. ii. accordingly, (a) she first expounds the paradox that the good alone have power, the bad are altogether powerless.--ch. iii. (b) the righteous never lack their reward, nor the wicked their punishment.--ch. iv. (c) the wicked are more unhappy when they accomplish their desires than when they fail to attain them. (d) evil-doers are more fortunate when they expiate their crimes by suffering punishment than when they escape unpunished. (e) the wrong-doer is more wretched than he who suffers injury.--ch. v. boethius still cannot understand why the distribution of happiness and misery to the righteous and the wicked seems the result of chance. philosophy replies that this only seems so because we do not understand the principles of god's moral governance.--ch. vi. the distinction of fate and providence. the apparent moral confusion is due to our ignorance of the secret counsels of god's providence. if we possessed the key, we should see how all things are guided to good.--ch. vii. thus all fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just. book iv. i. softly and sweetly philosophy sang these verses to the end without losing aught of the dignity of her expression or the seriousness of her tones; then, forasmuch as i was as yet unable to forget my deeply-seated sorrow, just as she was about to say something further, i broke in and cried: 'o thou guide into the way of true light, all that thy voice hath uttered from the beginning even unto now has manifestly seemed to me at once divine contemplated in itself, and by the force of thy arguments placed beyond the possibility of overthrow. moreover, these truths have not been altogether unfamiliar to me heretofore, though because of indignation at my wrongs they have for a time been forgotten. but, lo! herein is the very chiefest cause of my grief--that, while there exists a good ruler of the universe, it is possible that evil should be at all, still more that it should go unpunished. surely thou must see how deservedly this of itself provokes astonishment. but a yet greater marvel follows: while wickedness reigns and flourishes, virtue not only lacks its reward, but is even thrust down and trampled under the feet of the wicked, and suffers punishment in the place of crime. that this should happen under the rule of a god who knows all things and can do all things, but wills only the good, cannot be sufficiently wondered at nor sufficiently lamented.' then said she: 'it would indeed be infinitely astounding, and of all monstrous things most horrible, if, as thou esteemest, in the well-ordered home of so great a householder, the base vessels should be held in honour, the precious left to neglect. but it is not so. for if we hold unshaken those conclusions which we lately reached, thou shall learn that, by the will of him of whose realm we are speaking, the good are always strong, the bad always weak and impotent; that vices never go unpunished, nor virtues unrewarded; that good fortune ever befalls the good, and ill fortune the bad, and much more of the sort, which shall hush thy murmurings, and stablish thee in the strong assurance of conviction. and since by my late instructions thou hast seen the form of happiness, hast learnt, too, the seat where it is to be found, all due preliminaries being discharged, i will now show thee the road which will lead thee home. wings, also, will i fasten to thy mind wherewith thou mayst soar aloft, that so, all disturbing doubts removed, thou mayst return safe to thy country, under my guidance, in the path i will show thee, and by the means which i furnish.' song i. the soul's flight. wings are mine; above the pole far aloft i soar. clothed with these, my nimble soul scorns earth's hated shore, cleaves the skies upon the wind, sees the clouds left far behind. soon the glowing point she nears, where the heavens rotate, follows through the starry spheres phoebus' course, or straight takes for comrade 'mid the stars saturn cold or glittering mars; thus each circling orb explores through night's stole that peers; then, when all are numbered, soars far beyond the spheres, mounting heaven's supremest height to the very fount of light. there the sovereign of the world his calm sway maintains; as the globe is onward whirled guides the chariot reins, and in splendour glittering reigns the universal king. hither if thy wandering feet find at last a way, here thy long-lost home thou'lt greet: 'dear lost land,' thou'lt say, 'though from thee i've wandered wide, hence i came, here will abide.' yet if ever thou art fain visitant to be of earth's gloomy night again, surely thou wilt see tyrants whom the nations fear dwell in hapless exile here. ii. then said i: 'verily, wondrous great are thy promises; yet i do not doubt but thou canst make them good: only keep me not in suspense after raising such hopes.' 'learn, then, first,' said she, 'how that power ever waits upon the good, while the bad are left wholly destitute of strength.[k] of these truths the one proves the other; for since good and evil are contraries, if it is made plain that good is power, the feebleness of evil is clearly seen, and, conversely, if the frail nature of evil is made manifest, the strength of good is thereby known. however, to win ampler credence for my conclusion, i will pursue both paths, and draw confirmation for my statements first in one way and then in the other. 'the carrying out of any human action depends upon two things--to wit, will and power; if either be wanting, nothing can be accomplished. for if the will be lacking, no attempt at all is made to do what is not willed; whereas if there be no power, the will is all in vain. and so, if thou seest any man wishing to attain some end, yet utterly failing to attain it, thou canst not doubt that he lacked the power of getting what he wished for.' 'why, certainly not; there is no denying it.' 'canst thou, then, doubt that he whom thou seest to have accomplished what he willed had also the power to accomplish it?' 'of course not.' 'then, in respect of what he can accomplish a man is to be reckoned strong, in respect of what he cannot accomplish weak?' 'granted,' said i. 'then, dost thou remember that, by our former reasonings, it was concluded that the whole aim of man's will, though the means of pursuit vary, is set intently upon happiness?' 'i do remember that this, too, was proved.' 'dost thou also call to mind how happiness is absolute good, and therefore that, when happiness is sought, it is good which is in all cases the object of desire?' 'nay, i do not so much call to mind as keep it fixed in my memory.' 'then, all men, good and bad alike, with one indistinguishable purpose strive to reach good?' 'yes, that follows.' 'but it is certain that by the attainment of good men become good?' 'it is.' 'then, do the good attain their object?' 'it seems so.' 'but if the bad were to attain the good which is _their_ object, they could not be bad?' 'no.' 'then, since both seek good, but while the one sort attain it, the other attain it not, is there any doubt that the good are endued with power, while they who are bad are weak?' 'if any doubt it, he is incapable of reflecting on the nature of things, or the consequences involved in reasoning.' 'again, supposing there are two things to which the same function is prescribed in the course of nature, and one of these successfully accomplishes the function by natural action, the other is altogether incapable of that natural action, instead of which, in a way other than is agreeable to its nature, it--i will not say fulfils its function, but feigns to fulfil it: which of these two would in thy view be the stronger?' 'i guess thy meaning, but i pray thee let me hear thee more at large.' 'walking is man's natural motion, is it not?' 'certainly.' 'thou dost not doubt, i suppose, that it is natural for the feet to discharge this function?' 'no; surely i do not.' 'now, if one man who is able to use his feet walks, and another to whom the natural use of his feet is wanting tries to walk on his hands, which of the two wouldst thou rightly esteem the stronger?' 'go on,' said i; 'no one can question but that he who has the natural capacity has more strength than he who has it not.' 'now, the supreme good is set up as the end alike for the bad and for the good; but the good seek it through the natural action of the virtues, whereas the bad try to attain this same good through all manner of concupiscence, which is not the natural way of attaining good. or dost thou think otherwise?' 'nay; rather, one further consequence is clear to me: for from my admissions it must needs follow that the good have power, and the bad are impotent.' 'thou anticipatest rightly, and that as physicians reckon is a sign that nature is set working, and is throwing off the disease. but, since i see thee so ready at understanding, i will heap proof on proof. look how manifest is the extremity of vicious men's weakness; they cannot even reach that goal to which the aim of nature leads and almost constrains them. what if they were left without this mighty, this well-nigh irresistible help of nature's guidance! consider also how momentous is the powerlessness which incapacitates the wicked. not light or trivial[l] are the prizes which they contend for, but which they cannot win or hold; nay, their failure concerns the very sum and crown of things. poor wretches! they fail to compass even that for which they toil day and night. herein also the strength of the good conspicuously appears. for just as thou wouldst judge him to be the strongest walker whose legs could carry him to a point beyond which no further advance was possible, so must thou needs account him strong in power who so attains the end of his desires that nothing further to be desired lies beyond. whence follows the obvious conclusion that they who are wicked are seen likewise to be wholly destitute of strength. for why do they forsake virtue and follow vice? is it from ignorance of what is good? well, what is more weak and feeble than the blindness of ignorance? do they know what they ought to follow, but lust drives them aside out of the way? if it be so, they are still frail by reason of their incontinence, for they cannot fight against vice. or do they knowingly and wilfully forsake the good and turn aside to vice? why, at this rate, they not only cease to have power, but cease to be at all. for they who forsake the common end of all things that are, they likewise also cease to be at all. now, to some it may seem strange that we should assert that the bad, who form the greater part of mankind, do not exist. but the fact is so. i do not, indeed, deny that they who are bad are bad, but that they _are_ in an unqualified and absolute sense i deny. just as we call a corpse a dead man, but cannot call it simply "man," so i would allow the vicious to be bad, but that they _are_ in an absolute sense i cannot allow. that only _is_ which maintains its place and keeps its nature; whatever falls away from this forsakes the existence which is essential to its nature. "but," thou wilt say, "the bad have an ability." nor do i wish to deny it; only this ability of theirs comes not from strength, but from impotence. for their ability is to do evil, which would have had no efficacy at all if they could have continued in the performance of good. so this ability of theirs proves them still more plainly to have no power. for if, as we concluded just now, evil is nothing, 'tis clear that the wicked can effect nothing, since they are only able to do evil.' ''tis evident.' 'and that thou mayst understand what is the precise force of this power, we determined, did we not, awhile back, that nothing has more power than supreme good?' 'we did,' said i. 'but that same highest good cannot do evil?' 'certainly not.' 'is there anyone, then, who thinks that men are able to do all things?' 'none but a madman.' 'yet they are able to do evil?' 'ay; would they could not!' 'since, then, he who can do only good is omnipotent, while they who can do evil also are not omnipotent, it is manifest that they who can do evil have less power. there is this also: we have shown that all power is to be reckoned among things desirable, and that all desirable things are referred to good as to a kind of consummation of their nature. but the ability to commit crime cannot be referred to the good; therefore it is not a thing to be desired. and yet all power is desirable; it is clear, then, that ability to do evil is not power. from all which considerations appeareth the power of the good, and the indubitable weakness of the bad, and it is clear that plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can _not_ accomplish what they would. for they go on in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead not to happiness.' footnotes: [k] the paradoxes in this chapter and chapter iv. are taken from plato's 'gorgias.' see jowett, vol. ii., pp. - , and also pp. , ('gorgias,' - , and , ). [l] 'no trivial game is here; the strife is waged for turnus' own dear life.' _conington_. see virgil, Æneid,' xii. , : _cf_. 'iliad,' xxii. - . song ii. the bondage of passion. when high-enthroned the monarch sits, resplendent in the pride of purple robes, while flashing steel guards him on every side; when baleful terrors on his brow with frowning menace lower, and passion shakes his labouring breast--how dreadful seems his power! but if the vesture of his state from such a one thou tear, thou'lt see what load of secret bonds this lord of earth doth wear. lust's poison rankles; o'er his mind rage sweeps in tempest rude; sorrow his spirit vexes sore, and empty hopes delude. then thou'lt confess: one hapless wretch, whom many lords oppress, does never what he would, but lives in thraldom's helplessness. iii. 'thou seest, then, in what foulness unrighteous deeds are sunk, with what splendour righteousness shines. whereby it is manifest that goodness never lacks its reward, nor crime its punishment. for, verily, in all manner of transactions that for the sake of which the particular action is done may justly be accounted the reward of that action, even as the wreath for the sake of which the race is run is the reward offered for running. now, we have shown happiness to be that very good for the sake of which all things are done. absolute good, then, is offered as the common prize, as it were, of all human actions. but, truly, this is a reward from which it is impossible to separate the good man, for one who is without good cannot properly be called good at all; wherefore righteous dealing never misses its reward. rage the wicked, then, never so violently, the crown shall not fall from the head of the wise, nor wither. verily, other men's unrighteousness cannot pluck from righteous souls their proper glory. were the reward in which the soul of the righteous delighteth received from without, then might it be taken away by him who gave it, or some other; but since it is conferred by his own righteousness, then only will he lose his prize when he has ceased to be righteous. lastly, since every prize is desired because it is believed to be good, who can account him who possesses good to be without reward? and what a prize, the fairest and grandest of all! for remember the corollary which i chiefly insisted on a little while back, and reason thus: since absolute good is happiness, 'tis clear that all the good must be happy for the very reason that they are good. but it was agreed that those who are happy are gods. so, then, the prize of the good is one which no time may impair, no man's power lessen, no man's unrighteousness tarnish; 'tis very godship. and this being so, the wise man cannot doubt that punishment is inseparable from the bad. for since good and bad, and likewise reward and punishment, are contraries, it necessarily follows that, corresponding to all that we see accrue as reward of the good, there is some penalty attached as punishment of evil. as, then, righteousness itself is the reward of the righteous, so wickedness itself is the punishment of the unrighteous. now, no one who is visited with punishment doubts that he is visited with evil. accordingly, if they were but willing to weigh their own case, could _they_ think themselves free from punishment whom wickedness, worst of all evils, has not only touched, but deeply tainted? 'see, also, from the opposite standpoint--the standpoint of the good--what a penalty attends upon the wicked. thou didst learn a little since that whatever is is one, and that unity itself is good. accordingly, by this way of reckoning, whatever falls away from goodness ceases to be; whence it comes to pass that the bad cease to be what they were, while only the outward aspect is still left to show they have been men. wherefore, by their perversion to badness, they have lost their true human nature. further, since righteousness alone can raise men above the level of humanity, it must needs be that unrighteousness degrades below man's level those whom it has cast out of man's estate. it results, then, that thou canst not consider him human whom thou seest transformed by vice. the violent despoiler of other men's goods, enflamed with covetousness, surely resembles a wolf. a bold and restless spirit, ever wrangling in law-courts, is like some yelping cur. the secret schemer, taking pleasure in fraud and stealth, is own brother to the fox. the passionate man, phrenzied with rage, we might believe to be animated with the soul of a lion. the coward and runaway, afraid where no fear is, may be likened to the timid deer. he who is sunk in ignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. he who is light and inconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a bird. he who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures of a filthy hog. so it comes to pass that he who by forsaking righteousness ceases to be a man cannot pass into a godlike condition, but actually turns into a brute beast.' song iii. circe's cup. th' ithacan discreet, and all his storm-tossed fleet, far o'er the ocean wave the winds of heaven drave-- drave to the mystic isle, where dwelleth in her guile that fair and faithless one, the daughter of the sun. there for the stranger crew with cunning spells she knew to mix th' enchanted cup. for whoso drinks it up, must suffer hideous change to monstrous shapes and strange. one like a boar appears; this his huge form uprears, mighty in bulk and limb-- an afric lion--grim with claw and fang. confessed a wolf, this, sore distressed when he would weep, doth howl; and, strangely tame, these prowl the indian tiger's mates. and though in such sore straits, the pity of the god who bears the mystic rod had power the chieftain brave from her fell arts to save; his comrades, unrestrained, the fatal goblet drained. all now with low-bent head, like swine, on acorns fed; man's speech and form were reft, no human feature left; but steadfast still, the mind, unaltered, unresigned, the monstrous change bewailed. how little, then, availed the potencies of ill! these herbs, this baneful skill, may change each outward part, but cannot touch the heart. in its true home, deep-set, man's spirit liveth yet. _those_ poisons are more fell, more potent to expel man from his high estate, which subtly penetrate, and leave the body whole, but deep infect the soul. iv. then said i: 'this is very true. i see that the vicious, though they keep the outward form of man, are rightly said to be changed into beasts in respect of their spiritual nature; but, inasmuch as their cruel and polluted minds vent their rage in the destruction of the good, i would this license were not permitted to them.' 'nor is it,' said she, 'as shall be shown in the fitting place. yet if that license which thou believest to be permitted to them were taken away, the punishment of the wicked would be in great part remitted. for verily, incredible as it may seem to some, it needs must be that the bad are more unfortunate when they have accomplished their desires than if they are unable to get them fulfilled. if it is wretched to will evil, to have been able to accomplish evil is more wretched; for without the power the wretched will would fail of effect. accordingly, those whom thou seest to will, to be able to accomplish, and to accomplish crime, must needs be the victims of a threefold wretchedness, since each one of these states has its own measure of wretchedness.' 'yes,' said i; 'yet i earnestly wish they might speedily be quit of this misfortune by losing the ability to accomplish crime.' 'they will lose it,' said she, 'sooner than perchance thou wishest, or they themselves think likely; since, verily, within the narrow bounds of our brief life there is nothing so late in coming that anyone, least of all an immortal spirit, should deem it long to wait for. their great expectations, the lofty fabric of their crimes, is oft overthrown by a sudden and unlooked-for ending, and this but sets a limit to their misery. for if wickedness makes men wretched, he is necessarily more wretched who is wicked for a longer time; and were it not that death, at all events, puts an end to the evil doings of the wicked, i should account them wretched to the last degree. indeed, if we have formed true conclusions about the ill fortune of wickedness, that wretchedness is plainly infinite which is doomed to be eternal.' then said i: 'a wonderful inference, and difficult to grant; but i see that it agrees entirely with our previous conclusions.' 'thou art right,' said she; 'but if anyone finds it hard to admit the conclusion, he ought in fairness either to prove some falsity in the premises, or to show that the combination of propositions does not adequately enforce the necessity of the conclusion; otherwise, if the premises be granted, nothing whatever can be said against the inference of the conclusion. and here is another statement which seems not less wonderful, but on the premises assumed is equally necessary.' 'what is that?' 'the wicked are happier in undergoing punishment than if no penalty of justice chasten them. and i am not now meaning what might occur to anyone--that bad character is amended by retribution, and is brought into the right path by the terror of punishment, or that it serves as an example to warn others to avoid transgression; but i believe that in another way the wicked are more unfortunate when they go unpunished, even though no account be taken of amendment, and no regard be paid to example.' 'why, what other way is there beside these?' said i. then said she: 'have we not agreed that the good are happy, and the evil wretched?' 'yes,' said i. 'now, if,' said she, 'to one in affliction there be given along with his misery some good thing, is he not happier than one whose misery is misery pure and simple without admixture of any good?' 'it would seem so.' 'but if to one thus wretched, one destitute of all good, some further evil be added besides those which make him wretched, is he not to be judged far more unhappy than he whose ill fortune is alleviated by some share of good?' 'it could scarcely be otherwise.' 'surely, then, the wicked, when they are punished, have a good thing added to them--to wit, the punishment which by the law of justice is good; and likewise, when they escape punishment, a new evil attaches to them in that very freedom from punishment which thou hast rightly acknowledged to be an evil in the case of the unrighteous.' 'i cannot deny it.' 'then, the wicked are far more unhappy when indulged with an unjust freedom from punishment than when punished by a just retribution. now, it is manifest that it is just for the wicked to be punished, and for them to escape unpunished is unjust.' 'why, who would venture to deny it?' 'this, too, no one can possibly deny--that all which is just is good, and, conversely, all which is unjust is bad.' then i answered: 'these inferences do indeed follow from what we lately concluded; but tell me,' said i, 'dost thou take no account of the punishment of the soul after the death of the body?' 'nay, truly,' said she, 'great are these penalties, some of them inflicted, i imagine, in the severity of retribution, others in the mercy of purification. but it is not my present purpose to speak of these. so far, my aim hath been to make thee recognise that the power of the bad which shocked thee so exceedingly is no power; to make thee see that those of whose freedom from punishment thou didst complain are never without the proper penalties of their unrighteousness; to teach thee that the license which thou prayedst might soon come to an end is not long-enduring; that it would be more unhappy if it lasted longer, most unhappy of all if it lasted for ever; thereafter that the unrighteous are more wretched if unjustly let go without punishment than if punished by a just retribution--from which point of view it follows that the wicked are afflicted with more severe penalties just when they are supposed to escape punishment.' then said i: 'while i follow thy reasonings, i am deeply impressed with their truth; but if i turn to the common convictions of men, i find few who will even listen to such arguments, let alone admit them to be credible.' 'true,' said she; 'they cannot lift eyes accustomed to darkness to the light of clear truth, and are like those birds whose vision night illumines and day blinds; for while they regard, not the order of the universe, but their own dispositions of mind, they think the license to commit crime, and the escape from punishment, to be fortunate. but mark the ordinance of eternal law. hast thou fashioned thy soul to the likeness of the better, thou hast no need of a judge to award the prize--by thine own act hast thou raised thyself in the scale of excellence; hast thou perverted thy affections to baser things, look not for punishment from one without thee--thine own act hath degraded thee, and thrust thee down. even so, if alternately thou turn thy gaze upon the vile earth and upon the heavens, though all without thee stand still, by the mere laws of sight thou seemest now sunk in the mire, now soaring among the stars. but the common herd regards not these things. what, then? shall we go over to those whom we have shown to be like brute beasts? why, suppose, now, one who had quite lost his sight should likewise forget that he had ever possessed the faculty of vision, and should imagine that nothing was wanting in him to human perfection, should we deem those who saw as well as ever blind? why, they will not even assent to this, either--that they who do wrong are more wretched than those who suffer wrong, though the proof of this rests on grounds of reason no less strong.' 'let me hear these same reasons,' said i. 'wouldst thou deny that every wicked man deserves punishment?' 'i would not, certainly.' 'and that those who are wicked are unhappy is clear in manifold ways?' 'yes,' i replied. 'thou dost not doubt, then, that those who deserve punishment are wretched?' 'agreed,' said i. 'so, then, if thou wert sitting in judgment, on whom wouldst thou decree the infliction of punishment--on him who had done the wrong, or on him who had suffered it?' 'without doubt, i would compensate the sufferer at the cost of the doer of the wrong.' 'then, the injurer would seem more wretched than the injured?' 'yes; it follows. and so for this and other reasons resting on the same ground, inasmuch as baseness of its own nature makes men wretched, it is plain that a wrong involves the misery of the doer, not of the sufferer.' 'and yet,' says she, 'the practice of the law-courts is just the opposite: advocates try to arouse the commiseration of the judges for those who have endured some grievous and cruel wrong; whereas pity is rather due to the criminal, who ought to be brought to the judgment-seat by his accusers in a spirit not of anger, but of compassion and kindness, as a sick man to the physician, to have the ulcer of his fault cut away by punishment. whereby the business of the advocate would either wholly come to a standstill, or, did men prefer to make it serviceable to mankind, would be restricted to the practice of accusation. the wicked themselves also, if through some chink or cranny they were permitted to behold the virtue they have forsaken, and were to see that by the pains of punishment they would rid themselves of the uncleanness of their vices, and win in exchange the recompense of righteousness, they would no longer think these sufferings pains; they would refuse the help of advocates, and would commit themselves wholly into the hands of their accusers and judges. whence it comes to pass that for the wise no place is left for hatred; only the most foolish would hate the good, and to hate the bad is unreasonable. for if vicious propensity is, as it were, a disease of the soul like bodily sickness, even as we account the sick in body by no means deserving of hate, but rather of pity, so, and much more, should they be pitied whose minds are assailed by wickedness, which is more frightful than any sickness.' song iv. the unreasonableness of hatred. why all this furious strife? oh, why with rash and wilful hand provoke death's destined day? if death ye seek--lo! death is nigh, not of their master's will those coursers swift delay! the wild beasts vent on man their rage, yet 'gainst their brothers' lives men point the murderous steel; unjust and cruel wars they wage, and haste with flying darts the death to meet or deal. no right nor reason can they show; 'tis but because their lands and laws are not the same. wouldst _thou_ give each his due; then know thy love the good must have, the bad thy pity claim. v. on this i said: 'i see how there is a happiness and misery founded on the actual deserts of the righteous and the wicked. nevertheless, i wonder in myself whether there is not some good and evil in fortune as the vulgar understand it. surely, no sensible man would rather be exiled, poor and disgraced, than dwell prosperously in his own country, powerful, wealthy, and high in honour. indeed, the work of wisdom is more clear and manifest in its operation when the happiness of rulers is somehow passed on to the people around them, especially considering that the prison, the law, and the other pains of legal punishment are properly due only to mischievous citizens on whose account they were originally instituted. accordingly, i do exceedingly marvel why all this is completely reversed--why the good are harassed with the penalties due to crime, and the bad carry off the rewards of virtue; and i long to hear from thee what reason may be found for so unjust a state of disorder. for assuredly i should wonder less if i could believe that all things are the confused result of chance. but now my belief in god's governance doth add amazement to amazement. for, seeing that he sometimes assigns fair fortune to the good and harsh fortune to the bad, and then again deals harshly with the good, and grants to the bad their hearts' desire, how does this differ from chance, unless some reason is discovered for it all?' 'nay; it is not wonderful,' said she, 'if all should be thought random and confused when the principle of order is not known. and though thou knowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch as a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is rightly done.' song v. wonder and ignorance. who knoweth not how near the pole bootes' course doth go, must marvel by what heavenly law he moves his wain so slow; why late he plunges 'neath the main, and swiftly lights his beams again. when the full-orbèd moon grows pale in the mid course of night, and suddenly the stars shine forth that languished in her light, th' astonied nations stand at gaze, and beat the air in wild amaze.[m] none marvels why upon the shore the storm-lashed breakers beat, nor why the frost-bound glaciers melt at summer's fervent heat; for here the cause seems plain and clear, only what's dark and hid we fear. weak-minded folly magnifies all that is rare and strange, and the dull herd's o'erwhelmed with awe at unexpected change. but wonder leaves enlightened minds, when ignorance no longer blinds. footnotes: [m] to frighten away the monster swallowing the moon. the superstition was once common. see tylor's 'primitive culture,' pp. - . vi. 'true,' said i; 'but, since it is thy office to unfold the hidden cause of things, and explain principles veiled in darkness, inform me, i pray thee, of thine own conclusions in this matter, since the marvel of it is what more than aught else disturbs my mind.' a smile played one moment upon her lips as she replied: 'thou callest me to the greatest of all subjects of inquiry, a task for which the most exhaustive treatment barely suffices. such is its nature that, as fast as one doubt is cut away, innumerable others spring up like hydra's heads, nor could we set any limit to their renewal did we not apply the mind's living fire to suppress them. for there come within its scope the questions of the essential simplicity of providence, of the order of fate, of unforeseen chance, of the divine knowledge and predestination, and of the freedom of the will. how heavy is the weight of all this thou canst judge for thyself. but, inasmuch as to know these things also is part of the treatment of thy malady, we will try to give them some consideration, despite the restrictions of the narrow limits of our time. moreover, thou must for a time dispense with the pleasures of music and song, if so be that thou findest any delight therein, whilst i weave together the connected train of reasons in proper order.' 'as thou wilt,' said i. then, as if making a new beginning, she thus discoursed: 'the coming into being of all things, the whole course of development in things that change, every sort of thing that moves in any wise, receives its due cause, order, and form from the steadfastness of the divine mind. this mind, calm in the citadel of its own essential simplicity, has decreed that the method of its rule shall be manifold. viewed in the very purity of the divine intelligence, this method is called _providence_; but viewed in regard to those things which it moves and disposes, it is what the ancients called _fate_. that these two are different will easily be clear to anyone who passes in review their respective efficacies. providence is the divine reason itself, seated in the supreme being, which disposes all things; fate is the disposition inherent in all things which move, through which providence joins all things in their proper order. providence embraces all things, however different, however infinite; fate sets in motion separately individual things, and assigns to them severally their position, form, and time. 'so the unfolding of this temporal order unified into the foreview of the divine mind is providence, while the same unity broken up and unfolded in time is fate. and although these are different, yet is there a dependence between them; for the order of destiny issues from the essential simplicity of providence. for as the artificer, forming in his mind beforehand the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his design, and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in a single instant as a whole, so god in his providence ordains all things as parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very ordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. so whether fate is accomplished by divine spirits as the ministers of providence, or by a soul, or by the service of all nature--whether by the celestial motion of the stars, by the efficacy of angels, or by the many-sided cunning of demons--whether by all or by some of these the destined series is woven, this, at least, is manifest: that providence is the fixed and simple form of destined events, fate their shifting series in order of time, as by the disposal of the divine simplicity they are to take place. whereby it is that all things which are under fate are subjected also to providence, on which fate itself is dependent; whereas certain things which are set under providence are above the chain of fate--viz., those things which by their nearness to the primal divinity are steadfastly fixed, and lie outside the order of fate's movements. for as the innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches the simplicity of the midmost point, and is, as it were, a pivot round which the exterior circles turn, while the outermost, whirled in ampler orbit, takes in a wider and wider sweep of space in proportion to its departure from the indivisible unity of the centre--while, further, whatever joins and allies itself to the centre is narrowed to a like simplicity, and no longer expands vaguely into space--even so whatsoever departs widely from primal mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of fate, and things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come nearer to that central pivot; while if aught cleaves close to supreme mind in its absolute fixity, this, too, being free from movement, rises above fate's necessity. therefore, as is reasoning to pure intelligence, as that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle to its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness and simplicity of providence. 'it is this causal series which moves heaven and the stars, attempers the elements to mutual accord, and again in turn transforms them into new combinations; _this_ which renews the series of all things that are born and die through like successions of germ and birth; it is _its_ operation which binds the destinies of men by an indissoluble nexus of causality, and, since it issues in the beginning from unalterable providence, these destinies also must of necessity be immutable. accordingly, the world is ruled for the best if this unity abiding in the divine mind puts forth an inflexible order of causes. and this order, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which otherwise would ebb and flow at random. and so it happens that, although to you, who are not altogether capable of understanding this order, all things seem confused and disordered, nevertheless there is everywhere an appointed limit which guides all things to good. verily, nothing can be done for the sake of evil even by the wicked themselves; for, as we abundantly proved, they seek good, but are drawn out of the way by perverse error; far less can this order which sets out from the supreme centre of good turn aside anywhither from the way in which it began. '"yet what confusion," thou wilt say, "can be more unrighteous than that prosperity and adversity should indifferently befall the good, what they like and what they loathe come alternately to the bad!" yes; but have men in real life such soundness of mind that their judgments of righteousness and wickedness must necessarily correspond with facts? why, on this very point their verdicts conflict, and those whom some deem worthy of reward, others deem worthy of punishment. yet granted there were one who could rightly distinguish the good and bad, yet would he be able to look into the soul's inmost constitution, as it were, if we may borrow an expression used of the body? the marvel here is not unlike that which astonishes one who does not know why in health sweet things suit some constitutions, and bitter others, or why some sick men are best alleviated by mild remedies, others by severe. but the physician who distinguishes the precise conditions and characteristics of health and sickness does not marvel. now, the health of the soul is nothing but righteousness, and vice is its sickness. god, the guide and physician of the mind, it is who preserves the good and banishes the bad. and he looks forth from the lofty watch-tower of his providence, perceives what is suited to each, and assigns what he knows to be suitable. 'this, then, is what that extraordinary mystery of the order of destiny comes to--that something is done by one who knows, whereat the ignorant are astonished. but let us consider a few instances whereby appears what is the competency of human reason to fathom the divine unsearchableness. here is one whom thou deemest the perfection of justice and scrupulous integrity; to all-knowing providence it seems far otherwise. we all know our lucan's admonition that it was the winning cause that found favour with the gods, the beaten cause with cato. so, shouldst thou see anything in this world happening differently from thy expectation, doubt not but events are rightly ordered; it is in thy judgment that there is perverse confusion. 'grant, however, there be somewhere found one of so happy a character that god and man alike agree in their judgments about him; yet is he somewhat infirm in strength of mind. it may be, if he fall into adversity, he will cease to practise that innocency which has failed to secure his fortune. therefore, god's wise dispensation spares him whom adversity might make worse, will not let him suffer who is ill fitted for endurance. another there is perfect in all virtue, so holy and nigh to god that providence judges it unlawful that aught untoward should befall him; nay, doth not even permit him to be afflicted with bodily disease. as one more excellent than i[n] hath said: '"the very body of the holy saint is built of purest ether." often it happens that the governance is given to the good that a restraint may be put upon superfluity of wickedness. to others providence assigns some mixed lot suited to their spiritual nature; some it will plague lest they grow rank through long prosperity; others it will suffer to be vexed with sore afflictions to confirm their virtues by the exercise and practice of patience. some fear overmuch what they have strength to bear; others despise overmuch that to which their strength is unequal. all these it brings to the test of their true self through misfortune. some also have bought a name revered to future ages at the price of a glorious death; some by invincible constancy under their sufferings have afforded an example to others that virtue cannot be overcome by calamity--all which things, without doubt, come to pass rightly and in due order, and to the benefit of those to whom they are seen to happen. 'as to the other side of the marvel, that the bad now meet with affliction, now get their hearts' desire, this, too, springs from the same causes. as to the afflictions, of course no one marvels, because all hold the wicked to be ill deserving. the truth is, their punishments both frighten others from crime, and amend those on whom they are inflicted; while their prosperity is a powerful sermon to the good, what judgments they ought to pass on good fortune of this kind, which often attends the wicked so assiduously. 'there is another object which may, i believe, be attained in such cases: there is one, perhaps, whose nature is so reckless and violent that poverty would drive him more desperately into crime. _his_ disorder providence relieves by allowing him to amass money. such a one, in the uneasiness of a conscience stained with guilt, while he contrasts his character with his fortune, perchance grows alarmed lest he should come to mourn the loss of that whose possession is so pleasant to him. he will, then, reform his ways, and through the fear of losing his fortune he forsakes his iniquity. some, through a prosperity unworthily borne, have been hurled headlong to ruin; to some the power of the sword has been committed, to the end that the good may be tried by discipline, and the bad punished. for while there can be no peace between the righteous and the wicked, neither can the wicked agree among themselves. how should they, when each is at variance with himself, because his vices rend his conscience, and ofttimes they do things which, when they are done, they judge ought not to have been done. hence it is that this supreme providence brings to pass this notable marvel--that the bad make the bad good. for some, when they see the injustice which they themselves suffer at the hands of evil-doers, are inflamed with detestation of the offenders, and, in the endeavour to be unlike those whom they hate, return to the ways of virtue. it is the divine power alone to which things evil are also good, in that, by putting them to suitable use, it bringeth them in the end to some good issue. for order in some way or other embraceth all things, so that even that which has departed from the appointed laws of the order, nevertheless falleth within _an_ order, though _another_ order, that nothing in the realm of providence may be left to haphazard. but '"hard were the task, as a god, to recount all, nothing omitting." nor, truly, is it lawful for man to compass in thought all the mechanism of the divine work, or set it forth in speech. let us be content to have apprehended this only--that god, the creator of universal nature, likewise disposeth all things, and guides them to good; and while he studies to preserve in likeness to himself all that he has created, he banishes all evil from the borders of his commonweal through the links of fatal necessity. whereby it comes to pass that, if thou look to disposing providence, thou wilt nowhere find the evils which are believed so to abound on earth. 'but i see thou hast long been burdened with the weight of the subject, and fatigued with the prolixity of the argument, and now lookest for some refreshment of sweet poesy. listen, then, and may the draught so restore thee that thou wilt bend thy mind more resolutely to what remains.' footnotes: [n] parmenides. boethius seems to forget for the moment that philosophy is speaking. song vi. the universal aim. wouldst thou with unclouded mind view the laws by god designed, lift thy steadfast gaze on high to the starry canopy; see in rightful league of love all the constellations move. fiery sol, in full career, ne'er obstructs cold phoebe's sphere; when the bear, at heaven's height, wheels his coursers' rapid flight, though he sees the starry train sinking in the western main, he repines not, nor desires in the flood to quench his fires. in true sequence, as decreed, daily morn and eve succeed; vesper brings the shades of night, lucifer the morning light. love, in alternation due, still the cycle doth renew, and discordant strife is driven from the starry realm of heaven. thus, in wondrous amity, warring elements agree; hot and cold, and moist and dry, lay their ancient quarrel by; high the flickering flame ascends, downward earth for ever tends. so the year in spring's mild hours loads the air with scent of flowers; summer paints the golden grain; then, when autumn comes again, bright with fruit the orchards glow; winter brings the rain and snow. thus the seasons' fixed progression, tempered in a due succession, nourishes and brings to birth all that lives and breathes on earth. then, soon run life's little day, all it brought it takes away. but one sits and guides the reins, he who made and all sustains; king and lord and fountain-head, judge most holy, law most dread; now impels and now keeps back, holds each waverer in the track. else, were once the power withheld that the circling spheres compelled in their orbits to revolve, this world's order would dissolve, and th' harmonious whole would all in one hideous ruin fall. but through this connected frame runs one universal aim; towards the good do all things tend, many paths, but one the end. for naught lasts, unless it turns backward in its course, and yearns to that source to flow again whence its being first was ta'en. vii. 'dost thou, then, see the consequence of all that we have said?' 'nay; what consequence?' 'that absolutely every fortune is good fortune.' 'and how can that be?' said i. 'attend,' said she. 'since every fortune, welcome and unwelcome alike, has for its object the reward or trial of the good, and the punishing or amending of the bad, every fortune must be good, since it is either just or useful.' 'the reasoning is exceeding true,' said i, 'the conclusion, so long as i reflect upon the providence and fate of which thou hast taught me, based on a strong foundation. yet, with thy leave, we will count it among those which just now thou didst set down as paradoxical.' 'and why so?' said she. 'because ordinary speech is apt to assert, and that frequently, that some men's fortune is bad.' 'shall we, then, for awhile approach more nearly to the language of the vulgar, that we may not seem to have departed too far from the usages of men?' 'at thy good pleasure,' said i. 'that which advantageth thou callest good, dost thou not?' 'certainly.' 'and that which either tries or amends advantageth?' 'granted.' 'is good, then?' 'of course.' 'well, this is _their_ case who have attained virtue and wage war with adversity, or turn from vice and lay hold on the path of virtue.' 'i cannot deny it.' 'what of the good fortune which is given as reward of the good--do the vulgar adjudge it bad?' 'anything but that; they deem it to be the best, as indeed it is.' 'what, then, of that which remains, which, though it is harsh, puts the restraint of just punishment on the bad--does popular opinion deem it good?' 'nay; of all that can be imagined, it is accounted the most miserable.' 'observe, then, if, in following popular opinion, we have not ended in a conclusion quite paradoxical.' 'how so?' said i. 'why, it results from our admissions that of all who have attained, or are advancing in, or are aiming at virtue, the fortune is in every case good, while for those who remain in their wickedness fortune is always utterly bad.' 'it is true,' said i; 'yet no one dare acknowledge it.' 'wherefore,' said she, 'the wise man ought not to take it ill, if ever he is involved in one of fortune's conflicts, any more than it becomes a brave soldier to be offended when at any time the trumpet sounds for battle. the time of trial is the express opportunity for the one to win glory, for the other to perfect his wisdom. hence, indeed, virtue gets its name, because, relying on its own efficacy, it yieldeth not to adversity. and ye who have taken your stand on virtue's steep ascent, it is not for you to be dissolved in delights or enfeebled by pleasure; ye close in conflict--yea, in conflict most sharp--with all fortune's vicissitudes, lest ye suffer foul fortune to overwhelm or fair fortune to corrupt you. hold the mean with all your strength. whatever falls short of this, or goes beyond, is fraught with scorn of happiness, and misses the reward of toil. it rests with you to make your fortune what you will. verily, every harsh-seeming fortune, unless it either disciplines or amends, is punishment.' song vii. the hero's path. ten years a tedious warfare raged, ere ilium's smoking ruins paid for wedlock stained and faith betrayed, and great atrides' wrath assuaged. but when heaven's anger asked a life, and baffling winds his course withstood, the king put off his fatherhood, and slew his child with priestly knife. when by the cavern's glimmering light his comrades dear odysseus saw in the huge cyclops' hideous maw engulfed, he wept the piteous sight. but blinded soon, and wild with pain-- in bitter tears and sore annoy-- for that foul feast's unholy joy grim polyphemus paid again. his labours for alcides win a name of glory far and wide; he tamed the centaur's haughty pride, and from the lion reft his skin. the foul birds with sure darts he slew; the golden fruit he stole--in vain the dragon's watch; with triple chain from hell's depths cerberus he drew. with their fierce lord's own flesh he fed the wild steeds; hydra overcame with fire. 'neath his own waves in shame maimed achelous hid his head. huge cacus for his crimes was slain; on libya's sands antæus hurled; the shoulders that upheld the world the great boar's dribbled spume did stain. last toil of all--his might sustained the ball of heaven, nor did he bend beneath; this toil, his labour's end, the prize of heaven's high glory gained. brave hearts, press on! lo, heavenward lead these bright examples! from the fight turn not your backs in coward flight; earth's conflict won, the stars your meed! book v. free will and god's foreknowledge. summary. ch. i. boethius asks if there is really any such thing as chance. philosophy answers, in conformity with aristotle's definition (phys., ii. iv.), that chance is merely relative to human purpose, and that what seems fortuitous really depends on a more subtle form of causation.--ch. ii. has man, then, any freedom, if the reign of law is thus absolute? freedom of choice, replies philosophy, is a necessary attribute of reason. man has a measure of freedom, though a less perfect freedom than divine natures.--ch. iii. but how can man's freedom be reconciled with god's absolute foreknowledge? if god's foreknowledge be certain, it seems to exclude the possibility of man's free will. but if man has no freedom of choice, it follows that rewards and punishments are unjust as well as useless; that merit and demerit are mere names; that god is the cause of men's wickednesses; that prayer is meaningless.--ch. iv. the explanation is that man's reasoning faculties are not adequate to the apprehension of the ways of god's foreknowledge. if we could know, as he knows, all that is most perplexing in this problem would be made plain. for knowledge depends not on the nature of the thing known, but on the faculty of the knower.--ch. v. now, where our senses conflict with our reason, we defer the judgment of the lower faculty to the judgment of the higher. our present perplexity arises from our viewing god's foreknowledge from the standpoint of human reason. we must try and rise to the higher standpoint of god's immediate intuition.--ch. vi. to understand this higher form of cognition, we must consider god's nature. god is eternal. eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. accordingly, his knowledge surveys past and future in the timelessness of an eternal present. his foreseeing is seeing. yet this foreseeing does not in itself impose necessity, any more than our seeing things happen makes their happening necessary. we may, however, if we please, distinguish two necessities--one absolute, the other conditional on knowledge. in this conditional sense alone do the things which god foresees necessarily come to pass. but this kind of necessity affects not the nature of things. it leaves the reality of free will unimpaired, and the evils feared do not ensue. our responsibility is great, since all that we do is done in the sight of all-seeing providence. book v. i. she ceased, and was about to pass on in her discourse to the exposition of other matters, when i break in and say: 'excellent is thine exhortation, and such as well beseemeth thy high authority; but i am even now experiencing one of the many difficulties which, as thou saidst but now, beset the question of providence. i want to know whether thou deemest that there is any such thing as chance at all, and, if so, what it is.' then she made answer: 'i am anxious to fulfil my promise completely, and open to thee a way of return to thy native land. as for these matters, though very useful to know, they are yet a little removed from the path of our design, and i fear lest digressions should fatigue thee, and thou shouldst find thyself unequal to completing the direct journey to our goal.' 'have no fear for that,' said i. 'it is rest to me to learn, where learning brings delight so exquisite, especially when thy argument has been built up on all sides with undoubted conviction, and no place is left for uncertainty in what follows.' she made answer: 'i will accede to thy request;' and forthwith she thus began: 'if chance be defined as a result produced by random movement without any link of causal connection, i roundly affirm that there is no such thing as chance at all, and consider the word to be altogether without meaning, except as a symbol of the thing designated. what place can be left for random action, when god constraineth all things to order? for "ex nihilo nihil" is sound doctrine which none of the ancients gainsaid, although they used it of material substance, not of the efficient principle; this they laid down as a kind of basis for all their reasonings concerning nature. now, if a thing arise without causes, it will appear to have arisen from nothing. but if this cannot be, neither is it possible for there to be chance in accordance with the definition just given.' 'well,' said i, 'is there, then, nothing which can properly be called chance or accident, or is there something to which these names are appropriate, though its nature is dark to the vulgar?' 'our good aristotle,' says she, 'has defined it concisely in his "physics," and closely in accordance with the truth.' 'how, pray?' said i. 'thus,' says she: 'whenever something is done for the sake of a particular end, and for certain reasons some other result than that designed ensues, this is called chance; for instance, if a man is digging the earth for tillage, and finds a mass of buried gold. now, such a find is regarded as accidental; yet it is not "ex nihilo," for it has its proper causes, the unforeseen and unexpected concurrence of which has brought the chance about. for had not the cultivator been digging, had not the man who hid the money buried it in that precise spot, the gold would not have been found. these, then, are the reasons why the find is a chance one, in that it results from causes which met together and concurred, not from any intention on the part of the discoverer. since neither he who buried the gold nor he who worked in the field _intended_ that the money should be found, but, as i said, it _happened_ by coincidence that one dug where the other buried the treasure. we may, then, define chance as being an unexpected result flowing from a concurrence of causes where the several factors had some definite end. but the meeting and concurrence of these causes arises from that inevitable chain of order which, flowing from the fountain-head of providence, disposes all things in their due time and place.' song i. chance. in the rugged persian highlands, where the masters of the bow skill to feign a flight, and, fleeing, hurl their darts and pierce the foe; there the tigris and euphrates at one source[o] their waters blend, soon to draw apart, and plainward each its separate way to wend. when once more their waters mingle in a channel deep and wide, all the flotsam comes together that is borne upon the tide: ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted in the torrent's wild career, meet, as 'mid the swirling waters chance their random way may steer. yet the shelving of the channel and the flowing water's force guides each movement, and determines every floating fragment's course. thus, where'er the drift of hazard seems most unrestrained to flow, chance herself is reined and bitted, and the curb of law doth know. footnotes: [o] this is not, of course, literally true, though the tigris and euphrates rise in the same mountain district. ii. 'i am following needfully,' said i, 'and i agree that it is as thou sayest. but in this series of linked causes is there any freedom left to our will, or does the chain of fate bind also the very motions of our souls?' 'there is freedom,' said she; 'nor, indeed, can any creature be rational, unless he be endowed with free will. for that which hath the natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired. now, everyone seeks what he judges desirable, and avoids what he thinks should be shunned. wherefore, beings endowed with reason possess also the faculty of free choice and refusal. but i suppose this faculty not equal alike in all. the higher divine essences possess a clear-sighted judgment, an uncorrupt will, and an effective power of accomplishing their wishes. human souls must needs be comparatively free while they abide in the contemplation of the divine mind, less free when they pass into bodily form, and still less, again, when they are enwrapped in earthly members. but when they are given over to vices, and fall from the possession of their proper reason, then indeed their condition is utter slavery. for when they let their gaze fall from the light of highest truth to the lower world where darkness reigns, soon ignorance blinds their vision; they are disturbed by baneful affections, by yielding and assenting to which they help to promote the slavery in which they are involved, and are in a manner led captive by reason of their very liberty. yet he who seeth all things from eternity beholdeth these things with the eyes of his providence, and assigneth to each what is predestined for it by its merits: '"all things surveying, all things overhearing.'" song ii. the true sun. homer with mellifluous tongue phoebus' glorious light hath sung, hymning high his praise; yet _his_ feeble rays ocean's hollows may not brighten, nor earth's central gloom enlighten. but the might of him, who skilled this great universe to build, is not thus confined; not earth's solid rind, nor night's blackest canopy, baffle his all-seeing eye. all that is, hath been, shall be, in one glance's compass, he limitless descries; and, save his, no eyes all the world survey--no, none! _him_, then, truly name the sun. iii. then said i: 'but now i am once more perplexed by a problem yet more difficult.' 'and what is that?' said she; 'yet, in truth, i can guess what it is that troubles you.' 'it seems,' said i, 'too much of a paradox and a contradiction that god should know all things, and yet there should be free will. for if god foresees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which providence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass. wherefore, if from eternity he foreknows not only what men will do, but also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will, seeing that nothing can be done, nor can any sort of purpose be entertained, save such as a divine providence, incapable of being deceived, has perceived beforehand. for if the issues can be turned aside to some other end than that foreseen by providence, there will not then be any sure foreknowledge of the future, but uncertain conjecture instead, and to think this of god i deem impiety. 'moreover, i do not approve the reasoning by which some think to solve this puzzle. for they say that it is not because god has foreseen the coming of an event that _therefore_ it is sure to come to pass, but, conversely, because something is about to come to pass, it cannot be hidden from divine providence; and accordingly the necessity passes to the opposite side, and it is not that what is foreseen must necessarily come to pass, but that what is about to come to pass must necessarily be foreseen. but this is just as if the matter in debate were, which is cause and which effect--whether foreknowledge of the future cause of the necessity, or the necessity of the future of the foreknowledge. but we need not be at the pains of demonstrating that, whatsoever be the order of the causal sequence, the occurrence of things foreseen is necessary, even though the foreknowledge of future events does not in itself impose upon them the necessity of their occurrence. for example, if a man be seated, the supposition of his being seated is necessarily true; and, conversely, if the supposition of his being seated is true, because he is really seated, he must necessarily be sitting. so, in either case, there is some necessity involved--in this latter case, the necessity of the fact; in the former, of the truth of the statement. but in both cases the sitter is not therefore seated because the opinion is true, but rather the opinion is true because antecedently he was sitting as a matter of fact. thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion comes from the other side,[p] yet there is a necessity on both sides alike. we can obviously reason similarly in the case of providence and the future. even if future events are foreseen because they are about to happen, and do not come to pass because they are foreseen, still, all the same, there is a necessity, both that they should be foreseen by god as about to come to pass, and that when they are foreseen they should happen, and this is sufficient for the destruction of free will. however, it is preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause of eternal foreknowledge. and yet if we believe that god foresees future events because they are about to come to pass, what is it but to think that the occurrence of events is the cause of his supreme providence? further, just as when i _know_ that anything is, that thing _necessarily_ is, so when i know that anything will be, it will _necessarily_ be. it follows, then, that things foreknown come to pass inevitably. 'lastly, to think of a thing as being in any way other than what it is, is not only not knowledge, but it is false opinion widely different from the truth of knowledge. consequently, if anything is about to be, and yet its occurrence is not certain and necessary, how can anyone foreknow that it will occur? for just as knowledge itself is free from all admixture of falsity, so any conception drawn from knowledge cannot be other than as it is conceived. for this, indeed, is the cause why knowledge is free from falsehood, because of necessity each thing must correspond exactly with the knowledge which grasps its nature. in what way, then, are we to suppose that god foreknows these uncertainties as about to come to pass? for if he thinks of events which possibly may not happen at all as inevitably destined to come to pass, he is deceived; and this it is not only impious to believe, but even so much as to express in words. if, on the other hand, he sees them in the future as they are in such a sense as to know that they may equally come to pass or not, what sort of foreknowledge is this which comprehends nothing certain nor fixed? what better is this than the absurd vaticination of teiresias? '"whate'er i say shall either come to pass--or not." in that case, too, in what would divine providence surpass human opinion if it holds for uncertain things the occurrence of which is uncertain, even as men do? but if at that perfectly sure fountain-head of all things no shadow of uncertainty can possibly be found, then the occurrence of those things which he has surely foreknown as coming is certain. wherefore there can be no freedom in human actions and designs; but the divine mind, which foresees all things without possibility of mistake, ties and binds them down to one only issue. but this admission once made, what an upset of human affairs manifestly ensues! vainly are rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay, the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is now esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant injustice, since men are determined either way not by their own proper volition, but by the necessity of what must surely be. and therefore neither virtue nor vice is anything, but rather good and ill desert are confounded together without distinction. moreover, seeing that the whole course of events is deduced from providence, and nothing is left free to human design, it comes to pass that our vices also are referred to the author of all good--a thought than which none more abominable can possibly be conceived. again, no ground is left for hope or prayer, since how can we hope for blessings, or pray for mercy, when every object of desire depends upon the links of an unalterable chain of causation? gone, then, is the one means of intercourse between god and man--the communion of hope and prayer--if it be true that we ever earn the inestimable recompense of the divine favour at the price of a due humility; for this is the one way whereby men seem able to hold communion with god, and are joined to that unapproachable light by the very act of supplication, even before they obtain their petitions. then, since these things can scarcely be believed to have any efficacy, if the necessity of future events be admitted, what means will there be whereby we may be brought near and cleave to him who is the supreme head of all? wherefore it needs must be that the human race, even as thou didst erstwhile declare in song, parted and dissevered from its source, should fall to ruin.' footnotes: [p] _i.e._, the necessity of the truth of the statement from the fact. song iii. truth's paradoxes. why does a strange discordance break the ordered scheme's fair harmony? hath god decreed 'twixt truth and truth there may such lasting warfare be, that truths, each severally plain, we strive to reconcile in vain? or is the discord not in truth, since truth is self consistent ever? but, close in fleshly wrappings held, the blinded mind of man can never discern--so faint her taper shines-- the subtle chain that all combines? ah! then why burns man's restless mind truth's hidden portals to unclose? knows he already what he seeks? why toil to seek it, if he knows? yet, haply if he knoweth not, why blindly seek he knows not what?[q] who for a good he knows not sighs? who can an unknown end pursue? how find? how e'en when haply found hail that strange form he never knew? or is it that man's inmost soul once knew each part and knew the whole? now, though by fleshly vapours dimmed, not all forgot her visions past; for while the several parts are lost, to the one whole she cleaveth fast; whence he who yearns the truth to find is neither sound of sight nor blind. for neither does he know in full, nor is he reft of knowledge quite; but, holding still to what is left, he gropes in the uncertain light, and by the part that still survives to win back all he bravely strives. footnotes: [q] compare plato, 'meno,' ; jowett, vol. ii., pp. , . iv. then said she: 'this debate about providence is an old one, and is vigorously discussed by cicero in his "divination"; thou also hast long and earnestly pondered the problem, yet no one has had diligence and perseverance enough to find a solution. and the reason of this obscurity is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the divine foreknowledge; for if a conception of its nature could in any wise be framed, no shadow of uncertainty would remain. with a view of making this at last clear and plain, i will begin by considering the arguments by which thou art swayed. first, i inquire into the reasons why thou art dissatisfied with the solution proposed, which is to the effect that, seeing the fact of foreknowledge is not thought the cause of the necessity of future events, foreknowledge is not to be deemed any hindrance to the freedom of the will. now, surely the sole ground on which thou arguest the necessity of the future is that things which are foreknown cannot fail to come to pass. but if, as thou wert ready to acknowledge just now, the fact of foreknowledge imposes no necessity on things future, what reason is there for supposing the results of voluntary action constrained to a fixed issue? suppose, for the sake of argument, and to see what follows, we assume that there is no foreknowledge. are willed actions, then, tied down to any necessity in _this_ case?' 'certainly not.' 'let us assume foreknowledge again, but without its involving any actual necessity; the freedom of the will, i imagine, will remain in complete integrity. but thou wilt say that, even although the foreknowledge is not the necessity of the future event's occurrence, yet it is a sign that it will necessarily happen. granted; but in this case it is plain that, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the issues would have been inevitably certain. for a sign only indicates something which is, does not bring to pass that of which it is the sign. we require to show beforehand that all things, without exception, happen of necessity in order that a preconception may be a sign of this necessity. otherwise, if there is no such universal necessity, neither can any preconception be a sign of a necessity which exists not. manifestly, too, a proof established on firm grounds of reason must be drawn not from signs and loose general arguments, but from suitable and necessary causes. but how can it be that things foreseen should ever fail to come to pass? why, this is to suppose us to believe that the events which providence foresees to be coming were not about to happen, instead of our supposing that, although they should come to pass, yet there was no necessity involved in their own nature compelling their occurrence. take an illustration that will help to convey my meaning. there are many things which we see taking place before our eyes--the movements of charioteers, for instance, in guiding and turning their cars, and so on. now, is any one of these movements compelled by any necessity?' 'no; certainly not. there would be no efficacy in skill if all motions took place perforce.' 'then, things which in taking place are free from any necessity as to their being in the present must also, before they take place, be about to happen without necessity. wherefore there are things which will come to pass, the occurrence of which is perfectly free from necessity. at all events, i imagine that no one will deny that things now taking place were about to come to pass before they were actually happening. such things, however much foreknown, are in their occurrence _free_. for even as knowledge of things present imports no necessity into things that are taking place, so foreknowledge of the future imports none into things that are about to come. but this, thou wilt say, is the very point in dispute--whether any foreknowing is possible of things whose occurrence is not necessary. for here there seems to thee a contradiction, and, if they are foreseen, their necessity follows; whereas if there is no necessity, they can by no means be foreknown; and thou thinkest that nothing can be grasped as known unless it is certain, but if things whose occurrence is uncertain are foreknown as certain, this is the very mist of opinion, not the truth of knowledge. for to think of things otherwise than as they are, thou believest to be incompatible with the soundness of knowledge. 'now, the cause of the mistake is this--that men think that all knowledge is cognized purely by the nature and efficacy of the thing known. whereas the case is the very reverse: all that is known is grasped not conformably to its own efficacy, but rather conformably to the faculty of the knower. an example will make this clear: the roundness of a body is recognised in one way by sight, in another by touch. sight looks upon it from a distance as a whole by a simultaneous reflection of rays; touch grasps the roundness piecemeal, by contact and attachment to the surface, and by actual movement round the periphery itself. man himself, likewise, is viewed in one way by sense, in another by imagination, in another way, again, by thought, in another by pure intelligence. sense judges figure clothed in material substance, imagination figure alone without matter. thought transcends this again, and by its contemplation of universals considers the type itself which is contained in the individual. the eye of intelligence is yet more exalted; for overpassing the sphere of the universal, it will behold absolute form itself by the pure force of the mind's vision. wherein the main point to be considered is this: the higher faculty of comprehension embraces the lower, while the lower cannot rise to the higher. for sense has no efficacy beyond matter, nor can imagination behold universal ideas, nor thought embrace pure form; but intelligence, looking down, as it were, from its higher standpoint in its intuition of form, discriminates also the several elements which underlie it; but it comprehends them in the same way as it comprehends that form itself, which could be cognized by no other than itself. for it cognizes the universal of thought, the figure of imagination, and the matter of sense, without employing thought, imagination, or sense, but surveying all things, so to speak, under the aspect of pure form by a single flash of intuition. thought also, in considering the universal, embraces images and sense-impressions without resorting to imagination or sense. for it is thought which has thus defined the universal from its conceptual point of view: "man is a two-legged animal endowed with reason." this is indeed a universal notion, yet no one is ignorant that the _thing_ is imaginable and presentable to sense, because thought considers it not by imagination or sense, but by means of rational conception. imagination, too, though its faculty of viewing and forming representations is founded upon the senses, nevertheless surveys sense-impressions without calling in sense, not in the way of sense-perception, but of imagination. see'st thou, then, how all things in cognizing use rather their own faculty than the faculty of the things which they cognize? nor is this strange; for since every judgment is the act of the judge, it is necessary that each should accomplish its task by its own, not by another's power.' song iv. a psychological fallacy.[r] from the porch's murky depths comes a doctrine sage, that doth liken living mind to a written page; since all knowledge comes through sense, graven by experience. 'as,' say they, 'the pen its marks curiously doth trace on the smooth unsullied white of the paper's face, so do outer things impress images on consciousness.' but if verily the mind thus all passive lies; if no living power within its own force supplies; if it but reflect again, like a glass, things false and vain-- whence the wondrous faculty that perceives and knows, that in one fair ordered scheme doth the world dispose; grasps each whole that sense presents, or breaks into elements? so divides and recombines, and in changeful wise now to low descends, and now to the height doth rise; last in inward swift review strictly sifts the false and true? of these ample potencies fitter cause, i ween, were mind's self than marks impressed by the outer scene. yet the body through the sense stirs the soul's intelligence. when light flashes on the eye, or sound strikes the ear, mind aroused to due response makes the message clear; and the dumb external signs with the hidden forms combines. footnotes: [r] a criticism of the doctrine of the mind as a blank sheet of paper on which experience writes, as held by the stoics in anticipation of locke. see zeller, 'stoics, epicureans, and sceptics,' reichel's translation, p. . v. 'now, although in the case of bodies endowed with sentiency the qualities of external objects affect the sense-organs, and the activity of mind is preceded by a bodily affection which calls forth the mind's action upon itself, and stimulates the forms till that moment lying inactive within, yet, i say, if in these bodies endowed with sentiency the mind is not inscribed by mere passive affection, but of its own efficacy discriminates the impressions furnished to the body, how much more do intelligences free from all bodily affections employ in their discrimination their own mental activities instead of conforming to external objects? so on these principles various modes of cognition belong to distinct and different substances. for to creatures void of motive power--shell-fish and other such creatures which cling to rocks and grow there--belongs sense alone, void of all other modes of gaining knowledge; to beasts endowed with movement, in whom some capacity of seeking and shunning seems to have arisen, imagination also. thought pertains only to the human race, as intelligence to divinity alone; hence it follows that that form of knowledge exceeds the rest which of its own nature cognizes not only its proper object, but the objects of the other forms of knowledge also. but what if sense and imagination were to gainsay thought, and declare that universal which thought deems itself to behold to be nothing? for the object of sense and imagination cannot be universal; so that either the judgment of reason is true and there is no sense-object, or, since they know full well that many objects are presented to sense and imagination, the conception of reason, which looks on that which is perceived by sense and particular as if it were a something "universal," is empty of content. suppose, further, that reason maintains in reply that it does indeed contemplate the object of both sense and imagination under the form of universality, while sense and imagination cannot aspire to the knowledge of the universal, since their cognizance cannot go beyond bodily figures, and that in the cognition of reality we ought rather to trust the stronger and more perfect faculty of judgment. in a dispute of this sort, should not we, in whom is planted the faculty of reasoning as well as of imagining and perceiving, espouse the cause of reason? 'in like manner is it that human reason thinks that divine intelligence cannot see the future except after the fashion in which its own knowledge is obtained. for thy contention is, if events do not appear to involve certain and necessary issues, they cannot be foreseen as certainly about to come to pass. there is, then, no foreknowledge of such events; or, if we can ever bring ourselves to believe that there is, there can be nothing which does not happen of necessity. if, however, we could have some part in the judgment of the divine mind, even as we participate in reason, we should think it perfectly just that human reason should submit itself to the divine mind, no less than we judged that imagination and sense ought to yield to reason. wherefore let us soar, if we can, to the heights of that supreme intelligence; for there reason will see what in itself it cannot look upon; and that is in what way things whose occurrence is not certain may yet be seen in a sure and definite foreknowledge; and that this foreknowledge is not conjecture, but rather knowledge in its supreme simplicity, free of all limits and restrictions.' song v. the upward look. in what divers shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small over wide earth's teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl! some with elongated body sweep the ground, and, as they move, trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove; some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide, and through heaven's ample spaces in free motion smoothly glide; these earth's solid surface pressing, with firm paces onward rove, ranging through the verdant meadows, crouching in the woodland grove. great and wondrous is their variance! yet in all the head low-bent dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different. man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies, and in upright posture steadfast seems earth's baseness to despise. if with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear, thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear: lift thy soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly worth, and thine eyes alone look upward, while thy mind cleaves to the earth! vi. 'since, then, as we lately proved, everything that is known is cognized not in accordance with its own nature, but in accordance with the nature of the faculty that comprehends it, let us now contemplate, as far as lawful, the character of the divine essence, that we may be able to understand also the nature of its knowledge. 'god is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. let us, then, consider what eternity is. for this word carries with it a revelation alike of the divine nature and of the divine knowledge. now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. what this is becomes more clear and manifest from a comparison with things temporal. for whatever lives in time is a present proceeding from the past to the future, and there is nothing set in time which can embrace the whole space of its life together. to-morrow's state it grasps not yet, while it has already lost yesterday's; nay, even in the life of to-day ye live no longer than one brief transitory moment. whatever, therefore, is subject to the condition of time, although, as aristotle deemed of the world, it never have either beginning or end, and its life be stretched to the whole extent of time's infinity, it yet is not such as rightly to be thought eternal. for it does not include and embrace the whole space of infinite life at once, but has no present hold on things to come, not yet accomplished. accordingly, that which includes and possesses the whole fulness of unending life at once, from which nothing future is absent, from which nothing past has escaped, this is rightly called eternal; this must of necessity be ever present to itself in full self-possession, and hold the infinity of movable time in an abiding present. wherefore they deem not rightly who imagine that on plato's principles the created world is made co-eternal with the creator, because they are told that he believed the world to have had no beginning in time,[s] and to be destined never to come to an end. for it is one thing for existence to be endlessly prolonged, which was what plato ascribed to the world, another for the whole of an endless life to be embraced in the present, which is manifestly a property peculiar to the divine mind. nor need god appear earlier in mere duration of time to created things, but only prior in the unique simplicity of his nature. for the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate existence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot succeed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and falls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite duration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the whole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner it never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that which it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently to any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this bears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on everything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence. but since it cannot abide, it hurries along the infinite path of time, and the result has been that it continues by ceaseless movement the life the completeness of which it could not embrace while it stood still. so, if we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow plato in saying that god indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting. 'since, then, every mode of judgment comprehends its objects conformably to its own nature, and since god abides for ever in an eternal present, his knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. and therefore, if thou wilt carefully consider that immediate presentment whereby it discriminates all things, thou wilt more rightly deem it not foreknowledge as of something future, but knowledge of a moment that never passes. for this cause the name chosen to describe it is not prevision, but providence, because, since utterly removed in nature from things mean and trivial, its outlook embraces all things as from some lofty height. why, then, dost thou insist that the things which are surveyed by the divine eye are involved in necessity, whereas clearly men impose no necessity on things which they see? does the act of vision add any necessity to the things which thou seest before thy eyes?' 'assuredly not.' 'and yet, if we may without unfitness compare god's present and man's, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does he see all things in his eternal present. wherefore this divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. for even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time. whence it follows that when it perceives that something will come into existence, and yet is perfectly aware that this is unbound by any necessity, its apprehension is not opinion, but rather knowledge based on truth. and if to this thou sayest that what god sees to be about to come to pass cannot fail to come to pass, and that what cannot fail to come to pass happens of necessity, and wilt tie me down to this word necessity, i will acknowledge that thou affirmest a most solid truth, but one which scarcely anyone can approach to who has not made the divine his special study. for my answer would be that the same future event is necessary from the standpoint of divine knowledge, but when considered in its own nature it seems absolutely free and unfettered. so, then, there are two necessities--one simple, as that men are necessarily mortal; the other conditioned, as that, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. for that which is known cannot indeed be otherwise than as it is known to be, and yet this fact by no means carries with it that other simple necessity. for the former necessity is not imposed by the thing's own proper nature, but by the addition of a condition. no necessity compels one who is voluntarily walking to go forward, although it is necessary for him to go forward at the moment of walking. in the same way, then, if providence sees anything as present, that must necessarily be, though it is bound by no necessity of nature. now, god views as present those coming events which happen of free will. these, accordingly, from the standpoint of the divine vision are made necessary conditionally on the divine cognizance; viewed, however, in themselves, they desist not from the absolute freedom naturally theirs. accordingly, without doubt, all things will come to pass which god foreknows as about to happen, but of these certain proceed of free will; and though these happen, yet by the fact of their existence they do not lose their proper nature, in virtue of which before they happened it was really possible that they might not have come to pass. 'what difference, then, does the denial of necessity make, since, through their being conditioned by divine knowledge, they come to pass as if they were in all respects under the compulsion of necessity? this difference, surely, which we saw in the case of the instances i formerly took, the sun's rising and the man's walking; which at the moment of their occurrence could not but be taking place, and yet one of them before it took place was necessarily obliged to be, while the other was not so at all. so likewise the things which to god are present without doubt exist, but some of them come from the necessity of things, others from the power of the agent. quite rightly, then, have we said that these things are necessary if viewed from the standpoint of the divine knowledge; but if they are considered in themselves, they are free from the bonds of necessity, even as everything which is accessible to sense, regarded from the standpoint of thought, is universal, but viewed in its own nature particular. "but," thou wilt say, "if it is in my power to change my purpose, i shall make void providence, since i shall perchance change something which comes within its foreknowledge." my answer is: thou canst indeed turn aside thy purpose; but since the truth of providence is ever at hand to see that thou canst, and whether thou dost, and whither thou turnest thyself, thou canst not avoid the divine foreknowledge, even as thou canst not escape the sight of a present spectator, although of thy free will thou turn thyself to various actions. wilt thou, then, say: "shall the divine knowledge be changed at my discretion, so that, when i will this or that, providence changes its knowledge correspondingly?" 'surely not.' 'true, for the divine vision anticipates all that is coming, and transforms and reduces it to the form of its own present knowledge, and varies not, as thou deemest, in its foreknowledge, alternating to this or that, but in a single flash it forestalls and includes thy mutations without altering. and this ever-present comprehension and survey of all things god has received, not from the issue of future events, but from the simplicity of his own nature. hereby also is resolved the objection which a little while ago gave thee offence--that our doings in the future were spoken of as if supplying the cause of god's knowledge. for this faculty of knowledge, embracing all things in its immediate cognizance, has itself fixed the bounds of all things, yet itself owes nothing to what comes after. 'and all this being so, the freedom of man's will stands unshaken, and laws are not unrighteous, since their rewards and punishments are held forth to wills unbound by any necessity. god, who foreknoweth all things, still looks down from above, and the ever-present eternity of his vision concurs with the future character of all our acts, and dispenseth to the good rewards, to the bad punishments. our hopes and prayers also are not fixed on god in vain, and when they are rightly directed cannot fail of effect. therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to heaven. great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done before the eyes of a judge who seeth all things.' footnotes: [s] plato expressly states the opposite in the 'timæus' ( b), though possibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to be understood figuratively, not literally. see jowett, vol. iii., pp. , ( rd edit.). epilogue. within a short time of writing 'the consolation of philosophy,' boethius died by a cruel death. as to the manner of his death there is some uncertainty. according to one account, he was cut down by the swords of the soldiers before the very judgment-seat of theodoric; according to another, a cord was first fastened round his forehead, and tightened till 'his eyes started'; he was then killed with a club. _elliot stock, paternoster row, london_ references to quotations in the text. bk. i., ch. iv., p. , l. : 'iliad,' i. . " ch. iv., p. , l. : plato, 'republic,' v. , d; jowett, vol. iii., pp. , ( rd edit.). " ch. iv., p. , l. : plato, 'republic,' i. , c; jowett, iii., p. . " ch. v., p. , l. : 'iliad,' ii., , . bk. ii., ch. ii., p. , l. : 'iliad.' xxiv. , . " ch. vii., p. , l. : cicero, 'de republicâ,' vi. , in the 'somnium scipionis.' bk. iii., ch. iv., p. , l. : catullus, lii., . " ch. vi., p. , l. : euripides, 'andromache,' , . " ch. ix., p. , l. : plato, 'timæus,' , c; jowett, vol. iii., p. . " ch. xii., p. , l. : quoted plato, 'sophistes,' , e; jowett, vol. iv., p. . " ch. xii., p. , l. : plato, 'timæus,' , b; jowett, vol. iii., p. . bk. iv., ch. vi., p. , l. : lucan, 'pharsalia,' i. . " ch. vi., p. , l. : 'iliad,' xii. . bk. v., ch. i., p. ,l. : aristotle, 'physics,' ii. v. . " ch. iii., p. , l. : horace, 'satires,' ii. v. . " ch. iv., p. , l. : cicero, 'de divinatione,' ii. , . " ch. vi., p. , l. : aristotle, 'de cælo,' ii. . an outline of the history of christian thought since kant by edward caldwell moore parkman professor of theology in harvard university new york charles scribner's sons to adolf harnack on his sixtieth birthday by his first american pupil prefatory note it is hoped that this book may serve as an outline for a larger work, in which the judgments here expressed may be supported in detail. especially, the author desires to treat the literature of the social question and of the modernist movement with a fulness which has not been possible within the limits of this sketch. the philosophy of religion and the history of religions should have place, as also that estimate of the essence of christianity which is suggested by the contact of christianity with the living religions of the orient. pasque island, mass., _july_ , . contents chapter i a. introduction. . b. the background. . deism. . rationalism. . pietism. . Æsthetic idealism. . chapter ii idealistic philosophy. . kant. . fichte. . schelling. . hegel. . chapter iii theological reconstruction. . schleiermacher. . ritschl and the ritschlians. chapter iv the critical and historical movement. . strauss. . baur. . the canon. . the life of jesus. . the old testament. . the history of doctrine. . harnack. . chapter v the contribution of the sciences. . positivism. . naturalism and agnosticism. . evolution. . miracles. . the social sciences. . chapter vi the english-speaking peoples; action and reaction. . the poets. . coleridge. . the oriel school. . ersine and campbell. . maurice. . channing. . bushnell. . the catholic revival. . the oxford movement. . newman. . modernism. . robertson. . phillips brooks. . the broad church. . carlyle. . emerson. . arnold. . martineau. . james. . bibliography. . chapter i a. introduction the protestant reformation marked an era both in life and thought for the modern world. it ushered in a revolution in europe. it established distinctions and initiated tendencies which are still significant. these distinctions have been significant not for europe alone. they have had influence also upon those continents which since the reformation have come under the dominion of europeans. yet few would now regard the reformation as epoch-making in the sense in which that pre-eminence has been claimed. no one now esteems that it separates the modern from the mediæval and ancient world in the manner once supposed. the perspective of history makes it evident that large areas of life and thought remained then untouched by the new spirit. assumptions which had their origin in feudal or even in classical culture continued unquestioned. more than this, impulses in rational life and in the interpretation of religion, which showed themselves with clearness in one and another of the reformers themselves, were lost sight of, if not actually repudiated, by their successors. it is possible to view many things in the intellectual and religious life of the nineteenth century, even some which protestants have passionately reprobated, as but the taking up again of clues which the reformers had let fall, the carrying out of purposes of their movement which were partly hidden from themselves. men have asserted that the renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism. they have gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religious revival which the reformation was. even these men will, however, not deny that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the religious reformation possible or, at all events, effective. nor can it be denied that after the revolution, in the protestant communities the intellectual element was thrust into the background. the practical and devotional prevailed. humanism was for a time shut out. there was more room for it in the roman church than among protestants. again, the renaissance itself had been not so much an era of discovery of a new intellectual and spiritual world. it had been, rather, the rediscovery of valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. that thorough-going review of the principles at the basis of all relations of the life of man, which once seemed possible to renaissance and reformation, was postponed to a much later date. when it did take place, it was under far different auspices. there is a remarkable unity in the history of protestant thought in the period from the reformation to the end of the eighteenth century. there is a still more surprising unity of protestant thought in this period with the thought of the mediæval and ancient church. the basis and methods are the same. upon many points the conclusions are identical. there was nothing of which the protestant scholastics were more proud than of their agreement with the fathers of the early church. they did not perceive in how large degree they were at one with christian thinkers of the roman communion as well. few seem to have realised how largely catholic in principle protestant thought has been. the fundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have been the same. the notions of revelation and inspiration were identical. the idea of authority was common to both, only the instance in which that authority is lodged was different. the thoughts of god and man, of the world, of creation, of providence and prayer, of the nature and means of salvation, are similar. newman was right in discovering that from the first he had thought, only and always, in what he called catholic terms. it was veiled from him that many of those who ardently opposed him thought in those same terms. it is impossible to write upon the theme which this book sets itself without using the terms catholic and protestant in the conventional sense. the words stand for certain historic magnitudes. it is equally impossible to conceal from ourselves how misleading the language often is. the line between that which has been happily called the religion of authority and the religion of the spirit does not run between catholic and protestant. it runs through the middle of many protestant bodies, through the border only of some, and who will say that the roman church knows nothing of this contrast? the sole use of recurrence here to the historic distinction is to emphasise the fact that this distinction stands for less than has commonly been supposed. in a large way the history of christian thought, from earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century, presents a very striking unity. in contrast with this, that modern reflection which has taken the phenomenon known as religion and, specifically, that historic form of religion known as christianity, as its object, has indeed also slowly revealed the fact that it is in possession of certain principles. furthermore, these principles, as they have emerged, have been felt to be new and distinctive principles. they are essentially modern principles. they are the principles which, taken together, differentiate the thinker of the nineteenth century from all who have ever been before him. they are principles which unite all thinkers at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, in practically every portion of the world, as they think of all subjects except religion. it comes more and more to be felt that these principles must be reckoned with in our thought concerning religion as well. one of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in true critical fashion with problems of history and literature. long before the end of the age of rationalism, this principle had been applied to literature and history, other than those called sacred. the thorough going application of this scientific method to the literatures and history of the old and new testaments is almost wholly an achievement of the nineteenth century. it has completely altered the view of revelation and inspiration. the altered view of the nature of the documents of revelation has had immeasurable consequences for dogma. another of these elements is the new view of nature and of man's relation to nature. certain notable discoveries in physics and astronomy had proved possible of combination with traditional religion, as in the case of newton. or again, they had proved impossible of combination with any religion, as in the case of laplace. the review of the religious and christian problem in the light of the ever increasing volume of scientific discoveries--this is the new thing in the period which we have undertaken to describe. a theory of nature as a totality, in which man, not merely as physical, but even also as social and moral and religious being, has place in a series which suggests no break, has affected the doctrines of god and of man in a way which neither those who revered nor those who repudiated religion at the beginning of the nineteenth century could have imagined. another leading principle grows out of kant's distinction of two worlds and two orders of reason. that distinction issued in a new theory of knowledge. it laid a new foundation for an idealistic construing of the universe. in one way it was the answer of a profoundly religious nature to the triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalistic movement had run out. by it the philosopher gave standing forever to much that prophets and mystics in every age had felt to be true, yet had never been able to prove by any method which the ordered reasoning of man had provided. religion as feeling regained its place. ethics was set once more in the light of the eternal. the soul of man became the object of a scientific study. there have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger factors which enter into an interpretation of christianity which may fairly be said to be new in the nineteenth century. they are new in a sense in which the intellectual elements entering into the reconsideration of christianity in the age of the reformation were not new. they are characteristic of the nineteenth century. they would naturally issue in an interpretation of christianity in the general context of the life and thought of that century. the philosophical revolution inaugurated by kant, with the general drift toward monism in the interpretation of the universe, separates from their forebears men who have lived since kant, by a greater interval than that which divided kant from plato. the evolutionary view of nature, as developed from schelling and comte through darwin to bergson, divides men now living from the contemporaries of kant in his youthful studies of nature, as those men were not divided from the followers of aristotle. of purpose, the phrase christian thought has been interpreted as thought concerning christianity. the problem which this book essays is that of an outline of the history of the thought which has been devoted, during this period of marvellous progress, to that particular object in consciousness and history which is known as christianity. christianity, as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific reflection of the age--this it is which we propose to consider. our religion as affected in its interpretation by principles of thought which are already widespread, and bid fair to become universal among educated men--this it is which in this little volume we aim to discuss. the term religious thought has not always had this significance. philosophy of religion has signified, often, a philosophising of which religion was, so to say, the atmosphere. we cannot wonder if, in these circumstances, to the minds of some, the atmosphere has seemed to hinder clearness of vision. the whole subject of the philosophy of religion has within the last few decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted that the aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a religious spirit. on the contrary, the aim is to consider religion itself, with the best aid which current philosophy and science afford. in this sense only can we give the study of religion and christianity a place among the sciences. it remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all events, of those who have thought profoundly concerning christianity will be found to have been christian men. religion is a form of consciousness. it will be those who have had experience to which that consciousness corresponds, whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. that remark is true, for example, of æsthetic matters as well. to be a good judge of music one must have musical feeling and experience. to speak with any deeper reasonableness concerning faith, one must have faith. to think profoundly concerning christianity one needs to have had the christian experience. but this is very different from saying that to speak worthily of the christian religion, one must needs have made his own the statements of religion which men of a former generation may have found serviceable. the distinction between religion itself, on the one hand, and the expression of religion in doctrines and rites, or the application of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is in itself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century. it is one which separates us from christian men in previous centuries as markedly as it does any other. it is a simple implication of the kantian theory of knowledge. the evidence for its validity has come through the application of historical criticism to all the creeds. mystics of all ages have seen the truth from far. the fact that we may assume the prevalence of this distinction among christian men, and lay it at the base of the discussion we propose, is assuredly one of the gains which the nineteenth century has to record. it follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have to deal will have been, in their own time, of the number of avowedly christian men. some who have greatly furthered movements which in the end proved fruitful for christian thought, have been men who in their own time alienated from professed and official religion. in the retrospect we must often feel that their opposition to that which they took to be religion was justifiable. yet their identification of that with religion itself, and their frank declaration of what they called their own irreligion, was often a mistake. it was a mistake to which both they and their opponents in due proportion contributed. a still larger class of those with whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves a personal adherence to christianity. but their identification with christianity, or with a particular christian church, has been often bitterly denied by those who bore official responsibility in the church. the heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. there is something perverse in gottfried arnold's maxim, that the true church, in any age, is to be found with those who have just been excommunicated from the actual church. however, the maxim points in the direction of a truth. by far the larger part of those with whom we have to do have had acknowledged relation to the christian tradition and institution. they were christians and, at the same time, true children of the intellectual life of their own age. they esteemed it not merely their privilege, but also their duty, to endeavour to ponder anew the religious and christian problem, and to state that which they thought in a manner congruous with the thoughts which the men of the age would naturally have concerning other themes. it has been to most of these men axiomatic that doctrine has only relative truth. doctrine is but a composite of the content of the religious consciousness with materials which the intellect of a given man or age or nation in the total view of life affords. as such, doctrine is necessary and inevitable for all those who in any measure live the life of the mind. but the condition of doctrine is its mobile, its fluid and changing character. it is the combination of a more or less stable and characteristic experience, with a reflection which, exactly in proportion as it is genuine, is transformed from age to age, is modified by qualities of race and, in the last analysis, differs with individual men. dogma is that portion of doctrine which has been elevated by decree of ecclesiastical authority, or even only by common consent, into an absoluteness which is altogether foreign to its nature. it is that part of doctrine concerning which men have forgotten that it had a history, and have decided that it shall have no more. in its very notion dogma confounds a statement of truth, which must of necessity be human, with the truth itself, which is divine. in its identification of statement and truth it demands credence instead of faith. men have confounded doctrine and dogma; they have been taught so to do. they have felt the history of christian doctrine to be an unfruitful and uninteresting theme. but the history of christian thought would seek to set forth the series of interpretations put, by successive generations, upon the greatest of all human experiences, the experience of the communion of men with god. these interpretations ray out at all edges into the general intellectual life of the age. they draw one whole set of their formative impulses from the general intellectual life of the age. it is this relation of the progress of doctrine to the general history of thought in the nineteenth century, which the writer designed to emphasise in choosing the title of this work. as was indicated in the closing paragraphs of the preceding volume of this series, the issue of the age of rationalism had been for the cause of religion on the whole a distressing one. the majority of those who were resolved to follow reason were agreed in abjuring religion. that they had, as it seems to us, but a meagre understanding of what religion is, made little difference in their conclusion. bishop butler complains in his _analogy_ that religion was in his time hardly considered a subject for discussion among reasonable men. schleiermacher in the very title of his _discourses_ makes it plain that in germany the situation was not different. if the reasonable eschewed religious protests in germany, evangelicals in england, the men of the great revivals in america, many of them, took up a corresponding position as towards the life of reason, especially toward the use of reason in religion. the sinister cast which the word rationalism bears in much of the popular speech is evidence of this fact. to many minds it appeared as if one could not be an adherent both of reason and of faith. that was a contradiction which kant, first of all in his own experience, and then through his system of thought, did much to transcend. the deliverance which he wrought has been compared to the deliverance which luther in his time achieved for those who had been in bondage to scholasticism in the roman church. although kant has been dead a hundred years, both the defence of religion and the assertion of the right of reason are still, with many, on the ancient lines. there is no such strife between rationality and belief as has been supposed. but the confidence of that fact is still far from being shared by all christians at the beginning of the twentieth century. the course in reinterpretation and readjustment of christianity, which that calm conviction would imply, is still far from being the one taken by all of those who bear the christian name. if it is permissible in the writing of a book like this to have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, the author may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes with the earnest hope that in some measure he may contribute also to the establishment of an understanding upon which so much both for the church and the world depends. we should say a word at this point as to the general relation of religion and philosophy. we realise the evil which kant first in clearness pointed out. it was the evil of an apprehension which made the study of religion a department of metaphysics. the tendency of that apprehension was to do but scant justice to the historical content of christianity. religion is an historical phenomenon. especially is this true of christianity. it is a fact, or rather, a vast complex of facts. it is a positive religion. it is connected with personalities, above all with one transcendent personality, that of jesus. it sprang out of another religion which had already emerged into the light of world-history. it has been associated for two thousand years with portions of the race which have made achievements in culture and left record of those achievements. it is the function of speculation to interpret this phenomenon. when speculation is tempted to spin by its own processes something which it would set beside this historic magnitude or put in place of it, and still call that christianity, we must disallow the claim. it was the licence of its speculative endeavour, and the identification of these endeavours with christianity, which finally discredited hegelianism with religious men. nor can it be denied that theologians themselves have been sinners in this respect. the disposition to regard christianity as a revealed and divinely authoritative metaphysic began early and continued long. when the theologians also set out to interpret christianity and end in offering us a substitute, which, if it were acknowledged as absolute truth, would do away with christianity as historic fact, as little can we allow the claim. again, christianity exists not merely as a matter of history. it exists also as a fact in living consciousness. it is the function of psychology to investigate that consciousness. we must say that, accurately speaking, there is no such thing as christian philosophy. there are philosophies, good or bad, current or obsolete. these are christian only in being applied to the history of christianity and the content of the christian consciousness. there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as christian consciousness. there is the human consciousness, operating with and operated upon by the impulse of christianity. it is the great human experience from which we single out for investigation that part which is concerned with religion, and call that the religious experience. it is essential, therefore, that those general investigations of human consciousness and experience, as such, which are being carried on all about us should be reckoned with, if our christian life and thought are not altogether to fall out of touch with advancing knowledge. for this reason we have misgiving about the position of some followers of ritschl. their opinion, pushed to the limit, seems to mean that we have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance of science. religion is a feeling of which he alone who possesses it can give account. he alone who has it can appreciate such an account when given. we acknowledge that religion is in part a feeling. but that feeling must have rational justification. it must also have rational guidance if it is to be saved from degenerating into fanaticism. to say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends in our having to do with a bad philosophy. in that case we have a philosophy with which we operate without having investigated it, instead of having one with which we operate because we have investigated it. the philosophy of which we are aware we have. the philosophy of which we are not aware has us. no doubt, we may have religion without philosophy, but we cannot formulate it even in the rudest way to ourselves, we cannot communicate it in any way whatsoever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy. in the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this is merely the deposit of the regnant notions of the time. it may be amended or superseded, and our theology with it. yet while it lasts it is our one possible vehicle of expression. it is the interpreter and the critique of what we have experienced. it is not open to a man to retreat within himself and say, i am a christian, i feel thus, i think so, these thoughts are the content of christianity. the consequence of that position is that we make the religious experience to be no part of the normal human experience. if we contend that the being a christian is the great human experience, that the religious life is the true human life, we must pursue the opposite course. we must make the religious life coherent with all the other phases and elements of life. if we would contend that religious thought is the truest and deepest thought, we must begin at this very point. we must make it conform absolutely to the laws of all other thought. to contend for its isolation, as an area by itself and a process subject only to its own laws, is to court the judgment of men, that in its zeal to be christian it has ceased to be thought. our most profitable mode of procedure would seem to be this. we shall seek to follow, as we may, those few main movements of thought marking the nineteenth century which have immediate bearing upon our theme. we shall try to register the effect which these movements have had upon religious conceptions. it will not be possible at any point to do more than to select typical examples. perhaps the true method is that we should go back to the beginnings of each one of these movements. we should mark the emergence of a few great ideas. it is the emergence of an idea which is dramatically interesting. it is the moment of emergence in which that which is characteristic appears. our subject is far too complicated to permit that the ramifications of these influences should be followed in detail. modifications, subtractions, additions, the reader must make for himself. these main movements of thought are, as has been said, three in number. we shall take them in their chronological order. there is first the philosophical revolution which is commonly associated with the name of kant. if we were to seek with arbitrary exactitude to fix a date for the beginning of this movement, this might be the year of the publication of his first great work, _kritik der reinen vernunft_, in .[ ] kant was indeed himself, both intellectually and spiritually, the product of tendencies which had long been gathering strength. he was the exponent of ideas which in fragmentary way had been expressed by others, but he gathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses of his age. out from some portion of his works lead almost all the paths which philosophical thinkers since his time have trod. one cannot say even of his work, _der religion innerhalb der grenzen der blossen vernunft_, , that it is the sole source, or even the greatest source, of his influence upon religious thinking. but from the body of his work as a whole, there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed completely the notion of revelation. there came also a view of the universe as an ideal unity which, especially as elaborated by fichte, schelling and hegel, has radically altered the traditional ideas of god, of man, of nature and of their relations, the one to the other. [footnote : in the text the titles of books which are discussed are given for the first time in the language in which they are written. books which are merely alluded to are mentioned in english.] we shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and critical movement. it is the effort to apply consistently and without fear the maxims of historical and literary criticism to the documents of the old and new testaments. with still greater arbitrariness, and yet with appreciation of the significance of strauss' endeavour, we might set as the date of the full impact of this movement upon cherished religious convictions, that of the publication of his _leben jesu_, . this movement has supported with abundant evidence the insight of the philosophers as to the nature of revelation. it has shown that that which we actually have in the scriptures is just that which kant, with his reverence for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that we must have, if revelation is to be believed in at all. with this changed view has come an altered attitude toward many statements which devout men had held that they must accept as true, because these were found in scripture. with this changed view the whole history, whether of the jewish people or of jesus and the origins of the christian church, has been set in a new light. in the third place, we shall have to deal with the influence of the sciences of nature and of society, as these have been developed throughout the whole course of the nineteenth century. if one must have a date for an outstanding event in this portion of the history, perhaps that of the publication of darwin's _origin of species_, , would serve as well as any other. the principles of these sciences have come to underlie in a great measure all the reflection of cultivated men in our time. in amazing degree they have percolated, through elementary instruction, through popular literature, and through the newspapers, to the masses of mankind. they are recognised as the basis of a triumphant material civilisation, which has made everything pertaining to the inner and spiritual life seem remote. through the social sciences there has come an impulse to the transfer of emphasis from the individual to society, the disposition to see everything in its social bearing, to do everything in the light of its social antecedents and of its social consequences. here again we have to note the profoundest influence upon religious conceptions. the very notion connected with the words redemption and salvation appears to have been changed. in the case of each of these particular movements the church, as the organ of christianity, has passed through a period of antagonism to these influences, of fear of their consequences, of resistance to their progress. in large portions of the church at the present moment the protest is renewed. the substance of these modern teachings, which yet seem to be the very warp and woof of the intellectual life of the modern man, is repudiated and denounced. it is held to imperil the salvation of the soul. it is pronounced impossible of combination with belief in a divinely revealed truth concerning the universe and a saving faith for men. in other churches, outside the churches, the forms in which men hold their christianity have been in large measure adjusted to the results of these great movements of thought. they have, as these men themselves believe, been immensely strengthened and made sure by those very influences which were once considered dangerous. in connection with this indication of the nature of our materials, we have sought to say something of the time of emergence of the salient elements. it may be in point also to give some intimation of the place of their origins, that is to say, of the participation of the various nationalities in this common task of the modern christian world. that international quality of scholarship which seems to us natural, is a thing of very recent date. that a discovery should within a reasonable interval become the property of all educated men, that scholars of one nation should profit by that which the learned of another land have done, appears to us a thing to be assumed. it has not always been so, especially not in matters of religious faith. the roman church and the latin language gave to medieval christian thought a certain international character. again the renaissance and reformation had a certain world wide quality. the relations of the english church in the reigns of the last tudors to germany, switzerland, and france are not to be forgotten. but the life of the protestant national churches in the eighteenth century shows little of this trait. the barriers of language counted for something. the provincialism of national churches and denominational predilections counted for more. in the philosophical movement we must begin with the germans. the movement of english thought known as deism was a distinct forerunner of the rationalist movement, within the particular area of the discussion of religion. however, it ran into the sand. the rationalist movement, considered in its other aspects, never attained in england in the eighteenth century the proportions which it assumed in france and germany. in france that movement ran its full course, both among the learned and, equally, as a radical and revolutionary influence among the unlearned. it had momentous practical consequences. in no sphere was it more radical than in that of religion. not in vain had voltaire for years cried, '_Écrasez l'infâme_,' and rousseau preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he had had in the religious schools were made impossible. there was for many minds no alternative between clericalism and atheism. quite logically, therefore, after the downfall of the republic and of the empire there set in a great reaction. still it was simply a reversion to the absolute religion of the roman catholic church as set forth by the jesuit party. there was no real transcending of the rationalist movement in france in the interest of religion. there has been no great constructive movement in religious thought in france in the nineteenth century. there is relatively little literature of our subject in the french language until recent years. in germany, on the other hand, the rationalist movement had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. rationalism ran a much soberer course than in france. it was never a revolutionary and destructive movement as in france. it was not a dilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in england. it was far more creative and constructive than elsewhere. here also before the end of the century it had run its course. yet here the men who transcended the rationalist movement and shaped the spiritual revival in the beginning of the nineteenth century were men who had themselves been trained in the bosom of the rationalist movement. they had appropriated the benefits of it. they did not represent a violent reaction against it, but a natural and inevitable progress within and beyond it. this it was which gave to the germans their leadership at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the sphere of the intellectual life. it is worthy of note that the great heroes of the intellectual life in germany, in the period of which we speak, were most of them deeply interested in the problem of religion. the first man to bring to england the leaven of this new spirit, and therewith to transcend the old philosophical standpoint of locke and hume, was coleridge with his _aids to reflection_, published in . but even after this impulse of coleridge the movement remained in england a sporadic and uncertain one. it had nothing of the volume and conservativeness which belonged to it in germany. coleridge left among his literary remains a work published in under the title of _confessions of an enquiring spirit_. what is here written is largely upon the basis of intuition and forecast like that of remarus and lessing a half-century earlier in germany. strauss and others were already at work in germany upon the problem of the new testament, vatke and reuss upon that of the old. this was a different kind of labour, and destined to have immeasurably greater significance. george eliot's maiden literary labour was the translation into english of strauss' first edition. but the results of that criticism were only slowly appropriated by the english. the ostensible results were at first radical and subversive in the extreme. they were fiercely repudiated in strauss' own country. yet in the main there was acknowledgement of the correctness of the principle for which strauss had stood. hardly before the decade of the sixties was that method accepted in england in any wider way, and hardly before the decade of the seventies in america. ronan was the first to set forth, in , the historical and critical problem in the new spirit, in a way that the wide public which read french understood. when we come to speak of the scientific movement it is not easy to say where the leadership lay. many englishmen were in the first rank of investigators and accumulators of material. the first attempt at a systematisation of the results of the modern sciences was that of auguste comte in his _philosophie positive_. this philosophy, however, under its name of positivism, exerted a far greater influence, both in comte's time and subsequently, in england than it did in france. herbert spencer, after the middle of the decade of the sixties, essayed to do something of the sort which comte had attempted. he had far greater advantages for the solution of the problem. comte's foil in all of his discussions of religion was the catholicism of the south of france. none the less, the religion which in his later years he created, bears striking resemblance to that which in his earlier years he had sought to destroy. spencer's attitude toward religion was in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom and conscientiousness. both of these men represent the effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. the fact that there had been no such philosophical readjustment in great britain as in germany, made the acceptance of the evolutionary theory of the universe, which more and more the sciences enforced, slower and more difficult. the period of resistance on the part of those interested in religion extended far into the decade of the seventies. a word may be added concerning america. the early settlers had been proud of their connection with the english universities. an extraordinary number of them, in massachusetts at least, had been cambridge men. yet a tradition of learning was later developed, which was not without the traits of isolation natural in the circumstances. the residence, for a time, even of a man like berkeley in this country, altered that but little. the clergy remained in singular degree the educated and highly influential class. the churches had developed, in consonance with their puritan character, a theology and philosophy so portentous in their conclusions, that we can without difficulty understand the reaction which was brought about. wesleyanism had modified it in some portions of the country, but intensified it in others. deism apparently had had no great influence. when the rationalist movement of the old world began to make itself felt, it was at first largely through the influence of france. the religious life of the country at the beginning of the nineteenth century was at a low ebb. men like belaham and priestley were known as apostles of a freer spirit in the treatment of the problem of religion. priestley came to pennsylvania in his exile. in the large, however, one may say that the new england liberal movement, which came by and by to be called unitarian, was as truly american as was the orthodoxy to which it was opposed. channing reminds one often of schleiermacher. there is no evidence that he had learned from schleiermacher. the liberal movement by its very impetuosity gave a new lease of life to an orthodoxy which, without that antagonism, would sooner have waned. the great revivals, which were a benediction to the life of the country, were thought to have closer relation to the theology of those who participated in them than they had. the breach between the liberal and conservative tendencies of religious thought in this country came at a time when the philosophical reconstruction was already well under way in europe. the debate continued until long after the biblical-critical movement was in progress. the controversy was conducted upon both sides in practically total ignorance of these facts. there are traces upon both sides of that insight which makes the mystic a discoverer in religion, before the logic known to him will sustain the conclusion which he draws. there will always be interest in the literature of a discussion conducted by reverent and, in their own way, learned and original men. yet there is a pathos about the sturdy originality of good men expended upon a problem which had been already solved. the men in either camp proceeded from assumptions which are now impossible to the men of both. it was not until after the civil war that american students of theology began in numbers to study in germany. it is a much more recent thing that one may assume the immediate reading of foreign books, or boast of current contribution from american scholars to the labour of the world's thought upon these themes. we should make a great mistake if we supposed that the progress has been an unceasing forward movement. quite the contrary, in every aspect of it the life of the early part of the nineteenth century presents the spectacle of a great reaction. the resurgence of old ideas and forces seems almost incredible. in the political world we are wont to attribute this fact to the disillusionment which the french revolution had wrought, and the suffering which the napoleonic empire had entailed. the reaction in the world of thought, and particularly of religious thought, was, moreover, as marked as that in the world of deeds. the roman church profited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men as much as did the absolute state. almost the first act of pius vii. after his return to rome in , was the revival of the society of jesus, which had been after long agony in dissolved by the papacy itself. 'altar and throne' became the watchword of an ardent attempt at restoration of all of that which millions had given their lives to do away. all too easily, one who writes in sympathy with that which is conventionally called progress may give the impression that our period is one in which movement has been all in one direction. that is far from being true. one whose very ideal of progress is that of movement in directions opposite to those we have described may well say that the nineteenth century has had its gifts for him as well. the life of mankind is too complex that one should write of it with one exclusive standard as to loss and gain. and whatever be one's standard the facts cannot be ignored. the france of the thirties and the forties saw a liberal movement within the roman church. the names of lamennais, of lacordaire, of montalembert and ozanam, the title _l'avenir_ occur to men's minds at once. perhaps there has never been in france a party more truly catholic, more devout, refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between the cultivated and the church. however, before the second empire, an end had been made of that. it cannot be said that the french church exactly favoured the infallibility. it certainly did not stand against the decree as in the old days it would have done. the decree of infallibility is itself the greatest witness of the steady progress of reaction in the roman church. that action, theoretically at least, does away with even that measure of popular constitution in the church to which the end of the middle age had held fast without wavering, which the mightiest of popes had not been able to abolish and the council of trent had not dared earnestly to debate. whether the decree of is viewed in the light of the _syllabus of errors_ of , and again of the _encyclical_ of , or whether the encyclicals are viewed in the light of the decree, the fact remains that a power has been given to the curia against what has come to be called modernism such as innocent never wielded against the heresies of his day. meantime, so hostile are exactly those peoples among whom roman catholicism has had full sway, that it would almost appear that the hope of the roman church is in those countries in which, in the sequence of the reformation, a religious tolerance obtains, which the roman church would have done everything in its power to prevent. again, we should deceive ourselves if we supposed that the reaction had been felt only in roman catholic lands. a minister of prussia forbade kant to speak concerning religion. the prussia of frederick william iii. and of frederick william iv. was almost as reactionary as if metternich had ruled in berlin as well as in vienna. the history of the censorship of the press and of the repression of free thought in germany until the year is a sad chapter. the ruling influences in the lutheran church in that era, practically throughout germany, were reactionary. the universities did indeed in large measure retain their ancient freedom. but the church in which hengstenberg could be a leader, and in which staunch seventeenth-century lutheranism could be effectively sustained, was almost doomed to further that alienation between the life of piety and the life of learning which is so much to be deplored. in the church the conservatives have to this moment largely triumphed. in the theological faculties of the universities the liberals in the main have held their own. the fact that both church and faculties are functionaries of the state is often cited as sure in the end to bring about a solution of this unhappy state of things. for such a solution, it must be owned, we wait. the england of the period after had indeed no such cause for reaction as obtained in france or even in germany. the nation having had its revolution in the seventeenth century escaped that of the eighteenth. still the country was exhausted in the conflict against napoleon. commercial, industrial and social problems agitated it. the church slumbered. for a time the liberal thought of england found utterance mainly through the poets. by the decade of the thirties movement had begun. the opinions of the noetics in oriel college, oxford, now seem distinctly mild. they were sufficient to awaken newman and pusey, froude, keble, and the rest. then followed the most significant ecclesiastical movement which the church of england in the nineteenth century has seen, the oxford or tractarian movement, as it has been called. there was conscious recurrence of a mind like that of newman to the catholic position. he had never been able to conceive religion in any other terms than those of dogma, or the christian assurance on any other basis than that of external authority. nothing could be franker than the antagonism of the movement, from its inception, to the liberal spirit of the age. by inner logic newman found himself at last in the roman church. yet the anglo-catholic movement is to-day overwhelmingly in the ascendant in the english church. the broad churchmen of the middle of the century have had few successors. it is the high church which stands over against the great mass of the dissenting churches which, taken in the large, can hardly be said to be theologically more liberal than itself. it is the high church which has showed franciscanlike devotion in the problems of social readjustment which england to-day presents. it has shown in some part of its constituency a power of assimilation of new philosophical, critical and scientific views, which makes all comparison of it with the roman church misleading. and yet it remains in its own consciousness catholic to the core. in america also the vigour of onset of the liberalising forces at the beginning of this century tended to provoke reaction. the alarm with which the defection of so considerable a portion of the puritan church was viewed gave coherence to the opposition. there were those who devoutly held that the hope of religion lay in its further liberalisation. equally there were those who deeply felt that the deliverance lay in resistance to liberalisation. one of the concrete effects of the division of the churches was the separation of the education of the clergy from the universities, the entrusting it to isolated theological schools under denominational control. the system has done less harm than might have been expected. yet at present there would appear to be a general movement of recurrence to the elder tradition. the maintenance of the religious life is to some extent a matter of nurture and observances, of religious habit and practice. this truth is one which liberals, in their emphasis upon liberty and the individual, are always in danger of overlooking. the great revivals of religion in this century, like those of the century previous, have been connected with a form of religious thought pronouncedly pietistic. the building up of religious institutions in the new regions of the west, and the participation of the churches of the country in missions, wear predominantly this cast. antecedently, one might have said that the lack of ecclesiastical cohesion among the christians of the land, the ease with which a small group might split off for the furtherance of its own particular view, would tend to liberalisation. it is doubtful whether this is true. isolation is not necessarily a condition of progress. the emphasis upon trivial differences becomes rather a condition of their permanence. the middle of the nineteenth century in the united states was a period of intense denominationalism. that is synonymous with a period of the stagnation of christian thought. the religion of a people absorbed in the practical is likely to be one which they at least suppose to be a practical religion. in one age the most practical thing will appear to men to be to escape hell, in another to further socialism. the need of adjustment of religion to the great intellectual life of the world comes with contact with that life. what strikes one in the survey of the religious thought of the country, by and large, for a century and a quarter, is not so much that it has been reactionary, as that it has been stationary. almost every other aspect of the life of our country, including even that of religious life as distinguished from religious thought, has gone ahead by leaps and bounds. this it is which in a measure has created the tension which we feel. b. the background deism in england before the end of the civil war a movement for the rationalisation of religion had begun to make itself felt. it was in full force in the time of the revolution of . it had not altogether spent itself by the middle of the eighteenth century. the movement has borne the name of deism. in so far as it had one watchword, this came to be 'natural religion.' the antithesis had in mind was that to revealed religion, as this had been set forth in the tradition of the church, and particularly under the bibliolatry of the puritans. it is a witness to the liberty of speech enjoyed by englishmen in that day and to their interest in religion, that such a movement could have arisen largely among laymen who were often men of rank. it is an honour to the english race that, in the period of the rising might of the rational spirit throughout the western world, men should have sought at once to utilise that force for the restatement of religion. yet one may say quite simply that this undertaking of the deists was premature. the time was not ripe for the endeavour. the rationalist movement itself needed greater breadth and deeper understanding of itself. above all, it needed the salutary correction of opposing principles before it could avail for this delicate and difficult task. religion is the most conservative of human interests. rationalism would be successful in establishing a new interpretation of religion only after it had been successful in many other fields. the arguments of the deists were never successfully refuted. on the contrary, the striking thing is that their opponents, the militant divines and writings of numberless volumes of 'evidences for christianity,' had come to the same rational basis with the deists. they referred even the most subtle questions to the pure reason, as no one now would do. the deistical movement was not really defeated. it largely compelled its opponents to adopt its methods. it left a deposit which is more nearly rated at its worth at the present than it was in its own time. but it ceased to command confidence, or even interest. samuel johnson said, as to the publication of bolingbroke's work by his executor, three years after the author's death: 'it was a rusty old blunderbuss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself, instead of leaving a half-crown to a scotchman to let it off after his death.' it is a great mistake, however, in describing the influence of rationalism upon christian thought to deal mainly with deism. english deism made itself felt in france, as one may see in the case of voltaire. kant was at one time deeply moved by some english writers who would be assigned to this class. in a sense kant showed traces of the deistical view to the last. the centre of the rationalistic movement had, however, long since passed from england to the continent. the religious problem was no longer its central problem. we quite fail to appreciate what the nineteenth century owes to the eighteenth and to the rationalist movement in general, unless we view this latter in a far greater way. rationalism in kant wrote a tractate entitled, _was ist aufklärung?_ he said: 'aufklärung is the advance of man beyond the stage of voluntary immaturity. by immaturity is meant a man's inability to use his understanding except under the guidance of another. the immaturity is voluntary when the cause is not want of intelligence but of resolution. _sapere aude!_ "dare to use thine own understanding," is therefore the motto of free thought. if it be asked, "do we live in a free-thinking age?" the answer is, "no, but we live in an age of free thought." as things are at present, men in general are very far from possessing, or even from being able to acquire, the power of making a sure and right use of their own understanding without the guidance of others. on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field now lies, nevertheless, open before them, to which they can freely make their way and that the hindrances to general freedom of thought are gradually becoming less. and again he says: 'if we wish to insure the true use of the understanding by a method which is universally valid, we must first critically examine the laws which are involved in the very nature of the understanding itself. for the knowledge of a truth which is valid for everyone is possible only when based on laws which are involved in the nature of the human mind, as such, and have not been imported into it from without through facts of experience, which must always be accidental and conditional.' there speaks, of course, the prophet of the new age which was to transcend the old rationalist movement. men had come to harp in complacency upon reason. they had never inquired into the nature and laws of action of the reason itself. kant, though in fullest sympathy with its fundamental principles, was yet aware of the excesses and weaknesses in which the rationalist movement was running out. no man was ever more truly a child of rationalism. no man has ever written, to whom the human reason was more divine and inviolable. yet no man ever had greater reserves within himself which rationalism, as it had been, had never touched. it was he, therefore, who could lay the foundations for a new and nobler philosophy for the future. the word _aufklärung_, which the speech of the fatherland furnished him, is a better word than ours. it is a better word than the french _l'illuminisme_, the enlightenment. still we are apparently committed to the term rationalism, although it is not an altogether fortunate designation which the english-speaking race has given to a tendency practically universal in the thinking of europe, from about to the beginning of the nineteenth century. historically, the rationalistic movement was the necessary preliminary for the modern period of european civilization as distinguished from the ecclesiastically and theologically determined culture which had prevailed up to that time. it marks the great cleft between the ancient and mediæval world of culture on the one hand and the modern world on the other. the reformation had but pushed ajar the door to the modern world and then seemed in surprise and fear about to close it again. the thread of the renaissance was taken up again only in the enlightenment. the stream flowed underground which was yet to fertilise the modern world. we are here mainly concerned to note the breadth and universality of the movement. it was a transformation of culture, a change in the principles underlying civilisation, in all departments of life. it had indeed, as one of its most general traits, the antagonism to ecclesiastical and theological authority. whatever it was doing, it was never without a sidelong glance at religion. that was because the alleged divine right of churches and states was the one might which it seemed everywhere necessary to break. the conflict with ecclesiasticism, however, was taken up also by pietism, the other great spiritual force of the age. this was in spite of the fact that the pietists' view of religion was the opposite of the rationalist view. rationalism was characterised by thorough-going antagonism to supernaturalism with all its consequences. this arose from its zeal for the natural and the human, in a day when all men, defenders and assailants of religion alike, accepted the dictum that what was human could not be divine, the divine must necessarily be the opposite of the human. in reality this general trait of opposition to religion deceives us. it is superficial. in large part the rationalists were willing to leave the question of religion on one side if the ecclesiastics would let them alone. this is true in spite of the fact that the pot-house rationalism of germany and france in the eighteenth century found the main butt of its ridicule in the priesthood and the church. on its sober side, in the studies of scholars, in the bureaux of statesmen, in the laboratories of discoverers, it found more solid work. it accomplished results which that other trivial aspect must not hide from us. troeltsch first in our own day has given us a satisfactory account of the vast achievement of the movement in every department of human life.[ ] it annihilated the theological notion of the state. in the period after the thirty years' war men began to question what had been the purpose of it all. diplomacy freed itself from jesuitical and papal notions. it turned preponderantly to commercial and economic aims. a secular view of the purpose of god in history began to prevail in all classes of society. the grand monarque was ready to proclaim the divine right of the state which was himself. still, not until the period of his dotage did that claim bear any relation to what even he would have called religion. publicists, both catholic and protestant, sought to recur to the _lex naturæ_ in contradistinction with the old _lex divina_. the natural rights of man, the rights of the people, the rationally conditioned rights of the state, a natural, prudential, utilitarian morality interested men. one of the consequences of this theory of the state was a complete alteration in the thought of the relation of state and church. the nature of the church itself as an empirical institution in the midst of human society was subjected to the same criticism with the state. men saw the church in a new light. as the state was viewed as a kind of contract in men's social interest, so the church was regarded as but a voluntary association to care for their religious interests. it was to be judged according to the practical success with which it performed this function. [footnote : troeltsch, art. 'aufklärung' in herzog-hauck, _realencylopädie_, aufl., bd. ii., s. f.] then also, in the economic and social field the rational spirit made itself felt. commerce and the growth of colonies, the extension of the middle class, the redistribution of wealth, the growth of cities, the dependence in relations of trade of one nation upon another, all these things shook the ancient organisation of society. the industrial system grew up upon the basis of a naturalistic theory of all economic relations. unlimited freedom in labour and in the use of capital were claimed. there came a great revolution in public opinion upon all matters of morals. the ferocity of religious wars, the cruelty of religious controversies, the bigotry of the confessional, these all, which, only a generation earlier, had been taken by long-suffering humanity as if they had been matters of course, were now viewed with contrition by the more exalted spirits and with contempt and embitterment by the rest. men said, if religion can give us not better morality than this, it is high time we looked to the natural basis of morality. natural morality came to be the phrase ever on the lips of the leading spirits. too frequently they had come to look askance at the morality of those who alleged a supernatural sanction for that which they at least enjoined upon others. we come in this field also, as in others, upon the assertion of the human as nobler and more beautiful than that which had by the theologians been alleged to be divine. the assertion came indeed to be made in ribald and blasphemous forms, but it was not without a great measure of provocation. then there was the altered view of nature which came through the scientific discoveries of the age. bacon, copernicus, kepler, galileo, gassendi, newton, are the fathers of the modern sciences. these are the men who brought new worlds to our knowledge and new methods to our use. that the sun does not move about the earth, that the earth is but a speck in space, that heaven cannot be above nor hell beneath, these are thoughts which have consequences. instead of the old deductive method, that of the mediæval aristotelianism, which had been worse than fruitless in the study of nature, men now set out with a great enthusiasm to study facts, and to observe their laws. modern optics, acoustics, chemistry, geology, zoology, psychology and medicine, took their rises within the period of which we speak. the influence was indescribable. newton might maintain his own simple piety side by side, so to say, with his character, as a scientific man, though even he did not escape the accusation of being a unitarian. in the resistance which official religion offered at every step to the advance of the sciences, it is small wonder if natures less placid found the maintenance of their ancestral faith too difficult. natural science was deistic with locke and voltaire, it was pantheistic in the antique sense with shaftesbury, it was pantheistic-mystical with spinoza, spiritualistic with descartes, theistic with leibnitz, materialistic with the men of the encyclopædia. it was orthodox with nobody. the miracle as traditionally defined became impossible. at all events it became the millstone around the neck of the apologists. the movement went to an extreme. all the evils of excess upon this side from which we since have suffered were forecast. they were in a measure called out by the evils and errors which had so long reigned upon the other side. again, in the field of the writing of history and of the critique of ancient literatures, the principles of rational criticism were worked out and applied in all seriousness. then these maxims began to be applied, sometimes timidly and sometimes in scorn and shallowness, to the sacred history and literature as well. to claim, as the defenders of the faith were fain to do, that this one department of history was exempt, was only to tempt historians to say that this was equivalent to confession that we have not here to do with history at all. nor can we overlook the fact that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed a great philosophical revival. here again it is the rationalist principle which is everywhere at work. the observations upon nature, the new feeling concerning man, the vast complex of facts and impulses which we have been able in these few words to suggest, demanded a new philosophical treatment. the philosophy which now took its rise was no longer the servant of theology. it was, at most, the friend, and even possibly the enemy, of theology. before the end of the rationalist period it was the master of theology, though often wholly indifferent to theology, exactly because of its sense of mastery. the great philosophers of the eighteenth century, hume, berkeley, and kant, belong with a part only of their work and tendency to the rationalist movement. still their work rested upon that which had already been done by spinoza and malebranche, by hobbes and leibnitz, by descartes and bayle, by locke and wolff, by voltaire and the encyclopædists. with all of the contrasts among these men there are common elements. there is an ever increasing antipathy to the thought of original sin and of supernatural revelation, there is the confidence of human reason, the trust in the will of man, the enthusiasm for the simple, the natural, the intelligible and practical, the hatred of what was scholastic and, above all, the repudiation of authority. all these elements led, toward the end of the period, to the effort at the construction of a really rational theology. leibnitz and lessing both worked at that problem. however, not until after the labours of kant was it possible to utilise the results of the rationalist movement for the reconstruction of theology. if evidence for this statement were wanting, it could be abundantly given from the work of herder. he was younger than kant, yet the latter seems to have exerted but slight influence upon him. he earnestly desired to reinterpret christianity in the new light of his time, yet perhaps no part of his work is so futile. pietism allusion has been made to pietism. we have no need to set forth its own achievements. we must recur to it merely as one of the influences which made the transition from the century of rationalism to bear, in germany, an aspect different from that which it bore in any other land. pietism had at first much in common with rationalism. it shared with the latter its opposition to the whole administration of religion established by the state, its antagonism to the social distinctions which prevailed, its individualism, its emphasis upon the practical. it was part of a general religious reaction against ecclesiasticism, as were also jansenism in france, and methodism in england, and the whitefieldian revival in america. but, through the character of spener, and through the peculiarity of german social relations, it gained an influence over the educated classes, such as methodism never had in england, nor, on the whole, the great awakening in america. in virtue of this, german pietism was able, among influential persons, to present victorious opposition to the merely secular tendencies of the rationalistic movement. in no small measure it breathed into that movement a religious quality which in other lands was utterly lacking. it gave to it an ethical seriousness from which in other places it had too often set itself free. in england there had followed upon the age of the great religious conflict one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. men turned with all energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly modern civilisation. they retained, after a short period of friction, a smug and latitudinarian orthodoxy, which methodism did little to change. in france not only was the huguenot church annihilated, but the jansenist movement was savagely suppressed. the tyranny of the bourbon state and the corruption of the gallican church which was so deeply identified with it caused the rationalist movement to bear the trait of a passionate opposition to religion. in the time of pascal, jansenism had a moment when it bade fair to be to france what pietism was to germany. later, in the anguish and isolation of the conflict the movement lost its poise and intellectual quality. in germany, even after the temporary alliance of pietism and rationalism against the church had been transcended, and the length and breadth of their mutual antagonism had been revealed, there remained a deep mutual respect and salutary interaction. obscurantists and sentimentalists might denounce rationalism. vulgar ranters like dippel and barth might defame religion. that had little weight as compared with the fact that klopstock, hamann and herder, jacobi, goethe and jean paul, had all passed at some time under the influence of pietism. lessing learned from the moravians the undogmatic essence of religion. schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers of zinzendorf. even the radicalism of kant retained from the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categorical imperative of duty. it would be hard to find anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in which he was bred. such facts as these made themselves felt both in the philosophy and in the poetry of the age. the rationalist movement itself came to have an ethical and spiritual trait. the triviality, the morbidness and superstition of pietism received their just condemnation. but among the leaders of the nation in every walk of life were some who felt the drawing to deal with ethical and religious problems in the untrammelled fashion which the century had taught. we may be permitted to try to show the meaning of pietism by a concrete example. no one can read the correspondence between the youthful schleiermacher and his loving but mistaken father, or again, the lifelong correspondence of schleiermacher with his sister, without receiving, if he has any religion of his own, a touching impression of what the pietistic religion meant. the father had long before, unknown to the son, passed through the torments of the rational assault upon a faith which was sacred to him. he had preached, through years, in the misery of contradiction with himself. he had rescued his drowning soul in the ark of the most intolerant confessional orthodoxy. in the crisis of his son's life he pitiably concealed these facts. they should have been the bond of sympathy. the son, a sorrowful little motherless boy, was sent to the moravian school at niesky, and then to barby. he was to escape the contamination of the universities, and the woes through which his father had passed. even there the spirit of the age pursued him. the precocious lad, in his loneliness, raised every question which the race was wrestling with. he long concealed these facts, dreading to wound the man he so revered. then in a burst of filial candour, he threw himself upon his father's mercy, only to be abused and measurelessly condemned. he had his way. he resorted to halle, turned his back on sacred things, worked in titanic fashion at everything but the problem of religion. at least he kept his life clean and his soul sensitive among the flagrantly immoral who were all about him, even in the pietists' own university. he laid the foundations for his future philosophical construction. he bathed in the sentiments and sympathies, poetic, artistic and humanitarian, of the romanticist movement. in his early berlin period he was almost swept from his feet by its flood. he rescued himself, however, by his rationalism and romanticism into a breadth and power of faith which made him the prophet of the new age. by him, for a generation, men like-minded saved their souls. as one reads, one realises that it was the pietists' religion which saved him, and which, in another sense, he saved. his recollections of his instruction among the herrnhuter are full of beauty and pathos. his sister never advanced a step upon the long road which he travelled. yet his sympathy with her remained unimpaired. the two poles of the life of the age are visible here. the episode, full of exquisite personal charm, is a veritable miniature of the first fifty years of the movement which we have to record. no one did for england or for france what schleiermacher had done for the fatherland. Æsthetic idealism besides pietism, the germany of the end of the eighteenth century possessed still another foil and counterpoise to its decadent rationalism. this was the so-called æsthetic-idealistic movement, which shades off into romanticism. the debt of schleiermacher to that movement has been already hinted at. it was the revolt of those who had this in common with the pietists, that they hated and despised the outworn rationalism. they thought they wanted no religion. it is open to us to say that they misunderstood religion. it was this misunderstanding which schleiermacher sought to bring home to them. what religion they understood, ecclesiasticism, roman or lutheran, or again, the banalities and fanaticisms of middle-class pietism, they despised. their war with rationalism was not because it had deprived man of religion. it had been equally destructive of another side of the life of feeling, the æsthetic. their war was not on behalf of the good, it was in the name of the beautiful. rationalism had starved the soul, it had minimised and derided feeling. it had suppressed emotion. it had been fatal to art. it was barren of poetry. it had had no sympathy with history and no understanding of history. it had reduced everything to the process by which two and two make four. the pietists said that the frenzy for reason had made man oblivious of the element of the divine. the æsthetic idealists said that it had been fatal to the element of the human. from this point of view their movement has been called the new humanism. the glamour of life was gone, they said. mystery had vanished. and mystery is the womb of every art. rationalism had been absolutely uncreative, only and always destructive. rousseau had earlier uttered this wail in france, and had greatly influenced certain minds in germany. shelley and keats were saying something of the sort in england. even as to wordsworth, it may be an open question if his religion was not mainly romanticism. all these men used language which had been conventionally associated with religion, to describe this other emotion. rationalism had ended in proving deadly to ideals. this was true. but men forgot for the moment how glorious an ideal it had once been to be rational and to assert the rationality of the universe. still the time had come when, in germany at all events, the great cry was, 'back to the ideal.' it is curious that men always cry 'back' when they mean 'forward.' for it was not the old idealism, either religious or æsthetic, which they were seeking. it was a new one in which the sober fruits of rationalism should find place. still, for the moment, as we have seen, the air was full of the cry, 'back to the state by divine right, back to the church, back to the middle age, back to the beauty of classical antiquity.' the poetry, the romance, the artistic criticism of this movement set themselves free at a stroke from theological bondage and from the externality of conventional ethics. it shook off the dust of the doctrinaires. it ridiculed the petty utilitarianism which had been the vogue. it had such an horizon as men had never dreamed before. it owed that horizon to the rationalism it despised. from its new elevation it surveyed all the great elements of the life of man. it saw morals and religion, language and society, along with art and itself, as the free and unconscious product through the ages, of the vitality of the human spirit. it must be said that it neither solved nor put away the ancient questions. especially through its one-sided æstheticism it veiled that element of dualism in the world which kant clearly saw, and we now see again, after a century which has sometimes leaned to easy pantheism. however, it led to a study of the human soul and of all its activities, which came closer to living nature than anything which the world had yet seen. to this group of æsthetic idealists belong, not to mention lesser names, lessing and hamann and winckelmann, but above all herder and goethe. herder was surely the finest spirit among the elder contemporaries of goethe. bitterly hostile to the rationalists, he had been moved by rousseau to enthusiasm for the free creative life of the human spirit. with lessing he felt the worth of every art in and for itself, and the greatness of life in its own fulfilment. he sets out from the analysis of the poetic and artistic powers, the appreciation of which seemed to him to be the key to the understanding of the spiritual world. then first he approaches the analysis of the ethical and religious feeling. all the knowledge and insight thus gained he gathers together into a history of the spiritual life of mankind. this life of the human spirit comes forth everywhere from nature, is bound to nature. it constitutes one whole with a nature which the devout soul calls god, and apprehends within itself as the secret of all that it is and does. even in the period in which he had become passionately christian, herder never was able to attain to a scientific establishing of his christianity, or to any sense of the specific aim of its development. he felt himself to be separated from kant by an impassable gulf. all the sharp antinomies among which kant moved, contrasts of that which is sensuous with that which is reasonable, of experience with pure conception, of substance and form in thought, of nature and freedom, of inclination and duty, seemed to herder grossly exaggerated, if not absolutely false. sometimes herder speaks as if the end of life were simply the happiness which a man gets out of the use of all his powers and out of the mere fact of existence. deeper is kant's contention, that the true aim of life can be only moral culture, even independent of happiness, or rather one must find his noblest happiness in that moral culture. at a period in his life when herder had undergone conversion to court orthodoxy at bückeburg and threatened to throw away that for which his life had stood, he was greatly helped by goethe. the identification of herder with christianity continued to be more deep and direct than that of goethe ever became, yet goethe has also his measure of significance for our theme. if he steadied herder in his religious experience, he steadied others in their poetical emotionalism and artistic sentimentality, which were fast becoming vices of the time. the classic repose of his spirit, his apparently unconscious illustration of the ancient maxim, 'nothing too much,' was the more remarkable, because there were few influences in the whole gamut of human life to which he did not sooner or later surrender himself, few experiences which he did not seek, few areas of thought upon which he did not enter. systems and theories were never much to his mind. a fact, even if it were inexplicable, interested him much more. to the evolution of formal thought in his age he held himself receptive rather than directing. he kept, to the last, his own manner of brooding and creating, within the limits of a poetic impressionableness which instinctively viewed the material world and the life of the soul in substantially similar fashion. there is something almost humorous in the way in which he eagerly appropriated the results of the philosophising of his time, in so far as he could use these to sustain his own positions, and caustically rejected those which he could not thus use. he soon got by heart the negative lessons of voltaire and found, to use the words which he puts into the mouth of faust, that while it freed him from his superstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismal beyond endurance. in the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the _système de la nature_ as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 'it appeared to us,' he says, 'so grey, so cimmerian and so dead that we shuddered at it as at a ghost. we thought it the very quintessence of old age. all was said to be necessary, and therefore there was no god. why not a necessity for a god to take its place among the other necessities!' on the other hand, the ordinary teleological theology, with its external architect of the world and its externally determined designs, could not seem to goethe more satisfactory than the mechanical philosophy. he joined for a time in rousseau's cry for the return to nature. but goethe was far too well balanced not to perceive that such a cry may be the expression of a very artificial and sophisticated state of mind. it begins indeed in the desire to throw off that which is really oppressive. it ends in a fretful and reckless revolt against the most necessary conditions of human life. goethe lived long enough to see in france that dissolution of all authority, whether of state or church, for which rousseau had pined. he saw it result in the return of a portion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitive state, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw.' it was not that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough, both rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined was the primitive state. the thought of the discipline and renunciation of our lower nature in order to the realisation of a higher nature of mankind is written upon the very face of the second part of _faust_. certain passages in _dichtung_ and _wahrheit_ are even more familiar. 'our physical as well as our social life, morality, custom, knowledge of the world, philosophy, religion, even many an accidental occurrence in our daily life, all tell us that we must renounce.' 'renunciation, once for all, in view of the eternal,' that was the lesson which he said made him feel an atmosphere of peace breathed upon him. he perceived the supreme moral prominence of certain christian ideas, especially that of the atonement as he interpreted it. 'it is altogether strange to me,' he writes to jacobi, 'that i, an old heathen, should see the cross planted in my own garden, and hear christ's blood preached without its offending me.' goethe's quarrel with christianity was due to two causes. in the first place, it was due to his viewing christianity as mainly, if not exclusively, a religion of the other world, as it has been called, a religion whose god is not the principle of all life and nature and for which nature and life are not divine. in the second place, it was due to the prominence of the negative or ascetic element in christianity as commonly presented, to the fact that in that presentation the law of self-sacrifice bore no relation to the law of self-realisation. in both of these respects he would have found himself much more at home with the apprehension of christianity which we have inherited from the nineteenth century. the programme of charity which he outlines in the _wanderjahre_ as a substitute for religion would be taken to-day, so far as it goes, as a rather moderate expression of the very spirit of the christian religion. chapter ii idealistic philosophy the causes which we have named, religious and æsthetic, as well as purely speculative, led to such a revision of philosophical principles in germany as took place in no other land. the new idealistic philosophy, as it took shape primarily at the hands of kant, completed the dissolution of the old rationalism. it laid the foundation for the speculative thought of the western world for the century which was to come. the answers which æstheticism and pietism gave to rationalism were incomplete. they consisted largely in calling attention to that which rationalism had overlooked. kant's idealism, however, met the intellectual movement on its own grounds. it triumphed over it with its own weapons. the others set feeling over against thought. he taught men a new method in thinking. the others put emotion over against reason. he criticised in drastic fashion the use which had been made of reason. he inquired into the nature of reason. he vindicated the reasonableness of some truths which men had indeed felt to be indefeasibly true, but which they had not been able to establish by reasoning. kant immanuel kant was born in in königsberg, possibly of remoter scottish ancestry. his father was a saddler, as melanchthon's had been an armourer and wolff's a tanner. his native city with its university was the scene of his whole life and labour. he was never outside of prussia except for a brief interval when königsberg belonged to russia. he was a german professor of the old style. studying, teaching, writing books, these were his whole existence. he was the fourth of nine children of a devoted pietist household. two of his sisters served in the houses of friends. the consistorial-rath opened the way to the university. an uncle aided him to publish his first books. his earlier interest was in the natural sciences. he was slow in coming to promotion. only after was he full professor of logic and metaphysics. in he published the first of the books upon which rests his world-wide fame. nevertheless, he lived to see the triumph of his philosophy in most of the german universities. his subjects are abstruse, his style involved. it never occurred to him to make the treatment of his themes easier by use of the imagination. he had but a modicum of that quality. he was hostile to the pride of intellect often manifested by petty rationalists. he was almost equally hostile to excessive enthusiasm in religion. the note of his life, apart from his intellectual power, was his ethical seriousness. he was in conflict with ecclesiastical personages and out of sympathy with much of institutional religion. none the less, he was in his own way one of the most religious of men. his brief conflict with wöllner's government was the only instance in which his peace and public honour were disturbed. he never married. he died in königsberg in . he had been for ten years so much enfeebled that his death was a merciful release. kant used the word 'critique' so often that his philosophy has been called the 'critical philosophy.' the word therefore needs an explanation. kant himself distinguished two types of philosophy, which he called the dogmatic and critical types. the essence of a dogmatic philosophy is that it makes belief to rest upon knowledge. its endeavour is to demonstrate that which is believed. it brings out as its foil the characteristically sceptical philosophy. this esteems that the proofs advanced in the interest of belief are inadequate. the belief itself is therefore an illusion. the essence of a critical philosophy, on the other hand, consists in this, that it makes a distinction between the functions of knowing and believing. it distinguishes between the perception of that which is in accordance with natural law and the understanding of the moral meaning of things.[ ] kant thus uses his word critique in accordance with the strict etymological meaning of the root. he seeks to make a clear separation between the provinces of belief and knowledge, and thus to find an adjustment of their claims. of an object of belief we may indeed say that we know it. yet we must make clear to ourselves that we know it in a different sense from that in which we know physical fact. faith, since it does not spring from the pure reason, cannot indeed, as the old dogmatisms, both philosophical and theological, have united in asserting, be demonstrated by the reason. equally it cannot, as scepticism has declared, be overthrown by the pure reason. the ancient positive dogmatism had been the idealistic philosophy of plato and aristotle. the old negative dogmatism had been the materialism of the epicureans. to plato the world was the realisation of ideas. ideas, spiritual entities, were the counterparts and necessary antecedents of the natural objects and actual facts of life. to the epicureans, on the other hand, there are only material bodies and natural laws. there are no ideas or purposes. in the footsteps of the former moved all the scholastics of the middle age, and again, even locke and leibnitz in their so-called 'natural theology.' in the footsteps of the latter moved the men who had made materialism and scepticism to be the dominant philosophy of france in the latter half of the eighteenth century. the aim of kant was to resolve this age-long contradiction. free, unprejudiced investigation of the facts and laws of the phenomenal world can never touch the foundations of faith. natural science can lead in the knowledge only of the realm of the laws of things. it cannot give us the inner moral sense of those things. to speak of the purposes of nature as men had done was absurd. natural theology, as men had talked of it, was impossible. what science can give is a knowledge of the facts about us in the world, of the growth of the cosmos, of the development of life, of the course of history, all viewed as necessary sequences of cause and effect. [footnote : paulsen, _kant_, a. .] on the other hand, with the idealists, kant is fully persuaded that there is a meaning in things and that we can know it. there is a sense in life. with immediate certainty we set moral good as the absolute aim in life. this is done, however, not through the pure reason or by scientific thinking, but primarily through the will, or as kant prefers to call it, the practical reason. what is meant by the practical reason is the intelligence, the will and the affections operating together; that is to say, the whole man and not merely his intellect, directed to those problems upon which, in sympathy and moral reaction, the whole man must be directed and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty of ratiocination, does not adequately operate. in the practical reason the will is the central thing. the will is that faculty of man to which moral magnitudes appeal. it is with moral magnitudes that the will is primarily concerned. the pure reason may operate without the will and the affections. the will, as a source of knowledge, never works without the intelligence and the affections. but it is the will which alone judges according to the predicates good and evil. the pure reason judges according to the predicates true and false. it is the practical reason which ventures the credence that moral worth is the supreme worth in life. it then confirms this ventured credence in a manifold experience that yields a certainty with which no certainty of objects given in the senses is for a moment to be compared. we know that which we have believed. we know it as well as that two and two make four. still we do not know it in the same way. nor can we bring knowledge of it to others save through an act of freedom on their part, which is parallel to the original act of freedom on our own part. how can these two modes of thought stand related the one to the other? kant's answer is that they correspond to the distinction between two worlds, the world of sense and the transcendental or supersensible world. the pure and the practical reason are the faculties of man for dealing with these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and the noumenal. the world which is the object of scientific investigation is not the actuality itself. this is true in spite of the fact that to the common man the material and sensible is always, as he would say, the real. on the contrary, in kant's opinion the material world is only the presentation to our senses of something deeper, of which our senses are no judge. the reality lies behind this sensible presentation and appearance. the world of religious belief is the world of this transcendent reality. the spirit of man, which is not pure reason only, but moral will as well, recognises itself also as part of this reality. it expresses the essence of that mysterious reality in terms of its own essence. its own essence as free spirit is the highest aspect of reality of which it is aware. it may be unconscious of the symbolic nature of its language in describing that which is higher than anything which we know, by the highest which we do know. yet, granting that, and supposing that it is not a contradiction to attempt a description of the transcendent at all, there is no description which carries us so far. this series of ideas was perhaps that which gave to kant's philosophy its immediate and immense effect upon the minds of men wearied with the endless strife and insoluble contradiction of the dogmatic and sceptical spirits. we may disagree with much else in the kantian system. even here we may say that we have not two reasons, but only two functionings of one. we have not two worlds. the philosophical myth of two worlds has no better standing than the religious myth of two worlds. we have two characteristic aspects of one and the same world. these perfectly interpenetrate the one the other, if we may help ourselves with the language of space. each is everywhere present. furthermore, these actions of reason and aspects of world shade into one another by imperceptible degrees. almost all functionings of reason have something of the qualities of both. however, when all is said, it was of greatest worth to have had these two opposite poles of thought brought clearly to mind. the dogmatists, in the interest of faith, were resisting at every step the progress of the sciences, feeling that that progress was inimical to faith. the devotees of science were saying that its processes were of universal validity, its conclusions irresistible, the gradual dissolution of faith was certain. kant made plain that neither party had the right to such conclusions. each was attempting to apply the processes appropriate to one form of rational activity within the sphere which belonged to the other. nothing but confusion could result. the religious man has no reason to be jealous of the advance of the sciences. the interests of faith itself are furthered by such investigation. illusions as to fact which have been mistakenly identified with faith are thus done away. nevertheless, its own eternal right is assured to faith. with it lies the interpretation of the facts of nature and of history, whatever those facts may be found to be. with the practical reason is the interpretation of these facts according to their moral worth, a worth of which the pure reason knows nothing and scientific investigation reveals nothing. here was a deliverance not unlike that which the reformation had brought. the mingling of aristotelianism and religion in the scholastic theology luther had assailed. instead of assent to human dogmas luther had the immediate assurance of the heart that god was on his side. and what is that but a judgment of the practical reason, the response of the heart in man to the spiritual universe? it is given in experience. it is not mediated by argument. it cannot be destroyed by syllogism. it needs no confirmation from science. it is capable of combination with any of the changing interpretations which science may put upon the outward universe. the reformation had, however, not held fast to its great truth. it had gone back to the old scholastic position. it had rested faith in an essentially rationalistic manner upon supposed facts in nature and alleged events of history in connection with the revelation. it had thus jeopardised the whole content of faith, should these supposed facts of nature or events in history be at any time disproved. men had made faith to rest upon statements of scripture, alleging such and such acts and events. they did not recognise these as the naïve and childlike assumptions concerning nature and history which the authors of scripture would naturally have. when, therefore, these statements began with the progress of the sciences to be disproved, the defenders of the faith presented always the feeble spectacle of being driven from one form of evidence to another, as the old were in turn destroyed. the assumption was rife at the end of the eighteenth century that christianity was discredited in the minds of all free and reasonable men. its tenets were incompatible with that which enlightened men infallibly knew to be true. it could be no long time until the hollowness and sham would be patent to all. even the interested and the ignorant would be compelled to give it up. of course, the invincibly devout in every nation felt of instinct that this was not true. they felt that there is an inexpugnable truth of religion. still that was merely an intuition of their hearts. they were right. but they were unable to prove that they were right, or even to get a hearing with many of the cultivated of their age. to kant we owe the debt, that he put an end to this state of things. he made the real evidence for religion that of the moral sense, of the nonscience and hearts of men themselves. the real ground of religious conviction is the religious experience. he thus set free both science and religion from an embarrassment under which both laboured, and by which both had been injured. kant parted company with the empirical philosophy which had held that all knowledge arises from without, comes from experienced sensations, is essentially perception. this theory had not been able to explain the fact that human experience always conforms to certain laws. on the other hand, the philosophy of so-called innate ideas had sought to derive all knowledge from the constitution of the mind itself. it left out of consideration the dependence of the mind upon experience. it tended to confound the creations of its own speculation with reality, or rather, to claim correspondence with fact for statements which had no warrant in experience. there was no limit to which this speculative process might not be pushed. by this process the medieval theologians, with all gravity, propounded the most absurd speculations concerning nature. by this process men made the most astonishing declarations upon the basis, as they supposed, of revelation. they made allegations concerning history and the religious experience which the most rudimentary knowledge of history or reflection upon consciousness proved to be quite contrary to fact. both empiricism and the theory of innate ideas had agreed in regarding all knowledge as something given, from without or from within. the knowing mind was only a passive recipient of impressions thus imparted to it. it was as wax under the stylus, _tabula rasa_, clean paper waiting to be written upon. kant departed from this radically. he declared that all cognition rests upon the union of the mind's activity with its receptivity. the material of thought, or at least some of the materials of thought, must be given us in the multiformity of our perceptions, through what we call experience from the outer world. on the other hand, the formation of this material into knowledge is the work of the activity of our own minds. knowledge is the result of the systematising of experience and of reflection upon it. this activity of the mind takes place always in accordance with the mind's own laws. kant held them to the absolute dependence of knowledge upon material applied in experience. he compared himself to copernicus who had taught men that they themselves revolved around a central fact of the universe. they had supposed that the facts revolved about them. the central fact of the intellectual world is experience. this experience seems to be given us in the forms of time and space and cause. these are merely forms of the mind's own activity. it is not possible for us to know 'the thing in itself,' the _ding an sich_ in kant's phrase, which is the external factor in any sensation or perception. we cannot distinguish that external factor from the contribution to it, as it stands in our perception, which our own minds have made. if we cannot do that even for ourselves, how much less can we do it for others! it is the subject, the thinking being who says 'i,' which, by means of its characteristic and necessary active processes, in the perception of things under the forms of time and space, converts the chaotic material of knowledge into a regular and ordered world of reasoned experience. in this sense the understanding itself imposes laws, if not upon nature, yet, at least, upon nature as we can ever know it. there is thus in kant's philosophy a sceptical aspect. knowledge is limited to phenomena. we cannot by pure reason know anything of the world which lies beyond experience. this thought had been put forth by locke and berkeley, and by hume also, in a different way. but with kant this scepticism was not the gist of his philosophy. it was urged rather as the basis of the unconditioned character which he proposed to assert for the practical reason. kant's scepticism is therefore very different from that of hume. it does not militate against the profoundest religious conviction. yet it prepared the way for some of the just claims of modern agnosticism. according to kant, it is as much the province of the practical reason to lay down laws for action as it is the province of pure reason to determine the conditions of thought, though the practical reason can define only the form of action which shall be in the spirit of duty. it cannot present duty to us as an object of desire. desire can be only a form of self-love. in the end it reckons with the advantage of having done one's duty. it thus becomes selfish and degraded. the identification of duty and interest was particularly offensive to kant. he was at war with every form of hedonism. to do one's duty because one expects to reap advantage is not to have done one's duty. the doing of duty in this spirit simply resolves itself into a subtler and more pervasive form of selfishness. he castigates the popular presentation of religion as fostering this same fault. on the other hand, there is a trait of rigorism in kant, a survival of the ancient dualism, which was not altogether consistent with the implications of his own philosophy. this philosophy afforded, as we have seen, the basis for a monistic view of the universe. but to his mind the natural inclinations of man are opposed to good conscience and sound reason. he had contempt for the shallow optimism of his time, according to which the nature of man was all good, and needed only to be allowed to run its natural course to produce highest ethical results. he does not seem to have penetrated to the root of rousseau's fallacy, the double sense in which he constantly used the words 'nature' and 'natural.' otherwise, kant would have been able to repudiate the preposterous doctrine of rousseau, without himself falling back upon the doctrine of the radical evil of human nature. in this doctrine he is practically at one with the popular teaching of his own pietistic background, and with calvinism as it prevailed with many of the religiously-minded of his day. in its extreme statements the latter reminds one of the pagan and oriental dualisms which so long ran parallel to the development of christian thought and so profoundly influenced it. kant's system is not at one with itself at this point. according to him the natural inclinations of men are such as to produce a never-ending struggle between duty and desire. to desire to do a thing made him suspicious that he was not actuated by the pure spirit of duty in doing it. the sense in which man may be in his nature both a child of god, and, at the same time, part of the great complex of nature, was not yet clear either to kant or to his opponents. his pessimism was a reflection of his moral seriousness. yet it failed to reckon with that which is yet a glorious fact. one of the chief results of doing one's duty is the gradual escape from the desire to do the contrary. it is the gradual fostering by us, the ultimate dominance in us, of the desire to do that duty. even to have seen one's duty is the dawning in us of this high desire. in the lowest man there is indeed the superficial desire to indulge his passions. there is also the latent longing to be conformed to the good. there is the sense that he fulfils himself then only when he is obedient to the good. one of the great facts of spiritual experience is this gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard within us. we do really cease to desire the things which are against right reason and conscience. we come to desire the good, even if it shall cost us pain and sacrifice to do it. paul could write: 'when i would do good, evil is present with me.' but, in the vividness of his identification of his willing self with his better self against his sinning self, he could also write: 'so then it is no more i that do the sin.' _das radicale böse_ of human nature is less radical than kant supposed, and 'the categorical imperative' of duty less externally categorical than he alleged. still it is the great merit of kant's philosophy to have brought out with all possible emphasis, not merely as against the optimism of the shallow, but as against the hedonism of soberer people, that our life is a conflict between inclination and duty. the claims of duty are the higher ones. they are mandatory, absolute. we do our duty whether or not we superficially desire to do it. we do our duty whether or not we foresee advantage in having done it. we should do it if we foresaw with clearness disadvantage. we should find our satisfaction in having done it, even at the cost of all our other satisfactions. there is a must which is over and above all our desires. this is what kant really means by the categorical imperative. nevertheless, his statement comes in conflict with the principle of freedom, which is one of the most fundamental in his system. the phrases above used only eddy about the one point which is to be held fast. there may be that in the universe which destroys the man who does not conform to it, but in the last analysis he is self-destroyed, that is, he chooses not to conform. if he is saved, it is because he chooses thus to conform. man would be then most truly man in resisting that which would merely overpower him, even if it were goodness. of course, there can be no goodness which overpowers. there can be no goodness which is not willed. nothing can be a motive except through awakening our desire. that which one desires is never wholly external to oneself. according to kant, morality becomes religion when that which the former shows to be the end of man is conceived also to be the end of the supreme law-giver, god. religion is the recognition of our duties as divine commands. the distinction between revealed and natural religion is stated thus: in the former we know a thing to be a divine command before we recognise it as our duty. in the latter we know it to be our duty before we recognise it as a divine command. religion may be both natural and revealed. its tenets may be such that man can be conceived as arriving at them by unaided reason. but he would thus have arrived at them at a later period in the evolution of the race. hence revelation might be salutary or even necessary for certain times and places without being essential at all times or, for that matter, a permanent guarantee of the truth of religion. there is nothing here which is new or original with kant. this line of reasoning was one by which men since lessing had helped themselves over certain difficulties. it is cited only to show how kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some matters, although he so splendidly transcended it in others. the orthodox had immemorially asserted that revelation imparted information not otherwise attainable, or not then attainable. the rationalists here allege the same. kant is held fast in this view. assuredly what revelation imparts is not information of any sort whatsoever, not even information concerning god. what revelation imparts is god himself, through the will and the affection, the practical reason. revelation is experience, not instruction. the revealers are those who have experienced god, jesus the foremost among them. they have experienced god, whom then they have manifested as best they could, but far more significantly in what they were than in what they said. there is surely the gravest exaggeration of what is statutory and external in that which kant says of the relation of ethics and religion. how can we know that to be a command of god, which does not commend itself in our own heart and conscience? the traditionalist would have said, by documents miraculously confirmed. it was not in consonance with his noblest ideas for kant to say that. on the other hand, that which i perceive to be my duty i, as religious man, feel to be a command of god, whether or not a mandate of god to that effect can be adduced. whether an alleged revelation from god inculcates such a truth or duty may be incidental. in a sense it is accidental. the content of all historic revelation is conditioned in the circumstances of the man to whom the revelation is addressed. it is clear that the whole matter of revelation is thus apprehended by kant with more externality than we should have believed. his thought is still essentially archaic and dualistic. he is, therefore, now and then upon the point of denying that such a thing as revelation is possible. the very idea of revelation, in this form, does violence to his fundamental principle of the autonomy of the human reason and will. at many points in his reflection it is transparently clear that nothing can ever come to a man, or be given forth by him, which is not creatively shaped by himself. as regards revelation, however, kant never frankly took that step. the implications of his own system would have led him to that step. they led to an idea of revelation which was psychologically in harmony with the assumptions of his system, and historically could be conceived as taking place without the interjection of the miraculous in the ordinary sense. if the divine revelation is to be thought as taking place within the human spirit, and in consonance with the laws of all other experience, then the human spirit must itself be conceived as standing in such relation to the divine that the eternal reason may express and reveal itself in the regular course of the mind's own activity. then the manifold moral and religious ideals of mankind in all history must take their place as integral factors also in the progress of the divine revelation. when we come to the more specific topics of his religious teaching, freedom, immortality, god, kant is prompt to assert that these cannot be objects of theoretical knowledge. insoluble contradictions arise whenever a proof of them is attempted. if an object of faith could be demonstrated it would cease to be an object of faith. it would have been brought down out of the transcendental world. were god to us an object among other objects, he would cease to be a god. were the soul a demonstrable object like any other object, it would cease to be the transcendental aspect of ourselves. kant makes short work of the so-called proofs for the existence of god which had done duty in the scholastic theology. with subtilty, sometimes also with bitter irony, he shows that they one and all assume that which they set out to prove. they are theoretically insufficient and practically unnecessary. they have such high-sounding names--the ontological argument, the cosmological, the physico-theological--that almost in spite of ourselves we bring a reverential mood to them. they have been set forth with solemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something almost startling in the way that kant knocks them about. the fact that the ordinary man among us easily perceives that kant was right shows only how the climate of the intellectual world has changed. freedom, immortality, god, are not indeed provable. if given at all, they can be given only in the practical reason. still they are postulates in the moral order which makes man the citizen of an intelligible world. there can be no 'ought' for a being who is necessitated. we can perceive, and do perceive, that we ought to do a thing. it follows that we can do it. however, the hindrances to the realisation of the moral ideal are such that it cannot be realised in a finite time. hence the postulate of eternal life for the individual. finally, reason demands realisation of a supreme good, both a perfect virtue and a corresponding happiness. man is a final end only as a moral subject. there must be one who is not only a law-giver, but in himself also the realisation of the law of the moral world. kant's moral argument thus steps off the line of the others. it is not a proof at all in the sense in which they attempted to be proofs. the existence of god appears as a necessary assumption, if the highest good and value in the world are to be fulfilled. but the conception and possibility of realisation of a highest good is itself something which cannot be concluded with theoretical evidentiality. it is the object of a belief which in entire freedom is directed to that end. kant lays stress upon the fact that among the practical ideas of reason, that of freedom is the one whose reality admits most nearly of being proved by the laws of pure reason, as well as in conduct and experience. upon an act of freedom, then, belief rests. 'it is the free holding that to be true, which for the fulfilment of a purpose we find necessary.' now, as object of this 'free holding something to be true,' he sets forth the conception of the highest good in the world, to be realised through freedom. it is clear that before this argument would prove that a god is necessary to the realisation of the moral order, it would have to be shown that there are no adequate forces immanent within society itself for the establishment and fulfilment of that order. as a matter of fact, reflexion in the nineteenth century, devoted as it has been to the evolution of society, has busied itself with hardly anything more than with the study of those immanent elements which make for morality. it is therefore not an external guarantor of morals, such as kant thought, which is here given. it is the immanent god who is revealed in the history and life of the race, even as also it is the immanent god who is revealed in the consciousness of the individual soul. even the moral argument, therefore, in the form in which kant puts it, sounds remote and strange to us. his reasoning strains and creaks almost as if he were still trying to do that which he had just declared could not be done. what remains of significance for us, is this. all the debate about first causes, absolute beings, and the rest, gives us no god such as our souls need. if a man is to find the witness for soul, immortality and god at all, he must find it within himself and in the spiritual history of his fellows. he must venture, in freedom, the belief in these things, and find their corroboration in the contribution which they make to the solution of the mystery of life. one must venture to win them. one must continue to venture, to keep them. if it were not so, they would not be objects of faith. the source of the radical evil in man is an intelligible act of human freedom not further to be explained. moral evil is not, as such, transmitted. moral qualities are inseparable from the responsibility of the person who commits the deeds. yet this radical disposition to evil is to be changed into a good one, not altogether by a process of moral reformation. there is such a thing as a fundamental revolution of a man's habit of thought, a conscious and voluntary transference of a man's intention to obey, from the superficial and selfish desires which he has followed, to the deep and spiritual ones which he will henceforth allow. there is an epoch in a man's life when he makes the transition. he probably does it under the spell of personal influence, by the power of example, through the beauty of another personality. to kant salvation was character. it was of and in and by character. to no thinker has the moral participation of a man in the regeneration of his own character been more certain and necessary than to kant. yet, the change in direction of the will generally comes by an impulse from without. it comes by the impress of a noble personality. it is sustained by enthusiasm for that personality. kant has therefore a perfectly rational and ethical and vital meaning for the phrase 'new birth.' for the purpose of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so effective as the contemplation of an historical example of such surpassing moral grandeur as that which we behold in jesus. for this reason we may look to jesus as the ideal of goodness presented to us in flesh and blood. yet the assertion that jesus' historical personality altogether corresponds with the complete and eternal ethical ideal is one which we have no need to make. we do not possess in our own minds the absolute ideal with which in that assertion we compare him. the ethical ideal of the race is still in process of development. jesus has been the greatest factor urging forward that development. we ourselves stand at a certain point in that development. we have the ideals which we have because we stand at that point at which we do. the men who come after us will have a worthier ideal than we do. again, to say that jesus in his words and conduct expressed in its totality the eternal ethical ideal, would make of his life something different from the real, human life. every real, human life is lived within certain actual antitheses which call out certain qualities and do not call out others. they demand certain reactions and not others. this is the concrete element without which nothing historical can be conceived. to say that jesus lived in entire conformity to the ethical ideal so far as we are able to conceive it, and within the circumstances which his own time and place imposed, is the most that we can say. but in any case, kant insists, the real object of our religious faith is not the historic man, but the ideal of humanity well-pleasing to god. since this ideal is not of our own creation, but is given us in our super-sensible nature, it may be conceived as the son of god come down from heaven. the turn of this last phrase is an absolutely characteristic one, and brings out another quality of kant's mind in dealing with the christian doctrines. they are to him but symbols, forms into which a variety of meanings may be run. he had no great appreciation of the historical element in doctrine. he had no deep sense of the social element and of that for which christian institutions stand. we may illustrate with that which he says concerning christ's vicarious sacrifice. substitution cannot take place in the moral world. ethical salvation could not be conferred through such a substitution, even if this could take place. still, the conception of the vicarious suffering of christ may be taken as a symbolical expression of the idea that in the pain of self-discipline, of obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were vicariously, for the old. the atonement is a continual ethical process in the heart of the religious man. it is a grave defect of kant's religious philosophy, that it was so absolutely individualistic. had he realised more deeply than he did the social character of religion and the meaning of these doctrines, not alone as between man and god, but as between man and man, he surely would have drawn nearer to that interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement which has come more and more to prevail. this is the solution which finds in the atonement of christ the last and most glorious example of a universal law of human life and history. that law is that no redemptive good for men is ever secured without the suffering and sacrifice of those who seek to confer that good upon their fellows. kant was disposed to regard the traditional forms of christian doctrine, not as the old rationalism had done, as impositions of a priesthood or inherently absurd. he sought to divest them indeed of that which was speculatively untrue, though he saw in them only symbols of the great moral truths which lie at the heart of religion. the historical spirit of the next fifty years was to teach men a very different way of dealing with these same doctrines. * * * * * kant had said that the primary condition, fundamental not merely to knowledge, but to all connected experience, is the knowing, experiencing, thinking, acting self. it is that which says 'i,' the ego, the permanent subject. but that is not enough. the knowing self demands in turn a knowable world. it must have something outside of itself to which it yet stands related, the object of knowledge. knowledge is somehow the combination of those two, the result of their co-operation. how have we to think of this co-operation? both hume and berkeley had ended in scepticism as to the reality of knowledge. hume was in doubt as to the reality of the subject, berkeley as to that of the object. kant dissented from both. he vindicated the undoubted reality of the impression which we have concerning a thing. yet how far that impression is the reproduction of the thing as it is in itself, we can never perfectly know. what we have in our minds is not the object. it is a notion of that object, although we may be assured that we could have no such notion were there no object. equally, the notion is what it is because the subject is what it is. we can never get outside the processes of our own thought. we cannot know the thing as it is, the _ding-an-sich_, in kant's phrase. we know only that there must be a 'thing in itself.' fichte fichte asked, why? why must there be a _ding-an-sich_? why is not that also the result of the activity of the ego? why is not the ego, the thinking subject, all that is, the creator of the world, according to the laws of thought? if so much is reduced to idea, why not all? this was fichte's rather forced resolution of the old dualism of thought and thing. it is not the denial of the reality of things, but the assertion that their ideal element, that part of them which is not mere 'thing,' the action and subject of the action, is their underlying reality. according to kant things exist in a world beyond us. man has no faculty by which he can penetrate into that world. still, the farther we follow kant in his analysis the more does the contribution to knowledge from the side of the mind tend to increase, and the more does the factor in our impressions from the side of things tend to fade away. this basis of impression being wholly unknowable is as good as non-existent for us. yet it never actually disappears. there would seem to be inevitable a sort of kernel of matter or prick of sense about which all our thoughts are generated. yet this residue is a vanishing quantity. this seemed to fichte to be a self-contradiction and a half-way measure. only two positions appeared to him thorough-going and consequent. either one posits as fundamental the thing itself, matter, independent of any consciousness of it. so spinoza had taught. or else one takes consciousness, the conscious subject, independent of any matter or thing as fundamental. this last fichte claimed to be the real issue of kant's thought. he asserts that from the point of view of the thing in itself we can never explain knowledge. we may be as skilful as possible in placing one thing behind another in the relation of cause to effect. it is, however, an unending series. it is like the cosmogony of the eastern people which fabled that the earth rests upon the back of an elephant. the elephant stands upon a tortoise. the question is, upon what does the tortoise stand? so here, we may say, in the conclusive manner in which men have always said, that god made the world. yet sooner or later we come to the child's question: who made god? fichte rightly replied: 'if god is for us only an object of knowledge, the _ding-an-sich_ at the end of the series, there is no escape from the answer that man, the thinker, in thinking god made him.' all the world, including man, is but the reflexion, the revelation in forms of the finite, of an unceasing action of thought of which the ego is the object. nothing more paradoxical than this conclusion can be imagined. it seems to make the human subject, the man myself, the creator of the universe, and the universe only that which i happen to think it to be. this interpretation was at first put upon fichte's reasoning with such vigour that he was accused of atheism. he was driven from his chair in jena. only after several years was he called to a corresponding post in berlin. later, in his _vocation of man_, he brought his thought to clearness in this form: 'if god be only the object of thought, it remains true that he is then but the creation of man's thought. god is, however, to be understood as subject, as the real subject, the transcendent thinking and knowing subject, indwelling in the world and making the world what it is, indwelling in us and making us what we are. we ourselves are subjects only in so far as we are parts of god. we think and know only in so far as god thinks and knows and acts and lives in us. the world, including ourselves, is but the reflection of the thought of god, who thus only has existence. neither the world nor we have existence apart from him.' johann gottlieb fichte was born at rammenau in . his father was a ribbon weaver. he came of a family distinguished for piety and uprightness. he studied at jena, and became an instructor there in . he was at first a devout disciple of kant, but gradually separated himself from his master. there is a humorous tale as to one of his early books which was, through mistake of the publisher, put forth without the author's name. for a brief time it was hailed as a work of kant--his _critique of revelation_. fichte was a man of high moral enthusiasm, very uncompromising, unable to put himself in the place of an opponent, in incessant strife. the great work of his jena period was his _wissenschaftslehre_, . his popular works, _die bestimmung des menschen_ and _anweisung zum seligen leben_, belong to his berlin period. the disasters of drove him out of berlin. amidst the dangers and discouragements of the next few years he wrote his famous _reden an die deutsche nation_. he drew up the plan for the founding of the university of berlin. in he was called to be rector of the newly established university. he was, perhaps, the chief adviser of frederick william iii in the laying of the foundations of the university, which was surely a notable venture for those trying years. in the autumn of and again in , when the hospitals were full of sick and wounded after the russian and leipzig campaigns, fichte and his wife were unceasing in their care of the sufferers. he died of fever contracted in the hospital in january . according to fichte, as we have seen, the world of sense is the reflection of our own inner activity. it exists for us as the sphere and material of our duty. the moral order only is divine. we, the finite intelligences, exist only in and through the infinite intelligence. all our life is thus god's life. we are immortal because he is immortal. our consciousness is his consciousness. our life and moral force is his, the reflection and manifestation of his being, individuation of the infinite reason which is everywhere present in the finite. in god we see the world also in a new light. there is no longer any nature which is external to ourselves and unrelated to ourselves. there is only god manifesting himself in nature. even the evil is only a means to good and, therefore, only an apparent evil. we are god's immediate manifestation, being spirit like himself. the world is his mediate manifestation. the world of dead matter, as men have called it, does not exist. god is the reality within the forms of nature and within ourselves, by which alone we have reality. the duty to which a god outside of ourselves could only command us, becomes a privilege to which we need no commandment, but to the fulfilment of which, rather, we are drawn in joy by the forces of our own being. how a man could, even in the immature stages of these thoughts, have been persecuted for atheism, it is not easy to see, although we may admit that his earlier forms of statement were bewildering. when we have his whole thought before us we should say rather that it borders on acosmic pantheism, for which everything is god and the world does not exist. we have no need to follow fichte farther. suffice it to say, with reference to the theory of knowledge, that he had discovered that one could not stand still with kant. one must either go back toward the position of the old empiricism which assumed the reality of the world exactly as it appeared, or else one must go forward to an idealism more thorough-going than kant had planned. of the two paths which, with all the vast advance of the natural sciences, the thought of the nineteenth century might traverse, that of the denial of everything except the mechanism of nature, and that of the assertion that nature is but the organ of spirit and is instinct with reason, fichte chose the latter and blazed out the path along which all the idealists have followed him. in reference to the philosophy of religion, we must say that, with all the extravagance, the pantheism and mysticism of his phrases, fichte's great contribution was his breaking down of the old dualism between god and man which was still fundamental to kant. it was his assertion of the unity of man and god and of the life of god in man. this thought has been appropriated in all of modern theology. schelling it was the meagreness of fichte's treatment of nature which impelled schelling to what he called his outbreak into reality. nature will not be dismissed, as simply that which is not i. you cannot say that nature is only the sphere of my self-realisation. individuals are in their way the children of nature. they are this in respect of their souls as much as of their bodies. nature was before they were. nature is, moreover, not alien to intelligence. on the contrary, it is a treasure-house of intelligible forms which demand to be treated as such. it appeared to schelling, therefore, a truer idealism to work out an intelligible system of nature, exhibiting its essential oneness with personality. friedrich wilhelm joseph von schelling was born in at leonberg in württemberg. his father was a clergyman. he was precocious in his intellectual development and much spoiled by vanity. before he was twenty years old he had published three works upon problems suggested by fichte. at twenty-three he was extraordinarius at jena. he had apparently a brilliant career before him. he published his _erster entwurf eines systems der naturphilosophe_, , and also his _system des transcendentalen idealismus_, . even his short residence at jena was troubled by violent conflicts with his colleagues. it was brought to an end by his marriage with the wife of augustus von schlegel, who had been divorced for the purpose. from to he lived in munich in retirement. the long-expected books which were to fulfil his early promise never appeared. hegel's stricture was just. schelling had no taste for the prolonged and intense labour which his brilliant early works marked out. he died in , having reached the age of seventy-nine years, of which at least fifty were as melancholy and fruitless as could well be imagined. the dominating idea of schelling's philosophy of nature may be said to be the exhibition of nature as the progress of intelligence toward consciousness and personality. nature is the ego in evolution, personality in the making. all natural objects are visible analogues and counterparts of mind. the intelligence which their structure reveals, men had interpreted as residing in the mind of a maker of the world. nature had been spoken of as if it were a watch. god was its great artificer. no one asserted that its intelligence and power of development lay within itself. on the contrary, nature is always in the process of advance from lower, less highly organised and less intelligible forms, to those which are more highly organised, more nearly the counterpart of the active intelligence in man himself. the personality of man had been viewed as standing over against nature, this last being thought of as static and permanent. on the contrary, the personality of man, with all of its intelligence and free will, is but the climax and fulfilment of a long succession of intelligible forms in nature, passing upward from the inorganic to the organic, from the unconscious to the conscious, from the non-moral to the moral, as these are at last seen in man. of course, it was the life of organic nature which first suggested this notion to schelling. an organism is a self-moving, self-producing whole. it is an idea in process of self-realisation. what was observed in the organism was then made by schelling the root idea of universal nature. nature is in all its parts living, self-moving along the lines of its development, productivity and product both in one. empirical science may deal with separate products of nature. it may treat them as objects of analysis and investigation. it may even take the whole of nature as an object. but nature is not mere object. philosophy has to treat of the inner life which moves the whole of nature as intelligible productivity, as subject, no longer as object. personality has slowly arisen out of nature. nature was going through this process of self-development before there were any men to contemplate it. it would go through this process were there no longer men to contemplate it. schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute idealism which fichte had carried through in a one-sided way. he has given us also a wonderful anticipation of certain modern ideas concerning nature's preparation for the doctrine of evolution, which was a stroke of genius in its way. he attempted to arrange the realm of unconscious intelligences in an ascending series which should bridge the gulf between the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism in which self consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, and moral life, at last integrated. inadequate material and a fondness for analogies led schelling into vagaries in following out this scheme. nevertheless, it is only in detail that we can look askance at his attempt. in principle our own conception of the universe is the same. it is the dynamic view of nature and an application of the principle of evolution in the widest sense. his errors were those into which a man was bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep of the imagination that which has been the result of the detailed and patient investigation of three generations. what schelling attempted was to take nature as we know it and to exhibit it as in reality a function of intelligence, pointing, through all the gradations of its varied forms, towards its necessary goal in self-conscious personality. instead, therefore, of our having in nature and personality two things which cannot be brought together, these become members of one great organism of intelligence of which the immanent god is the source and the sustaining power. these ideas constitute schelling's contribution to an idealistic and, of course, an essentially monistic view of the universe. the unity of man with god, fichte had asserted. schelling set forth the oneness of god and nature, and again of man and nature. the circle was complete. * * * * * if we have succeeded in conveying a clear idea of the movement of thought from kant to hegel, that idea might be stated thus. there are but three possible objects which can engage the thought of man. these are nature and man and god. there is the universe, of which we become aware through experience from our earliest childhood. then there is man, the man given in self-consciousness, primarily the man myself. in this sense man seems to stand over against nature. then, as the third possible object of thought, we have god. upon the thought of god we usually come from the point of view of the category of cause. god is the name which men give to that which lies behind nature and man as the origin and explanation of both. plato's chief interest was in man. he talked much concerning a god who was somehow the speculative postulate of the spiritual nature in man. aristotle began a real observation of nature. but the ancient and, still more, the mediæval study of nature was dominated by abstract and theological assumptions. these prevented any real study of that nature in the midst of which man lives, in reaction against which he develops his powers, and to which, on one whole side of his nature, he belongs. even in respect of that which men reverently took to be thought concerning god, they seem to have been unaware how much of their material was imaginative and poetic symbolism drawn from the experience of man. the traditional idea of revelation proved a disturbing factor. assuming that revelation gave information concerning god, and not rather the religious experience of communion with god himself, men accepted statements of the documents of revelation as if they had been definitions graciously given from out the realm of the unseen. in reality, they were but fetches from out the world of the known into the world of the unknown. the point of interest is this:--in all possible combinations in which, throughout the history of thought, these three objects had been set, the one with the others, they had always remained three objects. there was no essential relation of the one to the other. they were like the points of a triangle of which any one stood over against the other two. god stood over against the man whom he had fashioned, man over against the god to whom he was responsible. the consequences for theology are evident. when men wished to describe, for example, jesus as the son of god, they laid emphasis upon every quality which he had, or was supposed to have, which was not common to him with other men. they lost sight of that profound interest of religion which has always claimed that, in some sense, all men are sons of god and jesus was the son of man. jesus was then only truly honoured as divine when every trait of his humanity was ignored. similarly, when men spoke of revelation they laid emphasis upon those particulars in which this supposed method of coming by information was unlike all other methods. knowledge derived directly from god through revelation was in no sense the parallel of knowledge derived by men in any other way. so also god stood over against nature. god was indeed declared to have made nature. he had, however, but given it, so to say, an original impulse. that impulse also it had in some strange way lost or perverted, so that the world, though it had been made by god, was not good. for the most part it moved itself, although god's sovereignty was evidenced in that he could still supervene upon it, if he chose. the supernatural was the realm of god. natural and supernatural were mutually exclusive terms, just as we saw that divine and human were exclusive terms. so also, on the third side of our triangle, man stood over against nature. nature was to primitive men the realm of caprice, in which they imagined demons, spirits and the like. these were antagonistic to men, as also hostile to god. then, when with the advance of reflexion these spirits, and equally their counterparts, the good genii and angels, had all died, nature became the realm of iron necessity, of regardless law, of all-destroying force, of cruel and indifferent fate. from this men took refuge in the thought of a compassionate god, though they could not withdraw themselves or those whom they loved from the inexorable laws of nature. they could not see that god always, or even often, intervened on their behalf. it cannot be denied that these ideas prevail to some extent in the popular theology at the present moment. much of our popular religious language is an inheritance from a time when they universally prevailed. the religious intuition even of psalmists and prophets opposed many of these notions. the pure religious intuition of jesus opposed almost every one of them. mystics in every religion have had, at times, insight into an altogether different scheme of things. the philosophy, however, even of the learned, would, in the main, have supported the views above described, from the dawn of reflexion almost to our own time. it was kant who first began the resolution of this three-cornered difficulty. when he pointed out that into the world, as we know it, an element of spirit goes, that in it an element of the ideal inheres, he began a movement which has issued in modern monism. he affirmed that that element from my thought which enters into the world, as i know it, may be so great that only just a point of matter and a prick of sense remains. fichte said: 'why do we put it all in so perverse a way? why reduce the world of matter to just a point? why is it not taken for what it is, and yet understood to be all alive with god and we able to think of it, because we are parts of the great thinker god?' still fichte had busied himself almost wholly with consciousness. schelling endeavoured to correct that. nature lives and moves in god, just as truly in one way as does man in another. men arise out of nature. a circle has been drawn through the points of our triangle. nature and man are in a new and deeper sense revelations of god. in fact, supplementing one another, they constitute the only possible channels for the manifestation of god. it hardly needs to be said that these thoughts are widely appropriated in our modern world. these once novel speculations of the kings of thought have made their way slowly to all strata of society. remote and difficult in their first expression in the language of the schools, their implications are to-day on everybody's lips. it is this unitary view of the universe which has made difficult the acceptance of a theology, the understandlng of a religion, which are still largely phrased in the language of a philosophy to which these ideas did not belong. there is not an historic creed, there is hardly a greater system of theology, which is not stated in terms of a philosophy and science which no longer reign. men are asking: 'cannot christianity be so stated and interpreted that it shall meet the needs of men of the twentieth century, as truly as it met those of men of the first or of the sixteenth?' hegel, the last of this great group of idealistic philosophers whom we shall name, enthusiastically believed in this new interpretation of the faith which was profoundly dear to him. he made important contribution to that interpretation. hegel georg wilhelm friedrich hegel was born in stuttgart in . his father was in the fiscal service of the king of württemberg. he studied in tübingen. he was heavy and slow of development, in striking contrast with schelling. he served as tutor in bern and frankfort, and began to lecture in jena in . he was much overshadowed by schelling. the victory of napoleon at jena in closed the university for a time. in he was called to fichte's old chair in berlin. never on very good terms with the prussian government, he yet showed his large sympathy with life in every way. after a school of philosophical thinkers began to gather about him. his first great book, his _phenomenologie des geistes_ (translated, baillie, london, ), was published at the end of his jena period. his _philosophie der religion_ and _philosophie der geschichte_ were edited after his death. they are mainly in the form which his notes took between and . he died during an epidemic of cholera in berlin in . besides his deep interest in history the most striking feature of hegel's preliminary training was his profound study of christianity. he might almost be said to have turned to philosophy as a means of formulating the ideas which he had conceived concerning the development of the religious consciousness, which seemed to him to have been the bearer of all human culture. no one could fail to see that the idea of the relation of god and man, of which we have been speaking, was bound to make itself felt in the interpretation of the doctrine of the incarnation and of all the dogmas, like that of the trinity, which are connected with it. characteristically, hegel had pure joy in the speculative aspects of the problem. if one may speak in all reverence, and, at the same time, not without a shade of humour, hegel rejoiced to find himself able, as he supposed, to rehabilitate the dogma of the trinity, rationalised in approved fashion. it is as if the dogma had been a revered form or mould, which was for him indeed emptied of its original content. he felt bound to fill it anew. or to speak more justly, he was really convinced that the new meaning which he poured into the dogma was the true meaning which the church fathers had been seeking all the while. in the light of two generations of sober dealing, as historians, with such problems, we can but view his solution in a manner very different from that which he indulged. he was even disposed mildly to censure the professional theologians for leaving the defence of the doctrine of the trinity to the philosophers. there were then, and have since been, defenders of the doctrine who have thought that hegel tendered them great aid. as a matter of fact, despite his own utter seriousness and reverent desire, his solution was a complete dissolution of the doctrine and of much else besides. his view would have been fatal, not merely to that particular form of orthodox thought, but, what is much more serious, to the religious meaning for which it stood. sooner or later men have seen that the whole drift of hegelianism was to transform religion into intellectualism. one might say that it was exactly this which the ancient metaphysicians, in the classic doctrine of the trinity, had done. they had transformed religion into metaphysics. the matter would not have been remedied by having a modern metaphysician do the same thing in another way. hegel was weary of fichte's endless discussion of the ego and schelling's of the absolute. it was not the abyss of the unknowable from which things said to come, or that into which they go, which interested hegel. it was their process and progress which we can know. it was that part of their movement which is observable within actual experience, with which he was concerned. now one of the laws of the movement of all things, he said, is that by which every thought suggests, and every force tends directly to produce, its opposite. nothing stands alone. everything exists by the balance and friction of opposing tendencies. we have the universal contrasts of heat and cold, of light and darkness, of inward and outward, of static and dynamic, of yes and no. there are two sides to every case, democratic government and absolutism, freedom of religion and authority, the individualistic and the social principles, a materialistic and a spiritual interpretation of the universe. only things which are dead have ceased to have this tide and alternation. christ is for living religion now a man, now god, revelation now natural, now supernatural. religion in the eternal conflict between reason and faith, morals the struggle of good and evil, god now mysterious and now manifest. fichte had said: the essence of the universe is spirit. hegel said: yes, but the true notion of spirit is that of the resolution of contradiction, of the exhibition of opposites as held together in their unity. this is the meaning of the trinity. in the trinity we have god who wills to manifest himself, jesus in whom he is manifest, and the spirit common to them both. god's existence is not static, it is dynamic. it is motion, not rest. god is revealer, recipient, and revelation all in one. the trinity was for hegel the central doctrine of christianity. popular orthodoxy had drawn near to the assertion of three gods. the revolt, however, in asserting the unity of god, had made of god a meaningless absolute as foundation of the universe. the orthodox, in respect to the person of christ, had always indeed asserted in laboured way that jesus was both god and man. starting from their own abstract conception of god, and attributing to jesus the qualities of that abstraction, they had ended in making of the humanity of jesus a perfectly unreal thing. on the other hand, those who had set out from jesus's real humanity had been unable to see that he was anything more than a mere man, as their phrase was. on their own assumption of the mutual exclusiveness of the conceptions of god and man, they could not do otherwise. hegel saw clearly that god can be known to us only in and through manifestation. we can certainly make no predication as to how god exists, in himself, as men say, and apart from our knowledge. he exists for our knowledge only as manifest in nature and man. man is for hegel part of nature and jesus is the highest point which the nature of god as manifest in man has reached. in this sense hegel sometimes even calls nature the son of god, and mankind and jesus are thought of as parts of this one manifestation of god. if the scripture asserts, as it seemed to the framers of the creeds to do, that god manifested himself from before all worlds in and to a self-conscious personality like his own, hegel would answer: but the scripture is no third source of knowledge, besides nature and man. scripture is only the record of god's revelation of himself in and to men. if these men framed their profoundest thought in this way, that is only because they lived in an age when men had all their thoughts of this sort in a form which we can historically trace. for platonists and neoplatonists, such as the makers of the creeds--and some portions of the scripture show this influence, as well--the divine, the ideal, was always thought of as eternal. it always existed as pure archetype before it ever existed as historic fact. the rabbins had a speculation to the same effect. the divine which exists must have pre-existed. jesus as son of god could not be thought of by the ancient world in any terms but these. the divine was static, changelessly perfect. for the modern man the divinest of all things is the mystery of growth. the perfect man is not at the beginning, but far down the immeasurable series of approaches to perfection. the perfection of other men is the work of still other ages, in which this extraordinary and inexplicable moral magnitude which jesus is, has had its influence, and conferred upon them power to aid them in the fulfilment of god's intent for themselves, which is like that intent for himself which jesus has fulfilled. surely enough has been said to show that what we have here is only the absorption of even the profoundest religious meanings into the vortex of an all-dissolving metaphysical system. the most obvious meaning of the phrase 'son of god,' its moral and spiritual, its real religious meaning, is dwelt on, here in hegel, as little as hegel claimed that the nicene trinitarians had dwelt upon it. nothing marks more clearly the distance we have travelled since hegel than does the general recognition that his attempted solution does not even lie in the right direction. it is an attempt within the same area as that of the nicene council and the creeds, namely, the metaphysical area. what is at stake is not the pre-existence or the two natures. hegel was right in what he said concerning these. the pre-existence cannot be thought of except as ideal. the two natures we assert for every man, only not in such a manner as to destroy unity in the personality. the heart of the dogma is not in these. it is the oneness of god and man, a moral and spiritual oneness, oneness in conduct and consciousness, the presence and realisation of god, who is spirit, in a real man, the divineness of jesus, in a sense which sees no meaning any longer in the old debate as between his divinity and his deity. in the light of the new theory of the universe which we have reviewed, it flashes upon us that both defenders and assailants of the doctrine of the incarnation, in the age-long debate, have proceeded from the assumption that god and man are opposites. men contended for the divineness of jesus in terms which by definition shut out his true humanity. they asserted the identity of a real man, a true historic personage, with an abstract notion of god which had actually been framed by the denial of all human qualities. their opponents with a like helplessness merely reversed the situation. to admit the deity of jesus would have been for them, in all candour and clear-sightedness, absolutely impossible, because the admission would have shut out his true humanity. on the old definitions we cannot wonder that the struggle was a bitter one. each party was on its own terms right. if god is by definition other than man, and man the opposite of god, then it is not surprising that the attempt to say that jesus of nazareth was both, remained mysticism to the one and seemed folly to the other. now, within the area of the philosophy which begins with kant this old antinomy has been resolved. an actual circle of clear relations joins the points of the old hopeless triangle. men are men because of god indwelling in them, working through them. the phrase 'mere man' is seen to be a mere phrase. to say that the nazarene, in some way not genetically to be explained, but which is hidden within the recesses of his own personality, shows forth in incomparable fulness that relation of god and man which is the ideal for us all, seems only to be saying over again what jesus said when he proclaimed: 'i and my father are one.' that jesus actualised, not absolutely in the sense that he stood out of relation to history, but still perfectly within his relation to history, that which in us and for us is potential, the sonship of god--that seems a very simple and intelligible assertion. it certainly makes a large part of the debate of ages seem remote from us. it brings home to us that we live in a new world. interesting and fruitful is hegel's expansion of the idea of redemption beyond that of the individual to that of the whole humanity, and in every aspect of its life. in my relation to the world are given my duties. the renunciation of outward duty makes the inward life barren. the principle which is to transform the world wears an aspect very different from that of stoicism, of asceticism or even of the individualism which has sought soul-salvation. in the midst of unworthiness and helplessness there springs up the consciousness of reconciliation. man, with all his imperfections, becomes aware that he is the object of the loving purpose of god. still this redemption of a man is something which is to be worked out, in the individual life and on the stage of universal history. the first step beyond the individual life is that of the church. it is from within this community of believers that men, in the rule, receive the impulse to the good. the community is, in its idea, a society in which the conquest of evil is already being achieved, where the individual is spared much bitter conflict and loneliness. nevertheless, so long as this unity of the life of man with god is realised in the church alone there remains a false and harmful opposition between the church and the world. religion is faced by a hostile power to which its principles have no application. the world is denounced as unholy. with this stigma cast upon it, it may be unholy. yet the retribution falls also upon the church, in that it becomes artificial, clerical, pharisaical. the end is never that what have been called the standards of the church shall prevail. the end is that the church shall be the shrine and centre of an influence by virtue of which the standard of truth and goodness which naturally belongs to any relation of life shall prevail. the distinction between religion and secular life must be abandoned. nothing is less sacred than a church set on its own aggrandisement. the relations of family and of the state, of business and social life, are to be restored to the divineness which belongs to them, or rather, the divineness which is inalienable from them is to be recognised. in the laws and customs of a true state, christianity first penetrates with its principles the real world. one sees how large a portion of these thoughts have been taken up into the programme of modern social movements. they are the basis of what men call a social theology. a book like fremantle's _world as the subject of redemption_ is their thorough-going exposition in the english tongue. we have no cause to pursue the philosophical movement beyond this point. its exponents are not without interest. especially is this true of schopenhauer. but the deposit from their work is for our particular purpose not great. the wonderful impulse had spent itself. these four brilliant men stand together, almost as much isolated from the generation which followed them as from that which went before. the historian of christian thought in the nineteenth century cannot overestimate the significance of their personal interest in religion. chapter iii theological reconstruction the outstanding trait of kant's reflection upon religion is its supreme interest in morals and conduct. metaphysician that he was, kant saw the evil which intellectualism had done to religion. religion was a profoundly real thing to him in his own life. religion is a life. it is a system of thought only because life is a whole. it is a system of thought only in the way of deposit from a vivid and vigorous life. a man normally reflects on the conditions and aims of what he does. religion is conduct. ends in character are supreme. religions and the many interpretations of christianity have been good or bad, according as they ministered to character. so strong was this ethical trait in kant that it dwarfed all else. he was not himself a man of great breadth or richness of feeling. he was not a man of imagination. his religion was austere, not to say arid. hegel was before all things an intellectualist. speculation was the breath of life to him. he had metaphysical genius. he tended to transform in this direction everything which he touched. religion is thought. he criticised the rationalist movement from the height of vantage which idealism had reached. but as pure intellectualist he would put most rationalists to shame. we owe to this temperament his zeal for an interpretation of the universe 'all in one piece.' its highest quality would be its abstract truth. his understanding of religion had the glory and the limitations which attend this view. schleiermacher between kant and hegel came another, schleiermacher. he too was no mean philosopher. but he was essentially a theologian, the founder of modern theology. he served in the same faculty with hegel and was overshadowed by him. his influence upon religious thought was less immediate. it has been more permanent. it was characteristically upon the side which kant and hegel had neglected. that was the side of feeling. his theology has been called the theology of feeling. he defined religion as feeling. christianity is for him a specific feeling. because he made so much of feeling, his name has been made a theological household word by many who appropriated little else of all he had to teach. his warmth and passion, his enthusiasm for christ, the central place of christ in his system, made him loved by many who, had they understood him better, might have loved him less. for his real greatness lay, not in the fact that he possessed these qualities alone, but that he possessed them in a singularly beautiful combination with other qualities. the emphasis is, however, correct. he was the prophet of feeling, as kant had been of ethical religion and hegel of the intellectuality of faith. the entire protestant theology of the nineteenth century has felt his influence. the english-speaking race is almost as much his debtor as is his own. the french huguenots of the revival felt him to be one of themselves. even to amiel and scherer he was a kindred spirit. it is a true remark of dilthey that in unusual degree an understanding of the man's personality and career is necessary to the appreciation of his thought. friedrich ernst daniel schleiermacher was born in in breslau, the son of a chaplain in the reformed church. he never connected himself officially with the lutheran church. we have alluded to an episode broadly characteristic of his youth. he was tutor in the house of one of the landed nobility of prussia, curate in a country parish, preacher at the charité in berlin in , professor extraordinarius at halle in , preacher at the church of the dreifaltigkeit in berlin in , professor of theology and organiser of that faculty in the newly-founded university of berlin in . he never gave up his position as pastor and preacher, maintaining this activity along with his unusual labours as teacher, executive and author. he died in . in his earlier years in berlin he belonged to the circle of brilliant men and women who made berlin famous in those years. it was a fashionable society composed of persons more or less of the rationalistic school. not a few of them, like the schlegels, were deeply tinged with romanticism. there were also among them jews of the house of the elder mendelssohn. morally it was a society not altogether above reproach. its opposition to religion was a by-word. an affection of the susceptible youth for a woman unhappily married brought him to the verge of despair. it was an affection which his passing pride as romanticist would have made him think it prudish to discard, while the deep, underlying elements of his nature made it inconceivable that he should indulge. only in later years did he heal his wound in a happy married life. the episode was typical of the experience he was passing through. he understood the public with which his first book dealt. that book bears the striking title, _reden über die religion, an die gebildeten unter ihren verächtern_ (translated, oman, oxford, ). his public understood him. he could reach them as perhaps no other man could do. if he had ever concealed what religion was to him, he now paid the price. if they had made light of him, he now made war on them. this meed they could hardly withhold from him, that he understood most other things quite as well as they, and religion much better than they. the rhetorical form is a fiction. the addresses were never delivered. their tension and straining after effect is palpable. they are a cry of pain on the part of one who sees that assailed which is sacred to him, of triumph as he feels himself able to repel the assault, of brooding persuasiveness lest any should fail to be won for his truth. he concedes everything. it is part of his art to go further than his detractors. he is so well versed in his subject that he can do that with consummate mastery, where they are clumsy or dilettante. it is but a pale ghost of religion that he has left. but he has attained his purpose. he has vindicated the place of religion in the life of culture. he has shown the relation of religion to every great thing in civilisation, its affinity with art, its common quality with poetry, its identity with all profound activities of the soul. these all are religion, though their votaries know it not. these are reverence for the highest, dependence on the highest, self-surrender to the highest. no great man ever lived, no great work was ever done, save in an attitude toward the universe, which is identical with that of the religious man toward god. the universe is god. god is the universe. that religionists have obscured this simple truth and denied this grand relation is true, and nothing to the point. the cultivated should be ashamed not to know this. then, with a sympathy with institutional religion and a knowledge of history in which he stood almost alone, he retracts much that he has yielded, he rebuilds much that he has thrown down, proclaims much which they must now concede. the book was published in . twenty years later he said sadly that if he were rewriting it, its shafts would be directed against some very different persons, against glib and smug people who boasted the form of godliness, conventional, even fashionable religionists and loveless ecclesiastics. vast and various influences in the germany of the first two decades of the century had wrought for the revival of religion. of those influences, not the least had been that of schleiermacher's book. among the greatest had been schleiermacher himself. the religion of feeling, as advocated in the _reden_, had left much on the ethical side to be desired. this defect the author sought to remedy in his _monologen_, published in . the programme of theological studies for the new university of berlin, _kurze darstellung des theologischen studiums_, , shows his theological system already in large part matured. his _der christliche glaube_, published in , revised three years before his death in , is his monumental work. his _ethik_, his lectures upon many subjects, numerous volumes of sermons, all published after his death, witness his versatility. his sermons have the rare note which one finds in robertson and brooks. all of the immediacy of religion, its independence of rational argument, of historical tradition or institutional forms, which was characteristic of schleiermacher to his latest day, is felt in the _reden_. by it he thrilled the hearts of men as they have rarely been thrilled. it is not forms and traditions which create religion. it is religion which creates these. they cannot exist without it. it may exist without them, though not so well or so effectively. religion is the sense of god. that sense we have, though many call it by another name. it would be more true to say that that sense has us. it is inescapable. all who have it are the religious. those who hold to dogmas, rites, institutions in such a way as to obscure and overlay this sense of god, those who hold those as substitute for that sense, are the nearest to being irreligious. any form, the most _outré_, bizarre and unconventional, is good, so only that it helps a man to god. all forms are evil, the most accredited the most evil, if they come between a man and god. the pantheism of the thought of god in all of schleiermacher's early work is undeniable. he never wholly put it aside. the personality of god seemed to him a limitation. language is here only symbolical, a mere expression from an environment which we know, flung out into the depths of that we cannot see. if the language of personal relations helps men in living with their truth--well and good. it hinders also. for himself he felt that it hindered more than helped. his definition of religion as the feeling of dependence upon god, is cited as evidence of the effect upon him of his contention against the personalness of god. religion is also, it is alleged, the sentiment of fellowship with god. fellowship implies persons. but to no man was the fellowship with the soul of his own soul and of all the universe more real than was that fellowship to schleiermacher. this was the more true in his maturer years, the years of the magnificent rounding out of his thought. god was to him indeed not 'a man in the next street.' what he says about the problem of the personalness of god is true. we see, perhaps, more clearly than did he that the debate is largely about words. similarly, we may say that schleiermacher's passing denial of the immortality of the soul was directed, in the first instance, against the crass, unsocial and immoral view which has disfigured much of the teaching of religion. his contention was directed toward that losing of oneself in god through ideals and service now, which in more modern phrase we call the entrance upon the immortal life here, the being in eternity now. for a soul so disposed, for a life thus inspired, death is but an episode. for himself he rejoices to declare it one to the issue of which he is indifferent. if he may thus live with god now, he cares little whether or not he shall live by and by. in his _monologues_ schleiermacher first sets forth his ethical thought. as it is religion that a man feels himself dependent upon god, so is it the beginning of morality that a man feels his dependence upon his fellows and their dependence on him. slaves of their own time and circumstance, men live out their lives in superficiality and isolation. they are a prey to their own selfishness. they never come into those relations with their fellows in which the moral ideal can be realised. man in his isolation from his fellows is nothing and accomplishes nothing. the interests of the whole humanity are his private interests. his own happiness and welfare are not possible to be secured save through his co-operation with others, his work and service for others. the happiness and welfare of others not merely react upon his own. they are in a large sense identical with his own. this oneness of a man with all men is the basis of morality, just as the oneness of man with god is the basis of religion. in both cases the oneness exists whether or not we know it. the contradictions and miseries into which immoral or unmoral conduct plunges us, are the witness of the fact that this inviolable unity of a man with humanity is operative, even if he ignores it. often it is his ignoring of this relation which brings him through misery to consciousness of it. man as moral being is but an individuation of humanity, just as, again, as religious being he is but an individuation of god. the goal of the moral life is the absorption of self, the elimination of self, which is at the same time the realisation of self, through the life and service for others. the goal of religion is the elimination of self, the swallowing up of self, in the service of god. in truth, the unity of man with man is at bottom only another form of his unity with god, and the service of humanity is the identical service of god. other so-called services of god are a means to this, or else an illusion. this parallel of religion and morals is to be set over against other passages, easily to be cited, in which schleiermacher speaks of passivity and contemplation as the means of the realisation of the unity of man and god, as if the elimination of self meant a sort of nirvana. schleiermacher was a pantheist and mystic. no philosopher save kant ever influenced him half so much as did spinoza. there is something almost oriental in his mood at times. an occasional fragment of description of religion might pass as a better delineation of buddhism than of christianity. this universality of his mind is interesting. these elements have not been unattractive to some portions of his following. one wearied with the philistinism of the modern popular urgency upon practicality turns to schleiermacher, as indeed sometimes to spinoza, and says, here is a man who at least knows what religion is. yet nothing is further from the truth than to say that schleiermacher had no sense for the meaning of religion in the outward life and present world. in the _reden_ schleiermacher had contended that religion is a condition of devout feeling, specifically the feeling of dependence upon god. this view dominates his treatment of christianity. it gives him his point of departure. a christian is possessed of the devout feeling of dependence upon god through jesus christ or, as again he phrases it, of dependence upon christ. christianity is a positive religion in the sense that it has direct relation to certain facts in the history of the race, most of all to the person of jesus of nazareth. but it does not consist in any positive propositions whatsoever. these have arisen in the process of interpretation of the faith. the substance of the faith is the experience of renewal in christ, of redemption through christ. this inward experience is neither produced by pure thought nor dependent upon it. like all other experience it is simply an object to be described and reckoned with. orthodox dogmatists had held that the content of the christian faith is a doctrine given in revelation. schleiermacher held that it is a consciousness inspired primarily by the personality of jesus. it must be connected with the other data and acta of our consciousness under the general laws of the operation of the mind. against rationalism and much so-called liberal christianity, schleiermacher contended that christianity is not a new set of propositions periodically brought up to date and proclaimed as if these alone were true. new propositions can have only the same relativity of truth which belonged to the old ones in their day. they may stand between men and religion as seriously as the others had done. the condition of the heart, which is religion, the experience through jesus which is christianity, is primarily an individual matter. but it is not solely such. it is a common experience also. schleiermacher recognises the common element in the christian consciousness, the element which shows itself in the christian experience of all ages, of different races and of countless numbers of men. by this recognition of the christian church in its deep and spiritual sense, schleiermacher hopes to escape the vagaries and eccentricities, and again the narrowness and bigotries of pure individualism. no liberal theologian until schleiermacher had had any similar sense of the meaning of the christian church, and of the privilege and duty of christian thought to contribute to the welfare of that body of men believing in god and following christ which is meant by the church. this is in marked contrast with the individualism of kant. of course, schleiermacher would never have recognised as the church that part of humanity which is held together by adherence to particular dogmas, since, for him, christianity is not dogma. still less could he recognise as the church that part of mankind which is held together by a common tradition of worship, or by a given theory of organisation, since these also are historical and incidental. he meant by the church that part of humanity, in all places and at all times, which has been held together by the common possession of the christian consciousness and the christian experience. the outline of this experience, the content of this consciousness, can never be so defined as to make it legislatively operative. if it were so defined we should have dogma and not christianity. nevertheless, it may be practically potent. the degree in which a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and experience with that of the christian world is problematical. in schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some of his contentions as, for example, the thought that god is not personal with the great christian consciousness of the past, is more than problematical. to this schleiermacher would reply that if these contentions were true, they would become the possession of spiritual christendom with the lapse of time. advance always originated with one or a few. if, however, in the end, a given portion found no place in the consciousness of generation truly evidencing their christian life, that position would be adjudged an idiosyncrasy, a negligible quantity. this view of schleiermacher's as to the church is suggestive. it is the undertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time. it is somewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marks of the churches, as these have been inherited even in protestantism from the catholic age. in a very real sense jesus occupied the central place in schleiermacher's system. the centralness of jesus christ he himself was never weary of emphasising. it became in the next generation a favorite phrase of some who followed schleiermacher's pure and bounteous spirit afar off. too much of a mystic to assert that it is through jesus alone that we know god, he yet accords to jesus an absolutely unique place in revelation. it is through the character and personality of jesus that the change in the character of man, which is redemption, is marshalled and sustained. redemption is a man's being brought out of the condition in which all higher self consciousness was dimmed and enfeebled, into one in which this higher consciousness is vivid and strong and the power of self-determination toward the good has been restored. salvation is thus moral and spiritual, present as well as future. it is possible in the future only because actual in the present. it is the reconstruction of a man's nature and life by the action of the spirit of god, conjointly with that of man's own free spirit. it is intelligible in schleiermacher's context that jesus should be spoken of as the sole redeemer of men, their only hope, and that the christian's dependence upon him should be described as absolute. as a matter of fact, however, the idea of dependence upon christ alone has been often, indeed, one may say generally, associated with a conception of salvation widely different from that of schleiermacher. it has been oftenest associated with the notion of something purely external, forensic, even magical. it is connected, even down to our own time, with reliance upon the blood of christ, almost as if this were externally applied. it has postulated a propitiatory sacrifice, a vicarious atonement, a completed transaction, something which was laid up for all and waiting to be availed of by some. now every external, forensic, magical notion of salvation, as something purchased for us, imputed to us, conferred upon us, would have been utterly impossible to schleiermacher. it is within the soul of man that redemption takes place. conferment from the side of god and christ, or from god through christ, can be nothing more, as also it can be nothing less, than the imparting of wisdom and grace and spiritual power from the personality of jesus, which a man then freely takes up within himself and gives forth as from himself. the christian consciousness contains, along with the sense of dependence upon jesus, the sense of moral alliance and spiritual sympathy with him, of a free relation of the will of man to the will of god as revealed in jesus. the will of man is set upon the reproduction within himself, so far as possible, of the consciousness, experience and character of jesus. the sin from which man is to be delivered is described by schleiermacher thus: it is the dominance of the lower nature in us, of the sense-consciousness. it is the determination of our course of life by the senses. this preponderance of the senses over the consciousness of god is the secret of unhappiness, of the feeling of defeat and misery in men, of the need of salvation. one has to read schleiermacher's phrase, 'the senses' here, as we read paul's phrase, 'the flesh.' on the other hand, the preponderance of the consciousness of god, the willing obedience to it in every act of life, becomes to us the secret of strength and of blessedness in life. this is the special experience of the christian. it is the effect of the impulse and influence of christ. we receive this impulse in a manner wholly consistent with the laws of our psychological and moral being. we carry forward this impulse with varying fortunes and by free will. it comes to us, however, from without and from above, through one who was indeed true man, but who is also, in a manner not further explicable, to be identified with the moral ideal of humanity. this identification of jesus with the moral ideal is complete and unquestioning with schleiermacher. it is visible in the interchangeable use of the titles jesus and christ. our saving consciousness of god could proceed from the person of jesus only if that consciousness were actually present in jesus in an absolute measure. ideal and person in him perfectly coincide. as typical and ideal man, according to schleiermacher, jesus was distinguished from all other founders of religions. these come before us as men chosen from the number of their fellows, receiving, quite as much for themselves as for others, that which they received from god. it is nowhere implied that jesus himself was in need of redemption, but rather that he alone possessed from earliest years the fulness of redemptive power. he was distinguished from other men by his absolute moral perfection. this excluded not merely actual sin, but all possibility of sin and, accordingly, all real moral struggle. this perfection was characterised also by his freedom from error. he never originated an erroneous notion nor adopted one from others as a conviction of his own. in this respect his person was a moral miracle in the midst of the common life of our humanity, of an order to be explained only by a new spiritually creative act of god. on the other hand, schleiermacher says squarely that the absence of the natural paternal participation in the origin of the physical life of jesus, according to the account in the first and third gospels, would add nothing to the moral miracle if it could be proved and detract nothing if it should be taken away. singular is this ability on the part of schleiermacher to believe in the moral miracle, not upon its own terms, of which we shall speak later, but upon terms upon which the outward and physical miracle, commonly so-called, had become, we need not say incredible, but unnecessary to schleiermacher himself. singular is this whole part of schleiermacher's construction, with its lapse into abstraction of the familiar sort, of which, in general, the working of his mind had been so free. for surely what we here have is abstraction. it is an undissolved fragment of metaphysical theology. it is impossible of combination with the historical. it is wholly unnecessary for the religious view of salvation which schleiermacher had distinctly taken. it is surprising how slow men have been to learn that the absolute cannot be historic nor the historic absolute. surely the claim that jesus was free from error in intellectual conception is unnecessary, from the point of view of the saving influence upon character which schleiermacher had asserted. it is in contradiction with the view of revelation to which schleiermacher had already advanced. it is to be accounted for only from the point of view of the mistaken assumption that the divine, even in manifestation, must be perfect, in the sense of that which is static and not of that which is dynamic. the assertion is not sustained from the gospel itself. it reduces many aspects of the life of jesus to mere semblance. that also which is claimed in regard to the abstract impossibility of sin upon the part of jesus is in hopeless contradiction with that which schleiermacher had said as to the normal and actual development of jesus, in moral as also in all other ways. such development is impossible without struggle. struggle is not real when failure is impossible. so far as we know, it is in struggle only that character is made. even as to the actual commission of sin on jesus' part, the assertion of the abstract necessity of his sinlessness, for the work of moral redemption, goes beyond anything which we know. the question of the sinlessness of jesus is not an _a priori_ question. to say that he was by conception free from sin is to beg the question. we thus form a conception and then read the gospels to find evidence to sustain it. to say that he did, though tempted in all points like as we are, yet so conduct himself in the mystery of life as to remain unstained, is indeed to allege that he achieved that which, so far us we know, is without parallel in the history of the race. but it is to leave him true man, and so the moral redeemer of men who would be true. to say that, if he were true man, he must have sinned, is again to beg the question. let us repeat that the question is one of evidence. to say that he was, though true man, so far as we have any evidence in fact, free from sin, is only to say that his humanity was uniquely penetrated by the spirit of god for the purposes of the life which he had to live. that heart-broken recollection of his own sin which one hears in _the scarlet letter_, giving power to the preacher who would reach men in their sins, has not the remotest parallel in any reminiscence of jesus which we possess. there is every evidence of the purity of jesus' consciousness. there is no evidence of the consciousness of sin. there is a passage in the _discourses_, in which schleiermacher himself declared that the identification of the fundamental idea of religion with the historical fact in which that religion had its rise, was a mistake. surely it is exactly this mistake which schleiermacher has here made. it will be evident from all that has been said that to schleiermacher the scripture was not the foundation of faith. as such it was almost universally regarded in his time. the new testament, he declared, is itself but a product of the christian consciousness. it is a record of the christian experience of the men of the earlier time. to us it is a means of grace because it is the vivid and original register of that experience. the scriptures can be regarded as the work of the holy spirit only in so far as this was this common spirit of the early church. this spirit has borne witness to christ in these writings not essentially otherwise than in later writings, only more at first hand, more under the impression of intercourse with jesus. least of all may we base the authority of scripture upon a theory of inspiration such as that generally current in schleiermacher's time. it is the personality of jesus which is the inspiration of the new testament. christian faith, including the faith in the scriptures, can rest only upon the total impression of the character of jesus. in the same manner schleiermacher speaks of miracles. these cannot be regarded in the conventional manner as supports of religion, for the simplest of all reasons. they presuppose religion and faith and must be understood by means of those. the accounts of external miracles contained in the gospels are matters for unhesitating criticism. the christian finds, for moral reasons and because of the response of his own heart, the highest revelation of god in jesus christ. extraordinary events may be expected in jesus' career. yet these can be called miracles only relatively, as containing something extraordinary for contemporary knowledge. they may remain to us events wholly inexplicable, illustrating a law higher than any which we yet know. therewith they are not taken out of the realm of the orderly phenomena of nature. in other words, the notion of the miraculous is purely subjective. what is a miracle for one age may be no miracle in the view of the next. whatever the deeds of jesus may have been, however inexplicable all ages may find them, we can but regard them as merely natural consequences of the personality of jesus, unique because he was unique. 'in the interests of religion the necessity can never arise of regarding an event as taken out of its connection with nature, in consequence of its dependence upon god.' it is not possible within the compass of this book to do more than deal with typical and representative persons. schleiermacher was epoch-making. he gathered in himself the creative impulses of the preceding period. the characteristic theological tendencies of the two succeeding generations may be traced back to him. many men worked in seriousness upon the theological problem. no one of them marks an era again until we come to ritschl. the theologians of the interval between schleiermacher and ritschl have been divided into three groups. the first group is of distinctly philosophical tendency. the influence of hegel was felt upon them all. to this group belong schweitzer, biedermann, lipsius, and pfleiderer. the influence of hegel was greatest upon biedermann, least upon lipsius. an estimate of the influence of schleiermacher would reverse that order. especially did lipsius seek to lay at the foundation of his work that exact psychological study of the phenomena of religion which schleiermacher had declared requisite. it is possible that lipsius will more nearly come to his own when the enthusiasm for ritschl has waned. the second group of schleiermacher's followers took the direction opposite to that which we have named. they were the confessional theologians. hoffmann shows himself learned, acute and full of power. one does not see, however, why his method should not prove anything which any confession ever claimed. he sets out from schleiermacher's declaration concerning the content of the christian consciousness. in hoffmann's own devout consciousness there had been response, since his childhood, to every item which the creed alleged. therefore these items must have objective truth. one is reminded of an english parallel in newman's _grammar of assent_. yet another group, that of the so-called mediating theologians, contains some well-known names. here belong nitzsch, rothe, müller, dorner. the name had originally described the effort to find, in the union, common ground between lutherans and reformed. in the fact that it made the creeds of little importance and fell back on schleiermacher's emphasis upon feeling, the movement came to have the character also of an attempt to find a middle way between confessionalists and rationalists. its representatives had often the kind of breadth of sympathy which goes with lack of insight, rather than that breadth of sympathy which is due to the possession of insight. yet rothe rises to real distinction, especially in his forecast of the social interpretation of religion. with the men of this group arose a speculation concerning the person of christ which for a time had some currency. it was called the theory of the kenosis. jesus is spoken of in a famous passage of the letter to the philippians; as having emptied himself of divine qualities that he might be found in fashion as a man. in this speculation the divine attributes were divided into two classes. of the one class it was held christ had emptied himself in becoming flesh, or at least he had them in abeyance. he had them, but did not use them. what we have here is but a despairing effort to be just to jesus' humanity and yet to assert his deity in the ancient metaphysical terms. it is but saying yes and no in the same breath. biedermann said sadly of the speculation that it represented the kenosis, not of the divine nature, but of the human understanding. ritschl and the ritschlians if any man in the department of theology in the latter half of the nineteenth century attained a position such as to entitle him to be compared with schleiermacher, it was ritschl. he was long the most conspicuous figure in any chair of dogmatic theology in germany. he established a school of theological thinkers in a sense in which schleiermacher never desired to gain a following. he exerted ecclesiastical influence of a kind which schleiermacher never sought. he was involved in controversy in a degree to which the life of schleiermacher presents no parallel. he was not a preacher, he was no philosopher. he was not a man of schleiermacher's breadth of interest. his intellectual history presents more than one breach within itself, as that of schleiermacher presented none, despite the wide arc which he traversed. of ritschl, as of schleiermacher, it may be said that he exerted a great influence over many who have only in part agreed with him. albrecht ritschl was born in in berlin, the son of a bishop in the lutheran church. he was educated at bonn and at tübingen. he established himself at bonn, where, in , he became professor extraordinarius and in ordinaries. in he was called to göttingen. in he became consistorialrath in the new prussian establishment for the hanoverian church. he died in . these are the simple outward facts of a somewhat stormy professional career. there was pietistic influence in ritschl's ancestry, as also in schleiermacher's. ritschl had, however, reacted violently against it. his attitude was that of repudiation of everything mystical. he had strong aversion to the type of piety which rested its assurance solely upon inward experience. this aversion is one root of the historic positivism which makes him, at the last, assert the worthlessness of all supposed revelations outside of the bible and of all supposed christian experience apart from the influence of the historical christ. he began his career under the influence of hegel. he came to the position in which he felt that the sole hope for theology was in the elimination from it of all metaphysical elements. he felt that none of his predecessors had carried out schleiermacher's dictum, that religion is not thought, but religious thought only one of the functions of religion. yet, of course, he was not able to discuss fundamental theological questions without philosophical basis, particularly an explicit theory of knowledge. his theory of knowledge he had derived eclectically and somewhat eccentrically, from lotze and kant. to this day not all, either of his friends or foes, are quite certain what it was. it is open to doubt whether ritschl really arrived at his theory of cognition and then made it one of the bases of his theology. it is conceivable that he made his theology and then propounded his theory of cognition in its defence. in a word, the basis of distinction between religious and scientific knowledge is not to be sought in its object. it is to be found in the sphere of the subject, in the difference of attitude of the subject toward the object. religion is concerned with what he calls _werthurtheile_, judgments of value, considerations of our relation to the world, which are of moment solely in accordance with their value in awakening feelings of pleasure or of pain. the thought of god, for example, must be treated solely as a judgment of value. it is a conception which is of worth for the attainment of good, for our spiritual peace and victory over the world. what god is in himself we cannot know, an existential judgment we cannot form without going over to the metaphysicians. what god is to us we can know simply as religious men and solely upon the basis of religious experience. god is holy love. that is a religious value-judgment. but what sort of a being god must be in order that we may assign to him these attributes, we cannot say without leaving the basis of experience. this is pragmatism indeed. it opens up boundless possibilities of subjectivism in a man who was apparently only too matter-of-fact. there was a time in his career when ritschl was popular with both conservatives and liberals. there were long years in which he was bitterly denounced by both. yet there was something in the man and in his teaching which went beyond all the antagonisms of the schools. there can be no doubt that it was the intention of ritschl to build his theology solely upon the gospel of jesus christ. the joy and confidence with which this theology could be preached, ritschl awakened in his pupils in a degree which had not been equalled by any theologian since schleiermacher himself. numbers who, in the time of philosophical and scientific uncertainty, had lost their courage, regained it in contact with his confident and deeply religious spirit. a wholesome nature, eminently objective in temper, concentrated with all his force upon his task, of rare dialectical gifts, he had a great sense of humour and occasionally also the faculty of bitterly sarcastic speech. his very figure radiated the delight of conflict as he walked the göttingen wall. a devoted pupil, writing immediately after ritschl's death, used concerning schleiermacher a phrase which we may transfer to ritschl himself. 'one wonders whether such a theology ever existed as a connected whole, except in the mind of its originator. neither by those about him, nor by those after him, has it been reproduced in its entirety or free from glaring contradictions.' it was not free from contradictions in ritschl's own mind. his pupils divided his inheritance among them. each appropriated that which accorded with his own way of looking at things and viewed the remainder as something which might be left out of the account. it is long since one could properly speak of a ritschlian school. it will be long until we shall cease to reckon with a ritschlian influence. he did yeoman service in breaking down the high lutheran confessionalism which had been the order of the day. in his recognition of the excesses of the tübingen school all would now agree. in his feeling against mere sentimentalities of piety many sympathise. in his emphasis upon the ethical and practical, in his urgency upon the actual problem of a man's vocation in the world, he meets in striking manner the temper of our age. in his emphasis upon the social factor in religion, he represents a popular phase of thought. with all of this, it is strange to find a man of so much learning who had so little sympathy with the comparative study of religions, who was such a dogmatist on behalf of his own inadequate notion of revelation, the logical effect of whose teaching concerning the church would be the revival of an institutionalism and externalism such as protestantism has hardly known. since schleiermacher the german theologians had made the problem of the person of christ the centre of discussion. in the same period the problem of the person of christ had been the central point of debate in america. here, as there, all the other points arranged themselves about this one. the new movement which went out from ritschl took as its centre the work of christ in redemption. this is obvious from the very title of ritschl's great book, _die christliche lehre von der rechtfertigung und versöhnung_. of this work the first edition of the third and significant volume was published in . before that time the formal treatises on theology had followed a traditional order of topics. it had been assumed as self-evident that one should speak of a person before one talked of his work. it did not occur to the theologians that in the case of the divine person, at all events, we can securely say that we know something as to his work. much concerning his person must remain a mystery to us, exactly because he is divine. our safest course, therefore, would be to infer the unknown qualities of his person from the known traits of his work. certainly this would be true as to the work of god in nature. this was not the way, however, in which the minds of theologians worked. the habit of dealing with conceptions as if they were facts had too deep hold upon them. so long as men believed in revelation as giving them, not primarily god and the transcendental world itself, but information about god and the transcendental, they naturally held that they knew as much of the persons of god and christ as of their works. schleiermacher had opened men's eyes to the fact that the great work of christ in redemption is an inward one, an ethical and spiritual work, the transformation of character. he had said, not merely that the transformation of man's character follows upon the work of redemption. it is the work of redemption. the primary witness to the work of christ is, therefore, in the facts of consciousness and history. these are capable of empirical scrutiny. they demand psychological investigation. when thus investigated they yield our primary material for any assertion we may make concerning god. above all, it is the nature of jesus, as learned on the evidence of his work in the hearts of men, which is our great revelation and source of inference concerning the nature of god. instead of saying in the famous phrase, that the christians think of christ as god, we say that we are able to think of god, as a religious magnitude, in no other terms than in those of his manifestation and redemptive activity in jesus. none since kant, except extreme confessionalists, and those in diminishing degree, have held that the great effect of the work of christ was upon the mind and attitude of god. less and less have men thought of justification as forensic and judicial, a declaring sinners righteous in the eye of the divine law, the attribution of christ's righteousness to men, so far at least as to relieve these last of penalty. this was the anselmic scheme. indeed, it had been tertullian's. less and less have men thought of reconciliation as that of an angry god to men, more and more as of alienated men with god. the phrases of the orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, lutheran as well as calvinistic, survive. more and more new meaning, not always consistent, is injected into them. no one would deny that the loftiest moral enthusiasm, the noblest sense of duty, animated the hearts of many who thought in the terms of calvinism. the delineation of god as unreconciled, of the work and sufferings of christ as a substitution, of salvation as a conferment, caused gratitude, tender devotion, heroic allegiance in some. it worked revulsion in others. it was protested against most radically by kant, as indeed it had been condemned by many before him. for kant the renovation of character was the essential salvation. yet the development of his doctrine was deficient through the individualistic form which it took. salvation was essentially a change in the individual mind, brought about through the practical reason, and having its ideal in jesus. yet for kant our salvation had no closer relation to the historic revelation in jesus. furthermore, so much was this change an individual issue that we may say that the actualisation of redemption would be the same for a given man, were he the only man in the universe. to hold fast to the ethical idealism of kant, and to overcome its subjectivity and individualism, was the problem. the reference to experience which underlies all that was said above was particularly congruous with the mood of an age grown weary of hegelianism and much impressed with the value of the empirical method in all the sciences. another great contention of our age is for the recognition of the value of what is social. its emphasis is upon that which binds men together. salvation is not normally achieved except in the life of a man among and for his fellows. it is by doing one's duty that one becomes good. one is saved, not in order to become a citizen of heaven by and by, but in order to be an active citizen of a kingdom of real human goodness here and now. in reality no man is being saved, except as he does actively and devotedly belong to that kingdom. the individual would hardly be in god's eyes worth the saving, except in order that he might be the instrumentality of the realisation of the kingdom. those are ideas which it is possible to exaggerate in statement or, at least, to set forth in all the isolation of their quality as half-truths. but it is hardly possible to exaggerate their significance as a reversal of the immemorial one-sidedness, inadequacy, and artificiality both of the official statement and of the popular apprehension of christianity. these ideas appeal to men in our time. they are popular because men think them already. men are pleased, even when somewhat incredulous, to learn that christianity will bear this social interpretation. most christians are in our time overwhelmingly convinced that in this direction lies the interpretation which christianity must bear, if it is to do the work and meet the needs of the age. its consonance with some of the truths underlying socialism may account, in a measure, for the influence which the ritschlian theology has had. as was indicated, ritschl's epoch-making book bears the title, _the christian doctrine of justification and reconciliation_. the book might be described in the language of the schools as a monograph upon one great dogma of the christian faith, around which, as the author treats it, all the other doctrines are arranged. the familiar topic of justification, of which luther made so much, was thus given again the central place. what the book really offered was something quite different from this. it was a complete system of theology, but it differed from the traditional systems of theology. these had followed helplessly a logical scheme which begins with god as he is in himself and apart from any knowledge which we have of him. they then slowly proceeded to man and sin and redemption, one empirical object and two concrete experiences which we may know something about. ritschl reversed the process. he aimed to begin with certain facts of life. such facts are sin and the consciousness of forgiveness, awareness of restoration to the will and power of goodness, the gift of love and of a spirit which can feel itself victorious even in the midst of ills in life, confidence that this life is not all. these phrases, taken together, would describe the consciousness of salvation. this consciousness of sin and salvation is a fact in individual men. it has evidently been a fact in the life of masses of men for many generations. the facts have thus a psychology and a history from which reflection on the phenomenon of faith must take its departure. there is no reason why, upon this basis, and until it departs from the scientific methods which are given with the nature of its object, theology should not be as truly a science as is any other known among men. this science starts with man, who in the object of many other sciences. it confines itself to man in this one aspect of his relation to moral life and to the transcendent meaning of the universe. it notes the fact that men, when awakened, usually have the sense of not being in harmony with the life of the universe or on the way to realisation of its meaning. it notes the fact that many men have had the consciousness of progressive restoration to that harmony. it inquires as to the process of that restoration. it asks as to the power of it. it discovers that that power is a personal one. men have believed that this power has been exerted over them, either in personal contact, or across the ages and through generations of believers, by one jesus, whom they call saviour. they have believed that it was god who through jesus saved them. jesus' consciousness thus became to them a revelation of god. the thought leads on to the consideration of that which a saved man does, or ought to do, in the life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution in which this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum total of human institutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inward force. there is room even for a clause in which to compress the little that we know of anything beyond this life. we have written in unconventional words. there is no one place, either in ritschl's work or elsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands together in one context. this is unfortunate. were this the case, even wayfaring men might have understood somewhat better than they have what ritschl was aiming at. it is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme should have left so much to be desired. that this execution would prove difficult needs hardly to be said. that it could never be the work of one man is certainly true. to have had so great an insight is title enough to fame. ritschl falls off from his endeavour as often as did schleiermacher--more often and with less excuse. the might of the past is great. the lumber which he meekly carries along with him is surprising, as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of the lumber which he recognised as such. the putting of new wine into old bottles is so often reprobated by ritschl that the reader is justly surprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. the system is not 'all of one piece'--distinctly not. there are places where the rent is certainly made worse by the old cloth on the new garment. the work taken as a whole is so bewildering that one finds himself asking, 'what is ritschl's method?' if what is meant is not a question of detail, but of the total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the apprehension which we strove to outline above, then ritschl's courageous and complete inversion of the ancient method, his demand that we proceed from the known to the unknown, is a contribution so great that all shortcomings in the execution of it are insignificant. his first volume deals with the history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with anselm and abelard. in it ritschl's eminent qualities as historian come out. in it also his prejudices have their play. the second volume deals with the biblical foundations for the doctrine. ritschl was bred in the tübingen school. yet here is much forced exegesis. ritschl's positivistic view of the scripture and of the whole question of revelation, was not congruous with his well-learned biblical criticism. the third volume is the constructive one. it is of immeasurably greater value than the other two. it is this third volume which has frequently been translated. in respect of his contention against metaphysics it is hardly necessary that we should go into detail. with his empirical and psychological point of departure, given above, most men will find themselves in entire sympathy. the confusion of religion, which is an experience, with dogma which is reasoning about it, and the acceptance of statements in scripture which are metaphysical in nature, as if they were religious truths--these two things have, in time past, prevented many earnest thinkers from following the true road. when it comes to the constructive portion of his work, it is, of course, impossible for ritschl to build without the theoretical supports which philosophy gives, or to follow up certain of the characteristic magnitudes of religion without following them into the realm of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to that of religion, they belong. it would be unjust to ritschl to suppose that these facts were hidden from him. as to his attitude toward mysticism, there is a word to say. in the long history of religious thought those who have revolted against metaphysical interpretation, orthodox or unorthodox, have usually taken refuge in mysticism. hither the prophet augustine takes refuge when he would flee the ecclesiastic augustine, himself. the brethren of the free spirit, tauler, à kempis, suso, the author of the _theologia germanica_, molinos, madame gayon, illustrate the thing we mean. ritschl had seen much of mysticism in pietist circles. he knew the history of the movement well. what impressed his sane mind was the fact that unhealthy minds have often claimed, as their revelation from god, an experience which might, with more truth, be assigned to almost any other source. he desired to cut off the possibility of what seemed to him often a tragic delusion. the margin of any mystical movement stretches out toward monstrosities and absurdities. for that matter, what prevents a buddhist from declaring his thoughts and feelings to be christianity? indeed, ritschl asks, why is not buddhism as good as such christianity? he is, therefore, suspicious of revelations which have nothing by which they can be measured and checked. the claim of mystics that they came, in communion with god, to the point where they have no need of christ, seemed to him impious. there is no way of knowing that we are in fellowship with god, except by comparing what we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which we historically learn that the fellowship with god gave to christ. this is the sense and this the connexion in which ritschl says that we cannot come to god save in and through the historic christ as he is given us in the gospels. the inner life, at least, which is there depicted for us is, in this outward and authoritative sense, our norm and guide. large difficulties loom upon the horizon of this positivistic insistence upon history. can we know the inner life of christ well enough to use it thus as test in every, or even in any case? does not the use of such a test, or of any test in this external way, take us out of the realm of the religion of the spirit? men once said that the church was their guide. others said the scripture was their guide. now, in the sense of the outwardness of its authority, we repudiate even this. it rings devoutly if we say christ is our guide. yet, as ritschl describes this guidance, in the exigency of his contention against mysticism, have we anything different? what becomes of confucianists and shintoists, who have never heard of the historic christ? and all the while we have the sense of a query in our minds. is it open to any man to repudiate mysticism absolutely and with contumely, and then leave us to discover that he does not mean mysticism as historians of every faith have understood it, but only the margin of evil which is apparently inseparable from it? that margin of evil others see and deplore. against it other remedies have been suggested, as, for example, intelligence. some would feel that in ritschl's remedy the loss is greater than the gain. this historical character of revelation is so truly one of the fountain heads of the theology which takes its rise in ritschl, that it deserves to be considered somewhat more at length. the ritschlian movement has engaged a generation of more or less notable thinkers in the period since ritschl's death. these have dissented at many points from ritschl's views, diverged from his path and marked out courses of their own. we shall do well in the remainder of this chapter to attempt the delineation in terms, not exclusively of ritschl, but of that which may with some laxity be styled ritschlianism. the value judgments of religion indicate only the subjective form of religious knowledge, as the ritschlians understand it. faith, however, does not invent its own contents. historical facts, composing the revelation, actually exist, quite independent of the use which the believer makes of them. no group of thinkers have more truly sought to draw near to the person of the historic jesus. the historical person, jesus of nazareth, is the divine revelation. that sums up this aspect of the ritschlian position. some negative consequences of this position we have already noted. let us turn to its positive significance. herrmann is the one of the ritschlians who has dealt with this matter not only with great clearness, but also with deep christian feeling in his _verkehr des christen mit gott_, , and notably in his address, _der begriff der offenbarung_, . if the motive of religion were an intellectual curiosity, a verbal communication would suffice. as it is a practical necessity, this must be met by actual impulse in life. that passing out of the unhappiness of sin, into the peace and larger life which is salvation, does indeed imply the movement of god's spirit on our hearts, in conversion and thereafter. this is essentially mediated to us through the scriptures, especially through those of the new testament, because the new testament contains the record of the personality of jesus. in that our personality is filled with the spirit which breathes in him, our salvation is achieved. the image of jesus which we receive acts upon us as something indubitably real. it vindicates itself as real, in that it takes hold upon our manhood. of course, this assumes that the church has been right in accepting the gospels as historical. herrmann candidly faces this question. not every word or deed, he says, which is recorded concerning jesus, belongs to this central and dynamic revelation of which we speak. we do not help men to see jesus in a saving way if, on the strength of accounts in the new testament, we insist concerning jesus that he was born of a virgin, that he raised the dead, that he himself rose from the dead. we should not put these things before men with the declaration that they must assent to them. we must not try to persuade ourselves that that which acted upon the disciples as indubitably real must of necessity act similarly upon us. we are to allow ourselves to be seized and uplifted by that which, in our position, touches us as indubitably real. this is, in the first place, the moral character of jesus. it is his inner life which, on the testimony of the disciples, meets us as something real and active in the world, as truly now as then. what are some facts of this inner life? the jesus of the new testament shows a firmness of religious conviction, a clearness of moral judgment, a purity and force of will, such as are not found united in any other figure in history. we have the image of a man who is conscious that he does not fall short of the ideal for which he offers himself. it is this consciousness which is yet united in him with the most perfect humility. he lives out his life and faces death in a confidence and independence which have never been approached. he has confidence that he can lift men to such a height that they also will partake with him in the highest good, through their full surrender to god and their life of love for their fellows. it is clear that herrmann aims to bring to the front only those elements in the life of jesus which are likely to prove most effectual in meeting the need and winning the faith of the men of our age. he would cast into the background those elements which are likely to awaken doubt and to hinder the approach of men's souls to god. for herrmann himself the virgin birth has the significance that the spiritual life of jesus did not proceed from the sinful race. but herrmann admits that a man could hold even that without needing to allege that the physical life of jesus did not come into being in the ordinary way. the distinction between the inner and outward life of jesus, and the declaration that belief in the former alone is necessary, has the result of thus ridding us of questions which can scarcely fail to be present to the mind of every modern man. yet it would be unjust to imply that this is the purpose. quite the contrary, the distinction is logical for this theology. redemption is an affair of the inner life of a man. it is the force of the inner life of the redeemer which avails for it. it is from the belief that such an inner and spiritual life was once realised here on earth, that our own faith gathers strength, and gets guidance in the conflict for the salvation of our souls. the belief in the historicity of such an inner life is necessary. so harnack also declares in his _wesen des christenthums_, . it is noteworthy that in this connexion neither of these writers advances to a form of speculation concerning the exalted christ, which in recent years has had some currency. according to this doctrine, there is ascribed to the risen and ascended jesus an existence with god which is thought of in terms different from those which we associate with the idea of immortality. in other words, this continued existence of christ as god is a counterpart of that existence before the incarnation, which the doctrine of the pre-existence alleged. but surely this speculation can have no better standing than that of the pre-existence. sin in the language of religion is defection from the law of god. it is the transgression of the divine command. in what measure, therefore, the life of man can be thought of as sinful, depends upon his knowledge of the will of god. in scripture, as in the legends of the early history of the race, this knowledge stands in intimate connexion with the witness to a primitive revelation. this thought has had a curious history. the ideas of mankind concerning god and his will have grown and changed as much as have any other ideas. the rudimentary idea of the good is probably of social origin. it first emerges in the conflict of men one with another. as the personalised ideal of conduct, the god then reacts upon conduct, as the conduct reacts upon the notion of the god. only slowly has the ideal of the good been clarified. only slowly have the gods been ethicised. 'an honest god is the noblest work of man.' the moralising and spiritualising of the idea of jahve lies right upon the face of the old testament. the ascent of man on his ethical and spiritual side is as certain as is that on his physical side. long struggle upward through ignorance, weakness, sin, gradual elevating of the standard of what ought to he, growingly successful effort to conform to that standard--this is what the history of the race has seen. athwart this lies the traditional dogma. the dogma took up into itself a legend of the childhood of the world. it elaborated that which in genesis is vague and poetic into a vast scheme which has passed as a sacred philosophy of history. it postulated an original revelation. it affirmed the created state of man as one of holiness before a fall. to the framers of the dogma, if sin is the transgression of god's will, then it must be in light of a revelation of that will. in the scriptures we have vague intimations concerning god's will, growingly clearer knowledge of that will, evolving through history to jesus. in the dogma we have this grand assumption of a paradisaic state of perfectness in which the will of god was from the beginning perfectly known. in the platonic, as in the rabbinic, speculation the idea must precede the fact. every step of progress is a defection from that idea. the dogma suffers from an insoluble contradiction within itself. it aims to give us the point of departure by which we are to recognise the nature of sin. at the same moment it would describe the perfection of man at which god has willed that by age-long struggle he should arrive. now, if we place this perfection at the beginning of human history, before all human self-determination, we divest it of ethical quality. whatever else it may be, it is not character. on the other hand, if we would make this perfection really that of moral character, then we cannot place it at the beginning of human history, but far down the course of the evolution of the higher human traits, of the consciousness of sin and of the struggle for redemption. it is not revelation from god, but naïve imagination, later giving place to adventurous speculation concerning the origin of the universe, which we have in the doctrine of the primeval perfection of man. we do not really make earnest with our christian claim that in jesus we have our paramount revelation, until we admit this. it is through jesus, and not from adam that we know sin. so we might go on to say that the dogma of inherited guilt is a contradiction in terms. disadvantage may be inherited, weakness, proclivity to sin, but not guilt, not sin in the sense of that which entails guilt. what entails guilt is action counter to the will of god which we know. that is always the act of the individual man myself. it cannot by any possibility be the act of another. it may be the consequence of the sins of my ancestors that i do moral evil without knowing it to be such. even my fellows view this as a mitigation, if not as an exculpation. the very same act, however, which up to this point has been only an occasion for pity, becomes sin and entails guilt, when it passes through my own mind and will as a defection from a will of god in which i believe, and as a righteousness which i refuse. the confusion of guilt and sin in order to the inclusion of all under the need of salvation, as in the augustinian scheme, ended in bewilderment and stultification of the moral sense. it caused men to despair of themselves and gravely to misrepresent god. it is no wonder if in the age of rationalism this dogma was largely done away with. the religious sense of sin was declared to be an hallucination. nothing is more evident in the rationalist theology than its lack of the sense of sin. this alone is sufficient explanation of the impotency and inadequacy of that theology. kant's doctrine of radical evil testifies to his deep sense that the rationalists were wrong. he could see also the impossibility of the ancient view. but he had no substitute. hegel, much as he prided himself upon the restoration of dogma, viewed evil as only relative, good in the making. schleiermacher made a beginning of construing the thought of sin from the point of view of the christian consciousness. ritschl was the first consistently to carry out schleiermacher's idea, placing the christian consciousness in the centre and claiming that the revelation of the righteousness of god and of the perfection of man is in jesus. all men being sinners, there is a vast solidarity, which he describes as the kingdom of evil and sets over against the kingdom of god, yet not so that the freedom or responsibility of man is impaired. god forgives all sin save that of wilful resistance to the spirit of the good. that is, ritschl regards all sin, short of this last, as mainly ignorance and weakness. it is from ritschl, and more particularly from kaftan, that the phrases have been mainly taken which served as introduction to this paragraph. for the work of god through christ, in the salvation of men from the guilt and power of sin, various terms have been used. different aspects of the work have been described by different names. redemption, regeneration, justification, reconciliation and election or predestination--these are the familiar words. this is the order in which the conceptions stand, if we take them as they occur in consciousness. election then means nothing more than the ultimate reference to god of the mystery of an experience in which the believer already rejoices. on the other hand, in the dogma the order is reversed. election must come first, since it is the decree of god upon which all depends. redemption and reconciliation have, in christian doctrine, been traditionally regarded as completed transactions, waiting indeed to be applied to the individual or appropriated by him through faith, but of themselves without relation to faith. reconciliation was long thought of as that of an angry god to man. especially was this last the characteristic view of the west, where juristic notions prevailed. origen talked of a right of the devil over the soul of man until bought off by the sacrifice of christ. this is pure paganism, of course. the doctrine of anselm marks a great advance. it runs somewhat thus: the divine honour is offended in the sin of man. satisfaction corresponding to the greatness of the guilt must be rendered. man is under obligation to render this satisfaction; yet he is unable so to do. a sin against god is an infinite offence. it demands an infinite satisfaction. man can render no satisfaction which is not finite. the way out of this dilemma is the incarnation of the divine logos. for the god-man, as man, is entitled to bring this satisfaction for men. on the other hand, as god he is able so to do. in his death this satisfaction is embodied. he gave his life freely. god having received satisfaction through him demands nothing more from us. abelard had, almost at the same time with anselm, interpreted the death of christ in far different fashion. it was a revelation of the love of god which wins men to love in turn. this notion of abelard was far too subtle. the crass objective dogma of anselm prevailed. the death of christ was a sacrifice. the purpose was the propitiation of an angry god. the effect was that, on the side of god, a hindrance to man's salvation was removed. the doctrine accurately reflects the feudal ideas of the time which produced it. in grotius was done away the notion of private right, which lies at the basis of the theory of anselm. that of public duty took its place. a sovereign need not stand upon his offended honour, as in anselm's thought. still, he cannot, like a private citizen, freely forgive. he must maintain the dignity of his office, in order not to demoralise the world. the sufferings of christ did not effect a necessary private satisfaction. they were an example which satisfied the moral order of the world. apart from this change, the conception remains the same. as kaftan argues, we can escape the dreadful externality and artificiality of this scheme, only as redemption and regeneration are brought back to their primary place in consciousness. these are the initial experiences in which we become aware of god's work through christ in us and for us. the reconciliation is of us. the redemption is from our sins. the regeneration is to a new moral life. through the influence of jesus, reconciled on our part to god and believing in his unchanging love to us, we are translated into god's kingdom and live for the eternal in our present existence. redemption is indeed the work of god through christ, but it has intelligible parallel in the awakening of the life of the mind, or again of the spirit of self-sacrifice, through the personal influence of the wise and good. salvation begins in such an awakening through the personal influence of the wisest and best. it is transformation of our personality through the personality of jesus, by the personal god of truth, of goodness and of love. all that which god through jesus has done for us is futile, save as we make the actualisation of our deliverance from sin our continuous and unceasing task. when this connexion of thought is broken through, we transfer the whole matter of salvation from the inner to the outer world and make of it a transaction independent of the moral life of man. justification and reconciliation also are primarily acts and gifts of god. justification is a forensic act. the sense is not that in justification we are made just. we are, so to say, temporarily thus regarded, not that leniency may become the occasion of a new offence, but that in grateful love we may make it the starting point of a new life. we must justify our justification. it is easy to see the objections to such a course on the part of a civil judge. he must consider the rights of others. it was this which brought grotius and the rest, with the new england theologians down to park, to feel that forgiveness could not be quite free. if we acknowledge that this symbolism of god as judge or sovereign is all symbolism, mere figure of speech, not fact at all, then that objection--and much else--falls away. if we assert that another figure of speech, that of god as father, more perfectly suggests the relation of god and man, then forgiveness may be free. then justification and forgiveness are only two words for one and the same idea. then the nightmare of a god who would forgive and cannot, of a god who will forgive but may not justify until something further happens, is all done away. then the relation of the death of jesus to the forgiveness of our sins cannot be other than the relation of his life to that forgiveness. both the one and the other are a revelation of the forgiving love of god. we may say that in his death the whole meaning of his life was gathered. we may say that his death was the consummation of his life, that without it his life would not have been what it is. this is, however, very far from being the ordinary statement of the relation of jesus' death, either to his own life or to the forgiveness of our sins. the doctrinal tradition made much also of the deliverance from punishment which follows after the forgiveness of sin. in fact, in many forms of the dogma, it has been the escape from punishment which was chiefly had in mind. along with the forensic notion of salvation we largely or wholly discard the notion of punishment. we retain only the sense that the consequence of continuing in sin is to become more sinful. god himself is powerless to prevent that. punishment is immanent, vital, necessary. the penalty is gradually taken away if the sin itself is taken away--not otherwise. it returns with the sin, it continues in the sin, it is inseparable from the sin. punishment is no longer the right word. reward is not the true description of that growing better which is the consequence of being good. reward or punishment as _quid pro quo_, as arbitrary assignments, as external equivalents, do not so much as belong to the world of ideas in which we move. for this view the idea that god laid upon jesus penalties due to us, fades into thin air. jesus could by no possibility have met the punishment of sin, except he himself had been a sinner. then he must have met the punishment of his own sin and not that of others. that portion which one may gladly bear of the consequences of another's sin may rightfully be called by almost any other name. it cannot be called punishment since punishment is immanent. even eternal death is not a judicial assignment for our obstinate sinfulness. eternal death is the obstinate sinfulness, and the sinfulness the death. it must be evident that reconciliation can have, in this scheme, no meaning save that man's being reconciled to god. jesus reveals a god who has no need to be reconciled to us. the alienation is not on the side of god. that, being alienated from god, man may imagine that god is hostile to him, is only the working of a familiar law of the human mind. the fiction of an angry god is the most awful survival among us of primitive paganism. that which jesus by his revelation of god brought to pass was a true 'at-one-ment,' a causing of god and man to be at one again. to the word atonement, as currently pronounced, and as, until a half century ago, almost universally apprehended, the notion of that which is sacrificial attached. to the life and death of jesus, as revelation of god and saviour of men, we can no longer attach any sacrificial meaning whatsoever. there is indeed the perfectly general sense in which so beautiful a life and so heroic a death were, of course, a grand exemplification of self-sacrifice. yet this is a sense so different from the other and in itself so obvious, that one hesitates to use the same word in the immediate context with that other, lest it should appear that the intention was to obscure rather than to make clear the meaning. for atonement in a sense different from that of reconciliation, we have no significance whatever. reconciliation and atonement describe one and the same fact. in the dogma the words were as far as possible from being synonyms. they referred to two facts, the one of which was the means and essential prerequisite of the other. the vicarious sacrifice was the antecedent condition of the reconciling of god. in our thought it is not a reconciliation of god which is aimed at. no sacrifice is necessary. no sacrifice such as that postulated is possible. of the reconciliation of man to god the only condition is the revelation of the love of god in the life and death of jesus and the obedient acceptance of that revelation on the part of men. chapter iv the critical and historical movement it has been said that in christian times the relation of philosophy and religion may be determined by the attitude of reason toward a single matter, namely, the churchly doctrine of revelation.[ ] there are three possible relations of reason to this doctrine. first, it may be affirmed that the content of religion and theology is matter communicated to man in extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which it is beyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. we have then the two spheres arbitrarily separated. as regards their relation, theology is at first supreme. reason is the handmaiden of faith. it is occupied in applying the principles which it receives at the hands of theology. these are the so-called ages of faith. notably was this the attitude of the middle age. but in the long run either authoritative revelation, thus conceived, must extinguish reason altogether, or else reason must claim the whole man. after all, it is in virtue of his having some reason that man is the subject of revelation. he is continually asked to exercise his reason upon certain parts of the revelation, even by those who maintain that he must do so only within limits. it is only because there in a certain reasonableness in the conceptions of revealed religion that man has ever been able to make them his own or to find in them meaning and edification. this external relation of reason to revelation cannot continue. nor can the encroachments of reason be met by temporary distinctions such as that between the natural and the supernatural. the antithesis to the natural is not the supernatural, but the unnatural. the antithesis to reason is not faith, but irrationality. the antithesis to human truth is not the divine truth. it is falsehood. [footnote : seth pringle-pattison, _the philosophical radicals_, p. .] when men have made this discovery, a revulsion carries their minds to the second position of which we spoke. this is, namely, the position of extreme denial. it is an attitude of negation toward revelation, such as prevailed in the barren and trivial rationalism of the end of the eighteenth century. the reason having been long repressed revenges itself, usurping everything. the explanation of the rise of positive religion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis of deceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. the religion of those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any religion, is merely the current morality. their explanation of the religion of others is that it is merely the current morality plus certain unprovable assumptions. indeed, they may think it to be but the obstinate adherence to these assumptions minus the current morality. it is impossible that this shallow view should prevail. to overcome it, however, there is need of a philosophy which shall give not less, but greater scope to reason and at the same time an inward meaning to revelation. this brings us to the third possible position, to which the best thinkers of the nineteenth century have advanced. so long as deistic views of the relation of god to man and the world held the field, revelation meant something interjected _ab extra_ into the established order of things. the popular theology which so abhorred deism was yet essentially deistic in its notion of god and of his separation from the world. men did not perceive that by thus separating god from the world they set up alongside of him a sphere and an activity to which his relations were transient and accidental. no wonder that other men, finding their satisfying activity within the sphere which was thus separated from god, came to think of this absentee god as an appendage to the scheme of things. but if man himself be inexplicable, save as sharing in the wider life of universal reason, if the process of history be realised as but the working out of an inherent divine purpose, the manifestation of an indwelling divine force, then revelation denotes no longer an interference with that evolution. it is a factor in that evolution. it is but the normal relation of the immanent spirit of god to the children of men at the crises of their fate. then revelation is an experience of men precisely in the line and according to the method of all their nobler experiences. it is itself reasonable and moral. inspiration is the normal and continuous effect of the contact of the god who is spirit with man who is spirit too. the relation is never broken. but there are times in which it has been more particularly felt. there have been personalities to whom in eminent degree this depth of communion with god has been vouchsafed. to such persons and eras the religious sense of mankind, by a true instinct, has tended to restrict the words 'revelation' and 'inspiration.' this restriction, however, signifies the separation of the grand experience from the ordinary, only in degree and not in kind. such an experience was that of prophets and law-givers under the ancient covenant. such an experience, in immeasurably greater degree, was that of jesus himself. such a turning-point in the life of the race was the advent of christianity. the world has not been wrong in calling the documents of these revelations sacred books and in attributing to them divine authority. it has been largely wrong _in the manner in which it construed their authority_. it has been wholly wrong in imagining that the documents themselves were the revelation. they are merely the record _of a personal communion with the transcendent_. it was lessing who first cast these fertile ideas into the soil of modern thought. they were never heartily taken up by kant. one can think, however, with what enthusiasm men recurred to them after their postulates had been verified and the idea of god, of man and of the world which they implied, had been confirmed by fichte and schelling. in the philosophical movement, the outline of which we have suggested, what one may call the _nidus_ of a new faith in scripture had been prepared. the quality had been forecast which the scripture must be found to possess, if it were to retain its character as document of revelation. in those very same years the great movement of biblical criticism was gathering force which, in the course of the nineteenth century, was to prove by stringent literary and historical methods, what qualities the documents which we know as scripture do possess. it was to prove in the most objective fashion that the scripture does not possess those qualities which men had long assigned to it. it was to prove that, as a matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which the philosophic forecast, above hinted, required. it was thus actually to restore the bible to an age in which many reasonable men had lost their faith in it. it was to give a genetic reconstruction of the literature and show the progress of the history which the scripture enshrines. after a contest in which the very foundations of faith seemed to be removed, it was to afford a basis for a belief in scripture and revelation as positive and secure as any which men ever enjoyed, with the advantage that it is a foundation upon which the modern man can and does securely build. the synchronism of the two endeavours is remarkable. the convergence upon one point, of studies starting, so to say, from opposite poles and having no apparent interest in common, is instructive. it is an illustration of that which comte said, that all the great intellectual movements of a given time are but the manifestation of a common impulse, which pervades and possesses the minds of the men of that time. the attempt to rationalise the narrative of scripture was no new one. it grew in intensity in the early years of the nineteenth century. the conflict which was presently precipitated concerned primarily the gospels. it was natural that it should do so. these contain the most important scripture narrative, that of the life of jesus. strauss had in good faith turned his attention to the gospels, precisely because he felt their central importance. his generation was to learn that they presented also the greatest difficulties. the old rationalistic interpretation had started from the assumption that what we have in the gospel narrative is fact. yet, of course, for the rationalists, the facts must be natural. they had the appearance of being supernatural only through the erroneous judgment of the narrators. it was for the interpreter to reduce everything which is related to its simple, natural cause. the water at cana was certainly not turned into wine. it must have been brought by jesus as a present and opened thus in jest. jesus was, of course, begotten in the natural manner. a simple maiden must have been deceived. the execution of this task of the rationalising of the narratives by one dr. paulus, was the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the claim. the most spiritual of the narratives, the finest flower of religious poetry, was thus turned into the meanest and most trivial incident without any religious significance whatsoever. the obtuseness of the procedure was exceeded only by its vulgarity. strauss on the other hand, as pfleiderer has said, we must remember the difficulty which beset the men of that age. their general culture made it difficult for them to accept the miraculous element in the gospel narrative as it stood. yet their theory of scripture gave them no notion as to any other way in which the narratives might be understood. the men had never asked themselves how the narratives arose. in the preface to his _leben jesu_, strauss said: 'orthodox and rationalists alike proceed from the false assumption that we have always in the gospels testimony, sometimes even that of eye-witnesses, to fact. they are, therefore, reduced to asking themselves what can have been the real and natural fact which is here witnessed to in such extraordinary way. we have to realise,' strauss proceeds, 'that the narrators testify sometimes, not to outward facts, but to ideas, often most poetical and beautiful ideas, constructions which even eye-witnesses had unconsciously put upon facts, imagination concerning them, reflexions upon them, reflexions and imaginings such as were natural to the time and at the author's level of culture. what we have here is not falsehood, not misrepresentation of the truth. it is a plastic, naïve, and, at the same time, often most profound apprehension of truth, within the area of religious feeling and poetic insight. it results in narrative, legendary, mythical in nature, illustrative often of spiritual truth in a manner more perfect than any hard, prosaic statement could achieve.' before strauss men had appreciated that particular episodes, like the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection, might have some such explanation as this. no one had ever undertaken to apply this method consistently, from one end to the other of the gospel narrative. what was of more significance, no one had clearly defined the conception of legend. strauss was sure that in the application of this notion to certain portions of the scripture no irreverence was shown. no moral taint was involved. nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we hold the scripture was implied. rather, in his view, the history of jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, of its elements are viewed in this way, when they are seen as the product of the poetic spirit, working all unconsciously at a certain level of culture and under the impulse of a great enthusiasm. there is no doubt that strauss, who was at that time an earnest christian, felt the relief from certain difficulties in the biography of jesus which this theory affords. he put it forth in all sincerity as affording to others like relief. he said that while rationalists and supernaturalists alike, by their methods, sacrificed the divine content of the story and clung only to its form, his hypothesis sacrificed the historicity of the narrative form, but kept the eternal and spiritual truth. in his opinion, the lapse of a single generation was enough to give room for this process of the growth of the legendary elements which have found place in the written gospels which we have. ideas entertained by primitive christians relative to their lost master, have been, all unwittingly, transformed into facts and woven into the tale of his career. the legends of a people are in their basal elements never the work of a single individual. they are never intentionally produced. the imperceptible growth of a joint creative work of this kind was possible, however, only on the supposition that oral tradition was, for a time, the means of transmission of the reminiscences of jesus. strauss' explanation of his theory has been given above, to some extent in his own words. we may see how he understood himself. we may appreciate also the genuineness of the religious spirit of his work. at the same time the thorough-going way in which he applied his principle, the relentless march of his argument, the character of his results, must sometimes have been startling even to himself. they certainly startled others. the effect of his work was instantaneous and immense. it was not at all the effect which he anticipated. the issue of the furious controversy which broke out was disastrous both to strauss' professional career and to his whole temperament and character. david friedrich strauss was born in in ludwigsburg in württemberg. he studied in tübingen and in berlin. he became an instructor in the theological faculty in tübingen in . he published his _leben jesu_ in . he was almost at once removed from his portion. in he withdrew altogether from the professorial career. his answer to his critics, written in , was in bitter tone. more conciliatory was his book, _Über vergängliches und bleibendes im christenthum_, published in . indeed there were some concessions in the third edition of his _leben jesu_ in , but these were all repudiated in . his _leben jesu für das deutsche volk_, published in was the effort to popularise that which he had done. it is, however, in point of method, superior to his earlier work, comments were met with even greater bitterness. finally, not long before his death in , he published _der alte und der neue glaube_, in which he definitely broke with christianity altogether and went over to materialism and pessimism. pfleiderer, who had personal acquaintance with strauss and held him in regard, once wrote: 'strauss' error did not lie in his regarding some of the gospel stories as legends, and some of the narratives of the miraculous as symbols of ideal truths. so far strauss was right. the contribution which he made is one which we have all appropriated and built upon. his error lay in his looking for those religious truths which are thus symbolised, outside of religion itself, in adventurous metaphysical speculations. he did not seek them in the facts of the devout heart and moral will, as these are illustrated in the actual life of jesus.' if strauss, after the disintegration in criticism of certain elements in the biography of jesus, had given us a positive picture of jesus as the ideal of religious character and ethical force, his work would indeed have been attacked. but it would have outlived the attack and conferred a very great benefit. it conferred a great benefit as it was, although not the benefit which strauss supposed. the benefit which it really conferred was in its critical method, and not at all in its results. of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which strauss' _leben jesu_ called forth, little is at this distance worth the mentioning. ullmann, who was far more appreciative than most of his adversaries, points out the real weakness of strauss' work. that weakness lay in the failure to draw any distinction between the historical and the mythical. he threatened to dissolve the whole history into myth. he had no sense for the ethical element in the personality and teaching of jesus nor of the creative force which this must have exerted. ullmann says with cogency that, according to strauss, the church created its christ virtually out of pure imagination. but we are then left with the query: what created the church? to this query strauss has absolutely no answer to give. the answer is, says ullmann, that the ethical personality of jesus created the church. this ethical personality is thus a supreme historic fact and a sublime historic cause, to which we must endeavour to penetrate, if need be through the veil of legend. the old rationalists had made themselves ridiculous by their effort to explain everything in some natural way. strauss and his followers often appeared frivolous, since, according to them, there was little left to be explained. if a portion of the narrative presented a difficulty, it was declared mythical. what was needed was such a discrimination between the legendary and historical elements in the gospels as could be reached only by patient, painstaking study of the actual historical quality and standing of the documents. no adequate study of this kind had ever been undertaken. strauss did not undertake it, nor even perceive that it was to be undertaken. there had been many men of vast learning in textual and philological criticism. here, however, a new sort of critique was applied to a problem which had but just now been revealed in all its length and breadth. the establishing of the principles of this historical criticism--the so-called higher criticism--was the herculean task of the generation following strauss. to the development of that science another tübingen professor, baur, made permanent contribution. with strauss himself, sadder than the ruin of his career, was the tragedy of the uprooting of his faith. this tragedy followed in many places in the wake of the recognition of strauss' fatal half-truth. baur baur, strauss' own teacher in tübingen, afterward famous as biblical critic and church-historian, said of strauss' book, that through it was revealed in startling fashion to that generation of scholars, how little real knowledge they had of the problem which the gospels present. to baur it was clear that if advance was to be made beyond strauss' negative results, the criticism of the gospel history must wait upon an adequate criticism of the documents which are our sources for that history. strauss' failure had brought home to the minds of men the fact that there were certain preliminary studies which must needs be taken up. meantime the other work must wait. as one surveys the literature of the next thirty years this fact stands out. many apologetic lives of jesus had to be written in reply to strauss. but they are almost completely negligible. no constructive work was done in this field until nearly a generation had passed. since all history, said baur, before it reaches us must pass through the medium of a narrator, our first question as to the gospel history is not, what objective reality can be accorded to the narrative itself. there is a previous question. this concerns the relation of the narrative to the narrator. it might be very difficult for us to make up our minds as to what it was that, in a given case, the witness saw. we have not material for such a judgment. we have probably much evidence, up and down his writings, as to what sort of man the witness was, in what manner he would be likely to see anything and with what personal equation he would relate that which he saw. baur would seem to have been the first vigorously and consistently to apply this principle to the gospel narratives. before we can penetrate deeply into the meaning of an author we must know, if we may, his purpose in writing. every author belongs to the time in which he lives. the greater the importance of his subject for the parties and struggles of his day, the safer is the assumption that both he and his work will bear the impress of these struggles. he will represent the interests of one or another of the parties. his work will have a tendency of some kind. this was one of baur's oft-used words--the tendency of a writer and of his work. we must ascertain that tendency. the explanation of many things both in the form and substance of a writing would be given could we but know that. the letters of paul, for example, are written in palpable advocacy of opinions which were bitterly opposed by other apostles. the biographies of jesus suggest that they also represent, the one this tendency, the other that. we have no cause to assert that this trait of which we speak implies conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate. the simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias in the working of their own minds. it is obvious that until we have reckoned with such elements as these, we cannot truly judge of that which the gospels say. to the elaboration of the principles of this historical criticism baur gave the labour of his life. his biblical work alone would have been epoch-making. ferdinand christian baur was born in in schmieden, near stuttgart. he became a professor in tübingen in and died there in . he was an ardent disciple of hegel. his greatest work was surely in the field of the history of dogma. his works, _die christliche lehre von der vereöhnung_, , _die christliche lehre von der dreieinigkeit und menschwerdung gottes_, - , his _lehrbuch der christlichen dogmengeschichte_, , together constitute a contribution to which harnack's work in our own time alone furnishes a parallel. baur had begun his thorough biblical studies before the publication of strauss' book. the direction of those studies was more than ever confirmed by his insight of the shortcomings of strauss' work. very characteristically also he had begun his investigations, not at the most difficult point, that of the gospels, as strauss had done, but at the easiest point, the epistles of paul. as early as he had published a tractate, _die christus-partei in der corinthischen gemeinde_. in that book he had delineated the bitter contest between paul and the judaising element in the apostolic church which opposed paul whithersoever he went. in his disquisition, _die sogenannten pastoral-briefe_, appeared. in the teachings of these letters he discovered the antithesis to the gnostic heresies of the second century. he thought also that the stage of organisation of the church which they imply, accorded better with this supposition than with that of their apostolic authorship. the same general theme is treated in a much larger way in baur's _paulus, der apostel jesu christi_, in . here the results of his study of the book of the acts are combined with those of his inquiries as to the pauline epistles. in the history of the apostolic age men had been accustomed to see the evidence only of peace and harmony. baur sought to show that the period had been one of fierce struggle, between the narrow judaic and legalistic form of faith in the messiah and that conception, introduced by paul, of a world-religion free from the law. out of this conflict, which lasted a hundred and fifty years, went forth the catholic church. the monuments of this struggle and witnesses of this process of growth are the new testament writings, most of which were produced in the second century. the only documents which we have which were written before a.d. , were the four great epistles of paul, those to the galatians, to the romans, and to the corinthians, together with the apocalypse. many details in baur's view are now seen to have been overstated and others false. yet this was the first time that a true historical method had been applied to the new testament literature as a whole. baur's contribution lay in the originality of his conception of christianity, in his emphasis upon paul, in his realisation of the magnitude of the struggle which paul inaugurated against jewish prejudices in the primitive church. in his idea, the issue of that struggle was, on the one hand, the freeing of christianity from judaism and on the other, the developing of christian thought into a system of dogma and of the scattered christian communities into an organised church. the fourth gospel contains, according to baur, a christian gnosis parallel to the gnosis which was more and more repudiated by the church as heresy. the logos, the divine principle of life and light, appears bodily in the phenomenal world in the person of jesus. it enters into conflict with the darkness and evil of the world. this speculation is but thinly clothed in the form of a biography of jesus. that an account completely dominated by speculative motives gives but slight guarantee of historical truth, was for baur self-evident. the author remains unknown, the age uncertain. the book, however, can hardly have appeared before the time of the montanist movement, that is, toward the end of the second century. scholars now rate far more highly than did baur the element of genuine johannine tradition which may lie behind the fourth gospel and account for its name. they do not find traces of montanism or of paschal controversies. but the main contention stands. the fourth gospel represents the beginning of elaborate reflexion upon the life and work of jesus. it is what it is because of the fusion of the ethical and spiritual content of the revelation in the personality of jesus, with metaphysical abstractions and philosophical interpretation. baur was by no means so fortunate in the solution which he offered of the problem which the synoptic gospels present. his opinions are of no interest except as showing that he too worked diligently upon a question which for a long time seemed only to grow in complexity and which has busied scholars practically from baur's day to our own. his zeal here also to discover dogmatic purposes led him astray. the _tendenzkritik_ had its own tendencies. the chief was to exaggeration and one-sidedness. baur had the kind of ear which hears grass grow. there is much overstrained acumen. many radically false conclusions are reached by prejudiced operation with an historical formula, which in the last analysis is that of hegel. everything is to be explained on the principle of antithesis. again, the assumption of conscious purpose in everything which men do or write is a grave exaggeration. it is often in contradiction of that wonderful unconsciousness with which men and institutions move to the fulfilment of a purpose for the good, the purpose of god, into which their own life is grandly taken up. to make each phase of such a movement the contribution of some one man's scheme or endeavour is, as was once said, to make god act like a professor. * * * * * the method of this book is that it seeks to deal only with men who have inaugurated movements, or marked some turning-point in their course which has proved of more than usual significance. the compass of the book demands such a limitation. but by this method whole chapters in the life of learning are passed over, in which the substance of achievement has been the carrying out of a plan of which we have been able to note only the inception. there is a sense in which the carrying out of a plan is both more difficult and more worthy than the mere setting it in motion. when one thinks of the labour and patience which have been expended, for example, upon the problem of the gospels in the past seventy years, those truths come home to us. when one reminds himself of the hypotheses which have been made but to be abandoned, which have yet had the value that they at least indicated the area within which solutions do not lie,--when one thinks of the wellnigh immeasurable toil by which we have been led to large results which now seem secure, one is made to realise that the conditions of the advance of science are, for theologians, not different from those which obtain for scholars who, in any other field, would establish truth and lead men. in a general way, however, it may be said that the course of opinion in these two generations, in reference to such questions as those of the dates and authorship of the new testament writings, has been one of rather noteworthy retrogression from many of the tübingen positions. harnack's _geschichte der altchristlichen literatur_, , and his _chronologie der altchristlichen literatur_, , present a marked contrast to baur's scheme. the canon the minds of new testament scholars in the last generation have been engaged with a question which, in its full significance, was hardly present to the attention of baur's school. it is the question of the new testament as a whole. it is the question as to the time and manner and motives of the gathering together of the separate writings into a canon of scripture which, despite the diversity of its elements, exerted its influence as a unit and to which an authority was ascribed, which the particular writings cannot originally have had. when and how did the christians come to have a sacred book which they placed on an equality with the old testament, which last they had taken over from the synagogue? how did they choose the writings which were to belong to this new collection? why did they reject books which we know were read for edification in the early churches? deeper even than the question of the growth of the collection is that of the growth of the apprehension concerning it. this apprehension of these twenty-seven different writings as constituting the sole document of christian revelation, given by the holy spirit, the identical holy book of the christian church, gave to the book a significance altogether different from that which its constituent elements must have had for men to whom they had appeared as but the natural literary deposit of the religious movement of the apostolic age. this apprehension took possession of the mind of the christian community. it was made the subject of deliverances by councils of the church. how did this great transformation take place? was it an isolated achievement, or was it part of a general movement? did not this development of life in the christian communities which gave them a new testament belong to an evolution which gave them also the so-called apostles' creed and a monarchical organisation of the church and the beginnings of a ritual of worship? it is clear that we have here a question of greatest moment. with the rise of this idea of the canon, with the assigning to this body of literature the character of scripture, we have the beginning of the larger mastery which the new testament has exerted over the minds and life of men. compared with this question, investigations as to the authorship and as to the time, place and circumstance of the production of particular books, came, for the time, to occupy a secondary rank. as they have emerged again, they wear a new aspect and are approached in a different spirit. the writings are revealed as belonging to a far larger context, that of the whole body of the christian literature of the age. it in no way follows from that which we have said that the body of documents, which ultimately found themselves together in the new testament, have not a unity other than the outward one which was by consensus of opinion or conciliar decree imposed upon them. they do represent, in the large and in varying degrees, an inward and spiritual unity. there was an inspiration of the main body of these writings, the outward condition of which, at all events, was the nearness of their writers to jesus or to his eye-witnesses, and the consequence of which was the unique relation which the more important of these documents historically bore to the formation of the christian church. there was a heaven which lay about the infancy of christianity which only slowly faded into the common light of day. that heaven was the spirit of the master himself. the chief of these writings do centrally enshrine the first pure illumination of that spirit. but the churchmen who made the canon and the fathers who argued about it very often gave mistaken reasons for facts in respect of which they nevertheless were right. they gave what they considered sound external reasons. they alleged apostolic authorship. they should have been content with internal evidence and spiritual effectiveness. the apostles had come, in the mind of the early church, to occupy a place of unique distinction. writings long enshrined in affection for their potent influence, but whose origin had not been much considered, were now assigned to apostles, that they might have authority and distinction. the theory of the canon came after the fact. the theory was often wrong. the canon had been, in the main and in its inward principle, soundly constituted. modern critics reversed the process. they began where the church fathers left off. they tore down first that which had been last built up. modern criticism, too, passed through a period in which points like those of authorship and date of gospels and epistles seemed the only ones to be considered. the results being here often negative, complete disintegration of the canon seemed threatened, through discovery of errors in the processes by which the canon had been outwardly built up. men realise now that that was a mistake. two things have been gained in this discussion. there is first the recognition that the canon is a growth. the holy book and the conception of its holiness, as well, were evolved. christianity was not primarily a book-religion save in the sense that almost all christians revered the old testament. other writings than those which we esteem canonical were long used in churches. some of those afterward canonical were not used in all the churches. in similar fashion we have learned that identical statements of faith were not current in the earliest churches. nor was there one uniform system of organisation and government. there was a time concerning which we cannot accurately use the word church. there were churches, very simple, worshipping communities. but the church, as outward magnitude, as triumphant organisation, grew. so there were many creeds or, at least, informally accredited and current beginnings of doctrine. by and by there was a formally accepted creed. so there were first dearly loved memorials of jesus and letters of apostolic men. only by and by was there a new testament. the first gain is the recognition of this state of things. the second follows. it is the recognition that, despite a sense in which this literature is unique, there is also a sense in which it is but a part of the whole body of early christian literature. from the exact and exhaustive study of the early christian literature as a whole, we are to expect a clearer understanding and a juster estimate of the canonical part of it. it is not easy to say to whom we have to ascribe the discovery and elaboration of these truths. the historians of dogma have done much for this body of opinion. the historians of christian literature have perhaps done more. students of institutions and of the canon law have had their share. baur had more than an inkling of the true state of things. but by far the most conspicuous teacher of our generation, in two at least of these particular fields, has been harnack. in his lifelong labour upon the sources of christian history, he had come upon this question of the canon again and again. in his _lehrbuch der dogmengeschichte_, - , te. aufl., , the view of the canon, which was given above, is absolutely fundamental. in his _geschichte der altchristlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , and _chronologic der allchristlichen literatur_, - , the evidence is offered in rich detail. it was in his tractate, _das neue testament um das jahr_ , , that he contended for the later date against zahn, who had urged that the outline of the new testament was established and the conception of it as scripture present, by the end of the first century. harnack argues that the decision practically shaped itself between the time of justin martyr, c. a.d. , and that of irenæus, c. a.d. . the studies of the last twenty years have more and more confirmed this view. life of jesus we said that the work of strauss revealed nothing so clearly as the ignorance of his time concerning the documents of the early christian movement. the labours of baur and of his followers were directed toward overcoming this difficulty. suddenly the public interest was stirred, and the earlier excitement recalled by the publication of a new life of jesus. the author was a frenchman, ernest renan, at one time a candidate for the priesthood in the roman church. he was a man of learning and literary skill, who made his _vie de jésus_, which appeared in , the starting-point for a series of historical works under the general title, _les origines de christianisme_. in the next year appeared strauss' popular work, _leben jesu für das deutsche volk_. in was published also weizsäcker's contribution to the life of christ, his _untersuchungen über die evangelische geschichte_. to the same year belonged schenkel's _charakterbild jesu_. in the years from - appeared keim's _geschichte jesu von nazara_. there is something very striking in this recurrence to the topic. after ail, this was the point for the sake of which those laborious investigations had been undertaken. this was and is the theme of undying religious interest, the character and career of the nazarene. renan's philosophical studies had been mainly in english, studies of locke and hume. but herder also had been his beloved guide. for his biblical and oriental studies he had turned almost exclusively to the germans. there is a deep religious spirit in the work of the period of his conflict with the church. the enthusiasm for christ sustained him in his struggle. of the days before he withdrew from the church he wrote: 'for two months i was a protestant like a professor in halle or tübingen.' french was at that time a language much better known in the world at large, particularly the english-speaking world, than was german. renan's book had great art and charm. it took a place almost at once as a bit of world-literature. the number of editions in french and of translations into other languages is amazing. beyond question, the critical position was made known through renan to multitudes who would never have been reached by the german works which were really renan's authorities. it is idle to say with pfleiderer that it is a pity that, having possessed so much learning, renan had not possessed more. that is not quite the point. the book has much breadth and solidity of learning. yet renan has scarcely the historian's quality. his work is a work of art. it has the halo of romance. imagination and poetical feeling make it in a measure what it is. renan was born in in treguier in brittany. he set out for the priesthood, but turned aside to the study of oriental languages and history. he made long sojourn in the east. he spoke of palestine as having been to him a fifth gospel. he became professor of hebrew in the _college de france_. he was suspended from his office in , and permitted to read again only in . he had formally separated himself from the roman church in . he was a member of the academy. his diction is unsurpassed. he died in . in his own phrase, he sought to bring jesus forth from the darkness of dogma into the midst of the life of his people. he paints him first as an idyllic national leader, then as a struggling and erring hero, always aiming at the highest, but doomed to tragic failure through the resistance offered by reality to his ideal. he calls the traditional christ an abstract being who never was alive. he would bring the marvellous human figure before our eyes. he heightens the brilliancy of his delineation by the deep shadows of mistakes and indiscretion upon jesus' part. in some respects an epic or an historical romance, without teaching us history in detail, may yet enable us by means of the artist's intuition to realise an event or period, or make presentation to ourselves of a personality, better than the scant records acknowledged by the strict historian could ever do. our materials for a real biography of jesus are inadequate. this was the fact which, by all these biographies of jesus, was brought home to men's minds. keim's book, the most learned of those mentioned, is hardly more than a vast collection of material for the history of jesus' age, which has now been largely superseded by schürer's _geschichte des judischen volkes im zeitalier jesu christi_, bde., - . there have been again, since the decade of the sixties, periods of approach to the great problem. weiss and beyschlag published at the end of the eighties lives of jesus which, especially the former, are noteworthy in their treatment of the critical material. they do not for a moment face the question of the person of christ. the same remark might be made, almost without exception, as to those lives of jesus which have appeared in numbers in england and america. the best books of recent years are albert reville's _jesus de nazareth_, , and oscar holtzmann's _leben jesu_, . so great are the difficulties and in such disheartening fashion are they urged from all sides, that one cannot withhold enthusiastic recognition of the service which holtzmann particularly has here rendered, in a calm, objective, and withal deeply devout handling of his theme. meantime new questions have arisen, questions of the relation of jesus to messianism, like those touched upon by wrede in his _das messias geheimniss in den evangelien_, , and questions as to the eschatological trait in jesus' own teaching. schweitzer's book, _von reimarus zu wrede: eine geschichte der leben jesu-forschung_, , not merely sets forth this deeply interesting chapter in the history of the thought of modern men, but has also serious interpretative value in itself. for english readers sanday's _life of christ in recent research_, , follows the descriptive aspect, at least, of the same purpose with schweitzer's book, covering, however, only the last twenty years. it is characteristic that ritschl, notwithstanding his emphasis upon the historical jesus, asserted the impossibility of a biography of jesus. the understanding of jesus is through faith. for wrede, on the other hand, such a biography is impossible because of the nature of our sources. not alone are they scant, but they are not biographical. they are apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything except those problems which a biographer must raise. the last few years have even conjured up the question whether jesus ever lived. one may say with all simplicity, that the question has, of course, as much rightfulness as has any other question any man could raise. the somewhat extended discussion has, however, done nothing to make evident how it could arise, save in minds unfamiliar with the materials and unskilled in historical research. the conditions which beset us when we ask for a biography of jesus that shall answer scientific requirement are not essentially different from those which meet us in the case of any other personage equally remote in point of time, and equally woven about--if any such have been--by the love and devotion of men. bousset's little book, _was wissen wir von jesus?_ , convinces a quiet mind that we know a good deal. qualities in the personality of jesus obviously worked in transcendent measure to call out devotion. no understanding of history is adequate which has no place for the unfathomed in personality. exactly because we ourselves share this devotion, we could earnestly wish that the situation as to the biography of jesus were other than it is. the old testament we have spoken thus far as if the whole biblical-critical problem had been that of the new testament. in reality the same impulses which had opened up that question to the minds of men had set them working upon the problem of the old testament as well. we have seen how the christians made for themselves a canon of the new testament. by the force of that conception of the canon, and through the belief that, almost in a literal sense, god was the author of the whole book, the obvious differences among the writings had been obscured. men forgot the evolution through which the writings had passed. the same thing had happened for the old testament in the jewish synagogues and for the rabbis before the christian movement. when the christians took over the old testament they took it over in this sense. it was a closed book wherein all appreciation of the long road which the religion of israel had traversed in its evolution had been lost. the relation of the old covenant to the new was obscured. the old testament became a christian book. not merely were the christian facts prophesied in the old testament, but its doctrines also were implied. almost down to modern times texts have been drawn indifferently from either testament to prove doctrine and sustain theology. moses and jesus, prophets and paul, are cited to support an argument, without any sense of difference. what we have said is hardly more true of augustine or anselm than of the classic puritan divines. this was the state of things which the critics faced. the old testament critical movement is a parallel at all points of the one which we have described in reference to the new. of course, elder scholars, even spinoza, had raised the question as to the mosaic authorship of certain portions of the pentateuch. roman catholic scholars in the seventeenth century, for whom the stringent theory of inspiration had less significance than for protestants, had set forth views which showed an awakening to the real condition. yet, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one would have forecast a revolution in opinion which would recognise the legendary quality of considerable portions of the pentateuch and historical books, which would leave but little that is of undisputed mosaic authorship, which would place the prophets before the law, which would concede the growth of the jewish canon, which would perceive the relation of judaism to the religions of the other semite peoples and would seek to establish the true relation of judaism to christianity. in the year , the same year in which strauss' _leben jesu_ saw the light, wilhelm vatke published his _religion des alten testaments_. vatke was born in , began to teach in berlin in , was professor extraordinarius there in and died in , not yet holding a full professorship. his book was obscurely written and scholastic. public attention was largely occupied by the conflict which strauss' work had caused. reuss in strassburg was working on the same lines, but published the main body of his results much later. the truth for which these scholars and others like them argued, worked its way slowly by force of its own merit. perhaps it was due to this fact that the development of old testament critical views was subject to a fluctuation less marked than that which characterised the case of the new testament. it is not necessary to describe the earlier stages of the discussion in vatke's own terms. to his honour be it said that the views which he thus early enunciated were in no small degree identical with those which were in masterful fashion substantiated in holland by kuenen about , in germany by wellhausen after , and made known to english readers by robertson smith in . budde has shown in his _kanon des alten testaments_, , that the old testament which lies before us finished and complete, assumed its present form only as the result of the growth of several centuries. at the beginning of this process of the canonisation stands that strange event, the sudden appearance of a holy book of the law under king josiah, in b.c. the end of the process, through the decisions of the scribes, falls after the destruction of jerusalem, possibly even in the second century. lagarde seems to have proved that the rabbis of the second century succeeded in destroying all copies of the scripture which differed from the standard then set up. this state of things has enormously increased a difficulty which was already great enough, that of the detection and separation of the various elements of which many of the books in this ancient literature are made up. certain books of the new testament also present the problem of the discrimination of elements of different ages, which have been wrought together into the documents as we now have them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage. the synoptic gospels are, of course, the great example. the book of the acts presents a problem of the same kind. but the pentateuch, or rather hexateuch, the historical books in less degree, the writings even of some of the prophets, the codes which formulate the law and ritual, are composites which have been whole centuries in the making and remaking. there was no such thing as right of authorship in ancient israel, little of it in the ancient world at all. what was once written was popular or priestly property. histories were newly narrated, laws enlarged and rearranged, prophecies attributed to conspicuous persons. all this took place not in deliberate intention to pervert historic truth, but because there was no interest in historic truth and no conception of it. the rewriting of a nation's history from the point of view of its priesthood bore, to the ancient israelite, beyond question, an aspect altogether different from that which the same transaction would bear to us. the difficulty of the separation of these materials, great in any case, is enhanced by the fact alluded to, that we have none but internal evidence. the success of the achievement, and the unanimity attained with reference to the most significant questions, is one of the marvels of the life of learning of our age. in the jewish tradition it had been assumed that the mosaic law was written down in the wilderness. then, in the times of the judges and of the kings, the historical books took shape, with david's psalms and the wise words of solomon. at the end of the period of the kings we have the prophetic literature and finally ezra and nehemiah. de wette had disputed this order, but wellhausen in his _prolegomena zur geshichte israels_, , may be said to have proved that this view was no longer tenable. men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of it, have been given to nomads in the wilderness? do not all parts of it assume a settled state of society and an agricultural life? do the historical books from judges to the ii. kings know anything about the law? are the practices of worship which they imply consonant with the supposition that the law was in force? how is it that that law appears both under josiah and again under ezra, as something new, thus far unknown, and yet as ruling the religious life of the people from that day forth? it seems impossible to escape the conclusion that only after josiah's reformation, more completely after the restoration under ezra, did the religion of the law exist. the centralisation of worship at one point, such as the book of deuteronomy demands, seems to have been the thing achieved by the reform under josiah. the establishment of the priestly hierarchy such as the code ordains was the issue of the religious revolution wrought in ezra's time. to put it differently, the so-called _book of the covenant, the nucleus of the law-giving_, itself implies the multiplicity of the places of worship. deuteronomy demands the centralisation of the worship as something which is yet to take place. the priestly code declares that the limitation of worship to one place was a fact already in the time of the journeys of israel in the wilderness. it is assumed that the hebrews in the time of moses shared the almost universal worship of the stars. moses may indeed have concluded a covenant between his people and jahve, their god, hallowing the judicial and moral life of the people, bringing these into relation to the divine will. jahve was a holy god whose will was to guide the people coming up out of the degradation of nature-worship. that part of the people held to the old nature-worship is evident in the time of elijah. the history of israel is not that of defection from a pure revelation. it is the history of a gradual attainment of purer revelation, of enlargement in the application of it, of discovery of new principles contained in it. it is the history also of the decline of spiritual religion. the zeal of the prophets against the ceremonial worship shows that. their protest reveals at that early date the beginning of that antithesis which had become so sharp in jesus' time. this determination of the relative positions of law and prophets was the first step in the reconstruction of the history, both of the nation of israel and of its literature. at the beginning, as in every literature, are songs of war and victory, of praise and grief, hymns, even riddles and phrases of magic. everywhere poetry precedes prose. then come myths relating to the worship and tales of the fathers and heroes. elements of both these sorts are embedded in the simple chronicles which began now to be written, primitive historical works, such as those of the jahvist and elohist, of the narrators of the deeds of the judges and of david and of saul. perhaps at this point belong the earliest attempts at fixing the tradition of family and clan rights, and of the regulation of personal conduct, as in the book of the covenant. then comes the great outburst of the prophetic spirit, the preaching of an age of great religious revival. then follows the law, with its minute regulation of all details of life upon which would depend the favour of the god who had brought punishment upon the people in the exile. the prophecy runs on into apocalyptic like that of the book of daniel. the contact with the outside world makes possible a phase of literature such as that to which the books of job and ecclesiastes belong. the deepening of the inner life gave the world the lyric of the psalms, some of which are credibly assigned to a period so late as that of the maccabees. in this which has been said of the literature we have the clue also for the reconstruction of the nation's history. the naïve assumption in the writing of all history had once been that one must begin with the beginning. but to wellhausen, stade, eduard meyer and kittel and cornill, it has been clear that the history of the earliest times is the most uncertain. it is the least adapted to furnish a secure point of departure for historical inquiry. there exist for it usually no contemporary authorities, or only such as are of problematical worth. this earliest period constitutes a problem, the solution of which, so far as any solution is possible, can be hoped for only through approach from the side of ascertained facts. we must start from a period which is historically known. for the history of the hebrews, this is the time of the first prophets of whom we have written records, or from whom we have written prophecies. we get from these, as also from the earliest direct attempts at history writing, only that conception of israel's pre-historic life which was entertained in prophetic circles in the eighth century. we learn the heroic legends in the interpretation which the prophets put upon them. we have still to seek to interpret them for ourselves. we must begin in the middle and work both backward and forward. such a view of the history of israel affords every opportunity for the connecting of the history and religion of israel with those of the other semite stocks. some of these have in recent years been discovered to offer extraordinary parallels to that which the old testament relates. the history of doctrine when speaking of baur's contribution to new testament criticism, we alluded to his historical works. he was in a distinct sense a reformer of the method of the writing of church history. to us the notions of the historical and of that which is genetic are identical. of course, naïve religious chronicles do not meet that test. a glance at the histories produced by the age of rationalism will show that these also fall short of it. the perception of the relativity of institutions like the papacy is here wholly wanting. men and things are brought summarily to the bar of the wisdom of the author's year of grace. they are approved or condemned by this criterion. for baur, all things had come to pass in the process of the great life of the world. there must have been a rationale of their becoming. it is for the historian with sympathy and imagination to find out what their inherent reason was. one other thing distinguishes baur as church historian from his predecessors. he realised that before one can delineate one must investigate. one must go to the sources. one must estimate the value of those sources. one must have ground in the sources for every judgment. baur was himself a great investigator. yet the movement for the investigation of the sources of biblical and ecclesiastical history which his generation initialed has gone on to such achievements that, in some respects, we can but view the foundations of baur's own work as precarious, the results at which he arrived as unwarranted. new documents have come to light since his day. forgeries have been proved to be such, the whole state of learning as to the literature of the christian origins has been vastly changed. there is still another other thing to say concerning baur. he was a hegelian. he has the disposition always to interpret the movements of the religious spirit in the sense of philosophical ideas. he frankly says that without speculation every historical investigation remains but a play upon the surface of things. baur's fault was that in his search for, or rather in his confident discovery of, the great connecting forces of history, the biographical element, the significance of personality, threatened altogether to disappear. the force in the history was the absolute, the immanent divine will. the method everywhere was that of advance by contrasts and antagonisms. one gets an impression, for example, that the nicene dogma became what it did by the might of the idea, that it could not by any possibility have had any other issue. the foil to much of this in baur's own age was represented in the work of neander, a converted jew, professor of church history in berlin, who exerted great influence upon a generation of english and american scholars. he was not an investigator of sources. he had no talent for the task. he was a delineator, one of the last of the great painters of history, if one may so describe the type. he had imagination, sympathy, a devout spirit. his great trait was his insight into personality. he wrote history with the biographical interest. he almost resolves history into a series of biographical types. he has too little sense for the connexion of things, for the laws of the evolution of the religious spirit. the great dramatic elements tend to disappear behind the emotions of individuals. the old delineators were before the age of investigation. since that impulse became masterful, some historians have been completely absorbed in the effort to make contribution to this investigation. others, with a sense of the impossibility of mastering the results of investigation in all fields, have lost the zeal for the writing of church history on a great scale. they have contented themselves with producing monographs upon some particular subject, in which, at the most, they may hope to embody all that is known as to some specific question. we spoke above of the new conception of the relation of the canonical literature of the new testament to the extracanonical. we alluded to the new sense of the continuity of the history of the apostolic churches with that of the church of the succeeding age. the influence of these ideas has been to set all problems here involved in a new light. until it might have been said with truth that we had no good history of the apostolic age. in that year weizsäcker's book, _das apostolische zeitalter der christlichen kirche_, admirably filled the place. a part of the problem of the historian of the apostolic age is difficult for the same reason which was given when we were speaking of the biography of jesus. our materials are inadequate. first with the beginning of the activities of paul have we sources of the first rank. the relation of statements in the pauline letters to data in the book of the acts was one of the earliest problems which the tübingen school set itself. an attempt to write the biography of paul reminds us sharply of our limitations. we know almost nothing of paul prior to his conversion, or subsequent to the enigmatical breaking off of the account of the beginnings of his work at rome. harnack's _mission und ausbreitung des christenthums_, (translated, moffatt, ), takes up the work of paul's successors in that cardinal activity. it offers, strange as it may seem, the first discussion of the dissemination of christianity which has dealt adequately with the sources. it gives also a picture of the world into which the christian movement went. it emphasises anew the truth which has for a generation past grown in men's apprehension that there is no possibility of understanding christianity, except against the background of the religious life and thought of the world into which it came. christianity had vital relation, at every step of its progress, to the religious movements and impulses of the ancient world, especially in those centres of civilisation which paul singled out for his endeavour and which remained the centres of the christian growth. it was an age which has often been summarily described as corrupt. despite its corruption, or possibly because it was corrupt, it gives evidence, however, of religious stirring, of strong ethical reaction, of spiritual endeavour rarely paralleled. in the roman empire everything travelled. religions travelled. in the centres of civilisation there was scarcely a faith of mankind which had not its votaries. it was an age of religious syncretism, of hospitality to diverse religious ideas, of the commingling of those ideas. these things facilitated the progress of christianity. they made certain that if the christian movement had in it the divine vitality which men claimed, it would one day conquer the world. equally, they made certain that, as the very condition of this conquest, christianity would be itself transformed. this it is which has happened in the evolution of christianity from its very earliest stages and in all phases of its life. of any given rite, opinion or institution, of the many which have passed for almost two millenniums unchallenged under the christian name, men about us are now asking: but how much of it is christian? in what measure have we to think of it as derived from some other source, and representing the accommodation and assimilation of christianity to its environment in process of its work? what is christianity? not unnaturally the ancient church looked with satisfaction upon the great change which passed over christianity when constantine suddenly made that which had been the faith of a despised and persecuted sect, the religion of the world. the fathers can have thought thus only because their minds rested upon that which was outward and spectacular. not unnaturally the metamorphosis in the inward nature of christianity which had taken place a century and a quarter earlier was hidden from their eyes. in truth, by that earlier and subtler transformation christianity had passed permanently beyond the stage in which it had been preponderantly a moral and spiritual enthusiasm, with its centre and authority in the person of jesus. it became a system and an institution, with a canon of new testament scripture, a monarchical organisation and a rule of faith which was formulated in the apostles' creed. to baur the truth as to the conflict of paul with the judaisers had meant much. he thought, therefore, with reference to the rise of priesthood and ritual among the christians, to the emphasis on scripture in the fashion of the scribes, to the insistence upon rules and dogmas after the manner of the pharisees, that they were but the evidence of the decline and defeat of paul's free spirit and of the resurgence of judaism in christianity. he sought to explain the rise of the episcopal organisation by the example of the synagogue. ritschl in his _entstehung der alt-catholischen kirche_, , had seen that baur's theory could not be true. christianity did not fall back into judaism. it went forward to embrace the hellenic and roman world. the institutions, dogmas, practices of that which, after a.d. , may with propriety be called the catholic church, are the fruit of that embrace. there was here a falling off from primitive and spiritual christianity. but it was not a falling back into judaism. there were priests and scribes and pharisees with other names elsewhere. the phenomenon of the waning of the original enthusiasm of a period of religious revelation has been a frequent one. christianity on a grand scale illustrated this phenomenon anew. harnack has elaborated this thesis with unexampled brilliancy and power. he has supported it with a learning in which he has no rival and with a religious interest which not even hostile critics would deny. the phrase, 'the hellenisation of christianity,' might almost be taken as the motto of the work to which he owes his fame. harnack adolf harnack was born in in dorpat, in one of the baltic provinces of russia. his father, theodosius harnack, was professor of pastoral theology in the university of dorpat. harnack studied in leipzig and began to teach there in . he was called to the chair of church history in giessen in . in he removed to marburg and in to berlin. harnack's earlier published work was almost entirely in the field of the study of the sources and materials of early church history. his first book, published in , was an inquiry as to the sources for the history of gnosticism. his _patrum apostolicorum opera_, , prepared by him jointly with von gehhardt and zahn, was in a way only a forecast of the great collection, _texte und untersuchungen zur geschickte der alt-christlichen literatur_, begun in , upon which numbers of scholars have worked together with him. the collection has already more than thirty-five volumes. in his own two works, _die geschichte der alt-christlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , and _die chronologie der alt-christlichen literatur bis eusebius_, , are deposited the results of his reflexion on the mass of this material. his _beitrage zur einleitung in das neue testament_, , etc., should not be overlooked. he has had the good fortune to be among those who have discovered manuscripts of importance. he has had to do with the prussian academy's edition of the greek fathers. a list of his published works, which was prepared in connexion with the celebration of his sixtieth birthday in , bears witness to his amazing diligence and fertility. he was for thirty-five years associated with schurer in the publication of the _theologische literaturzeitung_. he has filled important posts in the church and under the government. to this must be added an activity as a teacher which has placed a whole generation of students from every portion of the world under undying obligation. one speaks with reserve of the living, but surely no man of our generation has done more to make the history of which we write. harnack's epoch-making work was his _lehrbuch der dogmengeschichte_, - , fourth edition, . the book met, almost from the moment of its appearance, with the realisation of the magnitude of that which had been achieved. it rested upon a fresh and independent study of the sources. it departed from the mechanism which had made the old treatises upon the history of doctrine formal and lifeless. harnack realised to the full how many influences other than theological had had part in the development of doctrine. he recognised the reaction of modes of life and practice, and of external circumstances on the history of thought. his history of doctrine has thus a breadth and human quality never before attained. philosophy, worship, morals, the development of church government and of the canon, the common interests and passions of the age and those of the individual participants, are all made tributary to his delineation. harnack cannot share baur's view that the triumph of the logos-christology at nicæa and chalcedon was inevitable. a certain historic naturalness of the movement he would concede, the world on which christianity entered being what it was. he is aware, however, that many elements other than christian have entered into the development. he has phrased his apprehension thus. that hellenisation of christianity which gnosticism represented, and against which, in this, its acute form, the church contended was, after all, the same thing which, by slower process and more unconsciously, befell the church itself. that pure moral enthusiasm and inspiration which had been the gist of the christian movement, in its endeavour to appropriate the world, had been appropriated by the world in far greater measure than its adherents knew. it had taken up its mission to change the world. it had dreamed that while changing the world it had itself remained unchanged. the world was changed, the world of life, of feeling and of thought. but christianity was also changed. it had conquered the world. it had no perception of the fact that it illustrated the old law that the conquered give laws to the conquerors. it had fused the ancient culture with the flame of its inspiration. it did not appreciate the degree in which the elements of that ancient culture now coloured its far-shining flame. it had been a maker of history. meantime it had been unmade and remade by its own history. it confidently carried back its canon, dogma, organisation, to christ and the apostles. it did not realise that the very fact that it could find these things natural and declare them ancient, proved with conclusiveness that it had itself departed from the standard of christ and the apostles. it esteemed that these were its defences against the world. it little dreamed that they were, by their very existence, the evidence of the fact that the church had not defended itself against the world. its dogma was the hellenisation of its thought. its organisation was the romanising of its life. its canon and ritual were the externalising, and conventionalising of its spirit and enthusiasm. these are positive and constructive statements of harnack's main position. when, however, they are turned about and stated negatively, these statements all convey, more or less, the impression that the advance of christianity had been its destruction, and the evolution of dogma had been a defection from christ. this is the aspect of the contention which gave hostile critics opportunity to say that we have before us the history of the loss of christianity. harnack himself has many sentences which superficially will bear that construction. hatch had said in his brilliant book, _the influence of greek ideas and usages upon the christian church_, , that the domestication of greek philosophy in the church signified a defection from the sermon on the mount. the centre of gravity of the gospel was changed from life to doctrine, from morals to metaphysics, from goodness to orthodoxy. the change was portentous. the aspect of pessimism is, however, removed when one recognises the inevitableness of some such process, if christianity was ever to wield an influence in the world at all. again, one must consider that the process of the recovery of pure christianity must begin at exactly this point, namely, with the recognition of how much in current christianity is extraneous. it must begin with the sloughing off of these extraneous elements, with the recovery of the sense for that which original christianity was. such a recovery would be the setting free again of the power of the religion itself. the constant touchstone and point of reference for every stage of the history of the church must be the gospel of jesus. but what was the gospel of jesus? in what way did the very earliest christians apprehend that gospel? this question is far more difficult for us to answer than it was for those to whom the new testament was a closed body of literature, externally differentiated from all other, and with a miraculous inspiration extending uniformly to every phrase in any book. these men would have said that they had but to find the proper combination of the sacred phrases. but we acknowledge that the central inspiration was the personality of jesus. the books possess this inspiration in varying degree. certain of the books have distinctly begun the fusion of christian with other elements. they themselves represent the first stages of the history of doctrine. we acknowledge that those utterances of jesus which have been preserved for us, shaped themselves by the antitheses in which jesus stood. there is much about them that is palpably incidental, practically relevant and unquestionably only relative. in a large sense, much of the meaning of the gospel has to be gathered out of the evidence of the operation of its spirit in subsequent ages of the christian church, and from remoter aspects of the influence of jesus on the world. thus the very conception of the gospel of jesus becomes inevitably more or less subjective. it becomes an ideal construction. the identification of this ideal with the original gospel proclamation becomes precarious. we seem to move in a circle. we derive the ideal from the history, and then judge the history by the ideal. is there any escape from this situation, short of the return to the authority of church or scripture in the ancient sense? furthermore, even the men to whom the gospel was in the strictest sense a letter, identified the gospel with their own private interpretation of this letter. certainly the followers of ritschl who will acknowledge no traits of the gospel save those of which they find direct witness in the gospels, thus ignore that the gospels are themselves interpretations. this undue stress upon the documents which we are fortunate enough to possess, makes us forget the limitations of these documents. we tend thus to exaggerate that which must be only incidental, as, for example, the jewish element, in the teaching of jesus. we thus underrate phases of jesus' teaching which, no doubt, a man like paul would have apprehended better than did the evangelists themselves. in truth, in harnack's own delineation of the teaching of jesus, those elements of it which found their way to expression in paul, or again in the fourth gospel, are rather underrated than overstated, in the author's anxiety to exclude elements which are acknowledged to be interpretative in their nature. we are driven, in some measure, to seek to find out what the gospel was from the way in which the earliest christians took it up. we return ever afresh to questions nearly unanswerable from the materials at hand. what was the central principle in the shaping of the earliest stages of the new community, both as to its thought and life? was it the longing for the coming of the kingdom of god, the striving after the righteousness of the sermon on the mount? or was it the faith of the messiah, the reverence for the messiah, directed to the person of jesus? what word dominated the preaching? was it that the kingdom of god was near, that the son of man would come? or was it that in jesus messiah has come? what was the demand upon the hearer? was it, repent, or was it, believe on the lord jesus, or was it both, and which had the greater emphasis? was the name of jesus used in the formulas of worship before the time of paul? what do we know about prayer in the name of jesus, or baptism in that name, or miracles in the name of jesus, or of the lord's supper and the conception of the lord as present with his disciples in the rite? was this revering of jesus, which was fast moving toward a worship of him, the inner motive force of the whole construction of the dogma of his person and of the trinity? in the second volume harnack treats of the development primarily of the christological and trinitarian dogma, from the fourth to the seventh centuries. the dramatic interest of the narrative exceeds anything which has been written on this theme. a debate which to most modern men is remote and abstruse almost to the point of unintelligibility, and of which many of the external aspects are disheartening in the extreme, is here brought before us in something of the reasonableness which it must have had for those who took part in it. tertullian shaped the problem and established the nomenclature for the christological solution which the orient two hundred years later made its own. it was he who, from the point of view of the jurist, rather than of the philosopher, gave the words 'person' and 'substance,' which continually occur in this discussion, the meaning which in the nicene creed they bear. most brilliant is harnack's characterisation of arius and athanasius. in arius the notion of the son of god is altogether done away. only the name remains. the victory of arianism would have resolved christianity into cosmology and formal ethics. it would have destroyed it as religion. yet the perverse situation into which the long and fierce controversy had drifted cannot be better illustrated than by one undisputed fact. athanasius, who assured for christianity its character as a religion of the living communion of god with man, is yet the theologian in whose christology almost every possible trace of the recollection of the historic jesus has disappeared. the purpose of the redemption is to bring men into community of life with god. but athanasius apprehended this redemption as a conferment, from without and from above, of a divine nature. he subordinated everything to this idea. the whole narrative concerning jesus falls under the interpretation that the only quality requisite for the redeemer in his work was the possession in all fulness of the divine nature. his incarnation, his manifestation in real human life, held fast to in word, is reduced to a mere semblance. salvation is not an ethical process, but a miraculous endowment. the christ, who was god, lifts men up to godhood. they become god. these phrases are of course capable of ethical and intelligible meaning. the development of the doctrine, however, threw the emphasis upon the metaphysical and miraculous aspects of the work. it gloried in the fact that the presence of divine and human, two natures in one person forever, was unintelligible. in the end it came to pass that the enthusiastic assent to that which defied explanation became the very mark of a humble and submissive faith. one reads the so-called athanasian creed, and hears the ring of its determination to exact assent. it had long since been clear to these catholics and churchmen that, with the mere authority of scripture, it was not possible to defend christianity against the heretics. the heresies read their heresies out of the bible. the orthodox read orthodoxy from the same page. marcion had proved that, in the very days when the canon took its shape. there must be an authority to define the interpretation of the scripture. those who would share the benefits which the church dispensed must assent unconditionally to the terms of membership. all these questions were veiled for the early christians behind the question of the kind of christ in whom their hearts believed. with all that we have said about the reprehensible admixture of the metaphysical element in the dogma, with all the accusation which we bring concerning acute or gradual hellenisation, secularisation and defection from the christ, we ought not to hide from ourselves that in this gigantic struggle there were real religious interests at stake, and that for the men of both parties. dimly, or perhaps vividly, the man of either party felt that the conception of the christ which he was fighting for was congruous with the conception of religion which he had, or felt that he must have. it is this religious issue, everywhere present, which gives dignity to a struggle which otherwise does often sadly lack it. there are two religious views of the person of christ which have stood, from the beginning, the one over against the other.[ ] the one saw in jesus of nazareth a man, distinguished by his special calling as the messianic king, endued with special powers, lifted above all men ever known, yet a man, completely subject to god in faith, obedience and prayer. this view is surely sustained by many of jesus' own words and deeds. it shines through the testimony of the men who followed him. even the belief in his resurrection and his second coming did not altogether do away with it. the other view saw in him a new god who, descending from god, brought mysterious powers for the redemption of mankind into the world, and after short obscuring of his glory, returned to the abode of god, where he had been before. from this belief come all the hymns and prayers to jesus as to god, all miracles and exorcisms in his name. [footnote : wernle, _einfzhrung in das theologische studium_, , v. .] in the long run, the simpler view did not maintain itself. if false gods and demons were expelled, it was the god jesus who expelled them. the more modest faith believed that in the man jesus, being such an one as he was, men had received the greatest gift which the love of god had to bestow. in turn the believer felt the assurance that he also was a child of god, and in the spirit of jesus was to realise that sonship. syncretist religions suggested other thoughts. we see that already even in the synoptic tradition the calling upon the name of jesus had found place. one wonders whether that first apprehension ever stood alone in its purity. the gentile churches founded by paul, at all events, had no such simple trust. equally, the second form of faith seems never to have been able to stand alone in its peculiar quality. some of the gnostic sects had it. marcion again is our example. the new god jesus had nothing to do with the cruel god of the old testament. he supplanted the old god and became the only god. in the church the new god, come down from heaven, must be set in relation with the long-known god of israel. no less, must he stand in relation to the simple hero of the gospels with his human traits. the problem of theological reflexion was to find the right middle course, to keep the divine christ in harmony, on the one side, with monotheism, and on the other, with the picture which the gospels gave. belief knew nothing of these contradictions. the same simple soul thanked god for jesus with his sorrows and his sympathy, as man's guide and helper, and again prayed to jesus because he seemed too wonderful to be a man. the same kind of faith achieves the same wondering and touching combination to-day, after two thousand years. with thought comes trouble. reflexion wears itself out upon the insoluble difficulty, the impossible combination, the flat contradiction, which the two views present, so soon as they are clearly seen. in the earliest christian writings the fruit of this reflexion lies before us in this form:--the creator of worlds, the mediator, the lord of angels and demons, the logos which was god and is our saviour, was yet a humble son of man, undergoing suffering and death, having laid aside his divine glory. this picture is made with materials which the canonical writings themselves afford. theological study had henceforth nothing to do but to avoid extremes and seek to make this image, which reflexion upon two polar opposites had yielded, as nearly thinkable as possible. it has been said that the trinitarian doctrine is not in the new testament, that it was later elaborated by a different kind of mind. this is not true. but the inference is precisely the contrary of that which defenders of the dogma would formerly have drawn from this concession. the same kind of mind, or rather the same two kinds of mind, are at work in the new testament. both of the religious elements above suggested are in the gospels and epistles. the new testament presents attempts at their combination. either form may be found in the literature of the later age. if we ask ourselves, what is that in jesus which gives us the sense of redemption, surely we should answer, it is his glad and confident resting in the love of god the father. it is his courage, his faith in men, which becomes our faith in ourselves. it is his wonderful mingling of purity and love of righteousness with love of those who have sinned. you may find this in the ancient literature, as the fathers describe that to which their souls cling. but this is not the point of view from which the dogma is organised. the nicene christology is not to be understood from this approach. the cry of a dying civilisation after power and light and life, the feeling that these might come to it, streaming down as it were, from above, as a physical, a mechanical, a magical deliverance, this is the frame within which is set what is here said of the help and redemption wrought by christ. the resurrection and the incarnation are the points at which this streaming in of the divine light and power upon a darkened world is felt. that religion seemed the highest, that interpretation of christianity the truest, the absolute one, which could boast that it possessed the power of the almighty through his physical union with men. he who contended that jesus was god, contended therewith for a power which could come upon men and make them in some sense one with god. this is the view which has been almost exclusively held in the greek church. it is the view which has run under and through and around the other conception in the roman and protestant churches. the sense that salvation is inward, moral, spiritual, has rarely indeed been absent from christendom. it would be preposterous to allege that it had. yet this sense has been overlaid and underrun and shot through with that other and disparate idea of salvation, as of a pure bestowment, something achieved apart from us, or, if one may so say, some alteration of ourselves upon other than moral and spiritual terms. the conception of the person christ shows the same uncertainty. or rather, with a given view of the nature of religion and salvation, the corresponding view of christ is certain. in the age-long and world-wide contest over the trinitarian formula, with all that is saddening in the struggle and all that was misleading in the issue, it is because we see men struggling to come into the clear as to these two meanings of religion, that the contest has such absorbing interest. men have been right in declining to call that religion in which a man saves himself. they have been wrong in esteeming that they were then only saved of god or christ when they were saved by an obviously external process. even this antinomy is softened when one no longer holds that god and men are mutually exclusive conceptions. it is god working within us who saves, the god who in jesus worked such a wonder of righteousness and love as else the world has never seen. chapter v the contribution of the natural and social sciences by the middle of the nineteenth century the empirical sciences had undergone vast expansion in the study of detail and in the discovery of principles. men felt the necessity of some adequate discussion of the relation of these sciences one to another and of their unity. there was need of the organisation of the mass of knowledge, largely new and ever increasing, which the sciences furnished. it lay in the logic of the case that some of these attempts should advance the bold claim to deal with all knowledge whatsoever and to offer a theory of the universe as a whole. religion, both in its mythological and in its theological stages, had offered a theory of the universe as a whole. the great metaphysical systems had offered theories of the universe as a whole. both had professed to include all facts. notoriously both theology and metaphysics had dealt in most inadequate fashion with the material world, in the study of which the sciences were now achieving great results. indeed, the methods current and authoritative with theologians and metaphysicians had actually prevented study of the physical universe. both of these had invaded areas of fact to which their methods had no application and uttered dicta which had no relation to truth. the very life of the sciences depended upon deliverance from this bondage. the record of that deliverance is one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of thought. could one be surprised if, in the resentment which long oppression had engendered and in the joy which overwhelming victory had brought, scientific men now invaded the fields of their opponents? they repaid their enemies in their own coin. there was with some a disposition to deny that there exists an area of knowledge to which the methods of metaphysicians and theologians might apply. this was comte's contention. others conceded that there might be such an area, but claimed that we can have no knowledge of it. even the theologians, after their first shock, were disposed to concede that, concerning the magnitudes in which they were most interested, as for example, god and soul, we have no knowledge of the sort which the method of the physical sciences would give. they fell back upon kant's distinction of the two reasons and two worlds. they exaggerated the sharpness of that distinction. they learned that the claim of agnosticism was capable of being viewed as a line of defence, behind which the transcendental magnitudes might be secure. indeed, if one may take spencer as an example, it is not certain that this was not the intent of some of the scientists in their strong assertion of agnosticism. spencer's later work reveals that he had no disposition to deny that there are foundations for belief in a world lying behind the phenomenal, and from which the latter gets its meaning. meantime, after positivism was buried and agnosticism dead, a thing was achieved for which comte himself laid the foundation and in which spencer as he grew older was ever more deeply interested. this was the great development of the social sciences. every aspect of the life of man, including religion itself, has been drawn within the area of the social sciences. to all these subjects, including religion, there have been applied empirical methods which have the closest analogy with those which have reigned in the physical sciences. psychology has been made a science of experiment, and the psychology of religion has been given a place within the area of its observations and generalizations. the ethical, and again the religious consciousness has been subjected to the same kind of investigation to which all other aspects of consciousness are subjected. effort has been made to ascertain and classify the phenomena of the religious life of the race in all lands and in all ages. a science of religions is taking its place among the other sciences. it is as purely an inductive science as is any other. the history of religions and the philosophy of religion are being rewritten from this point of view. in the first lines of this chapter we spoke of the empirical sciences, meaning the sciences of the material world. it is clear, however, that the sciences of mind, of morals and of religion have now become empirical sciences. they have their basis in experience, the experience of individuals and the experience of masses of men, of ages of observable human life. they all proceed by the method of observation and inference, of hypothesis and verification. there is a unity of method as between the natural and social and psychical sciences, the reach of which is startling to reflect upon. indeed, the physiological aspects of psychology, the investigations of the relation of adolescence to conversion, suggest that the distinction between the physical and the psychical is a vanishing distinction. science comes nearer to offering an interpretation of the universe as a whole than the opening paragraphs of this chapter would imply. but it does so by including religion, not by excluding it. no one would any longer think of citing kant's distinction of two reasons and two worlds in the sense of establishing a city of refuge into which the persecuted might flee. kant rendered incomparable service by making clear two poles of thought. yet we must realise how the space between is filled with the gradations of an absolute continuity of activity. man has but one reason. this may conceivably operate upon appropriate material in one or the other of these polar fashions. it does operate in infinite variations of degree, in unity with itself, after both fashions, at all times and upon all materials. positivism was a system. agnosticism was at least a phase of thought. the broadening of the conception of science and the invasion of every area of life by a science thus broadly conceived, has been an influence less tangible than those others but not, therefore, less effective. positivism was bitterly hostile to christianity, though, in the mind of comte himself and of a few others, it produced a curious substitute, possessing many of the marks of roman catholicism. the name 'agnostic' was so loosely used that one must say that the contention was hostile to religion in the minds of some and not of others. the new movement for an inclusive science is not hostile to religion. yet it will transform current conceptions of religion as those others never did. in proportion as it is scientific, it cannot be hostile. it may at most be indifferent. nevertheless, in the long run, few will choose the theme of religion for the scientific labour of life who have not some interest in religion. men of these three classes have accepted the doctrine of evolution. comte thought he had discovered it. spencer and those for whom we have taken him as type, did service in the elaboration of it. to the men of our third group, the truth of evolution seems no longer debatable. here too, in the word 'evolution,' we have a term which has been used with laxity. it corresponds to a notion which has only gradually been evolved. its implications were at first by no means understood. it was associated with a mechanical view of the universe which was diametrically opposed to its truth. still, there could not be a doubt that the doctrine contravened those ideas as to the origin of the world, and more particularly of man, of the relations of species, and especially of the human species to other forms of animal life, which had immemorially prevailed in christian circles and which had the witness of the scriptures on their behalf. if we were to attempt, with acknowledged latitude, to name a book whose import might be said to be cardinal for the whole movement treated of in this chapter, that book would be darwin's _origin of species_, which was published in . long before darwin the creation legend had been recognised as such. the astronomy of the seventeenth century had removed the earth from its central position. the geology of the eighteenth had shown how long must have been the ages of the laying down of the earth's strata. the question of the descent of man, however, brought home the significance of evolution for religion more forcibly than any other aspect of the debate had done. there were scientific men of distinction who were not convinced of the truth of the evolutionary hypothesis. to most christian men the theory seemed to leave no unique distinction or spiritual quality for man. it seemed to render impossible faith in the scriptures as revelation. to many it seemed that the whole issue as between a spiritual and a purely materialistic view of the universe was involved. particularly was this true of the english-speaking peoples. one other factor in the transformation of the christian view needs to be dwelt upon. it is less theoretical than those upon which we have dwelt. it is the influence of socialism, taking that word in its largest sense. an industrial civilisation has developed both the good and the evil of individualism in incredible degree. the unity of society which the feudal system and the church gave to europe in the middle age had been destroyed. the individualism and democracy which were essential to protestantism notoriously aided the civil and social revolution, but the centrifugal forces were too great. initiative has been wonderful, but cohesion is lacking. democracy is yet far from being realised. the civil liberations which were the great crises of the western world from to appear now to many as deprived of their fruit. governments undertake on behalf of subjects that which formerly no government would have dreamed of doing. the demand is that the church, too, become a factor in the furtherance of the outward and present welfare of mankind. if that meant the call to love and charity it would be an old refrain. that is exactly what it does not mean. it means the attack upon evils which make charity necessary. it means the taking up into the idealisation of religion the endeavour to redress all wrongs, to do away with all evils, to confer all goods, to create a new world and not, as heretofore, mainly at least, a new soul in the midst of the old world. no one can deny either the magnitude of the evils which it is sought to remedy, or the greatness of the goal which is thus set before religion. the volume of religious and christian literature devoted to these social questions is immense. it is revolutionary in its effect. for, after all, the very gist of religion has been held to be that it deals primarily with the inner life and the transcendent world. that it has dealt with the problem of the inner life and transcendent world in such a manner as to retard, or even only not to further, the other aspects of man's life is indeed a grave indictment. that it should, however, see ends in the outer life and present world as ends fully sufficient in themselves, that it should cease to set these in the light of the eternal, is that it should cease to be religion. the physical and social sciences have given to men an outward setting in the world, a basis of power and happiness such as men never have enjoyed. yet the tragic failure of our civilisation to give to vast multitudes that power and happiness, is the proof that something more than the outward basis is needed. the success of our civilisation is its failure. this is by no means a recurrence to the old antithesis of religion and civilisation, as if these were contradictory elements. on the contrary, it is but to show that the present world of religion and of economics are not two worlds, but merely different aspects of the same world. therewith it is not alleged that religion has not a specific contribution to make. positivism the permanent influence of that phase of thought which called itself positivism has not been great. but a school of thought which numbered among its adherents such men and women as john stuart mill, george henry lewes, george eliot, frederic harrison, and matthew arnold, cannot be said to have been without significance. a book upon the translation of which harriet martinean worked with sustained enthusiasm cannot be dismissed as if it were merely a curiosity. comte's work, _coura de philosophie positive_, appeared between the years and . littré was his chief french interpreter. but the history of the positivist movement belongs to the history of english philosophical and religious thought, rather than to that of france. comte was born at montpellier in , of a family of intense roman catholic piety. he showed at school a precocity which might bear comparison with mill's. expelled from school, cast off by his parents, dismissed by the elder casimir perier, whose secretary he had been, he eked out a living by tutoring in mathematics. friends of his philosophy rallied to his support. he never occupied a post comparable with his genius. he was unhappy in his marriage. he passed through a period of mental aberration, due, perhaps, to the strain under which he worked. he did not regain his liberty without an experience which embittered him against the church. during the fourteen years of the production of his book he cut himself off from any reading save that of current scientific discovery. he came under the influence of madame vaux, whom, after her death, he idolised even more than before. for the problem which, in the earlier portion of his work, he set himself, that namely, of the organising of the sciences into a compact body of doctrine, he possessed extraordinary gifts. later, he took on rather the air of a high priest of humanity, legislating concerning a new religion. it is but fair to say that at this point littré and many others parted company with comte. he developed a habit and practice ascetic in its rigour and mystic in its devotion to the positivists' religion--the worship of humanity. he was the friend and counsellor of working-men and agitators, of little children, of the poor and miserable. he ended his rather pathetic and turbulent career in , gathering a few disciples about his bed as he remembered that socrates had done. comte begins with the natural sciences and postulates the doctrine of evolution. to the definition of this doctrine he makes some interesting approaches. the discussion of the order and arrangement of the various sciences and of their characteristic differences is wonderful in its insight and suggestiveness. he asserts that in the study of nature we are concerned solely with the facts before us and the relations which connect those facts. we have nothing to do with the supposed essence or hidden nature and meaning of those facts. facts and the invariable laws which govern them are the only legitimate objects of pursuit. comte infers that because we can know, in this sense, only phenomena and their relations, we should in consequence guard against illusions which creep in again if we so much as use the words principle, or cause, or will, or force. by phenomena must be understood objects of perception, to the exclusion, for example, of psychological changes reputed to be known in self-consciousness. that there is no knowledge but of the physical, that there is no knowing except by perception--this is ever reiterated as self-evident. even psychology, resting as it does largely upon the observation of the self by the self, must be illusive. physiology, or even phrenology, with the value of which comte was much impressed, must take its place. every object of knowledge is other than the knowing subject. whatever else the mind knows, it can never know itself. by invincible necessity the human mind can observe all phenomena except its own. commenting upon this, james martineau observed: 'we have had in the history of thought numerous forms of idealism which construed all outward phenomena as mere appearances within the mind. we have hitherto had no strictly corresponding materialism, which claimed certainty for the outer world precisely because it was foreign to ourselves.' man is the highest product of nature, the highest stage of nature's most mature and complex form. man as individual is nothing more. physiology gives us not merely his external constitution and one set of relations. it is the whole science of man. there is no study of mind in which its actions and states can be contemplated apart from the physical basis in conjunction with which mind exists. thus far man has been treated only biologically, as individual. we must advance to man in society. almost one half of comte's bulky work is devoted to this side of the inquiry. social phenomena are a class complex beyond any which have yet been investigated. so much is this the case and so difficult is the problem presented, that comte felt constrained in some degree to change his method. we proceed from experience, from data in fact, as before. but the facts are not mere illustrations of the so called laws of individual human nature. social facts are the results also of situations which represent the accumulated influence of past generations. in this, as against bentham, for example, with his endless recurrence to human nature, as he called it, comte was right. comte thus first gave the study of history its place in sociology. in this study of history and sociology, the collective phenomena are more accessible to us and better known by us, than are the parts of which they are composed. we therefore proceed here from the general to the particular, not from the particular to the general, as in research of the kinds previously named. the state of every part of the social organisation is ultimately connected with the contemporaneous state of all the other parts. philosophy, science, the fine arts, commerce, navigation, government, are all in close mutual dependence. when any considerable change takes place in one, we may know that a parallel change has preceded or will follow in the others. the progress of society is not the aggregate of partial changes, but the product of a single impulse acting through all the partial agencies. it can therefore be most easily traced by studying all together. these are the main principles of sociological investigation as set forth by comte, some of them as they have been phrased by mill. the most sweeping exemplification of the axiom last alluded to, as to parallel changes, is comte's so-called law of the three states of civilisation. under this law, he asserts, the whole historical evolution can be summed up. it is as certain as the law of gravitation. everything in human society has passed, as has the individual man, through the theological and then through the metaphysical stage, and so arrives at the positive stage. in this last stage of thought nothing either of superstition or of speculation will survive. theology and metaphysics comte repeatedly characterises as the two successive stages of nescience, unavoidable as preludes to science. equally unavoidable is it that science shall ultimately prevail in their place. the advance of science having once begun, there is no possibility but that it will ultimately possess itself of all. one hears the echo of this confidence in haeckel also. there is a persistence about the denial of any knowledge whatsoever that goes beyond external facts, which ill comports with the pretensions of positivism to be a philosophy. for its final claim is not that it is content to rest in experimental science. on the contrary, it would transform this science into a homogeneous doctrine which is able to explain everything in the universe. this is but a _tour de force_. the promise is fulfilled through the denial of the reality of everything which science cannot explain. comte was never willing to face the fact that the very existence of knowledge has a noumenal as well as a phenomenal side. the reasonableness of the universe is certainly a conception which we bring to the observation of nature. if we did not thus bring it with us, no mere observation of nature would ever give it to us. it is impossible for science to get rid of the conception of force, and ultimately of cause. there can be no phenomenon which is not a manifestation of something. the very nomenclature falls into hopeless confusion without these conceptions. yet the moment we touch them we transcend science and pass into the realm of philosophy. it is mere juggling with words to say that our science has now become a philosophy. the adjective 'positive' contains the same fallacy. apparently comte meant by the choice of it to convey the sense that he would limit research to phenomena in their orders of resemblance, co-existence and succession. but to call the inquiry into phenomena positive, in the sense that it alone deals with reality, to imply that the inquiry into causes deals with that which has no reality, is to beg the question. this is not a premise with which he may set out in the evolution of his system. comte denied the accusation of materialism and atheism. he did the first only by changing the meaning of the term materialism. materialism the world has supposed to be the view of man's condition and destiny which makes these to begin and end in nature. that certainly was comte's view. the accusation of atheism also he avoids by a mere play on words. he is not without a god. humanity is god. mankind is the positivist's supreme. altruism takes the place of devotion. the devotion so long wasted upon a mere creature of the imagination, to whom it could do no good, he would now give to men who sorely need it and can obviously profit by it. surely the antithesis between nature and the supernatural, in the form in which comte argues against it, is now abandoned by thoughtful people. equally the antithesis of altruism to the service of god is perverse. it arouses one's pity that comte should not have seen how, in true religion these two things coalesce. moreover, this deification of mankind, in so far as it is not a sounding phrase, is an absurdity. when comte says, for example, that the authority of humanity must take the place of that of god, he has recognised that religion must have authority. indeed, the whole social order must have authority. however, this is not for him, as we are accustomed to say, the authority of the truth and of the right. there is no such abstraction as the truth, coming to various manifestations. there is no such thing as right, apart from relatively right concrete measures. there is no larger being indwelling in men. society, humanity in its collective capacity, must, if need be, override the individual. yet comte despises the mere rule of majorities. the majority which he would have rule is that of those who have the scientific mind. we may admit that in this he aims at the supremacy of truth. but, in fact, he prepares the way for a doctrinaire tyranny which, of all forms of government, might easily turn out to be the worst which a long-suffering humanity has yet endured. in the end, we are told, love is to take the place of force. humanity is present to us first in our mothers, wives and daughters. for these it is present in their fathers, husbands, sons. from this primary circle love widens and worship extends as hearts enlarge. it is the prayer to humanity which first rises above the mere selfishness of the sort to get something out of god. remembrance in the hearts of those who loved us and owe something to us is the only worthy form of immortality. clearly it is only the caricature of prayer or of the desire of immortality which rises before comte's mind as the thing to be escaped. for this caricature religious men, both catholic and protestant, without doubt, gave him cause. there were to be seven sacraments, corresponding to seven significant epochs in a man's career. there were to be priests for the performance of these sacraments and for the inculcation of the doctrines of positivism. there were to be temples of humanity, affording opportunity for and reminder of this worship. in each temple there was to be set up the symbol of the positivist religion, a woman of thirty years with her little son in her arms. littré spoke bitterly of the positivist religion as a lapse of the author into his old aberration. this religion was certainly regarded as negligible by many to whom his system as a whole meant a great deal. at least, it is an interesting example, as is also his transformation of science into a philosophy, of the resurgence of valid elements in life, even in the case of a man who has made it his boast to do away with them. naturalism and agnosticism we may take spencer as representative of a group of men who, after the middle of the nineteenth century, laboured enthusiastically to set forth evolutionary and naturalistic theories of the universe. these theories had also, for the most part, the common trait that they professed agnosticism as to all that lay beyond the reach of the natural-scientific methods, in which the authors were adept. both ward and boutroux accept spencer as such a type. agnosticism for obvious reasons could be no system. naturalism is a tendency in interpretation of the universe which has many ramifications. there is no intention of making the reference to one man's work do more than serve as introduction to the field. spencer was eager in denial that he had been influenced by comte. yet there is a certain reminder of comte in spencer's monumental endeavour to systematise the whole mass of modern scientific knowledge, under the general title of 'a synthetic philosophy.' he would show the unity of the sciences and their common principles or, rather, the one great common principle which they all illustrate, the doctrine of evolution, as this had taken shape since the time of darwin. since we have an autobiography of herbert spencer, which, to be sure, seems largely to have been written prior to . the book is interesting, as well in the light which it throws upon the expansion of the sciences and the development of the doctrine of evolution in those years, as in the revelation of the personal traits of the man himself. concerning these tolstoi wrote to a friend, apropos of a gift of the book: 'in autobiographies the most important psychological phenomena are often revealed quite independently of the author's will.' spencer was born in in derby, the son of a schoolmaster. he came of nonconformist ancestry of most marked individuality. his early education was irregular and inadequate. before he reached the age of seventeen his reading had been immense. he worked with an engineer in the period of the building of the railways in the midlands. he always retained his interest in inventions. he wrote for the newspapers and magazines and definitely launched upon a literary career. at the age of thirty he published his first book, on _social statics_. he made friends among the most notable men and women of his age. so early as he was the victim of a disease of the heart which never left him. it was on his recovery from his first grave attack that he shaped the plan which henceforth held him, of organising the modern sciences and incorporating them into what he called a synthetic philosophy. there was immense increase in actual knowledge and in the power of his reflection on that knowledge, as the years went by. a generation elapsed between the publication of his _first principles_ and the conclusion of his more formal literary labours. there is something captivating about a man's life, the energy of which remains so little impaired that he esteems it better to write a new book, covering some untouched portion of his scheme, than to give to an earlier volume the revision which in the light of his matured convictions it may need. his philosophical limitations he never transcended. he does not so naïvely offer a substitute for philosophy as does comte. but he was no master in philosophy. there is a reflexion of the consciousness of this fact in his agnosticism. that the effort of the agnostic contention has been great, and on the whole salutary, few would deny. spencer's own later work shows that his declaration, that the absolute which lies behind the universe is unknowable, is to be taken with considerable qualification. it is only a relative unknowableness which he predicates. moreover, before spencer's death, the doctrine of evolution had made itself profoundly felt in the discussion of all aspects of life, including that of religion. there seemed no longer any reason for the barrier between science and religion which spencer had once thought requisite. the epithet agnostic, as applied to a certain attitude of scientific mind, is just, as over against excessive claims to valid knowledge made, now by theology and now by speculative philosophy. it is hardly descriptive in any absolute sense. spencer had coined the rather fortunate illustration which describes science as a gradually increasing sphere, such that every addition to its surface does but bring us into more extensive contact with surrounding nescience. even upon this illustration ward has commented that the metaphor is misleading. the continent of our knowledge is not merely bounded by an ocean of ignorance. it is intersected and cut up by straits and seas of ignorance. the author of _ecce coelum_ has declared: 'things die out under the microscope into the same unfathomed and, so far as we can see, unfathomable mystery, into which they die off beyond the range of our most powerful telescope.' this sense of the circumambient unknown has become cardinal with the best spirits of the age. men have a more rigorous sense of what constitutes knowledge. they have reckoned more strictly with the methods by which alone secure and solid knowledge may be attained. they have undisguised scepticism as to alleged knowledge not arrived at in those ways. it was the working of these motives which gave to the labours of the middle of the nineteenth century so prevailingly the aspect of denial, the character which carlyle described as an everlasting no. this was but a preparatory stage, a retrogression for a new and firmer advance. in the sense of the recognition of our ignorance and of a becoming modesty of affirmation, over against the mystery into which all our thought runs out, we cannot reject the correction which agnosticism has administered. it is a fact which has had disastrous consequences, that precisely the department of thought, namely the religious, which one might suppose would most have reminded men of the outlying mystery, that phase of life whose very atmosphere is mystery, has most often been guilty of arrant dogmatism. it has been thus guilty upon the basis of the claim that it possessed a revelation. it has allowed itself unlimited licence of affirmation concerning the most remote and difficult matters. it has alleged miraculously communicated information concerning those matters. it has clothed with a divine authoritativeness, overriding the mature reflexion and laborious investigation of learned men, that which was, after all, nothing but the innocent imaginings of the childhood of the race. in this good sense of a parallel to that agnosticism which scientists profess for themselves within their own appointed realm, there is a religious agnosticism which is one of the best fruits of the labour of the age. it is not that religious men have abandoned the thought of revelation. they apprehended more justly the nature of revelation. they confess that there is much ignorance which revelation does not mitigate. _exeunt omnia in mysterium_. they are prepared to say concerning many of the dicta of religiosity, that they cannot affirm their truth. they are prepared to say concerning the experience of god and the soul, that they know these with an indefeasible certitude. this just and wholesome attitude toward religious truth is only a corollary of the attitude which science has taught us toward all truth whatsoever. the strictly philosophic term phenomenon, to which science has taken so kindly, is in itself an explicit avowal of something beyond the phenomenal. spencer is careful to insist upon this relation of the phenomenal to the noumenal. his _synthetic philosophy_ opens with an exposition of this non-relative or absolute, without which the relative itself becomes contradictory. it is an essential part of spencer's doctrine to maintain that our consciousness of the absolute, indefinite as it is, is positive and not negative. 'though the absolute cannot in any manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness. the belief which this datum of consciousness constitutes has a higher warrant than any other belief whatsoever.' in short, the absolute or noumenal, according to spencer, though not known as the phenomenal or relative is known, is so far from being for knowledge a pure blank, that the phenomenal, which is said to be known, is in the strict sense inconceivable without it. this actuality behind appearances, without which appearances are unthinkable, is by spencer identified with that ultimate verity upon which religion ever insists. religion itself is a phenomenon, and the source and secret of most complex and interesting phenomena. it has always been of the greatest importance in the history of mankind. it has been able to hold its own in face of the attacks of science. it must contain an element of truth. all religions, however, assert that their god is for us not altogether cognisable, that god is a great mystery. the higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. it is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popular religiosity offends. it talks of god as if he were a man in the next street. it does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches into the truth, and presumably accurate definition of that truth. equally, the attempts which are logically possible at metaphysical solutions of the problem, namely, theism, pantheism, and atheism, if they are consistently carried out, assert, each of them, more than we know and are involved in contradiction with themselves. but the results of modern physics and chemistry reveal, as the constant element in all phenomena, force. this manifests itself in various forms which are interchangeable, while amid all these changes the force remains the same. this latter must be regarded as the reality, and basis of all that is relative and phenomenal. the entire universe is to be explained from the movements of this absolute force. the phenomena of nature and of mental life come under the same general laws of matter, motion, and force. spencer's doctrine, as here stated, is not adequate to account for the world of mental life or adapted to serve as the basis of a reconciliation of science and religion. it does not carry us beyond materialism. spencer's real intention was directed to something higher than that. if the absolute is to be conceived at all, it is as a necessary correlative of our self-consciousness. if we get the idea of force from the experience of our own power of volition, is it not natural to think of mind-force as the prius of physical force, and not the reverse? accordingly, the absolute force, basis of all specific forces, would be mind and will. the doctrine of evolution would harmonise perfectly with these inferences. but it would have to become idealistic evolution, as in schelling, instead of materialistic, as in comte. we are obliged, spencer owns, to refer the phenomenal world of law and order to a first cause. he says that this first cause is incomprehensible. yet he further says, when the question of attributing personality to this first cause is raised, that the choice is not between personality and something lower. it is between personality and something higher. to this may belong a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion. it is strange, he says, that men should suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the object of worship to themselves. and yet, again, in one of the latest of his works he writes: 'unexpected as it will be to most of my readers, i must assert that the power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness. the conception to which the exploration of nature everywhere tends is much less that of a universe of dead matter than that of a universe everywhere alive.' similar is the issue in the reflexion of huxley. agnosticism had at first been asserted in relation to the spiritual and the teleological. it ended in fastening upon the material and mechanical. after all, says huxley, in one of his essays:--'what do we know of this terrible matter, except as a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness? again, what do we know of that spirit over whose threatened extinction by matter so great lamentation has now arisen, except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our consciousness?' he concedes that matter is inconceivable apart from mind, but that mind is not inconceivable apart from matter. he concedes that the conception of universal and necessary law is an ideal. it is an invention of the mind's own devising. it is not a physical fact. in brief, taking agnostic naturalism just as it seemed disposed a generation ago to present itself, it now appears as if it had been turned exactly inside out. instead of the physical world being primary and fundamental and the mental world secondary, if not altogether problematical, the precise converse is true. nature, as science regards it, may be described as a system whose parts, be they simple or complex, are wholly governed by universal laws. knowledge of these laws is an indispensable condition of that control of nature upon which human welfare in so large degree depends. but this reign of law is an hypothesis. it is not an axiom which it would be absurd to deny. it is not an obvious fact, thrust upon us whether we will or no. experiences are possible without the conception of law and order. the fruit of experience in knowledge is not possible without it. that is only to say that the reason why we assume that nature is a connected system of uniform laws, lies in the fact that we ourselves are self-conscious personalities. when the naturalists say that the notion of cause is a fetish, an anthropomorphic superstition which we must eliminate, we have to answer: 'from the realm of empirical science perhaps, but not from experience as a whole.' indeed, a glance at the history, and particularly at the popular literature, of science affords the interesting spectacle of the rise of an hallucination, the growth of a habit of mythological speech, which is truly surprising. we begin to hear of self-existent laws which reign supreme and bind nature fast in fact. by this learned substitution for god, it was once confidently assumed that the race was to emerge from mythical dawn and metaphysical shadows into the noon-day of positive knowledge. rather, it would appear that at this point a part of the human race plunged into a new era of myth-making and fetish worship--the homage to the fetish of law. even the great minds do not altogether escape. 'fact i know and law i know,' says huxley, with a faint suggestion of sacred rhetoric. but surely we do not know law in the same sense in which we know fact. if there are no causes among our facts, then we do not know anything about the laws. if we do know laws it is because we assume causes. if, in the language of rational beings, laws of nature are to be spoken of as self-existent and independent of the phenomena which they are said to govern, such language must be merely analogous to the manner in which we often speak of the civil law. we say the law does that which we know the executive does. but the thorough-going naturalist cast off these implications as the last rags of a creed outworn. physicists were fond of talking of the movement of molecules, just as the ancient astrologers imagined that the planets had souls and guided their own courses. we had supposed that this was anthropomorphism. in truth, this would-be scientific mode of speech is as anthropomorphic as is the cosmogony of hesiod, only on a smaller scale. primitive religion ascribed life to everything of which it talked. polytheism in religion and independent forces and self-existent laws in science are thus upon a par. the gods many and lords many, so amenable to concrete presentation in poetry and art, have given place to one supreme being. so also light, heat, and other natural agencies, palpable and ready to hand for the explanation of everything, in the myth-making period of science which living men can still remember, have by this time paled. they have become simply various manifestations of one underlying spiritual energy, which is indeed beyond our perception.[ ] when comte said that the universe could not rest upon will, because then it would be arbitrary, incalculable, subject to caprice, one feels the humour and pathos of it. comte's experience with will, his own and that of others, had evidently been too largely of that sad sort. real freedom consists in conformity to what ought to be. in god, whom we conceive as perfect, this conformity is complete. with us it remains an ideal. were we the creatures of a blind mechanical necessity there could be no talk of ideal standards and no meaning in reason at all. [footnote : ward, _naturalism and agnosticism_, vol. ii. p. .] evolution in the progress of the thought of the generation, say, from to the present day, the conception of evolution has been much changed. the doctrine of evolution has itself been largely evolved within that period. the application of it has become familiar in fields of which there was at first no thought. the bearing of the acceptance of it upon religion has been seen to be quite different from that which was at first supposed. the advocacy of the doctrine was at first associated with the claims of naturalism or positivism. wider applications of the doctrine and deeper insight into its meaning have done away with this misunderstanding. evolution, as originally understood, was as far as possible from suggesting anything mechanical. by the term was meant primarily the gradual unfolding of a living germ from its embryonic beginning to its mature and final stage. this adult form was regarded not merely as the goal actually reached through successive stages of growth. it was conceived as the end aimed at, and achieved through the force of some vital or ideal principle shaping the plastic material and directing the process of growth. in short, evolution implied ideal ends controlling physical means. yet we find with spencer, as prevailingly also with others in the study of the natural sciences, the ideas of end and of cause looked at askance. they are regarded an outside the pale of the natural sciences. in a very definite sense that is true. the logical consequence of this admission should be merely the recognition that the idea of evolution as developed in the natural sciences cannot be the whole idea. the entire history of anything, spencer tells us, must include its appearance out of the imperceptible, and its disappearance again into the imperceptible. be it a single object, or the whole universe, an account which begins with it in a concrete form, or leaves off with its concrete form, is incomplete. he uses a familiar instance, that of a cloud appearing when vapour drifts over a cold mountain top, and again disappearing when it emerges into warmer air. the cloud emerges from the imperceptible as heat is dissipated. it is dissolved again as heat is absorbed and the watery particles evaporate. spencer esteems this an analogue of the appearance of the universe itself, according to the nebular hypothesis. yet assuredly, as the cloud presupposes vapours which had previously condensed, and the vapour clouds that had previously evaporated, and as clouds dissolve in one place even at the moment that they are forming in another, so we are told of nebulæ which are in every phase of advance or of decline. to ask which was first, solid masses or nebulous haze, is much like recurring to the riddle of the hen and the egg. still, we are told, we have but to extend our thought beyond this emergence and subsidence of sidereal systems, of continents, nations, men, to find a permanent totality made up of transient individuals in every stage of change. the physical assumption with which spencer sets out is that the mass of the universe and its energy are fixed in quantity. all the phenomena of evolution are included in the conservation of this matter and force. besides the criticism which was offered above, that the mere law of the persistence of force does not initiate our series, there is a further objection. even within the series, once it has been started, this law of the persistence of force is solely a quantitative law. when energy is transformed there is an equivalence between the new form and the old. of the reasons for the direction evolution takes, for the permanence of that direction once it has been taken, so that the sequence of forms is a progression, the explication of a latent nature--of all this, the mere law of the persistence of force gives us no explanation whatever. the change at random from one form of manifestation to another might be a striking illustration of the law of the persistence of force, but it would be the contradiction of evolution. the very notion of evolution is that of the sequence of forms, so that something is expressed or achieved. that achievement implies more than the mere force. or rather, it involves a quality of the force with which the language of mechanism does not reckon. it assumes the idea which gives direction to the force, an ideal quality of the force. unquestionably that which men sought to be rid of was the idea of purpose in nature, in the old sense of design in the mind of god, external to the material universe, of force exerted upon nature from without, so as to cause nature to conform to the design of its 'great original,' in addison's high phrase. in this effort, however, the reducing of all to mere force and permutation of force, not merely explains nothing, but contradicts facts which stare us in the face. it deprives evolution of the quality which makes it evolution. to put in this incongruous quality at the beginning, because we find it necessary at the end, is, to say the least, naïve. to deny that we have put it in, to insist that in the marvellous sequence we have only an illustration of mechanism and of conservation of force, is perverse. we passed through an era in which some said that they did not believe in god; everything was accounted for by evolution. in so far as they meant that they did not believe in the god of deism and of much traditional theology, they did not stand alone in this claim. in so far as they meant by evolution mere mechanism, they explained nothing and destroyed the notion of evolution besides. in so far as they meant more than mere mechanism, they lapsed into the company of the scientific myth-makers to whom we alluded above. they attributed to their abstraction, evolution, qualities which other people found in the forms of the universe viewed as the manifestation of an immanent god. only by so doing were they able to ascribe to evolution that which other people describe as the work of god. at this level the controversy becomes one simply about words. of course, the great illumination as to the meaning of evolution has come with its application to many fields besides the physical. darwin was certainly the great inaugurator of the evolutionary movement in england. still, darwin's problem was strictly limited. the impression is widespread that the biological evolutionary theories were first developed, and furnished the basis for the others. yet both hegel and comte, not to speak of schelling, were far more interested in the intellectual and historical, the ethical and social aspects of the question. both hegel and comte were, whether rightly or wrongly, rather contemptuous of the appeal to biology and organic life. both had the sense that they used a great figure of speech when they spoke of society as an organism, and compared the working of institutions to biological functions. this is indeed the question. it is a question over which spencer sets himself lightly. he passes back and forth between organic evolution and the ethical, economic, and social movements which are described by the same term, as if we were in possession of a perfectly safe analogy, or rather as if we were assured of an identical principle. much that is already archaic in spencer's economic and social, his historical and ethical, not to say his religious, chapters is due to the influence of this fact. of his own mind it was true that he had come to the doctrine of evolution from the physical side. he brought to his other subjects a more or less developed method of operating with the conception. he never fully realised how new subjects would alter the method and transform the conception. spencerian evolution is an assertion of the all-sufficiency of natural law. the authority of conscience is but the experience of law-abiding and dutiful generations flowing in our veins. the public weal has hold over us, because the happiness and misery of past ages are inherited by us. it marked a great departure when huxley began vigorously to dissent from these views. according to him evolutionary science has done nothing for ethics. men become ethical only as they set themselves against the principles embodied in the evolutionary process of the world. evolution is the struggle for existence. it is preposterous to say that man became good by succeeding in the struggle for existence. instead of the old single movement, as in spencer, straight from the nebula to the saint, huxley has place for suffering. suffering is most intense in man precisely under conditions most essential to the evolution of his nobler powers. the loss of ease or money may be gain in character. the cosmical process is not only full of pain. it is full of mercilessness and of wickedness. good has been evolved, but so has evil. the fittest may have survived. there is no guarantee that they are the best. the continual struggle against our fellows poisons our higher life. it will hardly do to say with huxley that the ethical struggle is the reverse of the cosmical process. nevertheless, we have here a most interesting transformation in thought. these ideas and principles, as is well known, were elaborated and advanced upon in a very popular book, drummond's _ascent of man_, . even the title was a happy and suggestive one. struggle for life is a fact, but it is not the whole fact. it is balanced by the struggle for the life of others. this latter reaches far down into the levels of what we call brute life. its divinest reach is only the fulfilment of the real nature of humanity. it is the living with men which develops the moral in man. the prolongation of infancy in the higher species has had to do with the development of moral nature. so only that we hold a sufficiently deep view of reason, provided we see clearly that reason transforms, perfects, makes new what we inherit from the beast, we need not fear for morality, though it should universally be taught that morality came into being by the slow and gradual fashioning of brute impulse. benjamin kidd in his _social evolution_, , has reverted again to extreme darwinism in morals and sociology. the law is that of unceasing struggle. reason does not teach us to moderate the struggle. it but sharpens the conflict. all religions are præter-rational, christianity most of all, in being the most altruistic. kidd, not without reason, comments bitterly upon spencer's utopia, the passage of militarism into industrialism. the struggle in industrialism is fiercer than ever. reason affects the animal nature of man for the worse. clearly conscious of what he is doing, man objects to sacrificing himself for his family or tribe. instinct might lead an ape to do that. intelligence warns a man against it. reason is cruel beyond anything dreamed of in the beast. that portion of the community which loves to hear the abuse of reason, rejoiced to hear this phrase. they rejoiced when they heard that religion was the only remedy, and that religion was ultra-rational, contra-rational, supernatural, in this new sense. how one comes by it, or how one can rationally justify the yielding of allegiance to it, is not clear. one must indeed have the will to believe if one believes on these terms. these again are but examples. they convey but a superficial impression of the effort to apply the conception of evolution to the moral and religious life of man. all this has taken place, of course, in a far larger setting that of the endeavour to elaborate the evolutionary view of politics and of the state, of economics and of trade, of social life and institutions, of culture and civilisation in every aspect. this elaboration and reiteration of the doctrine of evolution sometimes wearies us. it is but the unwearied following of the main clue to the riddle of the universe which the age has given us. it is nothing more and nothing less than the endeavour to apprehend the ideal life, no longer as something held out to us, set up before us, but also as something working within us, realising itself through us and among us. to deny the affinity of this with religion would be fatuous and also futile. temporarily, at least, and to many interests of religion, it would be fatal. miracles it must be evident that the total view of the universe which the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution implies, has had effect in the diminution of the acuteness of the question concerning miracles. it certainly gives to that question a new form. a philosophy which asserts the constant presence of god in nature and the whole life of the world, a criticism which has given us a truer notion of the documents which record the biblical miracles, the reverent sense of ignorance which our increasing knowledge affords, have tended to diminish the dogmatism of men on either side of the debate. the contention on behalf of the miracle, in the traditional sense of the word, once seemed the bulwark of positive religion, the distinction between the man who was satisfied with a naturalistic explanation of the universe and one whose devout soul asked for something more. on the other hand, the contention against the miracle appeared to be a necessary corollary of the notion of a law and order which are inviolable throughout the universe. furthermore, many men have come of themselves to the conclusion for which schleiermacher long ago contended. whatever may be theoretically determined concerning miracles, yet the miracle can never again be regarded as among the foundations of faith. this is for the simplest of reasons. the belief in a miracle presupposes faith. it is the faith which sustains the miracle, and not the miracle the faith. jesus is to men the incomparable moral and spiritual magnitude which he is, not on the evidence of some unparalleled things physical which it is alleged he did. quite the contrary, it is the immediate impression of the moral and spiritual wonder which jesus is, that prepares what credence we can gather for the wonders which it is declared he did. this is a transfer of emphasis, a redistribution of weight in the structure of our thought, the relief of which many appreciate who have not reasoned the matter through for themselves. schleiermacher had said, and herrmann and others repeat the thought, that, as the christian faith finds in christ the highest revelation, miracles may reasonably be expected of him. nevertheless, he adds, these deeds can be called miracles or esteemed extraordinary, only as containing something which was beyond contemporary knowledge of the regular and orderly connexion between physical and spiritual life. therewith, it must be evident, that the notion of the miraculous is fundamentally changed. so it comes to pass that we have a book like mackintosh's _natural history of the christian religion_, , whose avowed purpose is to do away with the miraculous altogether. of course, the author means the traditional notion of the miraculous, according to which it is the essence of arbitrariness and the negation of law. it is not that he has less sense for the divine life of the world, or for the quality of christianity as revelation. on the other hand, we have a book like percy gardner's _exploratio evangelica_, . with the most searching criticism of the narratives of some miracles, there is reverent confession, on the author's part, that he is baffled by the reports of others. there is recognition of unknown possibilities in the case of a character like that of jesus. it is not that gardner has a less stringent sense of fact and of the inexorableness of law than has mackintosh or an ardent physicist. the problem is reduced to that of the choice of expression. we are not able to withhold a justification of the scholar who declares: we must not say that we believe in the miraculous. this language is sure to be appropriated by those who still take their departure from the old dualism, now hopelessly obsolete, for which a breach of the law of nature was the crowning evidence of the love of god. on the other hand, the assertion that we do not believe in the miraculous will easily be taken by some to mean the denial of the whole sense of the nearness and power and love of god, and of the unimagined possibilities of such a moral nature as was that of christ. it is to be repeated that we have here a mere difference as to terms. the debate is no longer about ideas. the traditional notion of the miracle arose out of the confusion of two series of ideas which, in the last analysis, have nothing to do with each other. on the one hand, there is the conception of law and order, of cause and effect, of the unbroken connexion of nature. on the other hand is the thought of the divine purpose in the life of the world and of the individual. by the aid of that first sequence of thoughts we find ourselves in the universe and interpret the world of fact to ourselves. yet in the other sequence lies the essence of religion. the two sequences may perfectly well coexist in the same mind. out of the attempt to combine them nothing clear or satisfying can issue. if one should be, to-day, brought face to face with a fact which was alleged to be a miracle, his instinctive effort would be, nevertheless, to seek to find its cause, to establish for it a connexion in the natural order. in the ancient world men did not argue thus, nor in the modern world until less than two hundred years ago. the presumption of the order of nature had not assumed for them the proportions which it has for us. for us it is overwhelming, self-evident. therewith is not involved that we lack belief in a divine purpose for the world and for the individual life. we do not deny that there are laws of nature of which we have no experience, facts which we do not understand, events which, if they should occur, would stand before us as unique. still, the decisive thing is, that in face of such an event, instead of viewing it quite simply as a divine intervention, as men used to do, we, with equal simplicity and no less devoutness, conceive that same event as only an illustration of a connexion in nature which we do not understand. there is no inherent reason why we may not understand it. when we do understand it, there will be nothing more about it that is conceivably miraculous. there will be then no longer a unique quality attaching to the event. therewith ends the possible significance of such an event as proof of divine intervention for our especial help. we have but a connexion in nature such that, whether understood or not, if it were to recur, the event would recur. the miracles which are related in the scripture may be divided for our consideration into three classes. to the first class belong most of those which are related in the old testament, but some also which are conspicuous in the new testament. they are, in some cases, the poetical and imaginative representation of the profoundest religious ideas. so soon as one openly concedes this, when there is no longer any necessity either to attack or to defend the miracle in question, one is in a position to acknowledge how deep and wonderful the thoughts often are and how beautiful the form in which they are conveyed. it is through imagination and symbolism that we are able to convey the subtlest meanings which we have. still more was this the case with men of an earlier age. in the second place, the narratives of miracles are, some of them, of such a sort that we may say that an event or circumstance in nature has been obviously apprehended in naïve fashion. this by no means forbids us to interpret that same event in quite a different way. the men of former time, exactly in proportion as they had less sense of the order of nature than have we, so were they also far readier to assume the immediate forthputting of the power of god. this was true not merely of the uneducated. it is difficult, or even impossible, for us to find out what the event was. fact and apprehension are inextricably interwoven. that which really happened is concealed from us by the tale which had intended to reveal it. in the third place, there are many cases in the history of jesus, and some in that of the apostles and prophets, in which that which is related moves in the borderland between body and soul, spirit and matter, the region of the influence of will, one's own or that of another, over physical conditions. concerning such cases we are disposed, far more than were men even a few years ago, to concede that there is much that is by no means yet investigated, and the soundest judgment we can form is far from being sure. even if we recognise to the full the lamentable resurgence of outworn superstitions and stupidities, which again pass current among us for an unhappy moment, if we detect the questionable or manifestly evil consequences of certain uses made or alleged of psychic influence, yet still we are not always in a position to say, with certainty, what is true in tales of healing which we hear in our own day. there are certain of the statements concerning jesus' healing power and action which are absolutely baffling. they can be eliminated from the narrative only by a procedure which might just as well eliminate the narrative. in many of the narratives there may be much that is true. in some all may be as related. in jesus' time, on the witness of the scripture itself, it was assumed as something no one questioned, that miraculous deeds were performed, not alone by jesus and the apostles, but by many others, and not always even by the good. such deeds were performed through the power of evil spirits as well as by the power of god. to imagine that the working of miracles proved that jesus came from god, is the most patent importation of a modern apologetic notion into the area of ancient thought. we must remember that jesus himself laid no great weight upon the miracles which we assume that he believed he wrought, and some of which we may believe that he did work. many he performed with hesitation and desired so far as possible to conceal. even if we were in a position at one point or another in the life of jesus to defend the traditional assumptions concerning the miraculous, yet it must be evident how opposed it is to right reason, to lay stress on the abstract necessity of belief in the miraculous. the traditional conception of the miraculous is done away for us. this is not at all by the fact that we are in a position to say with matthew arnold: 'the trouble with miracles is that they never happen.' we do not know enough to say that. to stake all on the assertion of the impossibility of so-called miracles is as foolish as to stake much on the affirmation of their actuality. the connexion of nature is only an induction. this can never be complete. the real question is both more complex and also more simple. the question is whether, even if an event, the most unparalleled of those related in the gospels or outside of them, should be proved before our very eyes to have taken place, the question is whether we should believe it to have been a miracle in the traditional sense, an event in which the actual--not the known, but the possible--order of nature had been broken through, and in the old sense, god had arbitrarily supervened. allowed that the event were, in our own experience and in the known experience of the race, unparalleled, yet it would never occur to us to suppose but that there was a law of this case, also, a connexion in nature in which, as work of god, it occurred, and in which, if the conditions were repeated, it would recur. we should unceasingly endeavour through observation, reflexion, and new knowledge, to show how we might subordinate this event in the connexion of nature which we assume. we should feel that we knew more, and not less, of god, if we should succeed. and if our effort should prove altogether futile, we should be no less sure that such natural connexion exists. this is because nature is for us the revelation of the divine. the divine, we assume, has a natural order of working. its inviolability is the divinest thing about it. it is through this sequence of ideas that we are in a position to deny, not facts which may be inexplicable, but the traditional conception of the miracle. for surely no one needs to be told that this is not the conception of the miracle which has existed in the minds of the devout, and equally of the undevout, from the beginning of thought until the present day. however, there is nothing in all of this which hinders us from believing with a full heart in the love and grace and care of god, in his holy and redeeming purpose for mankind and for the individual. it is true that this belief cannot any longer retain its naïve and childish form. it is true that it demands of a man far more of moral force, of ethical and spiritual mastery, of insight and firm will, to sustain the belief in the purpose of god for himself and for all men, when a man believes that he sees and feels god only in and through nature and history, through personal consciousness and the personal consciousness of jesus. it is true that it has, apparently, been easier for men to think of god as outside and above his world, and of themselves as separated from their fellows by his special providence. it is more difficult, through glad and intelligent subjection to all laws of nature and of history, to achieve the education of one's spirit, to make good one's inner deliverance from the world, to aid others in the same struggle and to set them on their way to god. men grow uncertain within themselves, because they say that traditional religion has apprehended the matter in a different way. this is true. it is also misleading. whatever miracles jesus may have performed, no one can say that he performed them to make life easier for himself, to escape the common lot, to avoid struggle, to evade suffering and disgraceful death. on the contrary, in genuine human self-distrust, but also in genuine heroism, he gave himself to his vocation, accepting all that went therewith, and finished the work of god which he had made his own. this is the more wonderful because it lay so much nearer to him than it can lie to us, to pray for special evidence of the love of god and to set his faith on the receiving of it. he had not the conception of the relation of god to nature and history which we have. we may well view the modern tendency to belief in healings through prayer, suggestion and faith, as an intelligible, an interesting, and in part, a touching manifestation. of course there is mingled with it much dense ignorance, some superstition and even deception. yet behind such a phenomenon there is meaning. men of this mind make earnest with the thought that god cares for them. without that thought there is no religion. they have been taught to find the evidence of god's love and care in the unusual. they are quite logical. it has been a weak point of the traditional belief that men have said that in the time of christ there were miracles, but since that time, no more. why not, if we can only in spirit come near to christ and god? they are quite logical also in that they have repudiated modern science. to be sure, no inconsiderable part of them use the word science continually. but the very esoteric quality of their science is that it means something which no one else ever understood that it meant. in reality their breach with science is more radical than their breach with christianity. they feel the contradiction in which most men are bound fast, who will let science have its way, up to a certain point, but who beyond that, would retain the miracle. dimly the former appreciate that this position is impossible. they leave it to other men to become altogether scientific if they wish. for themselves they prefer to remain religious. what a revival of ancient superstitions they have brought to pass, is obvious. still we shall never get beyond such adventurous and preposterous endeavours to rescue that which is inestimably precious in religion, until the false antithesis between reason and faith, the lying contradiction between the providence of god and the order of nature, is overcome. some science mankind apparently must have. altogether without religion the majority, it would seem, will never be. how these are related, the one to the other, not every one sees. many attempt their admixture in unhappy ways. they might try letting them stand in peace as complement and supplement the one to the other. still better, they may perhaps some day see how each penetrates, permeates and glorifies the other. the social sciences we said that the last generation had been characterised by an unexampled concentration of intellectual interest upon problems presented by the social sciences. with this has gone an unrivalled earnestness in the interpretation of religion as a social force. the great religious enthusiasm has been that of the application of christianity to the social aspects of life. this effort has furnished most of the watchwords of religious teaching. it has laid vigorous, not to say violent, hands on religious institutions. it has given a new perspective to effort and a new impulse to devotion. the revival of religion in our age has taken this direction, with an exclusiveness which has had both good and evil consequences. yet, before all, it should be made clear that it constitutes a religious revival. some are deploring the prostrate condition of spiritual interests. if one judged only by conventional standards, they have much evidence upon their side. some are seeking to galvanise religious life by recurrence to evangelistic methods successfully operative half a century ago. the outstanding fact is that the age shows immense religious vitality, so soon as one concedes that it must be allowed to show its vitality in its own way. it is the age of the social question. one must be ignorant indeed of the activity of the churches and of the productivity of religious thinkers, if he does not own that in christian circles also no questions are so rife as these. whether the panaceas have been all wise or profitable may be questioned. whether the interest has not been even excessive and one-sided, whether the accusation has not been occasionally unjust and the self-accusation morbid, these are questions which it might be possible in some quarters to ask. this is, however, only another form of proof of what we say. the religious interest in social questions has not been aroused primarily by intellectual and scientific impulses, nor fostered mainly by doctrinaire discussion. on the contrary, the initiative has been from the practical side. it has been a question of life and service. if anything, one often misses the scientific note in the flood of semi-religious literature relating to this theme, the realisation that, to do well, it is often profitable to think. yet there is effort to mediate the best results of social-scientific thinking, through clerical education and directly to the laity. on the other hand, a deep sense of ethical and spiritual responsibility is prevalent among thinkers upon social topics. often indeed has the quality of christianity been observed which is here exemplified. each succeeding age has read into christ's teachings, or drawn out from his example, the special meaning which that generation, or that social level, or that individual man had need to draw. to them in their enthusiasm it has often seemed as if this were the only lesson reasonable men could draw. nothing could be more enlightening than is reflexion upon this reading of the ever-changing ideals of man's life into christianity, or of christianity into the ever-advancing ideals of man's life. this chameleonlike quality of christianity is the farthest possible remove from the changelessness which men love to attribute to religion. it is the most wonderful quality which christianity possesses. it is precisely because of the recognition of this capacity for change that one may safely argue the continuance of christianity in the world. yet also because of this recognition, one is put upon his guard against joining too easily in the clamour that a past apprehension of religion was altogether wrong, or that a new and urgent one, in its exclusive emphasis and its entirety, is right. our age is haunted by the sense of terrific social and economic inequalities which prevail. it has set its heart upon the elimination of those inequalities. it is an age whose disrespect for religion is in some part due to the fact that religion has not done away with these inequalities. it is an age which is immediately interested in an interpretation of religion which will make central the contention that, before all things else, these inequalities must be done away. if religion can be made a means of every man's getting his share of the blessings of this world, well and good. if not, there are many men and women to whom religion seems utterly meaningless. this sentence hardly overstates the case. it is the challenge of the age to religion to do something which the age profoundly needs, and which religion under its age-long dominant apprehension has not conspicuously done, nor even on a great scale attempted. it is the challenge to religion to undertake a work of surpassing grandeur--nothing less than the actualisation of the whole ideal of the life of man. religious men respond with the quickened and conscientious conviction, not indeed that they have laid too great an emphasis upon the spiritual, but that under a dualistic conception of god and man and world, they have never sufficiently realised that the spiritual is to be realised in the material, the ideal in and not apart from the actual, the eternal in and not after the temporal. yet with that oscillatory quality which belongs to human movements, especially where old wrongs and errors have come deeply to be felt, a part of the literature of the contention shows marked tendency to extremes. a religion in the body must become a religion of the body. a christianity of the social state runs risk of being apprehended as merely one more means for compassing outward and material ends. religion does stand for the inner life and the transcendent world, only not an inner life through the neglect of the outer, or a transcendent world in some far-off star or after an æon or two. there might be meaning in the argument that, exactly because so many other forces in our age do make for the realisation of the outer life and present world with an effectiveness and success which no previous age has ever dreamed, there is the more reason, and not the less, why religion should still be religion. exactly this is the contention of eueken in one of the most significant contributions of recent years to the philosophy of religion, his _wahrheitsgehalt der religion_, , transl. jones, . the very source and cause of the sure recovery of religion in our age will be the experience of the futility, the bankruptcy, of a civilisation without faith. no nobler argument has been heard in our time for the spiritual meaning of religion, with the fullest recognition of all its other meanings. the modern emphasis on the social aspects of religion may be said to have been first clearly expressed in seeley's _ecce homo_, . the pith of the book is in this phrase: 'to reorganise society and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties was the business of jesus' life.' allusion has been made to fremantle's _the world as the subject of redemption_, . worthy of note is also fairbairn's _religion in history and modern life_, ; pre-eminently so is bosanquet's _the civilisation of christendom_, . westcott's _incarnation and common life_, , contains utterances of weight. peabody, in his book, _jesus christ and the social question_, , has given, on the whole, the best résumé of the discussion. he conveys incidentally an impression of the body of literature produced in recent years, in which it is assumed, sometimes with embitterment, that the centre of gravity of christianity is outside the church. sell, in the very title of his illuminating little book, _christenthum und weltgeschichte seit der reformation: das christenthum in seiner entwickelung über die kirche hinaus_, , records an impression, which is widespread and true, that the characteristic mark of modern christianity is that it has transcended the organs and agencies officially created for it. it has become non-ecclesiastical, if not actually hostile to the church. it has permeated the world in unexpected fashion and does the deeds of christianity, though rather eager to avoid the name. the anti-clericalism of the latin countries is not unintelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the teutonic not without a cause. german socialism, ever since karl marx, has been fundamentally antagonistic to any religion whatsoever. it is purely secularist in tone. this is also a strained situation, liable to become perverse. that part of the christian church which understands itself, rejoices in nothing so much as in the fact that the spirit of christ is so widely disseminated, his influence felt by many who do not know what influence it is which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would never call themselves his workers. that part of the church is not therewith convinced but that there is need of the church as institution, and of those who are consciously disciples of jesus in the world. by far the largest question, however, which is raised in this connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated. it is, perhaps, the last question one would have expected the literature of the social movement to raise. it is, namely, the question of the individual. ever since the middle of the eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, to which the individual is sacrificed, has obtained. within the period of which this book treats the world has won an enlargement of horizon of which it never dreamed. it has gained a forecast of the future of culture and civilisation which is beyond imagination. the access of comfort makes men at home in the world as they never were at home. there has been set a value on this life which life never had before. the succession of discoveries and applications of discovery makes it seem as if there were to be no end in this direction. from rousseau to spencer men have elaborated the view that the historical process cannot really issue in anything else than in ever higher stages of perfection and of happiness. they postulate a continuous enhancement of energy and a steady perfecting of intellectual and moral quality. as the goal of evolution appears an ideal condition which is either indefinitely remote, that is, which gives room for the bliss of infinite progress in its direction, or else a definitely attainable condition, which would have within itself the conditions of perpetuity. the resistlessness with which this new view of the life of civilisation has won acknowledgment from men of all classes is amazing. it rests upon a belief in the self-sufficiency and the all-sufficiency of the life of this world, of the bearings of which it may be assumed that few of its votaries are aware. in reality this view cannot by any possibility be described as the result of knowledge. on the contrary, it is a venture of faith. it is the peculiar, the very characteristic and suggestive form which the faith of our age takes. men believe in this indefinite progress of the world and of mankind, because without postulating such progress they do not see how they can assume the absolute worth of an activity which is yet the only thing which has any interest to most of them. under this view one can assign to the individual life a definite significance, only upon the supposition that the individual is the organ of realisation of a part of this progress of mankind. all happiness and suffering, all changes in knowledge and manner of conduct, are supposed to have no worth each for itself or for the sake of the individual, but only for their relation to the movement as a whole. surely this is an illusion. exactly that in which the characteristic quality of the world and of life is found, the individual personalities, the single generations, the concrete events--these lose, in this view, their own particular worth. what can possibly be the worth of a whole of which the parts have no worth? we have here but a parallel on a huge scale of that deadly trait in our own private lives, according to which it makes no difference what we are doing, so only that we are doing, or whither we are going, so only that we cease not to go, or what our noise is all about, so only that there be no end of the noise. certainly no one can establish the value of the evolutionary process in and of itself. if the movement as a whole has no definite end that has absolute worth, then it has no worth except as the stages, the individual factors included in it, attain to something within themselves which is of increasing worth. if the movement achieves this, then it has worth, not otherwise. we may illustrate this question by asking ourselves concerning the existence and significance of suffering and of the evil and of the bad which are in the world, in their relation to this tendency to indefinite progress which is supposed to be inherent in civilisation. on this theory we have to say that the suffering of the individual is necessary for the development and perfecting of the whole. as over against the whole the individual has no right to make demands as to welfare or happiness. the bad also becomes only relative. in the movement taken as a whole, it is probably unavoidable. in any case it is negligible, since the movement is irresistible. all ethical values are absorbed in the dynamic ones, all personal values in the collective ones. surely the sole intelligent question about any civilisation is, what sort of men does it produce. if it produces worthless individuals, it is so far forth a worthless civilisation. if it has sacrificed many worthy men in order to produce this ignoble result, then it is more obviously ignoble than ever. furthermore, this notion of an inherent necessity and an irresistible tendency to progress is a chimera. the progress of mankind is a task. it is something to which the worthy human spirit is called upon to make contribution. the unworthy never hear the call. progress is not a natural necessity. it is an ethical obligation. it is a task which has been fulfilled by previous generations in varying degrees of perfectness. it will be participated in by succeeding generations with varying degrees of wisdom and success. but as to there being anything autonomous about it, this is sheer hallucination, myth-making again, on the part of those who boast that they despise the myth, miracle-mongering on the part of those who have abjured the miracle, nonsense on the part of those who boast that they alone are sane. there is no ultimate source of civilisation but the individual, as there is also no issue of civilisation but in individuals. men, characters, personalities, are the makers of it. men are the product which is made. the higher stages and achievements of the life of society have come to pass always and only upon condition that single personalities have recognised the problem, seen their individual duty and known how to inspire others with enthusiasm. periods of decline are always those in which this personal element cannot make itself felt. democracies and periods of the intensity of emphasis upon the social movement, tend directly to the depression and suppression of personality.[ ] such reflexions will have served their purpose if they give us some clear sense of what we have to understand as the effect of the social movement on religion. they may give also some forecast of the effect of real religion on the social movement. for religion is the relation of god and personality. it can be social only in the sense that society, in all its normal relations, is the sphere within which that relation of god and personality is to be wrought out. [footnote : siebeck, _religionsphilosophie_, , s. .] chapter vi the english-speaking peoples: action and reaction in those aspects of our subject with which we have thus far dealt, leadership has been largely with the germans. effort was indeed made in the chapter on the sciences to illustrate the progress of thought by reference to british writers. in this department the original and creative contribution of british authors was great. there were, however, also in the earlier portion of the nineteenth century movements of religious thought in great britain and america related to some of those which we have previously considered. moreover, one of the most influential movements of english religious thought, the so-called oxford movement, with the anglo-catholic revival which it introduced, was of a reactionary tendency. it has seemed, therefore, feasible to append to this chapter that which we must briefly say concerning the general movement of reaction which marked the century. this reactionary movement has indeed everywhere run parallel to the one which we have endeavoured to record. it has often with vigour run counter to our movement. it has revealed the working of earnest and sometimes anxious minds in directions opposed to those which we have been studying. no one can fail to be aware that there has been a great catholic revival in the nineteenth century. that revival has had place in the roman catholic countries of the continent as well. it was in order to include the privilege of reference to these aspects of our subject that this chapter was given a double title. yet in no country has the nineteenth century so favourably altered the position of the roman catholic church as in england. in no country has a church which has been esteemed to be protestant been so much influenced by catholic ideas. this again is a reason for including our reference to the reaction here. according to pfleiderer, a new movement in philosophy may be said to have begun in great britain in the year , with the publication of coleridge's _aids to reflection_. in coleridge's _confessions of an enquiring spirit_, published six years after his death in , we have a suggestion of the biblical-critical movement which was beginning to shape itself in germany. in the same years we have evidence in the works of erskine and the early writings of campbell, that in scotland theologians were thinking on schleiermacher's lines. in those same years books of more or less marked rationalistic tendency were put forth by the oriel school. finally, with pusey's _assize sermon_, in , newman felt that the movement later to be called tractarian had begun. we shall not be wrong, therefore, in saying that the decade following saw the beginnings in britain of more formal reflexion upon all the aspects of the theme with which we are concerned. what went before that, however, in the way of liberal religious thinking, though informal in its nature, should not be ignored. it was the work of the poets of the end of the eighteenth and of the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. the culmination of the great revolt against the traditional in state and society and against the conventional in religion, had been voiced in britain largely by the poets. so vigorous was this utterance and so effective, that some have spoken of the contribution of the english poets to the theological reconstruction. it is certain that the utterances of the poets tended greatly to the dissemination of the new ideas. there was in great britain no such unity as we have observed among the germans, either of the movement as a whole or in its various parts. there was a consecution nothing less than marvellous in the work of the philosophers from kant to hegel. there was a theological sequence from schleiermacher to ritschl. there was an unceasing critical advance from the days of strauss. there was nothing resembling this in the work of the english-speaking people. the contributions were for a long time only sporadic. the movement had no inclusiveness. there was no aspect of a solid front in the advance. in the department of the sciences only was the situation different. in a way, therefore, it will be necessary in this chapter merely to single out individuals, to note points of conflict, one and another, all along the great line of advance. or, to put it differently, it will be possible to pursue a chronological arrangement which would have been bewildering in our study heretofore. with the one great division between the progressive spirits and the men of the reaction, it will be possible to speak of philosophers, critics and theologians together, among their own contemporaries, and so to follow the century as it advances. in the closing years of the eighteenth century in england what claimed to be a rational supernaturalism prevailed. men sought to combine faith in revealed religion with the empirical philosophy of locke. they conceived god and his relation to the world under deistical forms. the educated often lacked in singular degree all deeper religious feeling. they were averse to mysticism and spurned enthusiasm. utilitarian considerations, which formed the practical side of the empirical philosophy, played a prominent part also in orthodox belief. the theory of the universe which obtained among the religious is seen at its worst in some of the volumes of the warburton lectures, and at its best perhaps in butler's _analogy of natural and revealed religion_. the character and views of the clergy and of the ruling class among the laity of the church of england, early in the nineteenth century, are pictured with love and humour in trollope's novels. they form the background in many of george eliot's books, where, in more mordant manner, both their strength and weaknesses are shown. even the remarks which introduce dean church's _oxford movement_, , in which the churchly element is dealt with in deep affection, give anything but an inspiring view. the contrast with this would-be rational and unemotional religious respectability of the upper classes was furnished, for masses of the people, in the quickening of the consciousness of sin and grace after the manner of the methodists. but the methodism of the earlier age had as good as no intellectual relations whatsoever. the wesleys and whitefield had indeed influenced a considerable portion of the anglican communion. their pietistic trait, combined, for the most part, with a calvinism which wesley abhorred and an old-fashioned low church feeling with which also wesley had no sympathy, shows itself in the so-called evangelical party which was strong before . this evangelical movement in the church of england manifested deep religious feeling, it put forth zealous philanthropic effort, it had among its representatives men and women of great beauty of personal character and piety. yet it was completely cut off from any living relation to the thought of the age. there was among its representatives no spirit of theological inquiry. there was, if anything, less probability of theological reconstruction, from this quarter, than from the circles of the older german pietism, with which this english evangelicalism of the time of the later georges had not a little in common. there had been a great enthusiasm for humanity at the opening of the period of the french revolution, but the excesses and atrocities of the revolution had profoundly shocked the english mind. there was abroad something of the same sense for the return to nature, and of the greatness of man, which moved schiller and goethe. the exponents of it were, however, almost exclusively the poets, wordsworth, shelley, keats and byron. there was nothing which combined these various elements as parts of a great whole. britain had stood outside the area of the revolution, and yet had put forth stupendous efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of the revolutionary era and of the napoleonic despotism. this tended perhaps to give to britons some natural satisfaction in the british constitution and the established church which flourished under it. finally, while men on the continent were devising holy alliances and other chimeras of the sort, england was precipitated into the earlier acute stages of the industrial revolution in which she has led the european nations and still leads. this fact explains a certain preoccupation of the british mind with questions remote from theological reconstruction or religious speculation. the poets it may now sound like a contradiction if we assert that the years from to constitute the era of the noblest english poetry since the times of great elizabeth. the social direction of the new theology of the present day, with its cry against every kind of injustice, with its claim of an equal opportunity for a happy life for every man--this was the forecast of cowper, as it had been of blake. to blake all outward infallible authority of books or churches was iniquitous. he was at daggers drawn with every doctrine which set limit to the freedom of all men to love god, or which could doubt that god had loved all men. jesus alone had seen the true thing. god was a father, every man his child. long before , burns was filled with the new ideas of the freedom and brotherhood of man, with zeal for the overthrow of unjust privilege. he had spoken in imperishable words of the holiness of the common life. he had come into contact with the most dreadful consequences of calvinism. he has pilloried these mercilessly in his 'holy tulzie' and in his 'holy willie's prayer.' such poems must have shaken calvinism more than a thousand liberal sermons could have done. what coleridge might have done in this field, had he not so early turned to prose, it is not easy to say. the verse of his early days rests upon the conviction, fundamental to his later philosophy, that all the new ideas concerning men and the world are a revelation of god. wordsworth seems never consciously to have broken with the current theology. his view of the natural glory and goodness of humanity, especially among the poor and simple, has not much relation to that theology. his view of nature, not as created of god. in the conventional sense, but as itself filled with god, of god as conscious of himself at every point of nature's being, has still less. man and nature are but different manifestations of the one soul of all. byron's contribution to christian thought, we need hardly say, was of a negative sort. it was destructive rather than constructive. among the conventions and hypocrisies of society there were none which he more utterly despised than those of religion and the church as he saw these. there is something volcanic, voltairean in his outbreaks. but there is a difference. both voltaire and byron knew that they had not the current religion. voltaire thought, nevertheless, that he had a religion. posterity has esteemed that he had little. byron thought he had none. posterity has felt that he had much. his attack was made in a reckless bitterness which lessened its effect. yet the truth of many things which he said is now overwhelmingly obvious. shelley began with being what he called an atheist. he ended with being what we call an agnostic, whose pure poetic spirit carried him far into the realm of the highest idealism. the existence of a conscious will within the universe is not quite thinkable. yet immortal love pervades the whole. immortality is improbable, but his highest flights continually imply it. he is sure that when any theology violates the primary human affections, it tramples into the dust all thoughts and feelings by which men may become good. the men who, about , stood paralysed between what strauss later called 'the old faith and the new,' or, as arnold phrased it, were 'between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born,' found their inmost thoughts written broad for them in arthur clough. from the time of the opening of tennyson's work, the poets, not by destruction but by construction, not in opposition to religion but in harmony with it, have built up new doctrines of god and man and aided incalculably in preparing the way for a new and nobler theology. in the latter part of the nineteenth century there was perhaps no one man in england who did more to read all of the vast advance of knowledge in the light of higher faith, and to fill such a faith with the spirit of the glad advance of knowledge, than did browning. even arnold has voiced in his poetry not a little of the noblest conviction of the age. and what shall one say of mrs. browning, of the rossettis and william morris, of emerson and lowell, of lanier and whitman, who have spoken, often with consummate power and beauty, that which one never says at all without faith and rarely says well without art? coleridge samuel taylor coleridge was born in at his father's vicarage, ottery st. mary's, devonshire. he was the tenth child of his parents, weak in frame, always suffering much. he was a student at christ's hospital, london, where he was properly bullied, then at jesus college, cambridge, where he did not take his degree. for some happy years he lived in the lake region and was the friend of wordsworth and southey. he studied in göttingen, a thing almost unheard of in his time. the years to were indeed spent in utter misery, through the opium habit which he had contracted while seeking relief from rheumatic pain. he wrote and taught and talked in highgate from to . he had planned great works which never took shape. for a brief period he severed his connexion with the english church, coming under unitarian influence. he then reverted to the relation in which his ecclesiastical instincts were satisfied. we read his _aids to reflection_ and his _confessions of an enquiring spirit_, and wonder how they can ever have exerted a great influence. nevertheless, they were fresh and stimulating in their time. that coleridge was a power, we have testimony from men differing among themselves so widely as do hare, sterling, newman and john stuart mill. he was a master of style. he had insight and breadth. tulloch says of the _aids_, that it is a book which none but a thinker upon divine things will ever like. not all even of these have liked it. inexcusably fragmentary it sometimes seems. one is fain to ask: what right has any man to publish a scrap-book of his musings? coleridge had the ambition to lay anew the foundations of spiritual philosophy. the _aids_ were but of the nature of prolegomena. for substance his philosophy went back to locke and hume and to the cambridge platonists. he had learned of kant and schleiermacher as well. he was no metaphysician, but a keen interpreter of spiritual facts, who himself had been quickened by a particularly painful experience. he saw in christianity, rightly conceived, at once the true explanation of our spiritual being and the remedy for its disorder. the evangelical tradition brought religion to a man from without. it took no account of man's spiritual constitution, beyond the fact that he was a sinner and in danger of hell. coleridge set out, not from sin alone, but from the whole deep basis of spiritual capacity and responsibility upon which sin rests. he asserts experience. we are as sure of the capacity for the good and of the experience of the good as we can be of the evil. the case is similar as to the truth. there are aspects of truth which transcend our powers. we use words without meaning when we talk of the plans of a being who is neither an object for our senses nor a part of our self-consciousness. all truth must be capable of being rendered into words conformable to reason. theologians had declared their doctrines true or false without reference to the subjective standard of judgment. coleridge contended that faith must rest not merely upon objective data, but upon inward experience. the authority of scripture is in its truthfulness, its answer to the highest aspirations of the human reason and the most urgent necessities of the moral life. the doctrine of an atonement is intelligible only in so far as it too comes within the range of spiritual experience. the apostolic language took colour from the traditions concerning sacrifice. much has been taken by the church as literal dogmatic statement which should be taken as more figure of speech, borrowed from jewish sources. coleridge feared that his thoughts concerning scripture might, if published, do more harm than good. they were printed first in . their writing goes back into the period long before the conflict raised by strauss. there is not much here that one might not have learned from herder and lessing. utterances of whately and arnold showed that minds in england were waking. but coleridge's utterances rest consistently upon the philosophy of religion and theory of dogma which have been above implied. they are more significant than are mere flashes of generous insight, like those of the men named. the notion of verbal inspiration or infallible dictation of the holy scriptures could not possibly survive after the modern spirit of historical inquiry had made itself felt. the rabbinical idea was bound to disappear. a truer sense of the conditions attending the origins and progress of civilisation and of the immaturities through which religious as well as moral and social ideas advance, brought of necessity a changed idea of the nature of scripture and revelation. its literature must be read as literature, its history as history. for the answer in our hearts to the spirit in the book, coleridge used the phrase: 'it finds me.' 'whatever finds me bears witness to itself that it has proceeded from the holy ghost. in the bible there is more that finds me than in all the other books which i have read.' still, there is much in the bible that does not find me. it is full of contradictions, both moral and historical. are we to regard these as all equally inspired? the scripture itself does not claim that. besides, what good would it do us to claim that the original documents were inerrant, unless we could claim also that they had been inerrantly transmitted? apparently coleridge thought that no one would ever claim that. coleridge wrote also concerning the church. his volume on _the constitution of church and state_ appeared in . it is the least satisfactory of his works. the vacillation of coleridge's own course showed that upon this point his mind was never clear. arnold also, though in a somewhat different way, was zealous for the theory that church and state are really identical, the church being merely the state in its educational and religious aspect and organisation. if thomas arnold's moral earnestness and his generous spirit could not save this theory from being chimerical, no better result was to be expected from coleridge. the oriel school it has often happened in the history of the english universities that a given college has become, through its body of tutors and students, through its common-room talk and literary work, the centre, for the time, of a movement of thought which gives leadership to the college. in this manner it has been customary to speak of the group of men who, before the rise of the oxford movement, gathered at oriel college, as the oriel school. newman and keble were both oriel tutors. the oriel men were of distinctly liberal tendency. there were men of note among them. there was whately, archbishop of dublin after , and copleston, from whom both keble and newman owned that they learned much. there was arnold, subsequently headmaster of rugby. there was hampden, professor of divinity after . the school was called from its liberalism the noetic school. whether this epithet contained more of satire or of complacency it is difficult to say. these men arrested attention and filled some of the older academic and ecclesiastical heads with alarm. without disrespect one may say that it is difficult now to understand the commotion which they made. arnold had a truly beautiful character. what he might have done as professor of ecclesiastical history in oxford was never revealed, for he died in . whately, viewed as a noetic, appears commonplace. perhaps the only one of the group upon whom we need dwell was hampden. in his bampton lectures of , under the title of _the scholastic philosophy considered in its relation to christian theology_, he assailed what had long been the very bulwark of traditionalism. his idea was to show how the vast fabric of scholastic theology had grown up, particularly what contributions had been made to it in the middle age. the traditional dogma is a structure reared upon the logical terminology of the patristic and mediæval schools. it has little foundation in scripture and no response in the religious consciousness. we have here the application, within set limits, of the thesis which harnack in our own time has applied in a universal way. hampden's opponents were not wrong in saying that his method would dissolve, not merely that particular system of theology, but all creeds and theologies whatsoever. patristic, mediæval catholic theology and scholastic protestantism, no less, would go down before it. a pamphlet attributed to newman, published in , precipitated a discussion which, for bitterness, has rarely been surpassed in the melancholy history of theological dispute. the excitement went to almost unheard of lengths. in the controversy the archbishop, dr. howley, made but a poor figure. the duke of wellington did not add to his fame. wilberforce and newman never cleared themselves of the suspicion of indirectness. this was, however, after the opening of the oxford movement. erskine and campbell the period from to was one of religious and intellectual activity in scotland as well. tulloch depicts with a scotsman's patriotism the movement which centres about the names of erskine and campbell. pfleiderer also judges that their contribution was as significant as any made to dogmatic theology in great britain in the nineteenth century. they achieved the same reconstruction of the doctrine of salvation which had been effected by kant and schleiermacher. at their hands the doctrine was rescued from that forensic externality into which calvinism had degenerated. it was given again its quality of ethical inwardness, and based directly upon religious experience. high lutheranism had issued in the same externality in germany before kant and schleiermacher, and the new england theology before channing and bushnell. the merits of christ achieved an external salvation, of which a man became participant practically upon condition of assent to certain propositions. similarly, in the catholic revival, salvation was conceived as an external and future good, of which a man became participant through the sacraments applied to him by priests in apostolical succession. in point of externality there was not much to choose between views which were felt to be radically opposed the one to the other. erskine was not a man theologically educated. he led a peculiarly secluded life. he was an advocate by profession, but, withdrawing from that career, virtually gave himself up to meditation. campbell was a minister of the established church of scotland in a remote village, row, upon the gare loch. when he was convicted of heresy and driven from the ministry, he also devoted himself to study and authorship. both men seem to have come to their results largely from the application of their own sound religious sense to the scriptures. that the scottish church should have rejected the truth for which these men contended was the heaviest blow which it could have inflicted on itself. thereby it arrested its own healthy development. it perpetuated its traditional view, somewhat as new england orthodoxy was given a new lease of life through the partisanship which the unitarian schism engendered. the matter was not mended at the time of the great rupture of the scottish church in . that body which broke away from the establishment, and achieved a purely ecclesiastical control of its own clergy, won, indeed, by this means the name of the free church, though, in point of theological opinion, it was far from representing the more free and progressive element. tulloch pays a beautiful tribute to the character of erskine, whom he knew. quiet, brooding, introspective, he read his bible and his own soul, and with singular purity of intuition generalised from his own experience. therewith is described, however, both the power and the limitation of his work. his first book was entitled _remarks on the internal evidence for the truth of revealed religion_, . the title itself is suggestive of the revolution through which the mind both of erskine and of his age was passing. his book, _the unconditional freeness of the gospel_, appeared in ; _the brazen serpent_ in . men have confounded forgiveness and pardon. they have made pardon equivalent to salvation. but salvation is character. forgiveness is only one of the means of it. salvation is not a future good. it is a present fellowship with god. it is sanctification of character by means of our labour and god's love. the fall was the rise of the spirit of freedom. fallen man can never be saved except through glad surrender of his childish independence to the truth and goodness of god. yet that surrender is the preservation and enlargement of our independence. it is the secret of true self-realisation. the sufferings of christ reveal god's holy love. it is not as if god's love had been purchased by the sufferings of his son. on the contrary, it is man who needs to believe in god's love, and so be reconciled to the god whom he has feared and hated. christ overcomes sin by obediently enduring the suffering which sin naturally entails. he endures it in pure love of his brethren. man must overcome sin in the same way. campbell published, so late as , his great work _the nature of the atonement and its relation to the remission of sins and eternal life_. it was the matured result of the reflections of a quarter of a century, spent partly in enforced retirement after . campbell maintains unequivocally that the sacrifice of christ cannot be understood as a punishment due to man's sin, meted out to christ in man's stead. viewed retrospectively, christ's work in the atonement is but the highest example of a law otherwise universally operative. no man can work redemption for his fellows except by entering into their condition, as if everything in that condition were his own, though much of it may be in no sense his due. it is freely borne by him because of his identification of himself with them. campbell lingers in the myth of christ's being the federal head of the humanity. there is something pathetic in the struggle of his mind to save phrases and the paraphernalia of an ancient view which, however, his fundamental principle rendered obsolete, he struggles to save the word satisfaction, though it means nothing in his system save that god is satisfied as he contemplates the character of christ. prospectively considered, the sacrifice of christ effects salvation by its moral power over men in example and inspiration. vicarious sacrifice, the result of which was merely imputed, would leave the sinner just where he was before. it is an empty fiction. but the spectacle of suffering freely undertaken for our sakes discovers the treasures of the divine image in man. the love of god and a man's own resolve make him in the end, in fact, that which he has always been in capacity and destiny, a child of god, possessed of the secret of a growing righteousness, which is itself salvation. maurice scottish books seem to have been but little read in england in that day. it was maurice who first made the substance of campbell's teaching known in england. frederick denison maurice was the son of a unitarian minister, educated at trinity college, cambridge, at a time when it was impossible for a nonconformist to obtain a degree. he was ordained a priest of the church of england in , even suffering himself to be baptised again. he was chaplain of lincoln's inn and professor of theology in king's college, london. after he was professor of moral philosophy in cambridge, though his life-work was over. at the heart of maurice's theology lies the contention to which he gave the name of universal redemption. christ's work is for every man. every man is indeed in christ. man's unhappiness lies only in the fact that he will not own this fact and live accordingly. man as man is the child of god. he cannot undo that fact or alter that relation if he would. he does not need to become a child of god, as the phrase has been. he needs only to recognise that he already is such a child. he can never cease to bear this relationship. he can only refuse to fulfil it. with other words erskine and coleridge and schleiermacher had said this same thing. for the rest, one may speak briefly of maurice. he was animated by the strongest desire for church unity, but at the back of his mind lay a conception of the church and an insistence upon uniformity which made unity impossible. in the light of his own inheritance his ecclesiastical positivism seems strange. perhaps it was the course of his experience which made this irrational positivism natural. few men in his generation suffered greater persecutions under the unwarranted supposition on the part of contemporaries that he had a liberal mind. in reality, few men in his generation had less of a quality which, had he possessed it, would have given him peace and joy even in the midst of his persecutions. the casual remark above made concerning campbell is true in enhanced degree of maurice. a large part of the industry of a very industrious life was devoted to the effort to convince others and himself that those few really wonderful glimpses of spiritual truth which he had, had no disastrous consequences for an inherited system of thought in which they certainly did not take their rise. his name was connected with the social enthusiasm that inaugurated a new movement in england which will claim attention in another paragraph. channing allusion has been made to a revision of traditional theology which took place in america also, upon the same general lines which we have seen in schleiermacher and in campbell. the typical figure here, the protagonist of the movement, is william ellery channing. it may be doubted whether there has ever been a civilisation more completely controlled by its church and ministers, or a culture more entirely dominated by theology, than were those of new england until the middle of the eighteenth century. there had been indeed a marked decline in religious life. the history of the great awakening shows that. remonstrances against the great awakening show also how men's minds were moving away from the theory of the universe which the theology of that movement implied. one cannot say that in the preaching of hopkins there is an appreciable relaxation of the edwardsian scheme. interestingly enough, it was in newport that channing was born and with hopkins that he associated until the time of his licensure to preach in . many thought that channing would stand with the most stringent of the orthodox. deism and rationalism had made themselves felt in america after the revolution. channing, during his years in harvard college, can hardly have failed to come into contact with the criticism of religion from this side. there is no such clear influence of current rationalism upon channing as, for example, upon schleiermacher. yet here in the west, which most europeans thought of as a wilderness, circumstances brought about the launching of this man upon the career of a liberal religious thinker, when as yet schleiermacher had hardly advanced beyond the position of the _discourses_, when erskine had not yet written a line and campbell was still a child. channing became minister of the federal street church in boston in . the appointment of ware as hollis professor of divinity in harvard college took place in . that appointment was the first clear indication of the liberal party's strength. channing's baltimore address was delivered in . he died in . in the schism among the congregational churches in new england, which before apparently had come to be regarded by both parties as remediless, channing took the side of the opposition to calvinistic orthodoxy. he developed qualities as controversialist and leader which the gentler aspect of his early years had hardly led men to suspect. this american liberal movement had been referred to by belsham as related to english unitarianism. after , in this country, by its opponents at least, the movement was consistently called unitarian. channing did with zeal contend against the traditional doctrine of the atonement and of the trinity. on the other hand, he saw in christ the perfect revelation of god to humanity and at the same time the ideal of humanity. he believed in jesus' sinlessness and in his miracles, especially in his resurrection. the keynote of channing's character and convictions is found in his sense of the inherent greatness of man. of this feeling his entire system is but the unfolding. it was early and deliberately adopted by him as a fundamental faith. it remained the immovable centre of his reverence and trust amid all the inroads of doubt and sorrow. political interest was as natural to channing's earlier manhood as it had been to fichte in the emergency of the fatherland. similarly, in the later years of his life, when evils connected with slavery had made themselves felt, his participation in the abolitionist agitation showed the same enthusiasm and practical bent. he had his dream of communism, his perception of the evils of our industrial system, his contempt for charity in place of economic remedy. all was for man, all rested upon supreme faith in man. that man is endowed with knowledge of the right and with the power to realise it, was a fundamental maxim. hence arose channing's assertion of free-will. the denial of free-will renders the sentiment of duty but illusory. in the conscience there is both a revelation and a type of god. its suggestions, by the very authority they carry with them, declare themselves to be god's law. god, concurring with our highest nature, present in its action, can be thought of only after the pattern which he gives us in ourselves. whatever revelation god makes of himself, he must deal with us as with free beings living under natural laws. revelation must be merely supplementary to those laws. everything arbitrary and magical, everything which despairs of us or insults us as moral agents, everything which does not address itself to us through reason and conscience, must be excluded from the intercourse between god and man. what the doctrines of salvation and atonement, of the person of christ and of the influence of the holy spirit, as construed from this centre would be, may without difficulty be surmised. the whole of channing's teaching is bathed in an atmosphere of the reverent love of god which is the very source of his enthusiasm for man. bushnell a very different man was horace bushnell, born in the year of channing's licensure, . he was not bred under the influence of the strict calvinism of his day. his father was an arminian. edwards had made arminians detested in new england. his mother had been reared in the episcopal church. she was of huguenot origin. when about seventeen, while tending a carding-machine, he wrote a paper in which he endeavoured to bring calvinism into logical coherence and, in the interest of sound reason, to correct st. paul's willingness to be accursed for the sake of his brethren. he graduated from yale college in . he taught there while studying law after . he describes himself at this period as sound in ethics and sceptical in religion, the soundness of his morals being due to nature and training, the scepticism, to the theology in which he was involved. his law studies were complete, yet he turned to the ministry. he had been born on the orthodox side of the great contention in which channing was a leader of the liberals in the days of which we speak. he never saw any reason to change this relation. his clerical colleagues, for half a life-time, sought to change it for him. in he was ordained and installed as minister of the north church in hartford, a pastorate which he never left. the process of disintegration of the orthodox body was continuing. there was almost as much rancour between the old and the new orthodoxy as between orthodox and unitarians themselves. almost before his career was well begun an incurable disease fastened itself upon him. not much later, all the severity of theological strife befell him. between these two we have to think of him doing his work and keeping his sense of humour. his earliest book of consequence was on _christian nurture_, published in . consistent calvinism presupposes in its converts mature years. even an adult must pass through waters deep for him. he is not a sinful child of the father. he is a being totally depraved and damned to everlasting punishment. god becomes his father only after he is redeemed. the revivalists' theory bushnell bitterly opposed. it made of religion a transcendental matter which belonged on the outside of life, a kind of miraculous epidemic. he repudiated the prevailing individualism. he anticipated much that is now being said concerning heredity, environment and subconsciousness. he revived the sense of the church in which puritanism had been so sadly lacking. the book is a classic, one of the rich treasures which the nineteenth century offers to the twentieth. bushnell, so far as one can judge, had no knowledge of kant. he is, nevertheless, dealing with kant's own problem, of the theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'dissertation on language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the title _god in christ_, . he was following his living principle, the reference of doctrine to conscience. god must be a 'right god.' dogma must make no assertion concerning god which will not stand this test. not alone does the dogma make such assertions. the scripture makes them as well. how can this be? what is the relation of language to thought and of thought to fact? how can the language of scripture be explained, and yet the reality of the revelation not be explained away? there is a touching interest which attaches to this hartford minister, working out, alone and clumsily, a problem the solution of which the greatest minds of the age had been gradually bringing to perfection for three-quarters of a century. in the year bushnell was invited to give addresses at the commencements of three divinity schools: that at harvard, then unqualifiedly unitarian; that at andover, where the battle with unitarianism had been fought; and that at yale, where bushnell had been trained. the address at cambridge was on the subject of _the atonement_; the one at new haven on _the divinity of christ_, including bushnell's doctrine of the trinity; the one at andover on _dogma and spirit_, a plea for the cessation of strife. he says squarely of the old school theories of the atonement, which represent christ as suffering the penalty of the law in our stead: 'they are capable, one and all of them, of no light in which they do not offend some right sentiment of our moral being. if the great redeemer, in the excess of his goodness, consents to receive the penal woes of the world in his person, and if that offer is accepted, what does it signify, save that god will have his modicum of suffering somehow; and if he lets the guilty go he will yet satisfy himself out of the innocent?' the vicariousness of love, the identification of the sufferer with the sinner, in the sense that the saviour is involved by his desire to help us in the woes which naturally follow sin, this bushnell mightily affirmed. yet there is no pretence that he used vicariousness or satisfaction in the same sense in which his adversaries did. he is magnificently free from all such indirection. in the new haven address there is this same combination of fire and light. the chief theological value of the doctrine of the trinity, as maintained by the new england calvinistic teachers, had been to furnish the _dramatis personæ_ for the doctrine of the atonement. in the speculation as to the negotiation of this substitutionary transaction, the language of the theologians had degenerated into stark tritheism. edwards, describing the councils of the trinity, spoke of the three persons as 'they.' bushnell saw that any proper view of the unity of god made the forensic idea of the atonement incredible. he sought to replace the ontological notion of the trinity by that of a trinity of revelation, which held for him the practical truths by which his faith was nourished, and yet avoided the contradictions which the other doctrine presented both to reason and faith. bushnell would have been far from claiming that he was the first to make this fight. the american unitarians had been making it for more than a generation. the unitarian protest was wholesome. it was magnificent. it was providential, but it paused in negation. it never advanced to construction. bushnell's significance is not that he fought this battle, but that he fought it from the ranks of the orthodox church. he fought it with a personal equipment which channing had not had. he was decades later in his work. he took up the central religious problem when channing's successors were following either emerson or parker. the andover address consisted in the statement of bushnell's views of the causes which had led to the schism in the new england church. a single quotation may give the key-note of the discourse:--'we had on our side an article of the creed which asserted a metaphysical trinity. that made the assertion of the metaphysical unity inevitable and desirable. we had theories of atonement, of depravity, of original sin, which required the appearance of antagonistic theories. on our side, theological culture was so limited that we took what was really only our own opinion for the unalterable truth of god. on the other side, it was so limited that men, perceiving the insufficiency of dogma, took the opposite contention with the same seriousness and totality of conviction. they asserted liberty, as indeed they must, to vindicate their revolt. they produced, meantime, the most intensely human and, in that sense, the most intensely opinionated religion ever invented.' the catholic revival the oxford movement has been spoken of as a reaction against the so-called oriel movement, a conservative tendency over against an intellectualist and progressive one. in a measure the personal animosities within the oxford circle may be accounted for in this way. the tractarian movement, however, which issued, on the one hand, in the going over of newman to the church of rome and, on the other, in a great revival of catholic principles within the anglican church itself, stands in a far larger setting. it was not merely an english or insular movement. it was a wave from a continental flood. on its own showing it was not merely an ecclesiastical movement. it had political and social aims as well. there was a universal european reaction against the enlightenment and the revolution. that reaction was not simple, but complex. it was a revolt of the conservative spirit from the new ideals which had been suddenly translated into portentous realities. it was marked everywhere by hatred of the eighteenth century with all its ways and works. on the one side we have the revolutionary thesis, the rights of man, the authority of reason, the watchwords liberty, equality, fraternity. on the other side stood forth those who were prepared to assert the meaning of community, the continuity of history, spiritual as well as civil authority as the basis of order, and order as the condition of the highest good. in literature the tendency appears as romanticism, in politics as legitimism, in religion as ultramontanism. le maistre with his _l'eglise gallicane du pape_; chateaubriand with his _génie du christianisme_; lamennais with his _essai sur l'indifference en matière, de religion_, were, from to , the exponents of a view which has had prodigious consequences for france and italy. the romantic movement arose outside of catholicism. it was impersonated in herder. friedrich schlegel, werner and others went over to the roman church. the political reaction was specifically latin and catholic. in the lurid light of anarchy rome seemed to have a mission again. divine right in the state must be restored through the church. the catholic apologetic saw the revolution as only the logical conclusion of the premises of the reformation. the religious revolt of the sixteenth century, the philosophical revolt of the seventeenth, the political revolt of the eighteenth, the social revolt of the nineteenth, are all parts of one dreadful sequence. as the church lifted up the world after the first flood of the barbarians, so must she again lift up the world after the devastations made by the more terrible barbarians of the eighteenth century. england had indeed stood a little outside of the cyclone which had devastated the world from coronna to moscow and from the channel to the pyramids, but she had been exhausted in putting down the revolution. only god's goodness had preserved england. the logic of puritanism would have been the same. indeed, in england the state was weaker and worse than were the states upon the continent. for since it had been a popular and constitutional monarchy. in frederick william's phrase, its sovereign took his crown from the gutter. the church was through and through erastian, a creature of the state. bishops were made by party representatives. acts like the reform bills, the course of the government in the matter of the irish church, were steps which would surely bring england to the pass which france had reached in . the source of such acts was wrong. it was with the people. it was in men, not in god. it was in reason, not in authority. it would be difficult to overstate the strength of this reactionary sentiment in important circles in england at the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century. the oxford movement in so far as that complex of causes just alluded to made of the oxford movement or the catholic revival a movement of life, ecclesiastical, social and political as well, its history falls outside the purpose of this book. we proposed to deal with the history of thought. reactionary movements have frequently got on without much thought. they have left little deposit of their own in the realm of ideas. their avowed principle has been that of recurrence to that which has already been thought, of fidelity to ideas which have long prevailed. this is the reason why the conservatives have not a large place in such a sketch as this. it is not that their writings have not often been full of high learning and of the subtlest of reasoning. it is only that the ideas about which they reason do not belong to the history of the nineteenth century. they belong, on the earnest contention of the conservatives themselves--those of protestants, to the history of the reformation--and of catholics, both anglican and roman, to the history of the early or mediæval church. nevertheless, when with passionate conviction a great man, taking the reactionary course, thinks the problem through again from his own point of view, then we have a real phenomenon in the history of contemporary thought. when such an one wrestles before god to give reason to himself and to his fellows for the faith that is in him, then the reactionary's reasoning is as imposing and suggestive as is any other. he leaves in his work an intellectual deposit which must be considered. he makes a contribution which must be reckoned with, even more seriously, perhaps, by those who dissent from it than by those who may agree with it. such deposit newman and the tractarian movement certainly did make. they offered a rationale of the reaction. they gave to the catholic revival a standing in the world of ideas, not merely in the world of action. whether their reasoning has weight to-day, is a question upon which opinion is divided. yet newman and his compeers, by their character and standing, by their distinctively english qualities and by the road of reason which they took in the defence of catholic principles, made catholicism english again, in a sense in which it had not been english for three hundred years. yet though newman brought to the roman church in england, on his conversion to it, a prestige and qualities which in that communion were unequalled, he was never _persona grata_ in that church. outwardly the roman catholic revival in england was not in large measure due to newman and his arguments. it was due far more to men like wiseman and manning, who were not men of argument but of deeds. newman john henry newman was born in , the son of a london banker. his mother was of huguenot descent. he came under calvinistic influence. through study especially, of romaine _on faith_ he became the subject of an inward conversion, of which in he wrote: 'i am still more certain of it than that i have hands and feet.' thomas scott, the evangelical, moved him. before he was sixteen he made a collection of scripture texts in proof of the doctrine of the trinity. from newton _on the prophecies_ he learned to identify the pope with anti-christ--a doctrine by which, he adds, his imagination was stained up to the year . in his _apologia_, , he declares: 'from the age of fifteen, dogma has been a fundamental principle of my religion. i cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.' at the age of twenty-one, two years after he had taken his degree, he came under very different influences. he passed from trinity college to a fellowship in oriel. to use his own phrase, he drifted in the direction of liberalism. he was touched by whately. he was too logical, and also too dogmatic, to be satisfied with whately's position. of the years from to mozley says: 'probably no one who then knew newman could have told which way he would go. it is not certain that he himself knew.' francis w. newman, newman's brother, who later became a unitarian, remembering his own years of stress, speaks with embitterment of his elder brother, who was profoundly uncongenial to him. the year , in which keble's _christian year_ was published, saw another change in newman's views. illness and bereavement came to him with awakening effect. he made the acquaintance of hurrell froude. froude brought newman and keble together. henceforth newman bore no more traces either of evangelicalism or of liberalism. of froude it is difficult to speak with confidence. his brother, james anthony froude, the historian, author of the _nemesis of faith_, , says that he was gifted, brilliant, enthusiastic. newman speaks of him with almost boundless praise. two volumes of his sermons, published after his death in , make the impression neither of learning nor judgment. clearly he had charm. possibly he talked himself into a common-room reputation. newman says: 'froude made me look with admiration toward the church of rome.' keble never had felt the liberalism through which newman had passed. cradled as the church of england had been in puritanism, the latter was to him simply evil. opinions differing from his own were not simply mistaken, they were sinful. he conceived no religious truth outside the church of england. in the _christian year_ one perceives an influence which newman strongly felt. it was that of the idea of the sacramental significance of all natural objects or events. pusey became professor of hebrew in . he lent the movement academic standing, which the others could not give. he had been in germany, and had published an _inquiry into the rationalist character of german theology_, . he hardly did more than expose the ignorance of rose. he was himself denounced as a german rationalist who dared to speak of a new era in theology. pusey, mourning the defection of newman, whom he deeply loved, gathered in the forces of the anglo-catholics and continued in some sense a leader to the end of his long life in . the course of political events was fretting the conservatives intolerably. the agitation for the reform bill was taking shape. sir robert peel, the member for oxford, had introduced a bill for the emancipation of the roman catholics. there was violent commotion in oxford. keble and newman strenuously opposed the measure. in there was revolution in france. in england the whigs had come into power. newman's mind was excited in the last degree. 'the vital question,' he says, 'is this, how are we to keep the church of england from being liberalised?' at the end of newman and froude went abroad together. on this journey, as he lay becalmed in the straits of bonifacio, he wrote his immortal hymn, 'lead, kindly light.' he came home assured that he had a work to do. keble's assize sermon on the _national apostasy_, preached in july , on the sunday after newman's return to oxford, kindled the conflagration which had been long preparing. newman conceived the idea of the _tracts for the times_ as a means of expressing the feelings and propagating the opinions which deeply moved him. 'from the first,' he says, 'my battle was with liberalism. by liberalism i mean the anti-dogmatic principle. secondly, my aim was the assertion of the visible church with sacraments and rites and definite religious teaching on the foundation of dogma; and thirdly, the assertion of the anglican church as opposed to the church of rome.' newman grew greatly in personal influence. his afternoon sermons at st. mary's exerted spiritual power. they deserved so to do. here he was at his best. all of his strength and little of his weakness shows. his insight, his subtility, his pathos, his love of souls, his marvellous play of dramatic as well as of spiritual faculty, are in evidence. keble and pusey were busying themselves with the historical aspects of the question. pusey began the _library of the fathers_, the most elaborate literary monument of the movement. nothing could be more amazing than the uncritical quality of the whole performance. the first check to the movement came in , when the bishop of oxford animadverted upon the _tracts_. newman professed his willingness to stop them. the bishop did not insist. newman's own thought moved rapidly onward in the only course which was still open to it. newman had been bred in the deepest reverence for scripture. in a sense that reverence never left him, though it changed its form. he saw that it was absurd to appeal to the bible in the old way as an infallible source of doctrine. how could truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and fallible expressions? newman's own studies in criticism, by no means profound, led him to this correct conclusion. this was the end for him of evangelical protestantism. the recourse was then to the infallible church. infallible guide and authority one must have. without these there can be no religion. to trust to reason and conscience as conveying something of the light of god is impossible. to wait in patience and to labour in fortitude for the increase of that light is unendurable. one must have certainty. there can be no certainty by the processes of the mind from within. this can come only by miraculous certification from without. according to newman the authority of the church should never have been impaired in the reformation. or rather, in his view of that movement, this authority, for truly christian men, had never been impaired. the intellect is aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy. its action in religious matters is corrosive, dissolving, sceptical. 'man's energy of intellect must be smitten hard and thrown back by infallible authority, if religion is to be saved at all.' newman's philosophy was utterly sceptical, although, unlike most absolute philosophical sceptics, he had a deep religious experience. the most complete secularist, in his negation of religion, does not differ from newman in his low opinion of the value of the surmises of the mind as to the transcendental meaning of life and the world. he differs from newman only in lacking that which to newman was the most indefeasible thing which he had at all, namely, religious experience. newman was the child of his age, though no one ever abused more fiercely the age of which he was the child. he supposed that he believed in religion on the basis of authority. quite the contrary, he believed in religion because he had religion or, as he says, in a magnificent passage in one of his parochial sermons, because religion had him. his scepticism forbade him to recognise that this was the basis of his belief. his diremption of human nature was absolute. the soul was of god. the mind was of the devil. he dare not trust his own intellect concerning this inestimable treasure of his experience. he dare not trust intellect at all. he knew not whither it might lead him. the mind cannot be broken to the belief of a power above it. it must have its stiff neck bent to recognise its creator. his whole book, _the grammar of assent_, , is pervaded by the intensest philosophical scepticism. scepticism supplies its motives, determines its problems, necessitates its distinctions, rules over the succession and gradation of its arguments. the whole aim of the work is to withdraw religion and the proofs of it, from the region of reason into the realm of conscience and imagination, where the arguments which reign may satisfy personal experience without alleging objective validity or being able to bear the criticism which tests it. again, he is the perverse, unconscious child of the age which he curses. had not kant and schleiermacher, coleridge and channing sought, does not ritschl seek, to remove religion from the realm of metaphysics and to bring it within the realm of experience? they had, however, pursued the same end by different means. one is reminded of that saying of gretchen concerning mephistopheles: 'he says the same thing with the pastor, only in different words.' newman says the same words, but means a different thing. assuming the reduction of religion to experience, in which kant and schleiermacher would have agreed, and asserting the worthlessness of mentality, which they would have denied, we are not surprised to hear newman say that without catholicism doubt is invincible. 'the church's infallibility is the provision adopted by the mercy of the creator to preserve religion in the world. outside the catholic church all things tend to atheism. the catholic church is the one face to face antagonist, able to withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion and the all-dissolving scepticism of the mind. i am a catholic by virtue of my belief in god. if i should be asked why i believe in god, i should answer, because i believe in myself. i find it impossible to believe in myself, without believing also in the existence of him who lives as a personal, all-seeing, all-judging being in my conscience.' these passages are mainly taken from the _apologia_, written long after newman had gone over to the roman church. they perfectly describe the attitude of his mind toward the anglican church, so long as he believed this, and not the roman, to be the true church. he had once thought that a man could hold a position midway between the protestantism which he repudiated and the romanism which he still resisted. he stayed in the _via media_ so long as he could. but in he began to have doubts about the anglican order of succession. the catholicity of rome began to overshadow the apostolicity of anglicanism. the anglican formularies cannot be at variance with the teachings of the authoritative and universal church. this is the problem which the last of the _tracts_, _tract ninety_, sets itself. it is one of those which newman wrote. one must find the sense of the roman church in the thirty-nine articles. this tract is prefaced by an extraordinary disquisition upon reserve in the communication of religious knowledge. god's revelations of himself to mankind have always been a kind of veil. truth is the reward of holiness. the fathers were holy men. therefore what the fathers said must be true. the principle of reserve the articles illustrate. they do not mean what they say. they were written in an uncatholic age, that is, in the age of the reformation. they were written by catholic men. else how can the church of england be now a catholic church? through their reserve they were acceptable in an uncatholic age. they cannot be uncatholic in spirit, else how should they be identical in meaning with the great catholic creeds? then follows an exposition of every important article of the thirty-nine, an effort to interpret each in the sense of the roman catholic church of to-day. four tutors published a protest against the tract. formal censure was passed upon it. it was now evident to newman that his place in the leadership of the oxford movement was gone. from this time, the spring of , he says he was on his deathbed as regards the church of england. he withdrew to littlemore and established a brotherhood there. in the autumn of he resigned the parochial charge of st. mary's at oxford. on the th of october he was formally admitted to the roman church. on the th of october ernest renan had formally severed his connexion with that church. it is a strange thing that in his _essay on the development of christian doctrine_, written in , newman himself should have advanced substantially hampden's contention. here are written many things concerning the development of doctrine which commend themselves to minds conversant with the application of historical criticism to the whole dogmatic structure of the christian ages. the purpose is with newman entirely polemical, the issue exactly that which one would not have foreseen. precisely because the development of doctrine is so obvious, because no historical point can be found at which the growth of doctrine ceased and the rule of faith was once for all settled, therefore an infallible authority outside of the development must have existed from the beginning, to provide a means of distinguishing true development from false. this infallible guide is, of course, the church. it seems incredible that newman could escape applying to the church the same argument which he had so skilfully applied to scripture and dogmatic history. similar is the case with the argument of the _grammar of assent_. 'no man is certain of a truth who can endure the thought of its contrary.' if the reason why i cannot endure the thought of the contradictory of a belief which i have made my own, is that so to think brings me pain and darkness, this does not prove my truth. if my belief ever had its origin in reason, it must be ever refutable by reason. it is not corroborated by the fact that i do not wish to see anything that would refute it.[ ] this last fact may be in the highest degree an act of arbitrariness. to make the impossibility of thinking the opposite, the test of truth, and then to shut one's eyes to those evidences which might compel one to think the opposite, is the essence of irrationality. one attains by this method indefinite assertiveness, but not certainty. newman lived in some seclusion in the oratory of st. philip neri in birmingham for many years. a few distinguished men, and a number of his followers, in all not more than a hundred and fifty, went over to the roman church after him. the defection was never so great as, in the first shock, it was supposed that it would be. the outward influence of newman upon the anglican church then ceased. but the ideas which he put forth have certainly been of great influence in that church to this day. most men know the portrait of the great cardinal, the wide forehead, ploughed deep with horizontal furrows, the pale cheek, down which 'long lines of shadow slope, which years and anxious thought and suffering give.' one looks into the wonderful face of those last days--newman lived to his ninetieth year--and wonders if he found in the infallible church the peace which he so earnestly sought. [footnote : fairbairn, _catholicism, roman and anglican_, p. .] modernism it was said that the oxford movement furnished the rationale of the reaction. many causes, of course, combine to make the situation of the roman church and the status of religion in the latin countries of the continent the lamentable one that it is. that position is worst in those countries where the roman church has most nearly had free play. the alienation both of the intellectual and civil life from organised religion is grave. that the roman church occupies in england to-day a position more favourable than in almost any nation on the continent, and better than it occupied in england at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is due in large measure to the general influence of the movement with which we have been dealing. the anglican church was at the beginning of the nineteenth century preponderantly evangelical, low-church and conscious of itself as protestant. at the beginning of the twentieth it is dominantly ritualistic and disposed to minimise its relation to the reformation. this resurgence of catholic principles is another effect of the movement of which we speak. other factors must have wrought for this result besides the body of arguments which newman and his compeers offered. the argument itself, the mere intellectual factor, is not adequate. there is an inherent contradiction in the effort to ground in reason an authority which is to take the place of reason. yet round and round this circle all the labours of john henry newman go. cardinal manning felt this. the victory of the church was not to be won by argument. it is well known that newman opposed the decree of infallibility. it cannot be said that upon this point his arguments had great weight. if one assumes that truth comes to us externally through representatives of god, and if the truth is that which they assert, then in the last analysis what they assert is truth. if one has given in to such authority because one distrusts his reason, then it is querulous to complain that the deliverances of authority do not comport with reason. there may be, of course, the greatest interest in the struggle as to the instance in which this authority is to be lodged. this interest attaches to the age-long struggle between pope and council. it attaches to the dramatic struggle of döllinger, dupanloup, lord acton and the rest, in . once the church has spoken there is, for the advocate of authoritative religion, no logic but to submit. similarly as to the _encyclical_ and _syllabus of errors_ of , which forecast the present conflict concerning modernism. the _syllabus_ had a different atmosphere from that which any englishman in the sixties would have given it. had not newman, however, made passionate warfare on the liberalism of the modern world? was it not merely a question of degrees? was gladstone's attitude intelligible? the contrast of two principles in life and religion, the principles of authority and of the spirit, is being brought home to men's consciousness as it has never been before. one reads _il santo_ and learns concerning the death of fogazzaro, one looks into the literature relating to tyrrell, one sees the fate of loisy, comparing the really majestic achievement in his works and the spirit of his _simple reflections_ with the _encyclical pascendi_, . one understands why these men have done what they could to remain within the roman church. one recalls the attitude of döllinger to the inauguration of the old catholic movement, reflects upon the relative futility of the old catholic church, and upon the position of hyacinthe loyson. one appreciates the feeling of these men that it is impossible, from without, to influence as they would the church which they have loved. the present difficulty of influencing it from within seems almost insuperable. the history of modernism as an effective contention in the world of christian thought seems scarcely begun. the opposition to modernism is not yet a part of the history of thought. robertson in no life are reflected more perfectly the spiritual conflicts of the fifth decade of the nineteenth century than in that of frederick w. robertson. no mind worked itself more triumphantly out of these difficulties. descended from a family of scottish soldiers, evangelical in piety, a student in oxford in , repelled by the oxford movement, he undertook his ministry under a morbid sense of responsibility. he reacted violently against his evangelicalism. he travelled abroad, read enormously, was plunged into an agony which threatened mentally to undo him. he took his charge at brighton in , still only thirty-one years old, and at once shone forth in the splendour of his genius. a martyr to disease and petty persecution, dying at thirty-seven, he yet left the impress of one of the greatest preachers whom the church of england has produced. he left no formal literary work such as he had designed. of his sermons we have almost none from his own manuscripts. yet his influence is to-day almost as intense as when the sermons were delivered. it is, before all, the wealth and depth of his thought, the reality of the content of the sermons, which commands admiration. they are a classic refutation of the remark that one cannot preach theology. out of them, even in their fragmentary state, a well-articulated system might be made. he brought to his age the living message of a man upon whom the best light of his age had shone. phillips brooks something of the same sort may be said concerning phillips brooks. he inherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane and secular interest of the earlier unitarianism, on his mother's side the intensity of evangelical pietism with the calvinistic form of thought. the conflict of these opposing tendencies in new england was at that time so great that brooks's parents sought refuge with the low-church element in the episcopal church. brooks's education at harvard college, where he took his degree in , as also at alexandria, and still more, his reading and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, in england in those years, was called the broad church party. he was deeply influenced by campbell and maurice. later well known in england, he was the compeer of the best spirits of his generation there. deepened by the experience of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of large influence, dying as bishop of massachusetts in . there is a theological note about his preaching, as in the case of robertson. often it is the same note. brooks had passed through no such crisis as had robertson. he had flowered into the greatness of rational belief. his sermons are a contribution to the thinking of his age. we have much finished material of this kind from his own hand, and a book or two besides. his service through many years as preacher to his university was of inestimable worth. the presentation of ever-advancing thought to a great public constituency is one of the most difficult of tasks. it is also one of the most necessary. the fusion of such thoughtfulness with spiritual impulse has rarely been more perfectly achieved than in the preaching of phillips brooks. the broad church we have used the phrase, the broad church party. stanley had employed the adjective to describe the real character of the english church, over against the antithesis of the low church and the high. the designation adhered to a group of which stanley was himself a type. they were not bound together in a party. they had no ecclesiastical end in view. they were of a common spirit. it was not the spirit of evangelicalism. still less was it that of the tractarians. it was that which robertson had manifested. it aimed to hold the faith with an open mind in all the intellectual movement of the age. maurice should be enumerated here, with reservations. kingsley beyond question belonged to this group. there was great ardour among them for the improvement of social conditions, a sense of the social mission of christianity. there grew up what was called a christian socialist movement, which, however, never attained or sought a political standing. the broad church movement seemed, at one time, assured of ascendancy in the church of england. its aims appeared congruous with the spirit of the times. yet dean fremantle esteems himself perhaps the last survivor of an illustrious company. the men who in published the volume known as _essays and reviews_ would be classed with the broad church. in its authorship were associated seven scholars, mostly oxford men. some one described _essays and reviews_ as the _tract ninety_ of the broad church. it stirred public sentiment and brought the authors into conflict with authority in a somewhat similar way. the living antagonism of the broad church was surely with the tractarians rather than with the evangelicals. yet the most significant of the essays, those on miracles and on prophecy, touched opinions common to both these groups. jowett, later master of balliol, contributed an essay on the 'interpretation of scripture.' it hardly belongs to jowett's best work. yet the controversy then precipitated may have had to do with jowett's adherence to platonic studies instead of his devoting himself to theology. the most decisive of the papers was that of baden powell on the 'study of the evidences of christianity.' it was mainly a discussion of the miracle. it was radical and conclusive. the essay closes with an allusion to darwin's _origin of species_, which had then just appeared. baden powell died shortly after its publication. the fight came on rowland williams's paper upon bunson's _biblical researches_. it was really upon the prophecies and their use in 'christian evidences.' baron bunsen was not a great archæologist, but he brought to the attention of english readers that which was being done in germany in this field. williams used the archæological material to rectify the current theological notions concerning ancient history. a certain type of english mind has always shown zeal for the interpretation of prophecy. williams's thesis, briefly put, was this: the bible does not always give the history of the past with accuracy; it does not give the history of the future at all; prophecy means spiritual teaching, not secular prognostication. a reader of our day may naturally feel that wilson, with his paper on the 'national church,' made the greatest contribution. he built indeed upon coleridge, but he had a larger horizon. he knew the arguments of the great frenchmen of his day and of their english imitators who, in benn's phrase, narrowed and perverted the ideal of a world-wide humanity into that of a church founded on dogmas and administered by clericals. wilson argued that in jesus' teaching the basis of the religious community is ethical. the church is but the instrument for carrying out the will of god as manifest in the moral law. the realisation of the will of god must extend beyond the limits of the church's activity, however widely these are drawn. there arose a violent agitation. williams and wilson were prosecuted. the case was tried in the court of arches. williams was defended by no less a person than fitzjames stephen. the two divines were sentenced to a year's suspension. this decision was reversed by the lord chancellor. fitzjames stephen had argued that if the men most interested in the church, namely, its clergy, are the only men who may be punished for serious discussion of the facts and truths of religion, then respect on the part of the world for the church is at an end. by this discussion the english clergy, even if anglo-catholic, are in a very different position from the roman priests, over whom encyclicals, even if not executed, are always suspended. similar was the issue in the case of colenso, bishop of natal. equipped mainly with cambridge mathematics added to purest self-devotion, he had been sent out as a missionary bishop. in the process of the translation of the pentateuch for his zulus, he had come to reflect upon the problem which the old testament presents. in a manner which is altogether marvellous he worked out critical conclusions parallel to those of old testament scholars on the continent. he was never really an expert, but in his main contention he was right. he adhered to his opinion despite severe pressure and was not removed from the episcopate. with such guarantees it would be strange indeed if we could not say that biblical studies entered in great britain, as also in america, on a development in which scholars of these nations are not behind the best scholars of the world. the trials for heresy of robertson smith in edinburgh and of dr. briggs in new york have now little living interest. yet biblical studies in scotland and america were incalculably furthered by those discussions. the publication of a book like _supernatural religion_, , illustrates a proclivity not uncommon in self-conscious liberal circles, for taking up a contention just when those who made it and have lived with it have decided to lay it down. however, the names of hatch and lightfoot alone, not to mention the living, are sufficient to warrant the assertions above made. * * * * * more than once in these chapters we have spoken of the service rendered to the progress of christian thought by the criticism and interpretation of religion at the hands of literary men. that country and age may be esteemed fortunate in which religion occupies a place such that it compels the attention of men of genius. in the history of culture this has by no means always been the case. that these men do not always speak the language of edification is of minor consequence. what is of infinite worth is that the largest minds of the generation shall engage themselves with the topic of religion. a history of thought concerning christianity cannot but reckon with the opinions, for example, of carlyle, of emerson, of matthew arnold--to mention only types. carlyle carlyle has pictured for us his early home at ecclefechan on the border; his father, a stone mason of the highest character; his mother with her frugal, pious ways; the minister, from whom he learned latin, 'the priestliest man i ever beheld in any ecclesiastical guise.' the picture of his mother never faded from his memory. carlyle was destined for the church. such had been his mother's prayer. he took his arts course in edinburgh. in the university, he says, 'there was much talk about progress of the species, dark ages, and the like, but the hungry young looked to their spiritual nurses and were bidden to eat the east wind.' he entered divinity hall, but already, in , prohibitive doubts had arisen in his mind. irving sought to help him. irving was not the man for the task. the christianity of the church had become intellectually incredible to carlyle. for a time he was acutely miserable, bordering upon despair. he has described his spiritual deliverance: 'precisely that befel me which the methodists call their conversion, the deliverance of their souls from the devil and the pit. there burst forth a sacred flame of joy in me.' with _sartor resartus_ his message to the world began. it was printed in _fraser's magazine_ in , but not published separately until . his difficulty in finding a publisher embittered him. style had something to do with this, the newness of his message had more. then for twenty years he poured forth his message. never did a man carry such a pair of eyes into the great world of london or set a more peremptory mark upon its notabilities. his best work was done before . his later years were darkened with much misery of body. no one can allege that he ever had a happy mind. he was a true prophet, but, elijah-like, he seemed to himself to be alone. his derision of the current religion seems sometimes needless. yet even that has the grand note of sincerity. what he desired he in no small measure achieved--that his readers should be arrested and feel themselves face to face with reality. his startling intuition, his intellectual uprightness, his grasp upon things as they are, his passion for what ought to be, made a great impression upon his age. it was in itself a religious influence. here was a mind of giant force, of sternest truthfulness. his untruths were those of exaggeration. his injustices were those of prejudice. he invested many questions of a social and moral, of a political and religious sort with a nobler meaning than they had had before. his _french revolution_, his papers on _chartism_, his unceasing comment on the troubled life of the years from to , are of highest moment for our understanding of the growth of that social feeling in the midst of which we live and work. in his brooding sympathy with the downtrodden he was a great inaugurator of the social movement. he felt the curse of an aristocratic society, yet no one has told us with more drastic truthfulness the evils of our democratic institutions. his word was a great corrective for much 'rose-water' optimism which prevailed in his day. the note of hope is, however, often lacking. the mythology of an absentee god had faded from him. yet the god who was clear to his mature consciousness, clear as the sun in the heavens, was a god over the world, to judge it inexorably. again, it is not difficult to accumulate evidence in his words which looks toward pantheism; but what one may call the religious benefit of pantheism, the sense that god is in his world, carlyle often loses. materialism is to-day so deeply discredited that we find it difficult to realise that sixty years ago the problem wore a different look. carlyle was never weary of pouring out the vials of his contempt on 'mud-philosophies' and exalting the spirit as against matter. never was a man more opposed to the idea of a godless world, in which man is his own chief end, and his sensual pleasures the main aims of his existence. his insight into the consequences of our commercialism and luxury and absorption in the outward never fails. man is god's son, but the effort to realise that sonship in the joy and trust of a devout heart and in the humble round of daily life sometimes seems to him cant or superstition. the humble life of godliness made an unspeakable appeal to him. he had known those who lived that life. his love for them was imperishable. yet he had so recoiled from the superstitions and hypocrisies of others, the eternal in his majesty was so ineffable, all effort to approach him so unworthy, that almost instinctively he would call upon the man who made the effort, to desist. so magnificent, all his life long, had been his protest against the credulity and stupidity of men, against beliefs which assert the impossible and blink the facts, that, for himself, the great objects of faith were held fast to, so to say, in their naked verity, with a giant's strength. they were half-querulously denied all garment and embodiment, lest he also should be found credulous and self-deceived. from this titan labouring at the foundations of the world, this samson pulling down temples of the philistines on his head, this cyclops heaving hills at ships as they pass by, it seems a long way to emerson. yet emerson was carlyle's friend. emerson arnold said in one of his american addresses: 'besides these voices--newman, carlyle, goethe--there came to us in the oxford of my youth a voice also from this side of the atlantic, a clear and pure voice which, for my ear at any rate, brought a strain as new and moving and unforgetable as those others. lowell has described the apparition of emerson to your young generation here. he was your newman, your man of soul and genius, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your heart and imagination.' then he quotes as one of the most memorable passages in english speech: 'trust thyself. accept the place which the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. great men have always done so, confiding themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying a perception which was stirring in their hearts, working through their hands, dominating their whole being.' arnold speaks of carlyle's grim insistence upon labour and righteousness but of his scorn of happiness, and then says: 'but emerson taught happiness in labour, in righteousness and veracity. in all the life of the spirit, happiness and eternal hope, that was emerson's gospel. by his conviction that in the life of the spirit is happiness, by his hope and expectation that this life of the spirit will more and more be understood and will prevail, by this emerson was great.' seven of emerson's ancestors were ministers of new england churches. he inherited qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue, sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. the form of his ideals was modified by the glow of transcendentalism which passed over parts of new england in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but the spirit in which emerson conceived the laws of life, reverenced them and lived them, was the puritan spirit, only elevated, enlarged and beautified by the poetic temperament. taking his degree from harvard in , despising school teaching, stirred by the passion for spiritual leadership, the ministry seemed to offer the fairest field for its satisfaction. in he entered the divinity school in harvard to prepare himself for the unitarian ministry. in he became associate minister of the second unitarian church in boston. he arrived at the conviction that the lord's supper was not intended by jesus to be a permanent sacrament. he found his congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant to agree with him. he therefore retired from the pastoral office. he was always a preacher, though of a singular order. his task was to befriend and guide the inner life of man. the influences of this period in his life have been enumerated as the liberating philosophy of coleridge, the mystical vision of swedenborg, the intimate poetry of wordsworth, the stimulating essays of carlyle. his address before the graduating class of the divinity school at cambridge in was an impassioned protest against what he called the defects of historical christianity, its undue reliance upon the personal authority of jesus, its failure to explore the moral nature of man. he made a daring plea for absolute self-reliance and new inspiration in religion: 'in the soul let redemption be sought. refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men. cast conformity behind you. acquaint men at first hand with deity.' he never could have been the power he was by the force of his negations. his power lay in the wealth, the variety, the beauty and insight with which he set forth the positive side of his doctrine of the greatness of man, of the presence of god in man, of the divineness of life, of god's judgment and mercy in the order of the world. one sees both the power and the limitation of emerson's religious teaching. at the root of it lay a real philosophy. he could not philosophise. he was always passing from the principle to its application. he could not systematise. he speaks of his 'formidable tendency to the lapidary style.' granting that one finds his philosophy in fragments, just as one finds his interpretation of religion in flashes of marvellous insight, both are worth searching for, and either, in coleridge's phrase, finds us, whether we search for it or not. arnold what shall we say of matthew arnold himself? without doubt the twenty years by which arnold was newman's junior at oxford made a great difference in the intellectual atmosphere of that place, and of the english world of letters, at the time when arnold's mind was maturing. he was not too late to feel the spell of newman. his mind was hardly one to appreciate the whole force of that spell. he was at oxford too early for the full understanding of the limits within which alone the scientific conception of the world can be said to be true. arnold often boasted that he was no metaphysician. he really need never have mentioned the fact. the assumption that whatever is true can be verified in the sense of the precise kind of verification which science implies is a very serious mistake. yet his whole intellectual strength was devoted to the sustaining, one cannot say exactly the cause of religion, but certainly that of noble conduct, and to the assertion of the elation of duty and the joy of righteousness. with all the scorn that arnold pours upon the trust which we place in god's love, he yet holds to the conviction that 'the power without ourselves which makes for righteousness' is one upon which we may in rapture rely. arnold had convinced himself that in an ago such as ours, which will take nothing for granted, but must verify everything, christianity, in the old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings and miraculous events, is no longer tenable. we must confine ourselves to such ethical truths as can be verified by experience. we must reject everything which goes beyond these. religion has no more to do with supernatural dogma than with metaphysical philosophy. it has nothing to do with either. it has to do with conduct. it is folly to make religion depend upon the conviction of the existence of an intelligent and moral governor of the universe, as the theologians have done. for the object of faith in the ethical sense arnold coined the phrase: 'the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness.' so soon as we go beyond this, we enter upon the region of fanciful anthropomorphism, of extra belief, _aberglaube_, which always revenges itself. these are the main contentions of his book, _literature and dogma_, . one feels the value of arnold's recall to the sense of the literary character of the scriptural documents, as urged in his book, _saint paul and protestantism_, , and again to the sense of the influence which the imagination of mankind has had upon religion. one feels the truth of his assertion of our ignorance. one feels arnold's own deep earnestness. it was his concern that reason and the will of god should prevail. though he was primarily a literary man, yet his great interest was in religion. one feels so sincerely that his main conclusion is sound, that it is the more trying that his statement of it should be often so perverse and his method of sustaining it so precarious. it is quite certain that the idea of the eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness is far from being the clear idea which arnold claims. it is far from being an idea derived from experience or verifiable in experience, in the sense which he asserts. it seems positively incredible that arnold did not know that with this conception he passed the boundary of the realm of science and entered the realm of metaphysics, which he so abhorred. he was the eldest son of thomas arnold of rugby. he was educated at winchester and rugby and at balliol college. he was professor of poetry in oxford from to . he was an inspector of schools. the years of his best literary labour were much taken up in ways which were wasteful of his rare powers. he came by literary intuition to an idea of scripture which others had built up from the point of view of a theory of knowledge and by investigation of the facts. he is the helpless personification of a view of the relation of science and religion which has absolutely passed away. yet arnold died only in . how much a distinguished inheritance may mean is gathered from the fact that a grand-daughter of thomas arnold and niece of matthew arnold, mrs. humphry ward, in her novels, has dealt largely with problems of religious life, and more particularly of religious thoughtfulness. she has done for her generation, in her measure, that which george eliot did for hers. martineau as the chapter and the book draw to their close we can think of no man whose life more nearly spanned the century, or whose work touched more fruitfully almost every aspect of christian thoughtfulness than did that of james martineau. we can think of no man who gathered into himself more fully the significant theological tendencies of the age, or whose utterance entitles him to be listened to more reverently as seer and saint. he was born in . he was bred as an engineer. he fulfilled for years the calling of minister and preacher. he gradually exchanged this for the activity of a professor. he was a religious philosopher in the old sense, but he was also a critic and historian. his position with reference to the new testament was partly antiquated before his _seat of authority in religion_, , made its appearance. evolutionism never became with him a coherent and consistent assumption. ethics never altogether got rid of the innate ideas. the social movement left him almost untouched. yet, despite all this, he was in some sense a representative progressive theologian of the century. there is a parallel between newman and martineau. both busied themselves with the problem of authority. criticism had been fatal to the apprehension which both had inherited concerning the authority of scripture. from that point onward they took divergent courses. the arguments which touched the infallible and oracular authority of scripture, for newman established that of the church; for martineau they had destroyed that of the church four hundred years ago. martineau's sense, even of the authority of jesus, reverent as it is, is yet no pietistic and mystical view. the authority of jesus is that of the truth which he speaks, of the goodness which dwells in him, of god himself and god alone. a real interest in the sciences and true learning in some of them made martineau able to write that wonderful chapter in his _seat of authority_, which he entitled 'god in nature.' newman could see in nature, at most a sacramental suggestion, a symbol of transcendental truth. the martineaus came of old huguenot stock, which in england belonged to the liberal presbyterianism out of which much of british unitarianism came. the righteousness of a persecuted race had left an austere impress upon their domestic and social life. intellectually they inherited the advanced liberalism of their day. harriet martineau's earlier piety had been of the most fervent sort. she reacted violently against it in later years. she had little of the politic temper and gentleness of her brother. she described one of her own later works as the last word of philosophic atheism. james was, and always remained, of deepest sensitiveness and reverence and of a gentleness which stood in high contrast with his powers of conflict, if necessity arose. out of martineau's years as preacher in liverpool and london came two books of rare devotional quality, _endeavours after the christian life_, and , and _hours of thought on sacred things_, and . almost all his life he was identified with manchester college, as a student when the college was located at york, as a teacher when it returned to manchester and again when it was removed to london. with its removal to oxford, accomplished in , he had not fully sympathised. he believed that the university itself must some day do justice to the education of men for the ministry in other churches than the anglican. he was eighty years old when he published his _types of ethical theory_, eighty-two when he gave to the world his _study of religion_, eighty-five when his _seat of authority_ saw the light. the effect of this postponement of publication was not wholly good. the books represented marvellous learning and ripeness of reflection. but they belong to a period anterior to the dates they bear upon their title-pages. martineau's education and his early professional experience put him in touch with the advancing sciences. in the days when most men of progressive spirit were carried off their feet, when materialism was flaunted in men's faces and the defence of religion was largely in the hands of those who knew nothing of the sciences, martineau was not moved. he saw the end from the beginning. there is nothing finer in his latest work than his early essays--'nature and god,' 'science, nescience and faith,' and 'religion as affected by modern materialism.' he died in in his ninety-fifth year. it is difficult to speak of the living in these pages. personal relations enforce reserve and brevity. nevertheless, no one can think of manchester college and martineau without being reminded of mansfield college and of fairbairn, a scotchman, but of the independent church. he also was both teacher and preacher all his days, leader of the movement which brought mansfield college from birmingham to oxford, by the confession both of anglicans and of non-conformists the most learned man in his subjects in the oxford of his time, an historian, touched by the social enthusiasm, but a religious philosopher, _par excellence_. his _religion and modern life_, , his _catholicism, roman and anglican_, , his _place of christ in modern theology_, , his _philosophy of the christian religion_, , and his _studies in religion and theology_, , indicate the wideness of his sympathies and the scope of the application, of his powers. if imitation is homage, grateful acknowledgment is here made of rich spoil taken from his books. philosophy took a new turn in britain after the middle of the decade of the sixties. it began to be conceded that locke and hume were dead. had mill really appreciated that fact he might have been a philosopher more fruitful and influential than he was. sir william hamilton was dead. mansel's endeavour, out of agnosticism to conjure the most absurdly positivistic faith, had left thinking men more exposed to scepticism, if possible, than they had been before. when hegel was thought in germany to be obsolete, and everywhere the cry was 'back to kant,' some scotch and english scholars, the two cairds and seth pringle-pattison, with thomas hill green, made a modified hegelianism current in great britain. they led by this path in the introduction of their countrymen to later german idealism. by this introduction philosophy in both britain and america has greatly gained. despite these facts, john caird's _introduction to the philosophy of religion_, , is still only a religious philosophy. it is not a philosophy of religion. his _fundamental ideas of christianity_, , hardly escapes the old antitheses among which theological discussion moved, say, thirty years ago. edward caird's _critical philosophy of kant_, , and especially his _evolution of religion_, , marked the coming change more definitely than did any of the labours of his brother. thomas hill green gave great promise in his _introduction to hume_, , his _prolegomena to ethics_, , and still more in essays and papers scattered through the volumes edited by nettleship after green's death. his contribution to religious discussion was such as to make his untimely end to be deeply deplored. seth pringle-pattison's early work, _the development from kant to hegel_, , still has great worth. his _hegelianism and personality_, , deals with one aspect of the topic which needs ever again to be explored, because of the psychological basis which in religious discussion is now assumed. james the greatest contribution of america to religious discussion in recent years is surely william james's _varieties of religious experience_, . the book is unreservedly acknowledged in britain, and in germany as well, to be the best which we yet have upon the psychology of religion. not only so, it gives a new intimation as to what psychology of religion means. it blazes a path along which investigators are eagerly following. boyce, in his phi beta kappa address at harvard in , declared james to be the third representative philosopher whom america has produced. he had the form of philosophy as emerson never had. he could realise whither he was going, as emerson in his intuitiveness never did. he criticised the dominant monism in most pregnant way. he recurred to the problems which dualism owned but could not solve. we cannot call the new scheme dualism. the world does not go back. yet james made an over-confident generation feel that the centuries to which dualism had seemed reasonable were not so completely without intelligence as has been supposed by some. no philosophy may claim completeness as an interpretation of the universe. no more conclusive proof of this judgment could be asked than is given quite unintentionally in haeckel's _weltrãthsel_. at no point is this recall more earnest than in james's dealing with the antithesis of good and evil. the reaction of the mind of the race, and primarily of individuals, upon the fact of evil, men's consciousness of evil in themselves, their desire to be rid of it, their belief that there is a deliverance from it and that they have found that deliverance, is for james the point of departure for the study of the actual phenomena and the active principle of religion. the truest psychological and philosophical instinct of the ago thus sets the experience of conversion in the centre of discussion. apparently most men have, at some time and in some way, the consciousness of a capacity for god which is unfulfilled, of a relation to god unrealised, which is broken and resumed, or yet to be resumed. they have the sense that their own effort must contribute to this recovery. they have the sense also that something without themselves empowers them to attempt this recovery and to persevere in the attempt. the psychology of religion is thus put in the forefront. the vast masses of material of this sort which the religious world, both past and present, possesses, have been either actually unexplored, or else set forth in ways which distorted and obscured the facts. the experience is the fact. the best science the world knows is now to deal with it as it would deal with any other fact. this is the epoch-making thing, the contribution to method in james's book. james was born in new york in , the son of a swedenborgian theologian. he took his medical degree at harvard in . he began to lecture there in anatomy in and became professor of philosophy in . he was a gifford and a hibbert lecturer. he died in . when james's thesis shall have been fully worked out, much supposed investigation of primitive religions, which is really nothing but imagination concerning primitive religions, will be shown in its true worthlessness. we know very little about primitive man. what we learn as to primitive man, on the side of his religion, we must learn in part from the psychology of the matured and civilised, the present living, thinking, feeling man in contact with his religion. matured religion is not to be judged by the primitive, but the reverse. the real study of the history of religions, the study of the objective phenomena, from earliest to latest times, has its place. but the history of religions is perverted when it takes for fact in the life of primitive man that which never existed save in the imagination of twentieth century students. early christianity, on its inner and spiritual side, is to be judged by later christianity, by present christianity, by the christian experience which we see and know to-day, and not conversely, as men have always claimed. the modern man is not to be converted after the pattern which it is alleged that his grandfather followed. for, first, there is the question as to whether his grandfather did conform to this pattern. and beyond that, it is safer to try to understand the experience of the grandfather, whom we do not know, by the psychology and experience of the grandson, whom we do know, with, of course, a judicious admixture of knowledge of the history of the nineteenth century, which would occasion characteristic differences. the modern saint is not asked to be a saint like francis. in the first place, how do we know what francis was like? in the second place, the experience of francis may be most easily understood by the aid of modern experience of true revolt from worldliness and of consecration to self-sacrifice, as these exist among us, with, of course, the proper background furnished by the history of the thirteenth century. souls are one. our souls may be, at least in some measure, known to ourselves. even the souls of some of our fellows may be measurably known to us. what are the facts of the religious experience? how do souls react in face of the eternal? the experience of religion, the experience of the fatherhood of god, of the sonship of man, of the moving of the spirit, is surely one experience. how did even christ's great soul react, experience, work, will, and suffer? by what possible means can we ever know how he reacted, worked, willed, suffered? in the literature we learn only how men thought that he reacted. we must inquire of our own souls. to be sure, christ belonged to the first century, and we live in the twentieth. it is possible for us to learn something of the first century and of the concrete outward conditions which caused his life to take the shape which it did. we learn this by strict historical research. assuredly the supreme measure in which the spirit of all truth and goodness once took possession of the nazarene, remains to us a mystery unfathomed and unfathomable. dwelling in jesus, that spirit made through him a revelation of the divine such as the world has never seen. yet that mystery leads forth along the path of that which is intelligible. and, in another sense, even such religious experience as we ourselves may have, poor though it be and sadly limited, leads back into the same mystery. it was with this contention that religion is a fact of the inner life of man, that it is to be understood through consciousness, that it is essentially and absolutely reasonable and yet belongs to the transcendental world, it was with this contention that, in the person of immanuel kant, the history of modern religious thought began. it is with this contention, in one of its newest and most far-reaching applications in the work of william james, that this history continues. for no one can think of the number of questions which recent years have raised, without realising that this history is by no means concluded. it is conceivable that the changes which the twentieth century will bring may be as noteworthy as those which the nineteenth century has seen. at least we may be grateful that so great and sure a foundation has been laid. bibliography chapter i wernle, paul. _einführung in das theologische studium._ tübingen, . aufl., . die kultur der gegenwart. th. i., abth. iv. . _geschichte der christlichen religion_, v. wellhausen, jülieber, harnack u. a., . aufl. berlin, . die kultur der gegenwart. th. i., abth. iv. . _systematische christliche religion_, v. troeltsch, herrmann, holtzmann u. a., . aufl. berlin, . pfleiderer, otto. _the development of theology in germany since kant, and its progress in great britain since_ . transl., j. frederick smith. london, . lichtenberger, f. _histoire des idées religieuses en allemagne despuis le milieu du xviii' siécle à nos jours._ paris, . transl., with notes, w. hastie. edinburgh, . adeney, w.f. _a century of progress in religious life and thought._ london, . harnack, adolf. _das wesen des christenthums._ berlin, . transl., _what is christianity?_ t.b. saunders. london, . stephen, leslie. _history of english thought in the eighteenth century._ vols. london, rd ed., . troeltsch, ernst. art. 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'pietiamus' in herzog-hauck, _realencydopädie_, . bd., , s. f. ritschl, albrecht. _geschichte des pietismus_, bde. bonn, - . chapter ii windelband, w. _die geschichte der neueren philosophie in ihrem zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen kultur und den besouderen wissenschaften._ bde. leipzig, . hÖffding, harold. _geschichte der neueren philosophie._ uebersetzt v. bendixen. bde. leipzig, . eucken, rudolf. _die lebensanschauungen der grossen denker._ . anfl. leipzig, . transl., _the problem of human life as viewed _by the great thinkers_, by w.s. hough and w.r. boyce gibson. new york, . pringle-pattison, a. seth. _the development from kant to hegel._ london, . drews, arthur. _die deutsche spekulation seit kant_ bde. berlin, . royce, josiah. _the spirit of modern philosophy._ boston, . _the religious aspect of philosophy._ boston, . _the world and the individual._ vols. new york, and . paulsen, friedrich. _immanuel kant, sein leben und seine lehre._ stuttgart, . aufl., . transl., creighton and lefever. new york, . caird, edward. _a critical account of the philosophy of kant_: with an historical introduction. glasgow, . fischer, kuno. _hegels leben, werke und lehre._ bde. heidelberg, . siebeck, hermann. _lehrbuch der religionsphilosophie._ freiburg, . eucken, rudolf. _der wahrheitsgehalt der religion._ leipzig, . aufl., . transl., jones. london, . tiele, c.p. _compendium der religionsgeschichte._ uebersetzt v. weber. . aufl. umgearbeitet v. söderblom. breslau, . chapter iii von frank, h.r. _geschichte und kritik der neueren theologie insbesondere der systematischen seit schleiermacher._ hrsg, v. schaarschmidt. eriangen, . schwarz, carl. _zur gesehichte der neuiten theologie._ leipzig, . aufl., . kattenbusch, ferdinand. _von schleiermacher zu ritschl._ giessen, . brown, william adams. _the essence of christianity: a study in the history of definition._ new york, . dilthey, wilhelm. _leben schleiermachers_, . bd. berlin, . gass, wilhelm. _geschichte der protestantischen dogmatik_, bde. leipzig, - . garvie, alfred. _the ritschlian theology_, nd ed. edinburgh, . herrmann, w. _der evangeliche glaube und die theologie albrecht ritschls._ marburg, . pfleiderer, otto. _die ritschlche theologie kritiech beleuchtet._ braunschweig, . kaftan, julius. _dogmatik._ tübingen, . aufl., . stevens, george b. _the christian doctrine of salvation._ new york, . chapter iv carpenter, j. estlin. _the bible in the nineteenth century._ london, . gardner, percy. _a historic view of the new testament._ london, . jÜlicher, adolf. _einleitung in das neue testament._ freiliurg, . aufl., . transl., miss janet ward. . moore, edward caldwell. _the new testament in the christian church._ new york, . liktzmann, hans. _wie wurden die bücher des neuen testaments heilige schrift?_ tübingen, . loisy, a. _l'ecangile el i'eglise._ paris, nd ed., . transl., london, . wernle, paul. _die anfänge unserer religion._ tübingen, . schweitzer, albert. _von reimarus zu wrede, eine geschichte der leben-jesu-forschung._ tübingen, . sanday, william. _the life of christ in recent research._ oxford, . holtzmann, oskar. _neu-testamentliche zeitgeschichte._ freiburg, . aufl., . driver, samuel b. _introduction to the literature of the old testament._ edinburgh, nd ed., . wellhausen, julius. _prolegomena sur geschichte israels._ berlin, . aufl., . budde, karl._the religion of israel to the exile._ new york, . kautsch, e. _abriss der geschichte des alt-tentamentlichen schriftthums in seiner 'heilige schrift des alten testaments.'_ freiburg, . transl., j.j. taylor, and published separately, new york, . smith, w. robertson. _the old testament in the jewish church._ glasgow, nd ed., . _the prophets of israel_, nd ed., . chapter v mehz, johh. _a history of european thought in the nineteenth century._ vols. and , edinburgh, and . white, andrew d. _the history of the warfare of science with theology in christendom._ vols. new york, . otto, rudolf. _naturalistisehe und religiöse weltansicht._ tübingen, . aufl., . ward, james. _naturalism and agnosticism._ vols. london, . flint, robert. _agnosticism._ edinburgh, . tulloch, john. _modern theories in philosophy and religion._ edinburgh, . martineau, james. _essays, reviews and addresses._ vols. and london, . boutroux, emile. _science et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine._ paris, . transl., nield. london, . flint, robert. _socialism._ london, . peabody, francis g. _jesus christ and the social question._ new york, . chapter vi hunt, john. _religious thought in england in the nineteenth century._ london, . tulloch, john. _movements of religious thought in britain during the nineteenth century._ london, . benn, alfred william. _the history of english rationalism in the nineteenth century._ vols. london, . hutton, richard h. _essays on some of the modern guides to english thought in matters of faith._ london, . mellone, sidney h. _leaders of religious thought in the nineteenth century._ edinburgh, . brooke, stopford a. _theology in the english poets._ london, . scudder, vida d. _the life of the spirit in the modern english poets_. boston, . church, r.w. _the oxford movement: twelve years, - ._ london, . fairbairn, andrew m. _catholicism, roman and anglican._ new york, . ward, wilfrid. _life and times of cardinal newman._ vols. th ed. london, . ward, wilfrid. _life of john henry, cardinal newman._ vols. london, . dollinger, j.j. ignaz von. _das papstthum; neubearbeitung von janus: der papst und das concil, von j. friedrich._ münchen, . gout, raoul. _l'affaire tyrrell._ paris, . sabatier, paul. _modernism_. transl., miles. new york, . stanley, arthur p. _the life and correspondence of thomas arnold._ vols. london, th ed., . brooke, stopford a. _life and letters of frederick w. robertson._ vols. london, . abbott, evelyn and campbell, lewis. _life and letters of benjamin jowett_. vols. london, . drummond, james, and upton, c.b. _life and letters of james martineau._ vols. london, . allen, alexander v.g. _life and letters of phillips brooks._ vols. new york, . munger, theodore t. _horace bushnell, preacher and theologian._ boston, . transcriber's note: page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. { }. they have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. philosophy and religion six lectures delivered at cambridge by hastings rashdall d. litt. (oxon.), d.c.l. (dunelm.) fellow of the british academy fellow and tutor of new college, oxford london: duckworth & co. henrietta st. covent garden all rights reserved {v} general introduction to the series man has no deeper or wider interest than theology; none deeper, for however much he may change, he never loses his love of the many questions it covers; and none wider, for under whatever law he may live he never escapes from its spacious shade; nor does he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a voice that fails to reach him. once the present writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame as a statesman and a man of letters, and he said, 'every day i live, politics, which are affairs of man and time, interest me less, while theology, which is an affair of god and eternity, interests me more.' as with him, so with many, though the many feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma. dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions framed by a council or parliament, which they do not respect any the more because the parliament was composed of ecclesiastically-minded persons; while the theology which so interests them is a discourse touching god, though the being so named is the god man conceived as not only related to himself and his world but also as rising ever higher with the notions of the self and the world. wise books, not in dogma but in theology, may therefore be described as the supreme {vi} need of our day, for only such can save us from much fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a sober and sane reason. theology is less a single science than an encyclopaedia of sciences; indeed all the sciences which have to do with man have a better right to be called theological than anthropological, though the man it studies is not simply an individual but a race. its way of viewing man is indeed characteristic; from this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of its darkest dreams. the ideals are all either ethical or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a goodly sisterhood; the dreams may be represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the will of god on the other. but even this will cannot make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with grace, it would cease to be sin. these books then,--which have all to be written by men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light,--though without having either their eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility,--are intended to present god in relation to man and man in relation to god. it is intended that they begin, not in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a theological encyclopaedia which shall show the circle of sciences co-ordinated under the term theology, though all will be viewed as related to its central or main idea. this relation of god to human knowledge will then be looked at through mind as a communion of deity with humanity, or god in fellowship {vii} with concrete man. on this basis the idea of revelation will be dealt with. then, so far as history and philology are concerned, the two sacred books, which are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, who is also a divine, views them; in other words, the old and new testaments, regarded as human documents, will be criticised as a literature which expresses relations to both the present and the future; that is, to the men and races who made the books, as well as to the races and men the books made. the bible will thus be studied in the semitic family which gave it being, and also in the indo-european families which gave to it the quality of the life to which they have attained. but theology has to do with more than sacred literature; it has also to do with the thoughts and life its history occasioned. therefore the church has to be studied and presented as an institution which god founded and man administers. but it is possible to know this church only through the thoughts it thinks, the doctrines it holds, the characters and the persons it forms, the people who are its saints and embody its ideals of sanctity, the acts it does, which are its sacraments, and the laws it follows and enforces, which are its polity, and the young it educates and the nations it directs and controls. these are the points to be presented in the volumes which follow, which are all to be occupied with theology or the knowledge of god and his ways. a. m. f. 'o.' {ix} preface these lectures were delivered in cambridge during the lent term of last year, on the invitation of a committee presided over by the master of magdalene, before an audience of from three hundred to four hundred university men, chiefly under-graduates. they were not then, and they are not now, intended for philosophers or even for beginners in the systematic study of philosophy, but as aids to educated men desirous of thinking out for themselves a reasonable basis for personal religion. the lectures--especially the first three--deal with questions on which i have already written. i am indebted to the publisher of _contentio veritatis_ and the other contributors to that volume for raising no objection to my publishing lectures which might possibly be regarded as in part a condensation, in part an expansion of my essay on 'the ultimate basis of theism.' i have dealt more systematically with many of the problems here discussed in an essay upon 'personality in god and man' contributed to _personal idealism_ (edited by henry {x} sturt) and in my 'theory of good and evil.' some of the doctrinal questions touched on in lecture vi. have been more fully dealt with in my volume of university sermons, _doctrine and development_. questions which were asked at the time and communications which have since reached me have made me feel, more even than i did when i was writing the lectures, how inadequate is the treatment here given to many great problems. on some matters much fuller explanation and discussion will naturally be required to convince persons previously unfamiliar with metaphysic: on others it is the more advanced student of philosophy who will complain that i have only touched upon the fringe of a vast subject. but i have felt that i could not seriously expand any part of the lectures without changing the whole character of the book, and i have been compelled in general to meet the demand for further explanation only by the above general reference to my other books, by the addition of a few notes, and by appending to each chapter some suggestions for more extended reading. these might of course have been indefinitely enlarged, but a long list of books is apt to defeat its own purpose: people with a limited time at their disposal want to know which book to make a beginning upon. the lectures are therefore published for the most {xi} part just as they were delivered, in the hope that they may suggest lines of thought which may be intellectually and practically useful. i trust that any philosopher who may wish to take serious notice of my views--especially the metaphysical views expressed in the first few chapters--will be good enough to remember that the expression of them is avowedly incomplete and elementary, and cannot fairly be criticized in much detail without reference to my other writings. i am much indebted for several useful suggestions and for valuable assistance in revising the proofs to one of the hearers of the lectures, mr. a. g. widgery, scholar of st. catherine's college, cambridge, now lecturer in university college, bristol. h. rashdall. new college, oxford, jan. , . {xii} contents lecture i mind and matter, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is materialism possible? there is no immediate knowledge of matter; what we know is always self + matter. the idea of a matter which can exist by itself is an inference: is it a reasonable one? . no. for all that we know about matter implies mind. this is obvious as to secondary qualities (colour, sound, etc.); but it is no less true of primary qualities (solidity, magnitude, etc.). relations, no less than sensations, imply mind, . . . . . . . . . . . . this is the great discovery of berkeley, though he did not adequately distinguish between sensations and intellectual relations, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . but matter certainly does not exist merely for _our_ transitory and incomplete knowledge: if it cannot exist apart from mind, there must be a universal mind in which and for which all things exist, _i.e._ god, . . . . . . . . but theism is possible without idealism. the impossibility of materialism has generally been recognized (_e.g._ by spinoza, spencer, haeckel). if the ultimate reality is not matter, it must be utterly unlike anything we know, or be mind. the latter view more probable, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . it is more reasonable to explain the lower by the higher than _vice versâ_, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lecture ii the universal cause, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we have been led by the idealistic argument to recognize the necessity of a mind which _thinks_ the world. insufficiency of this view. {xiii} . in our experiences of external nature we meet with nothing but succession, never with causality. the uniformity of nature is a postulate of physical science, not a necessity of thought. the idea of causality derived from our consciousness of volition. causality=activity, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . if events must have a cause, and we know of no cause but will, it is reasonable to infer that the events which _we_ do not cause must be caused by some other will; and the systematic unity of nature implies that this cause must be _one_ will, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . moreover, the analogy of the human mind suggests the probability that, if god is mind, there must be in him, as in us, the three activities of thought, feeling, and will, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the above line of argument can be used by the realist who believes matter to be a thing-in-itself; but it fits in much better with the idealistic view of the relations between mind and matter, and with the tendency of modern physics to resolve matter into force, . . testimony of spencer and kant to the theory that the ultimate reality is will, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is god a person? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lecture iii god and the moral consciousness, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the empirical study of nature ('red in tooth and claw') can tell us of purpose, not what the purpose is. the only source of knowledge of the character of god is to be found in the moral consciousness. . our moral judgements are as valid as other judgements (_e.g._ mathematical axioms), and equally reveal the thought of god, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . this does not imply that the moral consciousness is not gradually evolved, or that each individual's conscience is infallible, or that our moral judgements in detail are as certain as mathematical judgements, or that the detailed rules of human conduct are applicable to god, . . {xiv} . corollaries: (_a_) belief in the objectivity of our moral judgements logically implies belief in god, . . . . . . . . . . . (_b_) if god aims at an end not fully realized here, we have a ground for postulating immortality, . . . . . . (_c_) evil must be a necessary means to greater good, . . . in what sense this 'limits god.' omnipotence=ability to do all things which are in their own nature possible, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lecture iv difficulties and objections, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _is the world created?_ there may or may not be a beginning of the particular series of physical events constituting our world. but, even if this series has a beginning, this implies some previous existence which has no beginning. . _is the whole-time series infinite?_ time must be regarded as objective, but the 'antinomies' involved in the nature of time cannot be resolved, . . . . . . . . . _are spirits created or pre-existent?_ the close connexion and correspondence between mind and body makes for the former view. difficulties of pre-existence--heredity, etc., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _an idealism based on pre-existence without god_ is open to the same objections and others. such a system provides no mind (_a_) in which and for which the whole system exists, or (_b_) to effect the correspondence between mind and body, or (_c_) to allow of a purpose in the universe; without this the world is not rational, . . _the human mind (i.e. consciousness) not apart of the divine consciousness_, though in the closest possible dependence upon god. the universe a unity, but the unity is not that of self-consciousness, . . . . . . . . . . _there is no 'immediate' or 'intuitive' knowledge of god_. our knowledge is got by inference, like knowledge of our friend's existence, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {xv} . _religion and psychology_. it is impossible to base religion upon psychology or 'religious experience' without metaphysics, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _summary_: the ultimate nature of reality, . . . . . . . . note on non-theistic idealism, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lecture v revelation, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . there is no special organ of religious knowledge, but religious knowledge has many characteristics which may be conveniently suggested by the use of the term 'faith,' especially its connexion with character and will. . the psychological causes of religious belief must be carefully distinguished from the reasons which make it true. no logic of discovery. many religious ideas have occurred in a spontaneous or apparently intuitive way to particular persons, the truth of which the philosopher may subsequently be able to test by philosophical reflection, though he could not have discovered them, but they are not necessarily true because they arise in a spontaneous or unaccountable manner, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . false conceptions of revelation and true. all knowledge is in a sense revealed, especially religious and moral knowledge: but spiritual insight varies. need of the prophet or religious genius, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . reasoned and intuitive beliefs may both be 'revealed,' . . . degrees of truth in the historical religions. dependence of the individual upon such religions. christianity occupies a unique position, because it alone combines an ethical ideal which appeals to the universal conscience with a theism which commends itself to reason. the truth of christianity is dependent upon its appeal to the moral and religious consciousness of the present, . . . . . . . {xvi} lecture vi christianity, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the claim of christianity to be the special or absolute religion not dependent upon miracles. . ritschlian theologians right in resting the truth of christianity mainly upon the appeal made by christ to the individual conscience: but wrong in disparaging (_a_) philosophical arguments for theism, (_b_) the relative truth of non-christian systems, (_c_) the value of doctrine and necessity for development, . . . . . . christian doctrine (esp. of the logos) is an attempt to express the church's sense of the unique value of christ and his revelation. the necessity for recognizing development both in christian ethics and in theology, . . . some reflections on our practical attitude towards christian doctrine. some means of expressing the unique position of christ wanted. the old expressions were influenced by philosophy of the time, but not valueless. illustrations. need of re-interpretation and further development, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the doctrine of continuous revelation through the spirit is a part of christianity, and the condition of its acceptance as the final or absolute religion, . . . { } philosophy and religion lecture i mind and matter i have been invited to speak to you about the relations between religion and philosophy. to do that in a logical and thoroughgoing way it would be necessary to discuss elaborately the meaning first of religion and then of philosophy. such a discussion would occupy at least a lecture, and i am unwilling to spend one out of six scanty hours in formal preliminaries. i shall assume, therefore, that we all know in some general way the meaning of religion. it is not necessary for our present purpose to discuss such questions as the definition of religion for purposes of sociological investigation, or the possibility of a religion without a belief in god, or the like. i shall assume that, whatever else may be included in the term religion, christianity may at least be included in it; and that what you are practically most interested in is the bearing of philosophy upon the christian ideas concerning the { } being and nature of god, the hope of immortality, the meaning and possibility of revelation. when we turn to philosophy, i cannot perhaps assume with equal confidence that all of you know what it is. but then learning what philosophy is--especially that most fundamental part of philosophy which is called metaphysics--is like learning to swim: you never discover how to do it until you find yourself considerably out of your depth. you must strike out boldly, and at last you discover what you are after. i shall presuppose that in a general way you do all know that philosophy is an enquiry into the ultimate nature of the universe at large, as opposed to the discussion of those particular aspects or departments of it which are dealt with by the special sciences. what you want to know, i take it, is--what rational enquiry, pushed as far as it will go, has to say about those ultimate problems of which the great historical religions likewise profess to offer solutions. the nature and scope of philosophy is best understood by examples: and therefore i hope you will excuse me if without further preface i plunge _in medias res_. i shall endeavour to presuppose no previous acquaintance with technical philosophy, and i will ask those who have already made some serious study of philosophy kindly to remember that i am trying to make myself intelligible to those who have not. i shall { } not advance anything which i should not be prepared to defend even before an audience of metaphysical experts. but i cannot undertake in so short a course of lectures to meet all the objections which will, i know, be arising in the minds of any metaphysically trained hearers who may honour me with their presence, many of which may probably occur to persons not so trained. and i further trust the metaphysicians among you will forgive me if, in order to be intelligible to all, i sometimes speak with a little less than the _akribeia_ at which i might feel bound to aim if i were reading a paper before an avowedly philosophical society. reservations, qualifications, and elaborate distinctions must be omitted, if i am to succeed in saying anything clearly in the course of six lectures. moreover, i would remark that, though i do not believe that an intention to edify is any excuse for slipshod thought or intellectual dishonesty, i am speaking now mainly from the point of view of those who are enquiring into metaphysical truth for the guidance of their own religious and practical life, rather than from the point of view of pure speculation. i do not, for my own part, believe in any solution of the religious problem which evades the ultimate problems of all thought. the philosophy of religion is for me not so much a special and sharply distinguished branch or department of { } philosophy as a particular aspect of philosophy in general. but many questions which may be of much importance from the point of view of a complete theory of the universe can be entirely, or almost entirely, put on one side when the question is, 'what may i reasonably believe about those ultimate questions which have a direct and immediate bearing upon my religious and moral life; what may i believe about god and duty, about the world and its ultimate meaning, about the soul and its destiny?' for such purposes solutions stopping short of what will fully satisfy the legitimate demands of the professed metaphysician may be all that is necessary, or at least all that is possible for those who are not intending to make a serious and elaborate study of metaphysic. i have no sympathy with the attempt to base religion upon anything but honest enquiry into truth: and yet the professed philosophers are just those who will most readily recognize that there are--if not what are technically called degrees of truth--still different levels of thought, different degrees of adequacy and systematic completeness, even within the limits of thoroughly philosophical thinking. i shall assume that you are not content to remain at the level of ordinary unreflecting common-sense or of merely traditional religion--that you do want (so far as time and opportunity serve) to get to the bottom of things, { } but that you will be content in such a course as the present if i can suggest to you, or help you to form for yourselves, an outline--what plato would call the _hypotypôsis_ of a theory of the universe which may still fall very far short of a finished and fully articulated metaphysical system. i suppose that to nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the universe there very soon occurs the question whether materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties. i think, therefore, our present investigation had better begin with an enquiry whether materialism can possibly be true. i say 'can be true' rather than 'is true,' because, though dogmatic materialists are rare, the typical agnostic is one who is at least inclined to admit the possibility of materialism, even when he does not, at the bottom of his mind, practically assume its truth. the man who is prepared to exclude even this one theory of the universe from the category of possible but unprovable theories is not, properly speaking, an agnostic. to know that materialism at least is not true is to know something, and something very important, about the ultimate nature of things. i shall not attempt here any very precise definition of what is meant by materialism. strictly speaking, it ought to mean the view that nothing really exists but matter. but the existence, in some sense or { } other, of our sensations and thoughts and emotions is so obvious to common-sense that such a creed can hardly be explicitly maintained: it is a creed which is refuted in the very act of enunciating it. for practical purposes, therefore, materialism may be said to be the view that the ultimate basis of all existence is matter; and that thought, feeling, emotion--consciousness of every kind--is merely an effect, a by-product or concomitant, of certain material processes. now if we are to hold that matter is the only thing which exists, or is the ultimate source of all that exists, we ought to be able to say what matter is. to the unreflecting mind matter seems to be the thing that we are most certain of, the one thing that we know all about. thought, feeling, will, it may be suggested, are in some sense appearances which (though we can't help having them) might, from the point of view of superior insight, turn out to be mere delusions, or at best entirely unimportant and inconsiderable entities. this attitude of mind has been amusingly satirised by the title of one of mr. bradley's philosophical essays--'on the supposed uselessness of the soul.'[ ] in this state of mind matter presents itself as the one solid reality--as something undeniable, something perfectly intelligible, something, too, which is pre-eminently { } important and respectable; while thinking and feeling and willing, joy and sorrow, hope and aspiration, goodness and badness, if they cannot exactly be got rid of altogether, are, as it were, negligible quantities, which must not be allowed to disturb or interfere with the serious business of the universe. from this point of view matter is supposed to be the one reality with which we are in immediate contact, which we see and touch and taste and handle every hour of our lives. it may, therefore, sound a rather startling paradox to say that matter--matter in the sense of the materialist--is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or handled. yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. nobody has ever seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter. for in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching there is always present another thing. even if we suppose that he is justified in saying 'i touch matter,' there is always present the 'i' as well as the matter.[ ] it is always and inevitably matter + mind that he knows. nobody ever can get away from this 'i,' nobody can ever see or feel what matter is like apart from the 'i' which knows { } it. he may, indeed, infer that this matter exists apart from the 'i' which knows it. he may infer that it exists, and may even go as far as to assume that, apart from his seeing or touching, or anybody else's seeing or touching, matter possesses all those qualities which it possesses for his own consciousness. but this is inference, and not immediate knowledge. and the validity or reasonableness of the inference may be disputed. how far it is reasonable or legitimate to attribute to matter as it is in itself the qualities which it has for us must depend upon the nature of those qualities. let us then go on to ask whether the qualities which constitute matter as we know it are qualities which we can reasonably or even intelligibly attribute to a supposed matter-in-itself, to matter considered as something capable of existing by itself altogether apart from any kind of conscious experience. in matter, as we know it, there are two elements. there are certain sensations, or certain qualities which we come to know by sensation, and there are certain relations. now, with regard to the sensations, a very little reflection will, i think, show us that it is absolutely meaningless to say that matter has the qualities implied by these sensations, even when they are not felt, and would still possess them, even supposing it never had been and never would be felt by any one whatever. in a world in which { } there were no eyes and no minds, what would be the meaning of saying that things were red or blue? in a world in which there were no ears and no minds, there would clearly be no such thing as sound. this is exactly the point at which locke's analysis stopped. he admitted that the 'secondary qualities'--colours, sounds, tastes--of objects were really not in the things themselves but in the mind which perceives them. what existed in the things was merely a power of producing these sensations in us, the quality in the thing being not in the least like the sensations which it produces in us: he admitted that this power of producing a sensation was something different from, and totally unlike, the sensation itself. but when he came to the primary qualities--solidity, shape, magnitude and the like--he supposed that the qualities in the thing were exactly the same as they are for our minds. if all mind were to disappear from the universe, there would henceforth be no red and blue, no hot and cold; but things would still be big or small, round or square, solid or fluid. yet, even with these 'primary qualities' the reference to mind is really there just as much as in the case of the secondary qualities; only the fact is not quite so obvious. and one reason for this is that these primary qualities involve, much more glaringly and unmistakably than the secondary, something which is not _mere_ sensation--something which { } implies thought and not mere sense. what do we mean by solidity, for instance? we mean partly that we get certain sensations from touching the object--sensations of touch and sensations of what is called the muscular sense, sensations of muscular exertion and of pressure resisted. now, so far as that is what solidity means, it is clear that the quality in question involves as direct a reference to our subjective feelings as the secondary qualities of colour and sound. but something more than this is implied in our idea of solidity. we think of external objects as occupying space. and spaciality cannot be analysed away into mere feelings of ours. the feelings of touch which we derive from an object come to us one after the other. no mental reflection upon sensations which come one after the other in time could ever give us the idea of space, if they were not spacially related from the first. it is of the essence of spaciality that the parts of the object shall be thought of as existing side by side, outside one another. but this side-by-sideness, this outsideness, is after all a way in which the things present themselves to a mind. space is made up of relations; and what is the meaning of relations apart from a mind which relates, or _for_ which the things are related? if spaciality were a quality of the thing in itself, it would exist no matter what became of other things. it would be quite possible, therefore, { } that the top of this table should exist without the bottom: yet everybody surely would admit the meaninglessness of talking about a piece of matter (no matter how small, be it an atom or the smallest electron conceived by the most recent physical speculation) which had a top without a bottom, or a right-hand side without a left. this space-occupying quality which is the most fundamental element in our ordinary conception of matter is wholly made up of the relation of one part of it to another. now can a relation exist except for a mind? as it seems to me, the suggestion is meaningless. relatedness only has a meaning when thought of in connection with a mind which is capable of grasping or holding together both terms of the relation. the relation between point a and point b is not _in_ point a or _in_ point b taken by themselves. it is all in the 'between': 'betweenness' from its very nature cannot exist in any one point of space or in several isolated points of space or things in space; it must exist only in some one existent which holds together and connects those points. and nothing, as far as we can understand, can do that except a mind. apart from mind there can be no relatedness: apart from relatedness no space: apart from space no matter. it follows that apart from mind there can be no matter. it will probably be known to all of you that the { } first person to make this momentous inference was bishop berkeley. there was, indeed, an obscure medieval schoolman, hardly recognized by the historians of philosophy, one nicholas of autrecourt, dean of metz,[ ] who anticipated him in the fourteenth century, and other better-known schoolmen who approximated to the position; and there are, of course, elements in the teaching of plato and even of aristotle, or possible interpretations of plato and aristotle, which point in the same direction. but full-blown idealism, in the sense which involves a denial of the independent existence of matter, is always associated with the name of bishop berkeley. i can best make my meaning plain to you by quoting a passage or two from his _principles of human knowledge_, in which he extends to the primary qualities of matter the analysis which locke had already applied to the secondary. 'but, though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? either we must know it by sense or by reason.--as for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us that things exist { } without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. this the materialists themselves acknowledge.--it remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. but what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend there is any _necessary_ connexion betwixt them and our ideas? i say it is granted on all hands--and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute--that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing without resembling them. hence, it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas; since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence. * * * * * * 'in short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think there were that we have now. suppose--what no one can deny possible--an intelligence _without the help of external bodies_, to be affected with the same train of sensations or ideas that you are, imprinted in the same order and with like vividness in his mind. i ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing? of this there can be no { } question--which one consideration were enough to make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever arguments he may think himself to have, for the existence of bodies without the mind.'[ ] do you say that in that case the tables and chairs must be supposed to disappear the moment we all leave the room? it is true that we do commonly think of the tables and chairs as remaining, even when there is no one there to see or touch them. but that only means, berkeley explains, that if we or any one else were to come back into the room, we should perceive them. moreover, even in thinking of them as things which might be perceived under certain conditions, they have entered our minds and so proclaimed their ideal or mind-implying character. to prove that things exist without the mind we should have to conceive of things as unconceived or unthought of. and that is a feat which no one has ever yet succeeded in accomplishing. here is berkeley's own answer to the objection: 'but, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. i answer, you may so, there is no difficulty in it; but what is all this, i beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and { } at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them? but do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while? this therefore is nothing to the purpose: it only shews you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind; but it does not shew that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the mind. to make out this, it is necessary that _you_ conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. when we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. but the mind, _taking no notice of itself_, is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in, itself. a little attention will discover to any one the truth and evidence of what is here said, and make it unnecessary to insist on any other proofs against the existence of _material substance_.'[ ] berkeley no doubt did not adequately appreciate the importance of the distinction between mere sensations and mental relations. in the paragraph which i have read to you he tends to explain space away into mere subjective feelings: in this respect and in many others he has been corrected by kant and the post-kantian idealists. doubtless we cannot analyse away our conception of space or of substance into mere feelings. but relations imply mind no less than sensations. things are no mere { } bundles of sensations; we do think of them as objects or substances possessing attributes. indeed to call them (with berkeley), 'bundles of sensations' implies that the bundle is as important an element in thinghood as the sensations themselves. the bundle implies what kant would call the intellectual 'categories' of substance, quantity, quality, and the like. we do think objects: but an object is still an object of thought. we can attach no intelligible meaning to the term 'object' which does not imply a subject. if there is nothing in matter, as we know it, which does not obviously imply mind, if the very idea of matter is unintelligible apart from mind, it is clear that matter can never have existed without mind. what then, it may be asked, of the things which no human eye has ever seen or even thought of? are we to suppose that a new planet comes into existence for the first time when first it sails into the telescope of the astronomer, and that science is wrong in inferring that it existed not only before that particular astronomer saw it, but before there were any astronomers or other human or even animal intelligences upon this planet to observe it? did the world of geology come into existence for the first time when some eighteenth-century geologist first suspected that the world was more than six thousand years old? are all those ages of past { } history, when the earth and the sun were but nebulae, a mere imagination, or did that nebulous mass come into existence thousands or millions of years afterwards when kant or laplace first conceived that it had existed? the supposition is clearly self-contradictory and impossible. if science be not a mass of illusion, this planet existed millions of years before any human--or, so far as we know, any animal minds--existed to think its existence. and yet i have endeavoured to show the absurdity of supposing that matter can exist except for a mind. it is clear, then, that it cannot be merely for such minds as ours that the world has always existed. our minds come and go. they have a beginning; they go to sleep; they may, for aught that we can immediately know, come to an end. at no time does any one of them, at no time do all of them together, apprehend all that there is to be known. we do not create a universe; we discover it piece by piece, and after all very imperfectly. matter cannot intelligibly be supposed to exist apart from mind: and yet it clearly does not exist merely for _our_ minds. each of us knows only one little bit of the universe: all of us together do not know the whole. if the whole is to exist at all, there must be some one mind which knows the whole. the mind which is necessary to the very existence of the universe is the mind that we call god. { } in this way we are, as it seems to me, led up by a train of reasoning which is positively irresistible to the idea that, so far from matter being the only existence, it has no existence of its own apart from some mind which knows it--in which and for which it exists. the existence of a mind possessing universal knowledge is necessary as the presupposition both of there being any world to know, and also of there being any lesser minds to know it. it is, indeed, possible to believe in the eternal existence of limited minds, while denying the existence of the one omniscient mind. that is a hypothesis on which i will say a word hereafter.[ ] it is enough here to say that it is one which is not required to explain the world as we know it. the obvious _prima facie_ view of the matter is that the minds which apparently have a beginning, which develope slowly and gradually and in close connexion with certain physical processes, owe their origin to whatever is the ultimate source or ground of the physical processes themselves. the order or systematic interconnexion of all the observable phenomena in the universe suggests that the ultimate reality must be one being of some kind; the argument which i have suggested leads us to regard that one reality as a spiritual reality. we are not yet entitled to speak of this physical universe as _caused_ { } by god: that is a question which i hope to discuss in our next lecture. all that i want to establish now is that we cannot explain the world without the supposition of one universal mind in which and for which all so-called material things exist, and always have existed. so far i have endeavoured to establish the existence of god by a line of thought which also leads to the position that matter has no independent existence apart from conscious mind, that at bottom nothing exists except minds and their experiences. now i know that this is a line of thought which, to those who are unfamiliar with it, seems so paradoxical and extravagant that, even when a man does not see his way to reply to it, it will seldom produce immediate or permanent conviction the first time he becomes acquainted with it. it is for the most part only by a considerable course of habituation, extending over some years, that a man succeeds in thinking himself into the idealistic view of the universe. and after all, there are many minds--some of them, i must admit, not wanting in philosophical power--who never succeed in accomplishing that feat at all. therefore, while i feel bound to assert that the clearest and most irrefragable argument for the existence of god is that which is supplied by the idealistic line of thought, i should be sorry to have to admit that a man { } cannot be a theist, or that he cannot be a theist on reasonable grounds, without first being an idealist. from my own point of view most of the other reasons for believing in the existence of god resolve themselves into idealistic arguments imperfectly thought out. but they may be very good arguments, as far as they go, even when they are not thought out to what seem to me their logical consequences. one of these lines of thought i shall hope to develope in my next lecture; but meanwhile let me attempt to reduce the argument against materialism to a form in which it will perhaps appeal to common-sense without much profound metaphysical reflection. at the level of ordinary common-sense thought there appear to be two kinds of reality--mind and matter. and yet our experience of the unity of nature, of the intimate connexion between human and animal minds and their organisms (organisms governed by a single intelligible and interconnected system of laws) is such that we can hardly help regarding them as manifestations or products or effects or aspects of some one reality. there is, almost obviously, some kind of unity underlying all the diversity of things. our world does not arise by the coming together of two quite independent realities--mind and matter--governed by no law or by unconnected and independent systems of law. { } all things, all phenomena, all events form parts of a single inter-related, intelligible whole: that is the presupposition not only of philosophy but of science. or if any one chooses to say that it _is_ a presupposition and so an unwarrantable piece of dogmatism, i will say that it is the hypothesis to which all our knowledge points. it is at all events the one common meeting-point of nearly all serious thinkers. the question remains, 'what is the nature of this one reality?' now, if this ultimate reality be not mind, it must be one of two things. it must be matter, or it must be a third thing which is neither mind nor matter, but something quite different from either. now many who will not follow the idealistic line of thought the whole way--so far as to recognize that the ultimate reality is mind--will at least admit that idealists have successfully shown the impossibility of supposing that the ultimate reality can be matter. for all the properties of matter are properties which imply some relation to our sensibility or our thought. moreover, there is such a complete heterogeneity between consciousness and unconscious matter, considered as something capable of existing without mind, that it seems utterly impossible and unthinkable that mind should be simply the product or attribute of matter. that the ultimate reality cannot be what we mean by matter has been admitted by the most naturalistic, { } and, in the ordinary sense, anti-religious thinkers--spinoza, for instance, and haeckel, and herbert spencer. the question remains, 'which is the easier, the more probable, the more reasonable theory--that the ultimate reality should be mind, or that it should be something so utterly unintelligible and inconceivable to us as a _tertium quid_--a mysterious unknown and unknowable--which is neither mind nor matter?' for my own part, i see no reason to suppose that our inability to think of anything which is neither matter nor mind but quite unlike either is a mere imperfection of human thought. it seems more reasonable to assume that our inability to think of such a mysterious x is due to there being no such thing.[ ] our only way of judging of the unknown is by the analogy of the known. it is more probable, surely, that the world known to us should exhibit something of the characteristics of the reality from which it is derived, or of which it forms a manifestation, than that it should exhibit none of these characteristics. no doubt, if we were to argue from some small part of our experience, or from the detailed characteristics of one part of our experience to what is beyond our experience; if, for instance { } (i am here replying to an objection of höffding's), a blind man were to argue that the world must be colourless because he sees no colour, or if any of us were to affirm that in other planets there can be no colours but what we see, no sensations but what we feel, no mental powers but what we possess, the inference would be precarious enough. the anthropomorphist in the strict sense--the man who thinks that god or the gods must have human bodies--no doubt renders himself liable to the gibe that, if oxen could think, they would imagine the gods to be like oxen, and so on. but the cases are not parallel. we have no difficulty in thinking that in other worlds there may be colours which we have never seen, or whole groups of sensation different from our own: we cannot think that any existence should be neither mind nor matter, but utterly unlike either. we are not arguing from the mere absence of some special experience, but from the whole character of _all_ the thought and experience that we actually possess, of all that we are and the whole universe with which we are in contact. the characteristic of the whole world which we know is that it consists of mind and matter in close connexion--we may waive for a moment the nature of that connexion. is it more probable that the ultimate reality which lies beyond our reach should be something which possesses the characteristics of mind, or that it should { } be totally unlike either mind or matter? do you insist that we logically ought to say it might contain the characteristics of both mind and matter? there is only one way in which such a combination seems clearly thinkable by us, _i.e._ when we represent matter as either in the idealistic sense the thought or experience of mind, or (after the fashion of ordinary realistic theism) as created or produced by mind. but if you insist on something more than this, if you want to think of the qualities of matter as in some other way included in the nature of the ultimate reality as well as those of mind, at all events we could still urge that we shall get nearer to the truth by thinking of this ultimate reality in its mind-aspect than by thinking of it in its matter-aspect. i do not believe that the human mind is really equal to the task of thinking of a reality which is one and yet is neither mind nor matter but something which combines the nature of both. practically, where such a creed is professed, the man either thinks of an unconscious reality in some way generating or evolving mind, and so falls back into the materialism which he has verbally disclaimed; or he thinks of a mind producing or causing or generating a matter which when produced is something different from itself. this last is of course ordinary theism in the form in which it is commonly { } held by those who are not idealists. from a practical and religious point of view there is nothing to be said against such a view. still it involves a dualism, the philosophical difficulties of which i have attempted to suggest to you. i confess that for my own part the only way in which i can conceive of a single ultimate reality which combines the attributes of what we call mind with those of what we know as matter is by thinking of a mind conscious of a world or nature which has no existence except in and for that mind and whatever less complete consciousnesses that may be. i trust that those who have failed to follow my sketch of the arguments which lead to this idealistic conclusion may at least be led by it to see the difficulties either of materialism or of that kind of agnostic pantheism which, while admitting in words that the ultimate reality is not matter, refuses to invest it with the attributes of mind. the argument may be reduced to its simplest form by saying we believe that the ultimate reality is mind because mind will explain matter, while matter will not explain mind: while the idea of a something which is neither in mind nor matter is both unintelligible and gratuitous. and this line of thought may be supplemented by another. whatever may be thought of the existence of matter apart from mind, every one will { } admit that matter possesses no value or worth apart from mind. when we bring into account our moral judgements or judgements of value, we have no difficulty in recognizing mind as the highest or best kind of existence known to us. there is, surely, a certain intrinsic probability in supposing that the reality from which all being is derived must possess at least as much worth or value as the derived being; and that in thinking of that reality by the analogy of the highest kind of existence known to us we shall come nearer to a true thought of it than by any other way of thinking possible to us. this is a line of argument which i hope to develope further when i come to examine the bearing upon the religious problem of what is as real a part of our experience as any other--our moral experience. i will remind you in conclusion, that our argument for the existence of god is at present incomplete. i have tried to lead you to the idea that the ultimate reality is spiritual, that it is a mind which knows, or is conscious of, matter. i have tried to lead you with the idealist to think of the physical universe as having no existence except in the mind of god, or at all events (for those who fail to follow the idealistic line of thought) to believe that the universe does not exist without such a mind. what further relation exists between physical nature and this universal spirit, i shall hope in the next lecture { } to consider; and in so doing to suggest a line of argument which will independently lead to the same result, and which does not necessarily presuppose the acceptance of the idealistic creed. literature the reader who wishes to have the idealistic argument sketched in the foregoing chapter developed more fully should read berkeley's _principles of human knowledge_. for the correction of berkeley's sensationalistic mistakes the best course is to read kant's _critique of pure reason_ or the shorter _prolegomena to any future metaphysic_ or any of the numerous expositions or commentaries upon kant. (one of the best is the 'reproduction' prefixed to dr. hutchison stirling's _text-book to kant_.) the non-metaphysical reader should, however, be informed that kant is very hard reading, and is scarcely intelligible without some slight knowledge of the previous history of philosophy, especially of locke, berkeley, and hume, while some acquaintance with elementary logic is also desirable. he will find the argument for non-sensationalistic idealism re-stated in a post-kantian but much easier form in ferrier's _institutes of metaphysic_. the argument for a theistic idealism is powerfully stated (though it is not easy reading) in the late prof. t. h. green's _prolegomena to ethics_, book i. in view of recent realistic revivals i may add that the earlier chapters of mr. bradley's _appearance and reality_ still seem to me to contain an unanswerable defence of idealism as against materialism or any form of realism, though his idealism is not of the theistic type defended in the above lecture. the idealistic argument is stated in a way which makes strongly for theism by professor ward in _naturalism and agnosticism_--a work which would perhaps be the best sequel to these lectures for any reader { } who does not want to undertake a whole course of philosophical reading: readers entirely unacquainted with physical science might do well to begin with part ii. a more elementary and very clear defence of theism from the idealistic point of view is to be found in dr. illingworth's _personality human and divine_. representatives of non-idealistic theism will be mentioned at the end of the next lecture. [ ] _mind_, vol. iv. (u.s.), . [ ] i do not mean of course that in the earliest stages of consciousness this distinction is actually made; but, if there are stages of consciousness in which the 'i' is not realized, the idea of matter or even of an 'object' or 'not-self' existing apart from consciousness must be supposed to be equally absent. [ ] i have dealt at length with this forgotten thinker in a presidential address to the aristotelian society, printed in their _proceedings_ for . [ ] _principles of human knowledge_, pt. i., sections , . [ ] _principles of human knowledge_, pt. ., section . [ ] see lecture iv., pp. - , - . [ ] i have attempted to meet this line of argument somewhat more adequately, in the form in which it has recently been taken up by professor höffding in his _philosophy of religion_, in a review in the review of theology and philosophy for november, (vol. iii.). { } lecture ii the universal cause in my last lecture i endeavoured to show that matter, so far from constituting the ultimate reality, cannot reasonably be thought of as existing at all without mind; and that we cannot explain the world without assuming the existence of a mind in which and for which everything that is not mind has its being. but we are still very far from having fully cleared up the relation between the divine mind and that nature which exists in it and for it: while we have hardly dealt at all with the relation between the universal mind and those lesser minds which we have treated--so far without much argument--as in some way derived from, or dependent upon, that mind. so far as our previous line of argument goes, we might have to look upon the world as the thought of god, but not as caused by him or due to his will. we might speak of god as 'making nature,' but only in the sense in which you or i make nature when we think it or experience it. { } 'the world is as necessary to god as god is to the world,' we are often told--for instance by my own revered teacher, the late professor green. how unsatisfactory this position is from a religious point of view i need hardly insist. for all that such a theory has to say to the contrary, we might have to suppose that, though god is perfectly good, the world which he is compelled to think is very bad, and going from bad to worse. to think of god merely as the mind which eternally contemplates nature, without having any power whatever of determining what sort of nature it is to be, supplies no ground for hope or aspiration--still less for worship, adoration, imitation. i suggested the possibility that from such a point of view god might be thought of as good, and the world as bad. but that is really to concede too much. a being without a will could as little be bad as he could be good: he would be simply a being without a character. from an intellectual point such a way of looking at the universe might be more intelligent or intelligible than that of pure materialism or pure agnosticism; but morally and religiously i don't know that, when its consequences are fully realized, it is any great improvement upon either of them.[ ] { } moreover, even intellectually it fails to satisfy the demand which most reflecting people feel, that the world shall be regarded as a unity of some kind. if god is thought of as linked by some inexplicable fate to a nature over which he has no sort of control--not so much control as a mere human being who can produce limited changes in the world,--we can hardly be said to have reduced the world to a unity. the old dualism has broken out again: after all we still have god and the world confronting one another; neither of them is in any way explained by the other. still less could such a world be supposed to have a purpose or rational end. for our own mere intellectual satisfaction as well as for the satisfaction of our religious needs we must go on to ask whether we are not justified in thinking of god as the cause or creator of the world, as well as the thinker of it. this enquiry introduces us to the whole problem of causality. the sketch which i gave you last time of bishop berkeley's argument was a very imperfect one. bishop berkeley was from one point of view a great philosophic iconoclast, though he destroyed only that he might build up. he destroyed the superstition of a self-existing matter: { } he also waged war against what i will venture to call the kindred superstition of a mysterious causal nexus between the physical antecedent and the physical consequent. on this side his work was carried on by hume. berkeley resolved our knowledge into a succession of 'ideas.' he did, no doubt, fall into the mistake of treating our knowledge as if it were a mere succession of feelings: he ignored far too much--though he did not do so completely--that other element in our knowledge, the element of intellectual relation, of which i said something last time. here, no doubt, berkeley has been corrected by kant; and, so far, practically all modern idealists will own their indebtedness to kant. even in the apprehension of a succession of ideas, in the mere recognition that this feeling comes after that, there is an element which cannot be explained by mere feeling. the apprehension that this feeling came after that feeling is not itself a feeling. but can i detect any relation between these experiences of mine except that of succession? we commonly speak of fire as the cause of the melting of the wax, but what do we really know about the matter? surely on reflection we must admit that we know nothing but this--that, so far as our experience goes, the application of fire is always followed by the melting of the wax. where this is the case we do, from the point of view of { } ordinary life, speak of the one phenomenon as the cause of the other. where we don't discover such an invariable succession, we don't think of the one event as the cause of the other. i shall be told, perhaps, that on this view of the nature of causality we ought to speak of night as the cause of day. so perhaps we should, if the result to which we are led by a more limited experience were not corrected by the results of a larger experience. to say nothing of the valuable correction afforded by the polar winter and the polar summer, we have learned by a more comprehensive experience to replace the law that day follows night by the wider generalisation that the visibility of objects is invariably coincident upon the presence of some luminous body and not upon a previous state of darkness. but between cases of what we call mere succession and what is commonly called causal sequence the difference lies merely in the observed fact that in some cases the sequence varies, while in others no exception has ever been discovered. no matter how frequently we observe that a sensation of red follows the impact upon the aural nerve of a shock derived from a wave of ether of such and such a length, we see no reason why it should do so. we may, no doubt, make a still wider generalization, and say that every event in nature is invariably preceded by some definite complex of conditions, { } and so arrive at a general law of the uniformity of nature. and such a law is undoubtedly the express or implied basis of all inference in the physical sciences. when we have once accepted that law (as the whole mass of our experience in the purely physical region inclines us to do), then a single instance of a b c being followed by d (when we are quite sure that we have included all the antecedents which we do not know from other experience to be irrelevant) will warrant our concluding that we have discovered a law of nature. on the next occasion of a b c's occurrence we confidently predict that d will follow. but, however often we have observed such a sequence, and however many similar sequences we may have observed, we are no nearer to knowing _why_ d should follow abc: we can only know that it always does: and on the strength of that knowledge we infer, with a probability which we do no doubt for practical purposes treat as a certainty, that it always will. but on reflection we can see no reason why a wave of ether of a certain length should produce red rather than blue, a colour rather than a sound. there, as always, we discover nothing but succession, not necessary connexion. these cases of unvaried succession among phenomena, it should be observed, are quite different from cases of real necessary connexion. we don't want to examine thousands of instances of two { } added to two to be quite sure that they always make four, nor in making the inference do we appeal to any more general law of uniformity. we simply see that it is and always must be so. mill no doubt tells us he has no difficulty in supposing that in the region of the fixed stars two and two might make five, but nobody believes him. at all events few of us can pretend to such feats of intellectual elasticity. no amount of contradictory testimony from travellers to the fixed stars, no matter whether they were bishops of the highest character or trained as professors of physical science, would induce us to give a moment's credence to such a story. we simply see that two and two must make four, and that it is inconceivable they should ever, however exceptionally, make five. it is quite otherwise with any case of succession among external phenomena, no matter how unvaried. so long as we confine ourselves to merely physical phenomena (i put aside for the moment the case of conscious or other living beings) nowhere can we discover anything but succession; nowhere do we discover causality in the sense of a necessary connexion the reversal of which is inconceivable. are we then to conclude that there is no such thing as causality, that in searching for a cause of everything that happens, we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp, using a mere _vox nihili_ which has { } as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune? surely, in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality, in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between one physical phenomenon and another, we imply that we have got the idea of causality in our minds; and that, however little we may have discovered a genuine cause, we could not believe that anything could happen without a cause. for my own part, i find it quite possible to believe that a phenomenon which has been followed by another phenomenon times should on the , th time be followed by some other phenomenon. give me the requisite experience, and belief would follow; give me even any adequate evidence that another person has had such an experience (though i should be very particular about the evidence), and i should find no difficulty in believing it. but to tell me that the exception to an observed law might take place without any cause at all for the variation would seem to be pure nonsense. put the matter in another way. let us suppose an empty world, if one can speak of such a thing without contradiction--let us suppose that at one time nothing whatever had existed, neither mind nor matter nor any of that mysterious entity which some people find it possible to believe in which is { } neither mind nor matter. let us suppose literally nobody and nothing to have existed. now could you under these conditions rationally suppose that anything could have come into existence? could you for one moment admit the possibility that after countless aeons of nothingness a flash of lightning should occur or an animal be born? surely, on reflection those who are most suspicious of _a priori_ knowledge, who are most unwilling to carry their speculations beyond the limits of actual experience, will be prepared to say, 'no, the thing is utterly for ever impossible.' _ex nihilo nihil fit_: for every event there must be a cause. those who profess to reject all other _a priori_ or self-evident knowledge, show by their every thought and every act that they never really doubt that much. now, it would be just possible to contend that we have got the bare abstract concept or category of causality in our minds, and yet that there is nothing within our experience to give it any positive content--so that we should have to say, 'every event must have a cause, but we never know or can know what that cause is. if we are to talk about causes at all, we can only say "the unknowable is the cause of all things."' such a position can be barely stated without a contradiction. but surely it is a very difficult one. nature does not generally supply us with categories of thought, while it gives us no power { } or opportunity of using them. it would be like holding, for instance, that we have indeed been endowed with the idea of number in general, but that we cannot discover within our experience any numerable things; that we have got the idea of , , , , etc., but have no capacity whatever for actually counting--for saying that here are three apples, and there four marbles. and, psychologically, it would be difficult to find any parallel to anything of the kind. nature does not first supply us with clearly defined categories of thought, and then give us a material to exercise them upon. in general we discover these abstract categories by using them in our actual thinking. we count beads or men or horses before we evolve an abstract idea of number, or an abstract multiplication table. it is very difficult to see how this idea of cause could possibly have got into our heads if we had never in the whole course of our experience come into any sort of contact with any actual concrete cause. where then, within our experience, if not in the succession of external events, shall we look for a cause--for something to which we can apply this category or abstract notion of causality? i answer 'we must look within: it is in our experience of volition that we actually find something answering to our idea of causal connexion.' and here, i would invite you not to think so much of our consciousness of actually { } moving our limbs. here it is possible to argue plausibly that the experience of exercising causality is a delusion. i imagine that, if i will to do so, i can move my arm; but i will to stretch out my arm, and lo! it remains glued to my side, for i have suddenly been paralysed. or i may be told that the consciousness of exerting power is a mere experience of muscular contraction, and the like. i would ask you to think rather of your power of directing the succession of your own thoughts. i am directly conscious, for instance, that the reason why i am now thinking of causality, and not (say) of tariff reform, is the fact that i have conceived the design of delivering a course of lectures on this subject; the succession of ideas which flow through my mind as i write or speak is only explicable by reference to an end--an end which i am striving to bring into actual being. in such voluntarily concentrated purposeful successions of thought i am immediately exercising causality: and this causality does further influence the order of events in physical nature. my pen or my tongue moves in consequence of this striving of mine, though no doubt for such efforts to take place other physical conditions must be presupposed, which are not wholly within my own control. i am the cause, but not the whole or sole cause of these physical disturbances in external nature: i am a cause but not an uncaused cause. { } my volition, though it is not the sole cause of the event which i will, is enough to give me a conception of a cause which is the sole cause of the events. the attempt is of course sometimes made, as it was made by hume, to explain away this immediate consciousness of volition, and to say that all that i immediately know is the succession of my subjective experiences. it may be contended that i don't know, any more than in the case of external phenomena, that because the thought of my lecture comes first and the thought of putting my pen into the ink to write it comes afterwards, therefore the one thought causes the other. hence it is important to point out that i have a negative experience with which to contrast the positive experience. i do not _always_, even as regards my own inward experiences, assume that succession implies causality. supposing, as i speak or write, a twinge of the gout suddenly introduces itself into the succession of my experiences: then i am conscious of no such inner connexion between the new experience and that which went before it. then i am as distinctly conscious of passivity--of not causing the succession of events which take place in my mind--as i am in the other case of actively causing it. if the consciousness of exercising activity is a delusion, why does not that delusion occur in the one case as much as in the other? i hold then that in the consciousness of { } our own activity we get a real direct experience of causality. when causality is interpreted to mean mere necessary connexion--like the mathematical connexion between four and twice two or the logical connexion between the premisses of a syllogism and its conclusion,--its nature is fundamentally misrepresented. the essence of causality is not necessary connexion but activity. such activity we encounter in our own experience of volition and nowhere else.[ ] now, if the only cause of which i am immediately conscious is the will of a conscious rational being, is it not reasonable to infer that some such agency is at work in the case of those phenomena which we see no reason to attribute to the voluntary actions of men and animals? it is well known that primitive man took this step. primitive man had no notion of the 'uniformity of nature': it is only very gradually that civilized man has discovered it. but primitive man never doubted for one instant the law of causality: he never doubted that for any change, or at least for any change of the kind which most frequently attracted his attention, there must { } be a cause. everything that moved he supposed to be alive, or to be under the influence of some living being more or less like himself. if the sea raged, he supposed that the sea-god was angry. if it did not rain to-day, when it rained yesterday, that was due to the favour of the sky-god, and so on. the world for him was full of spirits. the argument of primitive man's unconscious but thoroughly sound metaphysic is well expressed by the fine lines of wordsworth in the _excursion_: once more to distant ages of the world let us revert, and place before our thoughts the face which rural solitude might wear to the unenlightened swains of pagan greece. --in that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched on the soft grass through half a summer's day, with music lulled his indolent repose: and, in some fit of weariness, if he, when his own breath was silent, chanced to hear a distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, even from the blazing chariot of the sun, a beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, and filled the illumined groves with ravishment. the nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed that timely light, to share his joyous sport: and hence, a beaming goddess with her nymphs, across the lawn and through the darksome grove, (not unaccompanied with tuneful notes by echo multiplied from rock or cave), { } swept in the storm of chace; as moon and stars glance rapidly along the clouded heaven, when winds are blowing strong. the traveller slaked his thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked the naiad. sunbeams, upon distant hills gliding apace, with shadows in their train, might, with small help from fancy, be transformed into fleet oreads sporting visibly. the zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings, lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed with gentle whisper. withered boughs grotesque, stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age, from depth of shaggy covert peeping forth in the low vale, or on steep mountain side; and, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,-- these were the lurking satyrs, a wild brood of gamesome deities; or pan himself, the simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god![ ] growing experience of the unity of nature, of the interdependence of all the various forces and departments of nature, have made such a view of it impossible to civilized and educated man. primitive man was quite right in arguing that, where he saw motion, there must be consciousness like his own. but we have been led by science to believe that whatever is the cause of any one phenomenon (at least in inanimate nature), must be the cause of all. the interconnexion, the regularity, the order observable in phenomena are too great to be the result of chance or of the undesigned concurrence of a number of { } independent agencies: and perhaps we may go on further to argue that this one cause must be the ultimate cause even of those events which are directly and immediately caused by our own wills. but that is a question which i will put aside for the present. at least for the events of physical nature there must be one cause. and if the only sort of cause we know is a conscious and rational being, then we have another most powerful reason for believing that the ultimate reality, from which all other reality is derived, is mind--a single conscious mind which we may now further describe as not only thought or intelligence but also will.[ ] let me add this additional consideration in support of the conclusion that the world is not merely thought by god but is also willed by god. when we talk about thought without will, we are talking about something that we know absolutely nothing about. in all the consciousness that we know of, in every moment of our own immediate waking experience, we find thought, feeling, willing. even in the consciousness of animals there appears to be something analogous to these three sides or aspects of consciousness: but at all events in developed human consciousness we know of no such thing as thinking without willing. all thought involves attention, and to attend is to will. if, therefore, on the grounds { } suggested by the hegelian or other post-kantian idealists, we have been led to think that the ultimate reality is mind or spirit, we should naturally conclude by analogy that it must be will as well as thought and--i may add, though it hardly belongs to the present argument to insist upon that--feeling. on the other hand if, with men like schopenhauer and edouard von hartmann,[ ] we are conducted by the appearances of design in nature to the idea that nature is striving after something, that the ultimate reality is will, we must supplement that line of argument by inferring from the analogy of our own consciousness that will without reason is an unintelligible and meaningless abstraction, and that (as indeed even hartmann saw) schopenhauer's will without reason was as impossible an abstraction as the apparently will-less universal thinker of the hegelian:[ ] while against schopenhauer and his more reasonable successor, hartmann, i should insist that an unconscious will is as unintelligible a contradiction as an unconscious reason. schopenhauer and hegel seem to have seen, each of them, exactly { } half of the truth: god is not will without reason or reason without will, but both reason and will. and here i must try to meet an inevitable objection. i do not say that these three activities of the human intellect stand in god side by side with the same distinctness and (if i may say so) irreducibility that they do in us. what feeling is for a being who has no material organism, we can form no distinct conception. our thought with its clumsy processes of inference from the known to the unknown must be very unlike what thought is in a being to whom nothing is unknown. all our thought too involves generalization, and in universal concepts (as mr. bradley has shown us) much that was present in the living experience of actual perception is necessarily left out. thought is but a sort of reproduction--and a very imperfect reproduction--of actual, living, sensible experience. we cannot suppose, then, that in god there is the same distinction between actual present experience and the universal concepts employed in thinking which there is in us. and so, again, willing must be a very different thing in a being who wills or creates the objects of his own thought from what it is in beings who can only achieve their ends by distinguishing in the sharpest possible manner between the indefinite multiplicity of things which they know but do not cause and the tiny fragment { } of the universe which by means of this knowledge they can control. nevertheless, though all our thoughts of god must be inadequate, it is by thinking of him as thought, will and feeling--emancipated from those limitations which are obviously due to human conditions and are inapplicable to a universal mind--that we shall attain to the truest knowledge of god which lies within our capacity. do you find a difficulty in the idea of partial and inadequate knowledge? just think, then, of our knowledge of other people's characters--of what goes on in other people's minds. it is only by the analogy of our own immediate experience that we can come to know anything at all of what goes on in other people's minds. and, after all, such insight into other people's thoughts, emotions, motives, intentions, characters, remains very imperfect. the difficulty is greatest when the mind which we seek to penetrate is far above our own. how little most of us know what it would feel like to be a shakespeare, a mozart, or a plato! and yet it would be absurd to talk as if our knowledge of our fellows was no knowledge at all. it is sufficient not merely to guide our own thoughts and actions, but to make possible sympathy, friendship, love. is it not so with our knowledge of god? the gnosticism which forgets the immensity of the difference between the divine mind and the human is not less unreasonable--not { } less opposed to the principles on which we conduct our thinking in every other department of life--than the agnosticism which rejects probabilities because we cannot have immediate certainties, and insists on knowing nothing because we cannot know everything. the argument which infers that god is will from the analogy of our own consciousness is one which is in itself independent of idealism. it has been used by many philosophers who are realists, such as reid or dr. martineau, as well as by idealists like berkeley, or pfleiderer, or lotze. it does not necessarily presuppose idealism; but it does, to my mind, fit in infinitely better with the idealistic mode of thought than with the realistic. if you hold that there is no difficulty in supposing dead, inert matter to exist without any mind to think it or know it, but that only a mind can be supposed to cause change or motion, you are assuming a hard and fast distinction between matter and force which the whole trend of modern science is tending to break down. it seems to imply the old greek conception of an inert, passive, characterless _hule_ which can only be acted upon from without. the modern physicist, i imagine, knows nothing of an inert matter which can neither attract nor repel, even if he does not definitely embark on the more speculative theory which actually defines the atom or the electron { } as a centre of force. activity belongs to the very essence of matter as understood by modern science. if matter can exist without mind, there is (from the scientific point of view) some difficulty in contending that it cannot likewise move or act without being influenced by an extraneous mind. if, on the other hand, with the idealist we treat the notion of matter without mind as an unintelligible abstraction, that line of thought would prepare us to see in force nothing but a mode of mental action. the idealist who has already identified matter with the object of thought will find no difficulty in going on to see in force simply the activity or expression or object of will. and if he learns from the physicist that we cannot in the last resort--from the physical point of view--distinguish matter from force, that will fit in very well with the metaphysical position which regards thought and will as simply two inseparable aspects of the life of mind. and now i will return once more for a moment to the idealistic argument. i have no doubt that many of you will have felt a difficulty in accepting the position that the world with which we come in contact is merely a state of our own or anybody else's consciousness. it is so obvious that in our experience we are in contact with a world which we do not create; which is what it is whether we like it or not; which opposes itself at every turn to our desires and { } inclinations. you may have been convinced that we know nothing of any external world except the effects which it produces upon consciousness. but, you will say to yourselves, there must have been something to cause these effects. you are perfectly right in so thinking. certainly in our experience of the world we are in contact with a reality which is not any state of our own mind, a reality which we do not create but simply discover, a reality from which are derived the sensations which we cannot help feeling, and the objects which we cannot help thinking. so far you are quite right. but very often, when the realist insists that there must be something to cause in my mind this appearance, which i call my consciousness of a table, he assumes all the while that this something--the real table, the table in itself--is _there_, inside or behind the phenomenal table that i actually see and feel; out there, in space. but if we were right in our analysis of space, if we were right in arguing that space is made up of intellectual relations[ ] and that { } intellectual relations can have no being and no meaning except in and for a mind which apprehends them, then it is obvious that you must not think of this reality which is the cause of our experience of external objects, as being _there_, as occupying space, as being 'external.' if space be a form of our thought, or (in kantian language) a form of our sensibility, then the reality which is to have an existence in itself, cannot be in space. a reality which is not in space can no longer be thought of as matter: whatever else matter (as commonly conceived) means, it is certainly something which occupies space. now we know of no kind of existence which is not in space except mind. on the idealistic view to which i have been endeavouring to lead you, we are, indeed, justified in saying that there is a reality which is the underlying cause or ground of our experiences, but that that reality is one which we may describe as thought no less than as will. it may interest some of you to know how near one who is often considered the typical representative of naturalistic, if not materialistic, modes of thought, ultimately came to accepting this identification. let me read to you a passage from one of mr. spencer's later works--the third volume of his _sociology_:-- 'this transfiguration, which the inquiries of physicists continually increase, is aided by that other { } transfiguration resulting from metaphysical inquiries. subjective analysis compels us to admit that our scientific interpretations of the phenomena which objects present, are expressed in terms of our own variously-combined sensations and ideas--are expressed, that is, in elements belonging to consciousness, which are but symbols of the something beyond consciousness. though analysis afterwards reinstates our primitive beliefs, to the extent of showing that behind every group of phenomenal manifestations there is always a _nexus_, which is the reality that remains fixed amid appearances which are variable;[ ] yet we are shown that this _nexus_ of reality is for ever inaccessible to consciousness. and when, once more, we remember that the activities constituting consciousness, being rigorously bounded, cannot bring in among themselves the activities beyond the bounds, which therefore seem unconscious, though production of either by the other seems to imply that they are of the same essential nature; this necessity we are under to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy, gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the universe: further thought, however, obliging us to recognize the truth that a conception given in phenomenal manifestations of this ultimate energy can in no wise show us what it is.'[ ] now, i think this is one of the passages which would justify mr. bradley's well-known epigram, that mr. herbert spencer has told us more about the unknowable than the rashest of theologians has ever ventured to tell us about god. { } even kant, who is largely responsible for the mistakes about causality against which this lecture has been a protest--i mean the tendency to resolve it into necessary connexion--did in the end come to admit that in the large resort we come into contact with causality only in our own wills. i owe the reference to professor ward, and will quote the paragraph in which he introduces it:-- 'presentation, feeling, conation, are ever one inseparable whole, and advance continuously to higher and higher forms. but for the fact that psychology was in the first instance studied, not for its own sake, but in subservience to speculation, this cardinal importance of activity would not have been so long overlooked. we should not have heard so much of passive sensations and so little of active movements. it is especially interesting to find that even kant at length--in his latest work, the posthumous treatise on the _connexion of physics and metaphysics_, only recently discovered and published--came to see the fundamental character of voluntary movement. i will venture to quote one sentence: "we should not recognise the moving forces of matter, not even through experience, if we were not conscious of our own activity in ourselves exerting acts of repulsion, approximation, etc." but to maine de biran, often called the french kant, to schopenhauer, and, finally, to our own british psychologists, brown, hamilton, bain, spencer, is especially due the merit of seeing the paramount importance of the active side of experience. to this then primarily, and not to any merely { } intellectual function, we may safely refer the category of causality.'[ ] i may add that professor ward's _naturalism and agnosticism_, from which i have quoted, constitutes the most brilliant and important modern defence of the doctrine which i have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you in this lecture. it is a remarkable fact that the typical exponent of popular so-called 'scientific' agnosticism, and the founder of that higher metaphysical agnosticism which has played so large a part in the history of modern philosophy, should before their deaths have both made confessions which really amount to an abjuration of all agnosticism. if the ultimate reality is to be thought of as a rational will, analogous to the will which each of us is conscious of himself having or being, he is no longer the unknown or the unknowable, but the god of religion, who has revealed himself in the consciousness of man, 'made in the image of god.' what more about himself we may also hold to be revealed in the human spirit, i hope to consider in our next lecture. but, meanwhile, a word may be uttered in answer to the question which may very probably be asked--is god a person? a complete answer to the question would involve elaborate discussions, but for our present purpose the question may be answered very { } briefly. if we are justified in thinking of god after the analogy of a human soul--if we are justified in thinking of him as a self-conscious being who thinks, feels, and wills, and who is, moreover (if i may a little anticipate the subject of our next lecture) in relation with, capable of loving and being loved by other such beings--then it seems most natural to speak of god's existence as personal. for to be a self-conscious being--conscious of itself and other beings, thinking, willing, feeling, loving--is what we mean by being a person. if any one prefers to speak of god as 'super-personal,' there is no great objection to so doing, provided that phrase is not made (as it often is) an excuse for really thinking of god after the analogy of some kind of existence lower than that of persons--as a force, an unconscious substance, or merely a name for the totality of things. but for myself, i prefer to say that our own self-consciousness gives us only an ideal of the highest type of existence which it nevertheless very imperfectly satisfies, and therefore i would rather think god is a person in a far truer, higher, more complete sense than that in which any human being can be a person. god alone fully realizes the ideal of personality. the essence of personality is something positive: it signifies to us the highest kind of being within our knowledge--not (as is too often supposed) the mere limitations { } and restraints which characterize human conscious life as we know it in ourselves. if we are justified in thinking of god after the analogy of the highest existence within our knowledge, we had better call him a person. the word is no doubt inadequate to the reality, as is all the language that we can employ about god; but it is at least more adequate than the terms employed by those who scruple to speak of god as a person. it is at least more adequate and more intelligent than to speak of him as a force, a substance, a 'something not ourselves which makes for righteousness.' _things_ do not 'make for righteousness'; and in using the term person we shall at least make it clear that we do not think of him as a 'thing,' or a collection of things, or a vague substratum of things, or even a mere totality of minds like our own.[ ] literature as has been explained in this lecture, many idealistic writers who insist upon the necessity of god as a universal, knowing mind to explain both the existence of the world and our knowledge of it, are more or less ambiguous about the question whether the divine mind is to be thought of as willing or causing the world, though passages occur in the writings of most of them which tend in this direction. 'god { } must be thought of as creating the objects of his own thought' is a perfectly orthodox hegelian formula. among the idealistic writers (besides berkeley) who correct this--as it seems to me--one-sided tendency, and who accept on the whole the view of the divine causality taken in this lecture, may be mentioned lotze, the th book of whose _microcosmus_ (translated by miss elizabeth hamilton and miss constance jones) or the third book of his _logic_ (translation ed. by prof. bosanquet), may very well be read by themselves (his views may also be studied in his short _philosophy of religion_--two translations, by the late mrs. conybeare and by professor ladd); pfleiderer, _philosophy and development of religion_, especially chapter v.; and professor ward's _naturalism and agnosticism_. among the non-idealistic writers who have based their argument for the existence of god mainly or largely upon the consideration that causality is unintelligible apart from a rational will, may be mentioned--among older writers reid, _essays on the active powers of man_, essay i. (especially chapter v.), and among more recent ones martineau, _a study of religion_. flint's _theism_ may be recommended as one of the best attempts to state the theistic case with a minimum of technical metaphysic. two little books by professor andrew seth (now seth pringle-pattison), though not primarily occupied with the religious problem, may be mentioned as very useful introductions to philosophy--_the scottish philosophers_ and _hegelianism and personality_. [ ] of course deeply religious men like green who have held this view did not admit, or did not realize, such consequences. the tendency here criticized is undoubtedly derived from hegel, but passages suggestive of the opposite view can be extracted from his writings, e.g.: 'god, however, as subjective power, is not simply will, intention, etc., but rather immediate cause' (_philosophy of religion_, eng. trans., ii. p. ). [ ] the idea of causality was by kant identified with the idea of logical connexion, _i.e._ the relation of the premisses of a syllogism to its conclusion; but this does not involve _time_ at all, and _time_ is essential to the idea of causality. for an admirable vindication of our immediate consciousness of causality see professor stout's chapter on 'the concept of mental activity' in _analytic psychology_ (book ii. chap. i.). [ ] _excursion_, book iv. [ ] for the further development of this argument see lecture iv. [ ] see especially the earlier chapters of _the philosophy of the unconscious_ (translated by w. c. coupland). [ ] of course passages can be quoted from hegel himself which suggest the idea that god is will as well as thought; i am speaking of the general tendency of hegel and many of his disciples. some recent hegelians, such as professor boyce, seem to be less open to this criticism, but there are difficulties in thinking of god as will and yet continuing to speak of ultimate reality as out of time. [ ] it may be objected that this is true only of 'conceptual space' (that is, the space of geometry), but not of 'perceptual space,' _i.e._ space as it presents itself in a child's perception of an object. the distinction is no doubt from many points of view important, but we must not speak of 'conceptual space' and 'perceptual space' as if they had nothing to do with one another. if the relations of conceptual space were not in some sense contained or implied in our perceptions, no amount of abstraction or reflection could get the relations out of them. [ ] _sociology_, vol. iii. p. . [ ] _naturalism and agnosticism_, vol. ii. pp. - . [ ] for a further discussion of the subject the reader may be referred to my essay on 'personality in god and man' in _personal idealism_. { } lecture iii god and the moral consciousness a course of purely metaphysical reasoning has led us up to the idea of god--that is to say, of a conscious and rational mind and will for which the world exists and by which that world and all other spirits are caused to exist. i have passed over a host of difficulties--the relation of god to time, the question whether or in what sense the world may be supposed to have a beginning and an end, the question of the relation in which god, the universal mind, stands to other minds, the question of free-will. these are difficulties which would involve elaborate metaphysical discussions: i shall return to some of them in a later lecture. it must suffice for the present to say that more than one answer to many of these questions might conceivably be given consistently with the view of the divine nature which i have contended for. all that i need insist on for my present purpose is-- ( ) that god is personal in the sense that he is a { } self-conscious, thinking, willing, feeling being, distinguishable from each and all less perfect minds. ( ) that all other minds are in some sense brought into being by the divine mind, while at the same time they have such a resemblance to, or community of nature with, their source that they may be regarded as not mere creations but as in some sense reproductions, more or less imperfect, of that source, approximating in various degrees to that ideal of personality which is realised perfectly in god alone. in proportion as they approximate to that ideal, they are causes of their own actions, and can claim for themselves the kind of causality which we attribute in its perfection to god. i content myself now with claiming for the developed, rational human self a measure of freedom to the extent which i have just defined--that it is the real cause of its own actions. it is capable of self-determination. the man's actions are determined by his character. that is quite consistent with the admission that god is the ultimate cause of a self of such and such a character coming into existence at such and such a time. ( ) i will not say that the conception of those who regard the human mind as literally a part of the divine, so that the human consciousness is in no sense outside of the divine, is necessarily, for those who hold it, inconsistent with the conception of { } personality both in god and man: i will only say that i do not myself understand such an assertion. i regard the human mind as derived from god, but not as being part of god. further discussion of this question i reserve for my next lecture. we have led up to the idea of god's existence. but so far we have discovered nothing at all about his character or purposes. and it is clear that without some such knowledge the belief in god could be of little or no value from any religious or moral point of view. how are we to learn anything about the character of god? i imagine that at the present day few people will attempt to prove the goodness or benevolence of god from an empirical examination of the facts of nature or of history. there is, no doubt, much in history and in nature to suggest the idea of benevolence, but there is much to suggest a directly opposite conclusion. few of us at the present day are likely to be much impressed by the argument which paley bases upon the existence of the little apparatus in the throat by which it is benevolently arranged that, though constantly on the point of being choked by our food, we hardly ever are choked. i cannot help reminding you of the characteristic passage: 'consider a city-feast,' he exclaims, 'what manducation, what deglutition, and yet not one alderman choked in a century!' such arguments look at the matter from the point { } of view of the alderman: the point of view of the turtle and the turkey is entirely forgotten. i would not for a moment speak disrespectfully of the argument from design. darwinism has changed its form, but anybody who reads edouard von hartmann's _philosophy of the unconscious_ is not likely to rise from its perusal with the idea that the evidences of design have been destroyed by darwinism, whatever he may think of hartmann's strange conclusion that the design can be explained by the operation of an unconscious mind or will. the philosophical argument of mr. r. b. haldane in _the pathway to reality_,[ ] and the purely biological argument of dr. john haldane in his two lectures on _life and mechanism_, and still more recently the brilliant and very important work of m. bergson, _l'Évolution creatrice_ have, as it seems to me, abundantly shown that it is as impossible as ever it was to explain even the growth of a plant without supposing that in it and all organic nature there is a striving towards an end. but the argument from design, though it testifies to purpose in the universe, tells us nothing about the nature of that purpose. purpose is one thing; benevolent purpose is another. nobody's estimate of the comparative amount of happiness and misery in the world is worth much; but for my own part, if i trusted simply to empirical evidence, { } i should not be disposed to do more than slightly attenuate the pessimism of the pessimists. at all events, nature is far too 'red in tooth and claw' to permit of our basing an argument for a benevolent deity upon a contemplation of the facts of animal and human life. there is but one source from which such an idea can possibly be derived--from the evidence of our own moral consciousness. our moral ideals are the work of reason. that the happiness of many ought to be preferred to the happiness of one, that pleasure is better than pain, that goodness is of more value than pleasure, that some pleasures are better than others--such judgements are as much the work of our own reason, they are as much self-evident truths, as the truth that two and two make four, or that a cannot be both b and not b at the same time, or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. we have every right to assume that such truths hold good for god as well as for man. if such idealism as i have endeavoured to lead you to is well founded, the mind which knows comes from god, and therefore the knowledge which that mind possesses must also be taken as an imperfect or fragmentary reproduction of god's knowledge. and the theist who rejects idealism but admits the existence of self-evident truths will be equally justified in assuming that, for god as well as for man, two and two must make { } four. we have just as much right to assume that our moral ideas--our ideas of value--must come from god too. for god too, as for us, there must exist the idea, the ultimate category of the good; and our judgements of value--judgements that such and such an end is good or worth striving for--in so far as they are true judgements, must be supposed to represent his judgements. we are conscious, in proportion as we are rational, of pursuing ends which we judge to be good. if such judgements reveal god's judgements, god must be supposed to aim likewise at an ideal of good--the same ideal which is revealed to us by our moral judgements. in these judgements then we have a revelation, the only possible revelation, of the character of god. the argument which i have suggested is simply a somewhat exacter statement of the popular idea that conscience is the voice of god. further to vindicate the idea of the existence, authority, objective validity of conscience would lead us too far away into the region of moral philosophy for our present subject. i will only attempt very briefly to guard against some possible misunderstandings, and to meet some obvious objections: ( ) it need hardly be pointed out that the assertion of the existence of the moral consciousness is not in the slightest degree inconsistent with recognising its gradual growth and development. the { } moral faculty, like every other faculty or aspect or activity of the human soul, has grown gradually. no rational man doubts the validity--no idealist doubts the _a priori_ character--of our mathematical judgements because probably monkeys and possibly primitive men cannot count, and certainly cannot perform more than the very simplest arithmetical operations. still less do we doubt the validity of mathematical reasoning because not only children and savages, but sometimes even distinguished classical scholars--a macaulay, a matthew arnold, a t. s. evans,--were wholly incapable of understanding very simple mathematical arguments. equally little do we deny a real difference between harmony and discord because people may be found who see no difference between 'god save the king' and 'pop goes the weasel.' self-evident truth does not mean truth which is evident to everybody. ( ) it is not doubted that the gradual evolution of our actual moral ideas--our actual ideas about what is right or wrong in particular cases--has been largely influenced by education, environment, association, social pressure, superstition, perhaps natural selection--in short, all the agencies by which naturalistic moralists try to account for the existence of morality. even euclid, or whatever his modern substitute may be, has to be taught; but that does not show that geometry is an arbitrary system { } invented by the ingenious and interested devices of those who want to get money by teaching it. arithmetic was invented largely as an instrument of commerce; but it could not have been invented if there were really no such things as number and quantity, or if the human mind had no original capacity for recognizing them. our scientific ideas, our political ideas, our ideas upon a thousand subjects have been partly developed, partly thwarted and distorted in their growth, by similar influences. but, however great the difficulty of getting rid of these distorting influences and facing such questions in a perfectly dry light, nobody suggests that objective truth on such matters is non-existent or for ever unattainable. a claim for objective validity for the moral judgement does not mean a claim for infallibility on behalf of any individual conscience. we may make mistakes in morals just as we may make mistakes in science, or even in pure mathematics. if a class of forty small boys are asked to do a sum, they will probably not all bring out the same answer: but nobody doubts that one answer alone is right, though arithmetical capacity is a variable quantity. what is meant is merely that, if i am right in affirming that this is good, you cannot be likewise right in saying that it is bad: and that we have some capacity--though doubtless a variable capacity--of judging which is the true { } view. hence our moral judgements, in so far as they are true judgements, must be taken to be reproductions in us of the thought of god. to show that an idea has been gradually developed, tells us nothing as to its truth or falsehood--one way or the other. ( ) in comparing the self-evidence of moral to that of mathematical judgements, it is not suggested that our moral judgements in detail are as certain, as clear and sharply defined, as mathematical judgements, or that they can claim so universal a consensus among the competent. what is meant is merely (_a_) that the notion of good in general is an ultimate category of thought; that it contains a meaning intelligible not perhaps to every individual human soul, but to the normal, developed, human consciousness; and (_b_) that the ultimate truth of morals, if it is seen at all, must be seen immediately. an ultimate moral truth cannot be deduced from, or proved by, any other truth. you cannot prove that pleasure is better than pain, or that virtue is better than pleasure, to any one who judges differently. it does not follow that all men have an equally clear and delicate moral consciousness. the power of discriminating moral values differs as widely as the power of distinguishing musical sounds, or of appreciating what is excellent in music. some men may be almost or altogether without such a power of moral discrimination, just as some men are wholly { } destitute of an ear for music; while the higher degrees of moral appreciation are the possession of the few rather than of the many. moral insight is not possessed by all men in equal measure. moral genius is as rare as any other kind of genius. ( ) when we attribute morality to god, it is not meant that the conduct which is right for men in detail ought to be or could possibly in all cases be practised by god. it is a childish objection (though it is sometimes made by modern philosophers who should know better) to allege with aristotle that god cannot be supposed to make or keep contracts. and in the same way, when we claim universal validity for our moral judgements, we do not mean that the rules suitable for human conduct would be the same for beings differently organized and constituted. our rules of sexual morality are clearly applicable only to sexually constituted beings. what is meant in asserting that these rules are universally and objectively valid is that these are the rules which every rational intelligence, in proportion as it is rational, will recognize as being suitable, or conducive to the ideal life, in beings constituted as we are. the truth that permanent monogamous marriage represents the true type of sexual relations for human beings will be none the less an objectively valid ethical truth, because the lower animals are below it, while superior beings, { } it may be, are above it. universal love is none the less the absolute moral ideal because it would be absurd to say that beasts of prey do wrong in devouring other creatures, or because war is sometimes necessary as a means to the end of love at our present imperfect stage of social and intellectual development. the means to the highest good vary with circumstances; the amount of good that is attainable in such and such circumstances varies also; consequently the right course of conduct will be different for beings differently constituted or placed under different circumstances: but the principles which, in the view of a perfect intelligence, would determine what is the right course for different beings in different circumstances will be always the same. the ultimate principles of our moral judgement, _e.g._ that love is better than hate, are just as applicable to god as they are to us. our conception of the highest good may be inadequate; but we certainly shall not attain to greater adequacy, or a nearer approach to ultimate truth, by flatly contradicting our own moral judgements. it would be just as reasonable to argue that because the law of gravitation might be proved, from the point of view of the highest knowledge, to be an inadequate statement of the truth, and all inadequacy involves some error, therefore we had better assume that from the point of view of god there is no difference whatever { } between attraction and repulsion. all arguments for what is called a 'super-moral' deity or a 'super-moral' absolute are open to this fatal objection: moral judgements cannot possibly rest upon anything but the moral consciousness, and yet these doctrines contradict the moral consciousness. the idea of good is derived from the moral consciousness. when a man declares that from the point of view of the universe all things are very good, he gets the idea of good from his own moral consciousness, and is assuming the objective validity of its dictates. his judgement is an ethical judgement as much as mine when i say that to me some things in this world appear very bad. if he is not entitled to assume the validity of his ethical judgements, his proposition is false or meaningless. if he is entitled to assume their validity, why should he distrust that same moral consciousness when it affirms (as it undoubtedly does) that pain and sin are for ever bad, and not (as our 'super-moral' religionists suggest) additional artistic touches which only add to the aesthetic effect of the whole? i shall now proceed to develop some of the consequences which (as it appears to me) flow from the doctrine that our belief in the goodness of god is an inference from our own moral consciousness: ( ) it throws light on the relations between religion and morality. the champions of ethical { } education as a substitute for religion and of ethical societies as a substitute for churches are fond of assuming that religion is not only unnecessary to, but actually destructive of, the intrinsic authority of the moral law. if we supposed with a few theologians in the most degenerate periods of theology (with william of occam, some extreme calvinists, and a few eighteenth-century divines like archdeacon paley) that actions are right or wrong merely because willed by god--meaning by god simply a powerful being without goodness or moral character, then undoubtedly the secularists would be right. if a religious morality implies that virtue means merely (in paley's words) 'the doing good to mankind in obedience to the will of god and for the sake of everlasting happiness' (so that if god were to will murder and adultery, those practices would forthwith become meritorious), then undoubtedly it would be better to teach morality without religion than with it. but that is a caricature of the true teaching of christ or of any considerable christian theologian. undoubtedly we must assert what is called the 'independence' of the moral judgement. the judgement 'to love is better than to hate' has a meaning complete in itself, which contains no reference whatever to any theological presupposition. it is a judgement which is, and which can intelligibly be, made by people of all religions or of none. but { } we may still raise the question whether the validity of that judgement can be defended without theological implications. and i am prepared most distinctly to maintain that it cannot. these moral judgements claim objective validity. when we say 'this is right,' we do not mean merely 'i approve this course of conduct,' 'this conduct gives me a thrill of satisfaction, a "feeling of approbation," a pleasure of the moral sense.' if that were all that was meant, it would be perfectly possible that another person might feel an equally satisfactory glow of approbation at conduct of a precisely opposite character _without either of them being wrong_. a bull-fight fills most spaniards with feelings of lively approbation, and most englishmen with feelings of acute disapprobation. if such moral judgements were mere feelings, neither of them would be wrong. there could be no question of objective rightness or wrongness. mustard is not objectively nice or objectively nasty: it is simply nice to some people and nasty to others. the mustard-lover has no right to condemn the mustard-hater, or the mustard-hater the mustard-lover. if morality were merely a matter of feeling or emotion, actions would not be objectively right or objectively wrong; but simply right to some people, wrong to others. hume would be right in holding the morality of an action to consist simply in the pleasure it gives to the person who { } contemplates it. rightness thus becomes simply a name for the fact of social approbation.[ ] and yet surely the very heart of the affirmation which the moral consciousness makes in each of us is that right and wrong are not matters of mere subjective feeling. when i assert 'this is right,' i do not claim personal infallibility. i may, indeed, be wrong, as i may be wrong in my political or scientific theories. but i do mean that i think i am right; and that, if i am right, you cannot also be right when you affirm that this same action is wrong. this objective validity is the very core and centre of the idea of duty or moral obligation. that is why it is so important to assert that moral judgements are the work of reason, not of a supposed moral sense or any other kind of feeling. feelings may vary in different men without any of them being in the wrong; red really is the same as green to a colour-blind person. what we mean when we talk about the existence of duty is that things are right or wrong, no matter what you or i think about them--that the laws of morality { } are quite as much independent of my personal likings and dislikings as the physical laws of nature. that is what is meant by the 'objectivity' of the moral law. now, the question arises--'can such an objectivity be asserted by those who take a purely materialistic or naturalistic view of the universe?' whatever our metaphysical theories about the nature of reality may be, we can in practice have no difficulty in the region of physical science about recognizing an objective reality of some kind which is other than my mere thinking about it. that fire will burn whether i think so or not is practically recognized by persons of all metaphysical persuasions. if i say 'i can cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast,' i try the experiment, and i fail. i imagine the feast, but i am hungry still: and if i persist in the experiment, i die. but what do we mean when we say that things are right or wrong whether i think them so or not, that the moral law exists outside me and independently of my thinking about it? where and how does this moral law exist? the physical laws of nature may be supposed by the materialist or the realist somehow to exist in matter: to the metaphysician there may be difficulties in such a view, but the difficulties are not obvious to common-sense. but surely (whatever may be thought about physical laws) the moral law, { } which expresses not any matter of physical fact but what _ought_ to be thought of acts, cannot be supposed to exist in a purely material universe. an 'ought' can exist only in and for a mind. in what mind, then, does the moral law exist? as a matter of fact, different people's moral judgements contradict one another. and the consciousness of no living man can well be supposed to be a flawless reflection of the absolute moral ideal. on a non-theistic view of the universe, then, the moral law cannot well be thought of as having any actual existence. the objective validity of the moral law can indeed be and no doubt is _asserted_, believed in, acted upon without reference to any theological creed; but it cannot be defended or fully justified without the pre-supposition of theism. what we mean by an objective law is that the moral law is a part of the ultimate nature of things, on a level with the laws of physical nature, and it cannot be _that_, unless we assume that law to be an expression of the same mind in which physical laws originate. the idea of duty, when analysed, implies the idea of god. whatever else plato meant by the 'idea of the good,' this at least was one of his meanings--that the moral law has its source in the source of all reality. and therefore at bottom popular feeling is right in holding that religious belief is necessary to morality. of course i do not mean to say that, were { } religious belief to disappear from the world, morality would disappear too. but i do think morality would become quite a different thing from what it has been for the higher levels of religious thought and feeling. the best men would no doubt go on acting up to their own highest ideal just as if it did possess objective validity, no matter how unable they might be to reconcile their practical with their speculative beliefs. but it would not be so for the many--or perhaps even for the few in their moments of weakness and temptation, when once the consequences of purely naturalistic ethics were thoroughly admitted and realized. the only kind of objective validity which can be recognized on a purely naturalistic view of ethics is conformity to public opinion. the tendency of all naturalistic ethics is to make a god of public opinion. and if no other deity were recognized, such a god would assuredly not be without worshippers. and yet the strongest temptation to most of us is the temptation to follow a debased public opinion--the opinion of our age, our class, our party. apart from faith in a perfectly righteous god whose commands are, however imperfectly, revealed in the individual conscience, we can find no really valid reason why the individual should act on his own sense of what is intrinsically right, even when he finds himself an 'athanasius contra mundum,' and when his own personal likings and inclinations { } and interests are on the side of the world. kant was at bottom right, though perhaps he did not give the strongest reasons for his position, in making the idea of god a postulate of morality. from a more directly practical point of view i need hardly point out how much easier it is to feel towards the moral law the reverence that we ought to feel when we believe that that law is embodied in a personal will. not only is religious morality not opposed to the idea of duty for duty's sake: it is speculatively the only reasonable basis of it; practically and emotionally the great safeguard of it. and whatever may be thought of the possibility of a speculative defence of such an idea without theism, the practical difficulty of teaching it--especially to children, uneducated and unreflective persons--seems to be quite insuperable.[ ] in more than one country in which religious education has been banished from the primary schools, grave observers complain that the idea of duty seems to be suffering an eclipse in the minds of the rising { } generation; some of them add that in those lands crime is steadily on the increase. catechisms of civil duty and the like have not hitherto proved very satisfactory substitutes for the old teaching about the fear of god. would that it were more frequently remembered on both sides of our educational squabbles that the supreme object of all religious education should be to instil into children's minds in the closest possible connexion the twin ideas of god and of duty! ( ) i have tried to show that the ethical importance of the idea of god is prior to and independent of any belief in the idea of future rewards and punishments or of a future life, however conceived of. but when the idea of a righteous god has once been accepted, the idea of immortality seems to me to follow from it as a sort of corollary. if any one on a calm review of the actual facts of the world's history can suppose that such a world as ours could be the expression of the will of a rational and moral being without the assumption of a future life for which this is a discipline or education or preparatory stage, argument would be useless with him. inveterate optimism, like inveterate scepticism, admits of no refutation, but in most minds produces no conviction. for those who are convinced that the world has a rational end, and yet that life as we see it (taken by itself) cannot be that end, the hypothesis { } of immortality becomes a necessary deduction from their belief in god. i would not disparage the educative effect of the belief in a future life even when expressed in the crude and inadequate metaphor of reward and punishment. few of us, i venture to think, have reached the moral level at which the belief--not in a vindictive, retributive, unending torment, but in a disciplinary or purgatorial education of souls prolonged after death--is without its value. at the same time it is a mere caricature of all higher religious beliefs when the religious motive is supposed to mean simply a fear of punishment and hope of personal reward, even of the least sensuous or material kind. love of goodness for its own sake is for the theist identical with the love of god. love of a person is a stronger force than devotion to an idea; and an ethical conception of god carries with it the idea of immortality. the wages of sin is death: if the wages of virtue be dust, would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? she desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, to rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky; give her the wages of going on, and not to die.[ ] belief in human immortality is, as i have suggested, the postulate without which most of us cannot { } believe in god. even for its own sake it is of the highest ethical value. the belief in immortality gives a meaning to life even when it has lost all other meaning. 'it is rather,' in the noble words of the late professor sidgwick, 'from a disinterested aversion to an universe so irrationally constituted that the wages of virtue should be dust than from any private reckoning about his own wages,' that the good man clings to the idea of immortality. and that is not all. the value of all higher goods even in this life, though it does not depend wholly upon their duration, does partly depend upon it. it would be better to be pure and unselfish for a day than to be base and selfish for a century. and yet we do not hesitate to commend the value of intellectual and of all kinds of higher enjoyments on account of their greater durability. why, then, should we shrink from admitting that the value of character really is increased when it is regarded as surviving bodily death? disbelief in immortality would, i believe, in the long run and for the vast majority of men, carry with it an enormous enhancement of the value of the carnal and sensual over the spiritual and intellectual element in life. ( ) a third consequence which follows from our determining to accept the moral consciousness as containing the supreme revelation of god is this. from the point of view of the moral consciousness { } we cannot say that the universe is wholly good. we have only one means of judging whether things are good or bad: the idea of value is wholly derived from our own ethical judgements or judgements of value. if we distrust these judgements, there is no higher court to which we can appeal. and if we distrust our most ultimate judgements of value, i do not know why we should trust any judgements whatever. even if we grant that from some very transcendental metaphysical height--the height, for instance, of mr. bradley's philosophy--it may be contended that none of our judgements are wholly true or fully adequate to express the true nature of reality, we at all events cannot get nearer to reality than we are conducted by the judgements which present themselves to us as immediate and self-evident. now, if we do apply these judgements of value to the universe as we know it, can we say that everything in it seems to be very good? for my own part, i unhesitatingly say, 'pain is an evil, and sin is a worse evil, and nothing on earth can ever make them good.' how then are we to account for such evils in a universe which we believe to express the thought and will of a perfectly righteous being? in only one way that i know of--by supposing they are means to a greater good. that is really the substance and substratum of all the theodicies of all the philosophers and all the { } theologians except those who frankly trample on or throw over the moral consciousness, and declare that, for those who see truly, pain and sin are only additional sources of aesthetic interest in a great world-drama produced for his own entertainment by a deity not anthropomorphic enough to love but still anthropomorphic enough to be amused. i shall be told no doubt that this is limiting god. a human being may, it will be urged, without loss of goodness, do things in themselves evil, as a means to a greater good: as a surgeon, he may cause excruciating pain; as a statesman or a soldier, he may doom thousands to a cruel death; as a wise administrator of the poor law, he may refuse to relieve much suffering, in order that he may not cause more suffering. but this is because his power is limited; he has to work upon a world which has a nature of its own independent of his volition. to apply the same explanation to the evil which god causes, is to make him finite instead of infinite, limited in power instead of omnipotent. now in a sense i admit that this is so. i am not wedded to the words 'infinite' or 'omnipotent.' but i would protest against a persistent misrepresentation of the point of view which i defend. it is suggested that the limit to the power of god must necessarily spring from the existence of some other thing or being outside of him, not created by him or under his { } control. i must protest that that is not so. everybody admits that god cannot change the past; few philosophers consider it necessary to maintain that god could construct triangles with their angles not together equal to two right angles, or think it any derogation from his omnipotence to say that he could not make the sum of two and two to be other than four. few theologians push their idea of freewill so far as to insist that god could will himself to be unjust or unloving, or that, being just and loving, he could do unjust or unloving acts. there are necessities to which even god must submit. but they are not imposed upon him from without: they are parts of his own essential nature. the limitation by which god cannot attain his ends without causing some evil is a limitation of exactly the same nature. if you say that it is no limitation of god not to be able to change the past, for the thing is really unmeaning, then i submit that in the same way it may be no limitation that he should not be able to evolve highly organized beings without a struggle for existence, or to train human beings in unselfishness without allowing the existence both of sin and of pain. from the point of view of perfect knowledge, these things might turn out to be just as unmeaning as for god to change the past. the popular idea of omnipotence is one which really does not bear looking into. if we supposed the world { } to contain no evil at all, still there would be in it a definite amount of good. twice such a world would be twice as good. why is there not twice that amount of good? a being who deliberately created only a good world of limited quantity--a definite number of spirits (for instance) enjoying so much pleasure and so much virtue--when he could have created twice that number of spirits, and consequently twice that amount of good, would not be perfectly good or loving. and so on _ad infinitum_, no matter how much good you suppose him to have created. the only sense which we can intelligibly give to the idea of a divine omnipotence is this--that god possesses all the power there is, that he can do all things that are in their own nature possible.[ ] but there is a more formidable objection which i have yet to meet. it has been urged by certain philosophers of great eminence that, if we suppose god not to be unlimited in power, we have no guarantee that the world is even good on the whole; we should not be authorized to infer anything as to a future life or the ultimate destiny of humanity from the fact of god's goodness. a limited god might be a defeated god. i admit the difficulty. this is the 'greatest wave' of all in the theistic { } argument. in reply, i would simply appeal to the reasons which i have given for supposing that the world is really willed by god. a rational being does not will evil except as a means to a greater good. if god be rational, we have a right to suppose that the world must contain more good than evil, or it would not be willed at all. a being who was obliged to create a world which did not seem to him good would be a blind force, as force is understood by the pure materialist, not a rational will. that much we have a right to claim as a matter of strict logic; and that would to my own mind be a sufficient reason for assuming that, at least for the higher order of spirits, such a life as ours must be intended as the preface to a better life than this. but i should go further. to me it appears that such evils as sin and pain are so enormously worse than the mere absence of good, that i could not regard as rational a universe in which the good did not very greatly predominate over the evil. more than that i do not think we are entitled to say. and yet justice is so great a good that it is rational to hope that for every individual conscious being--at least each individual capable of any high degree of good--there must be a predominance of good on the whole. beings of very small capacity might conceivably be created chiefly or entirely as a means to a vastly greater good than any that they { } themselves enjoy: the higher a spirit is in the scale of being, the more difficult it becomes to suppose that it has been brought into existence merely as a means to another's good, or that it will not ultimately enjoy a good which will make it on the whole good that it should have been born. i could wish myself that, in popular religious teaching, there was a franker conception of this position--a position which, as i have said, is really implied in the theodicies of all the divines. popular unbelief--and sometimes the unbelief of more cultivated persons--rests mainly upon the existence of evil. we should cut at the roots of it by teaching frankly that this is the best of all possible universes, though not the best of all imaginable universes--such universes as we can construct in our own imagination by picturing to ourselves all the good that there is in the world without any of the evil. we may still say, if we please, that god is infinite because he is limited by nothing outside his own nature, except what he has himself caused. we can still call him omnipotent in the sense that he possesses all the power there is. and in many ways such a belief is far more practically consolatory and stimulating than a belief in a god who can do all things by any means and who consequently does not need our help. in our view, we are engaged not in a sham warfare with an evil that is really { } good, but in a real warfare with a real evil, a struggle in which we have the ultimate power in the universe on our side, but one in which the victory cannot be won without our help, a real struggle in which we are called upon to be literally fellow-workers with god. literature the subject is more or less explicitly dealt with in most of the works mentioned at the end of the last two lectures, and also in books on moral philosophy too numerous to mention. classical vindications of the authority of the moral consciousness are bishop butler's _sermons_, and kant's _fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals_ and other ethical writings (translated by t. k. abbott). i have expressed my own views on the subject with some fullness in the third book of my _theory of good and evil_. [ ] see especially book ii. lect. iii. [ ] 'we do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases: but in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous.' (_treatise_, part i, section ii., ed. green and grose, vol. ii. p. .) 'the distinction of moral good and evil is founded in the pleasure or pain, which results from the view of any sentiment, or character; and as that pleasure or pain cannot be unknown to the person who feels it, it follows that there is just so much virtue in any character as every one places in it, and that 'tis impossible in this particular we can ever be mistaken.' (_ibid._ vol. ii. p. .) [ ] there are no doubt ways of making morality the law of the universe without what most of us understand by theism, though not without religion, and a religion of a highly metaphysical character; but because such non-theistic modes of religious thought exist in buddhism, for instance, it does not follow that they are reasonable, and, at all events, they are hardly intelligible to most western minds. such non-theistic religions imply a metaphysic quite as much as christianity or buddhism. there have been religions without the idea of a personal god, but never without metaphysic, _i.e._ a theory about the ultimate nature of things. [ ] tennyson's _wages_. [ ] the doctrine of st. thomas aquinas is 'cum possit deus omnia efficere quae esae possunt, non autem quae contradictionem implicant, omnipotens merito dicitur.' (_summa theol_., pars i. q. xxv. art. .) { } lecture iv difficulties and objections in the present lecture i shall try to deal with some of the difficulties which will probably have been arising in your minds in the course of the last three; and in meeting them, to clear up to some extent various points which have been left obscure. ( ) _creation_. i have endeavoured to show that the world must be thought of as ultimately an experience in the mind of god, parts of which are progressively communicated to lesser minds such as ours. this experience--both the complete experience which is in his own mind and also the measure of it which is communicated to the lesser minds--must be thought of as willed by god. at the same time i suggested as an alternative view that, even if we think of things as having an existence which is not simply in and for minds, the things must be caused to exist by a rational will. now the world, as we know it, consists of a number of changes taking place in time, changes which are undoubtedly represented in thought as changes happening to, or { } accidents of, a permanent substance, whether (with the idealist) we suppose that this substance is merely the object of mind's contemplation, or whether (with the realist) we think of it as having some sort of being independent of mind. but what of the first of these events--the beginning of the whole series? are we to think of the series of events in time as having a beginning and possibly an end, or as being without beginning or end? what in fact are we to make of the theological idea of creation, often further defined as creation out of nothing? it is often suggested both by idealists and by realists that the idea of a creation or absolute beginning of the world is unthinkable. such a view seems to me to be a piece of unwarrantable _a priori_ dogmatism--quite as much so as the closely connected idea that the uniformity of nature is an _a priori_ necessity of thought. no doubt the notion of an absolute beginning of all things is unthinkable enough: if we think of god as creating the world at a definite point of time, then we must suppose god himself to have existed before that creation. we cannot think of an event in time without thinking of a time before it; and time cannot be thought of as merely empty time. events of some kind there must necessarily have been, even though those events are thought of as merely subjective experiences involving no relation to space. a beginning of existence is, { } indeed, unthinkable. but there is no difficulty in supposing that this particular series of phenomena which constitutes our physical universe may have had a beginning in time. on the other hand there is no positive evidence, for those who cannot regard the early chapters of genesis as representing on such a matter anything but a primitive legend edited by a later jewish thinker, that it had such a beginning. it is no doubt more difficult to represent to ourselves a beginning of space; and the notion of an empty space, eternally thought but not eternally filled up by any series of phenomena of the space-occupying kind, represents a rather difficult, though not (as it seems to me) an absolutely impossible conception. the question, therefore, whether there was a beginning of the series of events which constitute the history of our physical world must (so far as i can see) be left an open one. of course if the argument of lord kelvin be accepted, if he is justified in arguing on purely physical grounds that the present distribution of energy in the universe is such that it cannot have resulted from an infinite series of previous physical changes, if science can prove that the series is a finite one, the conclusions of science must be accepted.[ ] metaphysic has nothing to say for or against such a view. that is a question of physics on which { } of course i do not venture to express any opinion whatever. ( ) _the time-series_. i am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on the validity of such arguments as lord kelvin's. but, however we decide this question, there will still remain the further and harder question, 'is the series of all events or experiences, physical or psychical (not merely the particular series which constitutes our physical universe), to be thought of as finite or infinite? on the one hand it involves a contradiction to talk of a time-series which has a beginning: a time which has no time before it is not time at all; any more than space with an end to it would be space. on the other hand, we find equally, or almost equally, unthinkable the hypothesis of an endless series of events in time: a series of events, which no possible enumeration of its members will make any smaller, presents itself to us as unthinkable, directly we regard it as expressing the true nature of a positive reality, and not as a mere result of mathematical abstraction. here then we are presented with an antinomy--an apparent contradiction in our thought--which we can neither avoid nor overcome. it is one of the classical antinomies recognized by the kantian philosophy--the only one, i may add, which neither kant himself nor any of his successors has done anything to attenuate or to remove. { } kant's own attempted solution of it involved the impossible supposition that the past has no existence at all except in so far as it is thought by some finite mind in the present. the way out of this difficulty which is popular with post-kantian idealists is to say that god is himself out of time, and eternally sees the whole series at once. but, in the first place, that does not get over the difficulty: even if god does see the whole series at once, he must see it either as limited or as endless, and the old antinomy breaks out again when we attempt to think either alternative. and secondly, when you treat a temporal series as one which is all really present together--of course it may all be _known_ together as even we know the past and the future--but when you try to think of god as contemplating the whole series as really present altogether, the series is no longer a time-series. you have turned it into some other kind of series--practically (we may say) into a spacial series. you have cut the knot, instead of unravelling it. i have no doubt that the existence of this antinomy does point to the fact that there is some way of thinking about time from which the difficulty disappears: but we are, so far as i can see, incompetent so to resolve it. philosophers resent the idea of an insoluble problem. by all means let them go on trying to solve it. i can only say that i find no difficulty in showing the futility { } of any solution of the time-difficulty which i have so far seen. for the present at least--i strongly suspect for ever--we must acquiesce on this matter in a reverent agnosticism. we can show the absurdity of regarding time as merely subjective; we can show that it belongs to the very essence of the universe we know; we can show that it is as 'objective' as anything else within our knowledge. but how to reconcile this objectivity with the difficulty of thinking of an endless succession no philosopher has done much to explain. for religious purposes it seems enough to believe that each member of the time-series--no matter how many such events there may be, no matter whether the series be endless or not--is caused by god. the more reflecting theologians have generally admitted that the act of divine conservation is essentially the same as that of creation. a god who can be represented as 'upholding all things by the power of his word' is a creative deity whether the act of creation be in time, or eternally continuous, or (if there were any meaning in that phrase) out of time altogether.[ ] { } ( ) _the creation of spirits_. it may seem to some of you that i may have so far left out, or too easily disposed of, an important link in our argument. i have given reasons for thinking that the material world cannot be explained without the assumption of a universal consciousness which both thinks and wills it. i have assumed rather than proved that the lesser minds, in which the divine experience is partially reproduced, are also caused to exist and kept in existence by the same divine will. but how, it may be said, do we know that those minds did not exist before the birth of the organisms with which upon this planet they are connected? the considerations which forbid our thinking of matter as something capable of existing by itself do not apply to minds. a consciousness, unlike a thing, exists 'for itself,' not merely 'for another': a mind is not made what it is by being known or otherwise experienced by another mind: its very being consists in being itself conscious: it is what it is for itself. it is undoubtedly impossible positively to disprove the hypothesis of eternally pre-existent souls. sometimes that hypothesis is combined with theism. it { } is supposed that god is the supreme and incomparably the most powerful, but not the only, self-existent and eternal spirit. this hypothesis--sometimes spoken of as pluralism[ ]--has many attractions: from the time of origen onwards the idea of pre-existence has seemed to many to facilitate the explanation of evil by making it possible to regard the sufferings of our present state as a disciplinary process for getting rid of an original or a pre-natal sinfulness. it is a theory not incapable of satisfying the demands of the religious consciousness, and may even form an element in an essentially christian theory of the universe: but to my mind it is opposed to all the obvious indications of experience. the connexion between soul and body is such that the laws of the soul's development obviously form part of the same system with the laws of physical nature. if one part of that system is referred to the divine will, so must the whole of it be. the souls, when they have entered animal bodies, must be supposed to be subject to a system of laws which is of one piece with the system of physical laws. if the physical part of the world-order is referred to the divine will, the psychical part of it must be equally referred to { } that will. the souls might, indeed, conceivably have an independent and original nature of their own capable of offering resistance to the divine intentions. but we see, to say the least, no indications of a struggle going on between an outside divine will and independent beings not forming a part of the divine scheme. at all events, the result of this struggle, if struggle there be, is (so far as we can observe) a system, complete and orderly, within the psychical sphere as much as within the purely physical sphere. and in particular the body is exactly fitted to the soul that is to inhabit it. we never find the intellect of a shakespeare in connexion with the facial angle of a negro; bodies which resemble the bodies of their parents are connected with souls between which a similar resemblance can be traced. if the souls existed before birth, we must suppose those souls to be kept waiting in a limbo of some kind till a body is prepared suitable for their reception. we must suppose that among the waiting souls, one is from time to time selected to be the offspring of such and such a matrimonial union, so as to present (as it were) a colourable appearance of being really the fruit of that union. further, before birth the souls must be steeped in the waters of lethe, or something of the kind, so as to rid them of all memory of their previous experiences. such a conception seems to { } me to belong to the region of mythology rather than of sober philosophical thought. i do not deny that mythology may sometimes be a means of pictorially or symbolically envisaging truths to which philosophy vaguely points but which it cannot express in clearly apprehensible detail. but such a mythology as this seems to be intellectually unmotived and unhelpful. it is not wanted to explain the facts: there is nothing in our experience to suggest it, and much which is _prima facie_ opposed to it. it really removes no single difficulty: for one difficulty which it presents some appearance of removing, it creates a dozen greater ones. it is a hypothesis which we shall do well to dismiss as otiose. ( ) _non-theistic idealism_. somewhat less unmotived, if we look upon it from a merely intellectual point of view, is the theory of pre-existent souls without a personal god. many, if not most, of you probably possess more or less acquaintance with the views of my friend, dr. mctaggart. i cannot here undertake a full exposition or criticism of one of the ablest thinkers of our day--one of the very few english thinkers who is the author of a truly original metaphysical system. i can only touch--and that most inadequately--upon the particular side of it which directly bears upon our present enquiry. dr. mctaggart is an idealist; he recognizes the { } impossibility of matter without mind. for him nothing exists but spirits, but he does not recognize the necessity for any one all-embracing or controlling spirit: the only spirits in his universe are limited minds like those of men and animals. he differs, then, from the pluralist of the type just mentioned in getting rid of the hypothesis of a personal god side by side with and yet controlling the uncreated spirits. and he differs further from all pluralists in not treating the separate spirits as so many centres of consciousness quite independent of, and possibly at war with, all the rest: the spirits form part of an ordered system: the world is a unity, though that unity is not the unity which belongs to self-consciousness. he recognizes, in the traditional language of philosophy, an absolute, but this absolute is not a single spiritual being but a society: or, if it is to be called a single spiritual being, it is a being which exists or manifests itself only in a plurality of limited consciousnesses. this scheme is, i admit, more reasonable than pluralism. it does, nominally at least, recognize the world as an ordered system. it gets rid of the difficulty of accounting for the apparent order of the cosmos as the result of a struggle between independent wills. it is not, upon its author's pre-suppositions, a gratuitous theory: for a mind which accepts idealism and rejects theism it is the only { } intelligible alternative. but i must confess that it seems to me open to most of the difficulties which i have endeavoured to point out in pluralism, and to some others. in the first place, there is one, to my mind, great and insuperable difficulty about it. as an idealist, dr. mctaggart has to admit that the whole physical world, in so far as it exists at all, must exist in and for some consciousness. now, not only is there, according to him, no single mind in which the system can exist as a whole, but even all the minds together do not apparently know the whole of it, or (so far as our knowledge goes) ever will. the undiscovered and unknown part of the universe is then non-existent. and yet, be it noticed, the known part of the world does not make a perfectly articulated or (if you like the phrase) organic system without the unknown part. it is only on the assumption of relations between what we know and what we don't know that we can regard it as an orderly, intelligible system at all. therefore, if part of the system is non-existent, the whole system--the system as a whole--must be treated as non-existent. the world is, we are told, a system; and yet as a system it has (upon the hypothesis) no real existence. the systematic whole does not exist in matter, for to dr. mctaggart matter is merely the experience of mind. what sort of existence, then, can an undiscovered planet possess till it is { } discovered? for dr. mctaggart has not provided any mind or minds in and for which it is to exist. at one time, indeed, dr. mctaggart seemed disposed to accept a suggestion of mine that, on his view, each soul must be omniscient; and to admit that, while in its temporal aspect, each soul is limited and fallible in its knowledge, it is at the same time supertemporally omniscient. that is a conception difficult beyond all the difficulties of the most arbitrary and self-contradicting of orthodox patristic or scholastic speculations. but, as dr. mctaggart does not now seem disposed to insist upon that point, i will say no more about it except that to my mind it is a theory which defies all intellectual grasp. it can be stated; it cannot be thought. further, i would remind you, the theory is open to all the objections which i urged against the pre-existence theory in its pluralistic form. i have suggested the difficulties involved in the facts of heredity--the difficulty of understanding how souls whose real intellectual and moral characteristics are uncaused and eternal should be assigned to parents so far resembling them as to lead almost inevitably to the inference that the characteristics of the children are to some extent causally connected with those of the parents.[ ] now the pluralist can { } at least urge that for this purpose ingenious arrangements are contrived by god--by the one spirit whom he regards as incomparably the wisest and most powerful in the universe. dr. mctaggart recognizes no intelligence capable of grappling with such a problem or succession of problems. but this particular matter of the assignment of souls to bodies is only a particular application of a wider difficulty. dr. mctaggart contends that the universe constitutes not merely a physical but a moral order. he would not deny that the universe means something; that the series of events tends towards an end, an end which is also a good; that it has a purpose and a final cause. and yet this purpose exists in no mind whatever, and is due to no will whatever--except to the very small extent to which the processes of physical nature can be consciously directed to an end by the volitions of men and similarly limited intelligences. as a whole, the universe is purposed and willed by no single will or combination of wills. i confess i do not understand the idea of a purpose which operates, but is not the purpose of a mind which is also a will. all the considerations upon which i dwelt to show the necessity of such a will to account for the universe which we know, are so many arguments against dr. mctaggart's scheme. the events of dr. mctaggart's universe are, upon the view of causality which i { } attempted to defend in my second lecture, uncaused events. nevertheless, as a philosopher, i am deeply grateful to dr. mctaggart. not only does his scheme on its practical side seem to me preferable to many systems which sound more orthodox--systems of vague pantheistic theism in which morality is treated as mere 'appearance' and personal immortality deliberately rejected--but it has done much intellectually to clear the air. dr. mctaggart seems to me right in holding that, if god or the absolute is to include in itself all other spirits, and yet the personality or self-consciousness of those spirits is not to be denied, then this absolute in which they are to be included cannot reasonably be thought of as a conscious being, or invested with the other attributes usually implied by the term god. and this leads me to say a few words more in explanation of my own view of the relation between god and human or other souls. to me, as i have already intimated, it seems simply meaningless to speak of one consciousness as included in another consciousness. the essence of a consciousness is to be for itself: whether it be a thought, a feeling, or an emotion, the essence of that consciousness is what it is for me. every moment of consciousness is unique. another being may have a { } similar feeling: in that case there are two feelings, and not one. another mind may know what i feel, but the knowledge of another's agony is (fortunately) a very different thing from the agony itself. it is fashionable in some quarters to ridicule the idea of 'impenetrable' souls. if 'impenetrable' means that another soul cannot know what goes on in my soul, i do not assert that the soul is impenetrable. i believe that god knows what occurs in my soul in an infinitely completer way than that in which any human being can know it. further, i believe that every soul is kept in existence from moment to moment by a continuous act of the divine will, and so is altogether dependent upon that will, and forms part of one system with him. on the other hand i believe that (through the analogy of my own mind and the guidance of the moral consciousness) i do know, imperfectly and inadequately, 'as in a mirror darkly,' what goes on in god's mind. but, if penetrability is to mean identity, the theory that souls are penetrable seems to me mainly unintelligible. the acceptance which it meets with in some quarters is due, i believe, wholly to the influence of that most fertile source of philosophical confusion--misapplied spacial metaphor.[ ] it seems easy to talk about a mind being { } something in itself, and yet part of another mind, because we are familiar with the idea of things in space forming part of larger things in space--chinese boxes, for instance, shut up in bigger ones. such a mode of thought is wholly inapplicable to minds which are not in space at all. space is in the mind: the mind is not in space. a mind is not a thing which can be round or square: you can't say that the intellect of kant or of lord kelvin measures so many inches by so many: equally impossible is it to talk about such an intellect being a part of a more extensive intellect. the theory of an all-inclusive deity has recently been adopted and popularized by mr. campbell,[ ] who has done all that rhetorical skill combined with genuine religious earnestness can do to present it in an attractive and edifying dress. and yet the same logic which leads to the assertion that the saint is part of god, leads also to the assertion that caesar borgia and napoleon buonaparte and all the wicked popes who have ever been white-washed by episcopal or other historians are also parts of god. how can i worship, how can i strive to be like, how can i be the better for believing in or revering { } a being of whom caesar borgia is a part as completely and entirely as st. paul or our lord himself? hindoo theology is consistent in this matter. it worships the destructive and the vicious aspects of brahma as much as the kindly and the moral ones: it does not pretend that god is revealed in the moral consciousness, or is in any exclusive or one-sided way a god of love. if it be an 'ethical obsession' (as has been suggested) to object to treat immorality as no less a revelation of god than morality, i must plead guilty to such an obsession. and yet without such an 'obsession' i confess i do not see what is left of christianity. there is only one way out of the difficulty. if we are all parts of god, we can only call god good or perfect by maintaining that the deliverances of our moral consciousness have no validity for god, and therefore can tell us nothing about him. that has been done deliberately and explicitly by some philosophers:[ ] the distinguished theologians who echo the language of this philosophy have fortunately for their own religious life and experience, but unfortunately for their philosophical consistency, declined to follow in their steps. a god who is 'beyond good and evil,' can be no fitting object of { } worship to men who wish to become good, just, merciful. if the cosmic process be indifferent to these ethical considerations, we had better (with honest agnostics like professor huxley) make up our minds to defy it, whether it call itself god or not. but it is not so much on account of its consequences as on account of its essential unmeaningness and intellectual unintelligibility that i would invite you to reject this formula 'god is all.' certainly, the universe is an ordered system: there is nothing in it that is not done by the will of god. and some parts of this universe--the spiritual parts of it and particularly the higher spirits--are not mere creations of god's will. they have a resemblance of nature to him. i do not object to your saying that at bottom there is but one substance in the universe, if you will only keep clear of the materialistic and spacial association of the word substance: but it is a substance which reveals itself in many different consciousnesses. the theory of an all-inclusive consciousness is not necessary to make possible the idea of close and intimate communion between god and men, or of the revelation in and to humanity of the thought of god. on the contrary, it is the idea of identity which destroys the possibility of communion. communion implies two minds: a mind cannot have communion with itself or with part of itself. the two may also in a { } sense be one; of course all beings are ultimately part of one universe or reality: but that reality is not one consciousness. the universe is a unity, but the unity is not of the kind which constitutes a person or a self-consciousness. it is (as dr. mctaggart holds) the unity of a society, but of a society (as i have attempted to argue) which emanates from, and is controlled by and guided to a preconceived end by, a single rational will.[ ] ( ) _the intuitive theory of religious knowledge_. in other quarters objection will probably be taken to my not having recognized the possibility of an immediate knowledge of god, and left the idea of god to be inferred by intellectual processes which, when fully thought out, amount to a metaphysic. it will be suggested that to make religious belief dependent upon reason is to make it impossible to any but trained philosophers or theologians. now there is no doubt a great attractiveness in the theory which makes belief in god depend simply upon the immediate affirmation of the individual's own consciousness. it would be more difficult to argue against such a theory of immediate knowledge or intuition if we found that the consciousness of all or most individuals does actually reveal to them { } the existence of god: though after all the fact that a number of men draw the same inference from given facts does not show that it is not an inference. you will sometimes find metaphysicians contending that nobody is really an atheist, since everybody necessarily supposes himself to be in contact with an other of which he is nevertheless a part. i do not deny that, if you water down the idea of god to the notion of a vague 'something not ourselves,' you may possibly make out that everybody is explicitly or implicitly a believer in such a deity. i should prefer myself to say that, if that is all you mean by god, it does not much matter whether we believe in him or not. in the sense in which god is understood by christianity or judaism or any other theistic religion it is unfortunately impossible to contend that everybody is a theist. and, if there is an immediate knowledge of god in every human soul, this would be difficult to account for. neither the cultivated nor the uncultivated chinaman has apparently any such belief. the ignorant chinaman believes in a sort of luck or destiny--possibly in a plurality of limited but more or less mischievous spirits; the educated chinaman, we are told, is for the most part a pure agnostic. and chinamen are believed to be one-fifth of the human race. the task of the missionary would be an easier one if he could { } appeal to any such widely diffused intuitions of god. the missionary, from the days of st. paul at athens down to the present, has to begin by arguing with his opponents in favour of theism, and then to go on to argue from theism to christianity. i do not deny--on the contrary i strongly contend--that the rational considerations which lead up to monotheism are so manifold, and lie so near at hand, that at a certain stage of mental development we find that belief independently asserting itself with more or less fullness in widely distant regions of time and space; while traces of it are found almost everywhere--even among savages--side by side with other and inconsistent beliefs. but even among theistic nations an immediate knowledge of god is claimed by very few. if there is a tendency on the part of the more strongly religious minds to claim it, it is explicitly disclaimed by others--by most of the great schoolmen, and in modern times by profoundly religious minds such as newman or martineau. its existence is in fact denied by most of the great theological systems--catholic, protestant, anglican. theologians always begin by arguing in favour of the existence of god. and even among the religious minds without philosophical training which do claim such immediate knowledge, their creed is most often due (as is obvious to the outside observer) to the influence of environment, of education, of social { } tradition. for the religious person who claims such knowledge of god does not generally stop at the bare affirmation of god's existence: he goes on to claim an immediate knowledge of all sorts of other things--ideas clearly derived from the traditional teaching of his religious community. the protestant of a certain type will claim immediate consciousness of ideas about the forgiveness of sins which are palpably due to the teaching of luther or st. augustine, and to the influence of this or that preacher who has transmitted those ideas to him or to his mother: while the catholic, though his training discourages such claims, will sometimes see visions which convey to him an immediate assurance of the truth of the immaculate conception. even among anglicans we find educated men who claim to know by immediate intuition the truth of historical facts alleged to have occurred in the first century, or dogmatic truths such as the complicated niceties of the athanasian creed. these claims to immediate insight thus refute themselves by the inconsistent character of the knowledge claimed. an attempt may be made to extract from all these immediate certainties a residual element which is said to be common to all of them. the attempt has been made by professor james in that rather painful work, the _varieties of religious experience_. and the residuum turns out to be something so vague that, if not { } absolutely worthless, it is almost incapable of being expressed in articulate language, and constitutes a very precarious foundation for a working religious creed. the truth is that the uneducated--or rather the unanalytical, perhaps i ought to say the metaphysically untrained--human mind has a tendency to regard as an immediate certainty any truth which it strongly believes and regards as very important. such minds do not know the psychological causes which have led to their own belief, when they are due to psychological causes: they have not analysed the processes of thought by which they have been led to those beliefs which are really due to the working of their own minds. most uncultivated persons would probably be very much surprised to hear that the existence of the friend with whose body they are in physical contact is after all only an inference.[ ] but surely, in the man who has discovered that such is the case, the warmth of friendship was never dimmed by the reflection that his knowledge of his friend is not immediate but mediate. it is a mere prejudice to suppose that mediate knowledge is in any { } way less certain, less intimate, less trustworthy or less satisfying than immediate knowledge. if we claim for man the possibility of just such a knowledge of god as a man may possess of his brother man, surely that is all that is wanted to make possible the closest religious communion. it is from the existence of my own self that i infer the existence of other selves, whom i observe to behave in a manner resembling my own behaviour. it is by an only slightly more difficult and complicated inference from my own consciousness that i rise to that conception of a universal consciousness which supplies me with at once the simplest and the most natural explanation both of my own existence and of the existence of the nature which i see around me. ( ) _religion and psychology_. i do not deny that the study of religious history, by exhibiting the naturalness and universality of religious ideas and religious emotions, may rationally create a pre-disposition to find some measure of truth in every form of religious belief. but i would venture to add a word of caution against the tendency fashionable in many quarters to talk of basing religious belief upon psychology. the business of psychology is to tell us what actually goes on in the human mind. it cannot possibly tell us whether the beliefs which are found there are true or false. an erroneous { } belief is as much a psychological fact as a true one. a theory which goes on, by inference from what we observe in our own minds, to construct a theory of the universe necessarily involves a metaphysic, conscious or unconscious. it may be urged that the reality of religious experience is unaffected by the question whether the beliefs associated with it are true or false. that is the case, so long as the beliefs are supposed to be true by the person in question. but, when once the spirit of enquiry is aroused, a man cannot be--and i venture to think ought not to be--satisfied as to the truth of his belief simply by being told that the beliefs are actually there. it may be contended, no doubt, that religious experience does not mean merely a state of intellectual belief, but certain emotions, aspirations, perhaps (to take one particular type of religious experience) a consciousness of love met by answering love. to many who undergo such experiences, they seem to carry with them an immediate assurance of the existence of the being with whom they feel themselves to be in communion. that, on the intellectual presuppositions of the particular person, seems to be the natural--it may be the only possible--way of explaining the feeling. but even there the belief is not really immediate: it is an inference from what is actually matter of experience. and it is, unhappily, no less a matter of well-ascertained { } psychological fact that, when intellectual doubt is once aroused, such experiences no longer carry with them this conviction of their own objective basis. the person was really under the influence of an intellectual theory all along, whether the theory was acquired by hereditary tradition, by the influence of another's mind, or by personal thought and reflection. when the intellectual theory alters, the same kind of experience is no longer possible. i will not attempt to say how far it is desirable that persons who are perfectly satisfied with a creed which they have never examined should (as it were) pull up the roots of their own faith to see how deep they go. i merely want to point out that the occurrence of certain emotional experiences, though undoubtedly they may constitute part of the data of a religious argument, cannot be held to constitute in and by themselves sufficient evidence for the truth of the intellectual theory connected with them in the mind of the person to whom they occur. they do not always present themselves as sufficient evidence for their truth even to the person experiencing them--still less can they do so to others. equally unreasonable is it to maintain, with a certain class of religious philosophers, that the religious experience by itself is all we want; and to assume that we may throw to the winds all the theological or other beliefs which have actually been associated { } with the various types of religious experience, and yet continue to have those experiences and find them no less valuable and no less satisfying. if there is one thing which the study of religious psychology testifies to, it is the fact that the character of the religious experience (though there may be certain common elements in it) varies very widely with the character of the theoretical belief with which it is associated--a belief of which it is sometimes the cause, sometimes the effect, but from which it is always inseparable. the buddhist's religious experiences are not possible to those who hold the christian's view of the universe: the christian's religious experiences are not possible to one who holds the buddhist theory of the universe. you cannot have an experience of communion with a living being when you disbelieve in the existence of such a being. and a man's theories of the universe always at bottom imply a metaphysic of some kind--conscious or unconscious. sometimes the theory of a religion which shall be purely psychological springs from pure ignorance as to the meaning of the terms actually employed by the general usage of philosophers. those who talk in this way mean by psychology what, according to the ordinary philosophic usage, is really metaphysic. for metaphysic is simply the science which deals with the ultimate nature of the universe. { } at other times attempts are made by people of more or less philosophical culture to justify their theory. the most widely influential of such attempts is the one made by m. auguste sabatier.[ ] this attempt has at least this much in its favour--that it is not so much to the ordinary experience of average men and women that m. sabatier appeals as to the exceptional experiences of the great religious minds. he lays the chief stress upon those exceptional moments of religious history when a new religious idea entered into the mind of some prophet or teacher, _e.g._ the unity of god, the fatherhood of god, the brotherhood of man. here, just because the idea was new, it cannot (he contends) be accounted for by education or environment or any other of the psychological causes which obviously determine the traditional beliefs of the great majority. these new ideas, therefore, he assumes to be due to immediate revelation or inspiration from god. now it is obvious that, even if this inference were well grounded, it assumes that we have somehow arrived independently at a conception of god to which such inspirations can be referred. the psychology of the human mind cannot assume the existence of such a being: if we infer such a being from our own mental experience, that is not immediate but { } mediate knowledge. it is a belief based on inference, and a belief which is, properly speaking, metaphysical. the idea of a religion which is merely based upon psychology and involves nothing else is a delusion: all the great religions of the world have been, among other things, metaphysical systems. we have no means of ascertaining their truth but reason, whether it assume the form of a rough common-sense or of elaborate reasoning which not only is metaphysic but knows itself to be so. reason is then the organ of religious truth. but then, let me remind you, reason includes our moral reason. that really is a faculty of immediate knowledge; and it is a faculty which, in a higher or lower state of development, is actually found in practically all human beings. the one element of truth which i recognize in the theory of an immediate knowledge of god is the truth that the most important data upon which we base the inference which leads to the knowledge of god are those supplied by the immediate judgements or intuitions of the moral consciousness. and here let me caution you against a very prevalent misunderstanding about the word reason. it is assumed very often that reason means nothing but inference. that is not what we mean when we refer moral judgements to the reason. we do not mean that we can prove that things are right or { } wrong: we mean precisely the opposite--that ultimate moral truth is immediate, like the truth that two and two make four. it might, of course, be contended that the same reason which assures me that goodness is worth having and that the whole is greater than the part, assures us no less immediately of the existence of god. i can only say that i am sure i have no such immediate knowledge, and that for the most part that knowledge is never claimed by people who understand clearly the difference between immediate knowledge and inference. the idea of god is a complex conception, based, not upon this or that isolated judgement or momentary experience, but upon the whole of our experience taken together. it is a hypothesis suggested by, and necessary to, the explanation of our experience as a whole. some minds may lay most stress upon the religious emotions themselves; others upon the experience of the outer world, upon the appearances of design, or upon the metaphysical argument which shows them the inconceivability of matter without mind; others, again, may be most impressed by the impossibility of accounting in any way for the immediate consciousness of duty and the conviction of objective validity or authority which that consciousness carries with it. but in any case the knowledge, when it is a reasonable belief and not based merely upon authority, involves { } inference--just like our knowledge of our friend's existence. the fact that my friend is known to me by experience does not prevent his communicating his mind to me. i shall try to show you in my next lecture that to admit that our knowledge of god is based upon inference is not incompatible with the belief that god has spoken to man face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend. at this point it may perhaps be well, for the sake of clearness, to summarize the position to which i have tried to lead you. i have tried to show that the material universe cannot reasonably be thought of as having any existence outside, or independently of, mind. it certainly does not exist merely in any or all of the human and similar minds whose knowledge is fleeting, and which have, there is every reason to believe, a beginning in time. we are bound then to infer the existence of a single mind or consciousness, which must be thought of as containing all the elements of our own consciousness--reason or thought, feeling, and will--though no doubt in him those elements or aspects of consciousness are combined in a manner of which our own minds can give us but a very faint and analogical idea. the world must be thought of as ultimately the thought or experience of this mind, which we call god. and this mind must be thought { } of as not only a thinker, but also as a cause or a will. our own and all other minds, no less than the events of the material universe, owe their beginning and continuance to this divine will: in them the thought or experience of the divine mind is reproduced in various degrees; and to all of them is communicated some portion of that causality or activity of which god is the ultimate source, so that their acts must be regarded as due mediately to them, ultimately to god. but, though these minds are wholly dependent upon and in intimate connexion with the divine mind, they cannot be regarded as _parts_ of the divine consciousness. reality consists of god and all the minds that he wills to exist, together with the world of nature which exists in and for those minds. reality is the system or society of spirits and their experience. the character and ultimate purpose of the divine mind is revealed to us, however inadequately or imperfectly, in the moral consciousness; and the moral ideal which is thus communicated to us makes it reasonable for us to expect, for at least the higher of the dependent or created minds, a continuance, of their individual existence, after physical death. pain, sin, and other evils must be regarded as necessary incidents in the process by which the divine will is bringing about the greatest attainable good of all conscious beings. the question whether our material universe, { } considered as the object of mind, has a beginning and will have an end, is one which we have no data for deciding. time-distinctions, i think, must be regarded as objective--that is to say, as forming part of the nature and constitution of the real world; but the antinomy involved either in supposing an endless succession or a beginning and end of the time-series is one which our intellectual faculties are, or at least have so far proved, incapable of solving. the element of inadequacy and uncertainty which the admission of this antinomy introduces into our theory of the universe is an emphatic reminder to us of the inadequate and imperfect character of all our knowledge. the knowledge, however, that we possess, though inadequate knowledge, is real knowledge--not a sham knowledge of merely relative or human validity; and is sufficient not only for the guidance of life but even for the partial, though not the complete, satisfaction of one of the noblest impulses of the human mind--the disinterested passion for truth. 'now we see in a mirror darkly'; but still we see. the view of the universe which i have endeavoured very inadequately to set before you is a form of idealism. inasmuch as it recognizes the existence--though not the separate and independent existence--of many persons; inasmuch as it regards both god and man as persons, without attempting { } to merge the existence of either in one all-including, comprehensive consciousness, it may further be described as a form of 'personal idealism.' but, if any one finds it easier to think of material nature as having an existence which, though dependent upon and willed by the divine mind, is not simply an existence in and for mind, such a view of the universe will serve equally well as a basis of religion. for religious purposes it makes no difference whether we think of nature as existing in the mind of god, or as simply created or brought into and kept in existence by that mind. when you have subtracted from the theistic case every argument that depends for its force upon the theory that the idea of matter without mind is an unthinkable absurdity, enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled by mind. the argument for idealism may, i hope, have at all events exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of materialistic and naturalistic assumptions, and left the way clear for the establishment of theism by the arguments which rest upon the discovery that causality implies volition; upon the appearances of intelligence in organic life; upon the existence of the moral consciousness; and more generally upon the enormous probability that the ultimate source of reality should resemble rather { } the highest than the lowest kind of existence of which we have experience. that reality as a whole may be most reasonably interpreted by reality at its highest is after all the sum and substance of all theistic arguments. if anybody finds it easier to think of matter as uncreated but as always guided and controlled by mind, i do not think there will be any religious objection to such a position; though it is, as it seems to me, intellectually a less unassailable position than is afforded by an idealism of the type which i have most inadequately sketched. mr. bradley in a cynical moment has defined metaphysics as the 'finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.' i do not for myself accept that definition, which mr. bradley himself would not of course regard as expressing the whole truth of the matter. but, though i am firmly convinced that it is possible to find good reasons for the religious beliefs and hopes which have in fact inspired the noblest lives, i still feel that the greatest service which even a little acquaintance with philosophy may render to many who have not the time for any profounder study of it, will be to give them greater boldness and confidence in accepting a view of the universe which satisfies the instinctive or unanalysed demands of their moral, intellectual, and spiritual nature. { } note on non-theistic idealism it may perhaps be well for the sake of greater clearness to summarize my objections--those already mentioned and some others--to the system of dr. mctaggart, which i admit to be, for one who has accepted the idealistic position that matter does not exist apart from mind, the only intelligible alternative to theism. his theory is, it will be remembered, that ultimate reality consists of a system of selves or spirits, uncreated and eternal, forming together a unity, but not a conscious unity, so that consciousness exists only in the separate selves, not in the whole: ( ) it is admitted that the material world exists only in and for mind. there is no reason to think that any human mind, or any of the other minds of which dr. mctaggart's universe is composed, knows the whole of this world. what kind of existence then have the parts of the universe which are not known to any mind? it seems to me that dr. mctaggart would be compelled to admit that they do not exist at all. the world postulated by science would thus be admitted to be a delusion. this represents a subjective idealism of an extreme and staggering kind which cannot meet the objections commonly urged against all idealism. ( ) moreover, the world is not such an intellectually complete system as dr. mctaggart insists that it must be, apart from the relations of its known parts to its unknown parts. if there are parts which are unknown to any mind, and which therefore do not exist at all, it is not a system at all. ( ) if it be said that all the spirits between them know the world--one knowing one part, another another--this is a mere hypothesis, opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience, and after all would be a very inadequate answer to our difficulties. dr. mctaggart insists { } that the world of existing things exists as a system. such existence to an idealist must mean existence for a mind; a system not known as a system to any mind whatever could hardly be said to exist at all. ( ) if it be suggested (as dr. mctaggart was at one time inclined to suggest) that every mind considered as a timeless noumenon is omniscient, though in its phenomenal and temporal aspect its knowledge is intermittent and always limited, i reply (_a_) the theory seems to me not only gratuitous but unintelligible, and (_b_) it is open to all the difficulties and objections of the theory that time and change are merely subjective delusions. this is too large a question to discuss here: i can only refer to the treatment of the subject by such writers as lotze (see above) and m. bergson. i may also refer to mr. bradley's argument (_appearance and reality_, p. sq.) against the theory that the individual ego is out of time. ( ) the theory of pre-existent souls is opposed to all the probabilities suggested by experience. soul and organism are connected in such a way that the pre-existence of one element in what presents itself and works in our world as a unity is an extremely difficult supposition, and involves assumptions which reduce to a minimum the amount of identity or continuity that could be claimed for the ego throughout its successive lives. a soul which has forgotten all its previous experiences may have some identity with its previous state, but not much. moreover, we should have to suppose that the correspondence of a certain type of body with a certain kind of soul, as well as the resemblance between the individual and his parents, implies no kind of causal connexion, but is due to mere accident; or, if it is not to accident, to a very arbitrary kind of pre-established harmony which there is nothing in experience to suggest, and which (upon dr. mctaggart's theory) there is no creative intelligence to pre-establish. the theory cannot be absolutely refuted, but all dr. mctaggart's ingenuity has not--to my own mind, { } and (i feel sure) to most minds--made it seem otherwise than extremely difficult and improbable. its sole recommendation is that it makes possible an idealism without theism: but, if theism be an easier and more defensible theory, that is no recommendation at all. ( ) dr. mctaggart's whole theory seems to me to waver between two inconsistent views of reality. when he insists that the world consists of a system or unity, he tends towards a view of things which makes the system of intellectual relations constituting knowledge or science to be the very reality of things: on such a view there is no impossibility of an ultimate reality not known to any one mind. but dr. mctaggart has too strong a hold on the conviction of the supremely real character of conscious mind and the unreality of mere abstractions to be satisfied with this view. if there is no mind which both knows and wills the existence and the mutual relations of the spirits, the supreme reality must be found in the individual spirits themselves; yet the system, if known to none of them, seems to fall outside the reality. the natural tendency of a system which finds the sole reality in eternally self-existent souls is towards pluralism--a theory of wholly independent 'reals' or 'monads.' dr. mctaggnrt is too much of a hegelian to acquiesce in such a view. the gulf between the two tendencies seems to me--with all respect--to be awkwardly bridged over by the assumption that the separate selves form an intelligible system, which nevertheless no one really existent spirit actually understands. if a system of relations can be reality, there is no ground for assuming the pre-existence or eternity of individual souls: if on the other hand reality is 'experience,' an unexperienced 'system' cannot be real, and the 'unity' disappears. this is a line of objection which it would require a much more thorough discussion to develope. ( ) on the view which i myself hold as to the nature of causality, the only intelligible cause of events is a will. the events of dr. mctaggart's world (putting aside the very { } small proportion which are due, in part at least, to the voluntary action of men or spirits) are not caused at all. his theory is therefore open to all--and more than all--the objections which i have urged in lecture ii. against the theory which explains the universe as the thought of a mind but not as caused by that mind. ( ) it is just possible that some one might suggest that the first of my objections might be met by the allegation that there is nothing in the scheme which forbids us to suppose that the whole of nature is known to more than one of the spirits which make up reality, though not to all, or indeed any, of the human and non-human spirits known to us. i should reply (_a_) that the considerations which lead to the hypothesis of one omniscient being do not require more than one such spirit, and _entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_; (_b_) such a scheme would still be open to objection . if it is a speculative possibility that all nature may exist in the knowledge of more than one spirit, it cannot well be thought of as willed by more than one spirit. if the universe, admitted to form an ordered system, is caused by rational will at all, it must surely be caused by one will. but perhaps a serious discussion of a polytheistic scheme such as this may be postponed till it is seriously maintained. it has not been suggested, so far as i am aware, by dr. mctaggart himself. ( ) the real strength of dr. mctaggart's system must be measured by the validity of his objections to a theism such as i have defended. i have attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these lectures, and more at length in a review of his _some dogmas of religion_ in _mind_ (n.s.), vol. xv., . [ ] cf. flint's _theism_, ed. v., p. and app. xi. [ ] the most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing argument for its 'objectivity' which i know, is to be found in lotze's _metaphysic_, book ii. chap. iii., but it cannot be recommended to the beginner in metaphysic. a brilliant exposition of the view of the universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality of the universe, has recently appeared in m. bergson's l'Évolution créatrice, but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical difficulties indicated above. the book, however, seems to me the most important philosophical work that has appeared since mr. bradley's _appearance and reality_, and though the writer has hardly formulated his natural theology, it constitutes a very important contribution to the theistic argument. being based upon a profound study of biological evolution, it may be specially commended to scientific readers. [ ] such a view is expounded in dr. schiller's early work _the riddles of the sphinx_ and in professor howison's _the limits of evolution_. the very distinguished french thinker charles renouvier (_la nouvelle monadologie_, etc.), like origen, believed that souls were pre-existent but created. [ ] i use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific sense of the word, to indicate merely an actually observed psycho-physical law. [ ] in part, perhaps, also to a mistaken theory of predication, which assumes that, because every fact in the world can be represented as logically a predicate of reality at large, therefore there is but one substance or (metaphysically) real being in the world, of which all other existences are really mere 'attributes.' but this theory cannot be discussed here. [ ] in _the new theology_. [ ] _e.g._ by mr. bradley in _appearance and reality_ and still more uncompromisingly by professor a. e. taylor in _the problem of conduct_, but i rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given up this theory of a 'super-moral' absolute. [ ] i think it desirable to mention here that professor watson's account of my views in his _philosophical basis of religion_ completely misrepresents my real position. i have replied to his criticisms in _mind_, n.s. no. (jan. ). [ ] this is sometimes denied by philosophers, but i have never been able to understand on what grounds. if i know _a priori_ the existence of other men, i ought to be able to say _a priori_ how many they are and to say something about them. and this is more than any one claims. [ ] in _esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'après la psychologie et l'histoire_. { } lecture v revelation i have tried in previous lectures to show that the apprehension of religious truth does not depend upon some special kind of intuition; that it is not due to some special faculty superior to and different in kind from our ordinary intellectual activities, but to an exercise of the same intellectual faculties by which we attain to truth in other matters--including, however, especially the wholly unique faculty of immediately discerning values or pronouncing moral judgements. the word 'faith' should, as it seems to me, be used to express not a mysterious capacity for attaining to knowledge without thought or without evidence, but to indicate some of the manifold characteristics by which our religious knowledge is distinguished from the knowledge either of common life or of the physical sciences. if i had time there would be much to be said about these characteristics, and i think i could show that the popular distinction between knowledge and religious { } faith finds whatever real justification it possesses in these characteristics of religious knowledge. i might insist on the frequently implicit and unanalysed character of religious thinking; upon the incompleteness and inadequacy of even the fullest account that the maturest and acutest philosopher can give of ultimate reality; upon the merely probable and analogical character of much of the reasoning which is necessarily employed both in the most popular and in the most philosophical kinds of reasoning about such matters; and above all upon the prominent place which moral judgements occupy in religious thought, moral judgements which, on account of their immediate character and their emotional setting, are often not recognized in their true character as judgements of the reason. most of the mistakes into which popular thinking has fallen in this matter--the mistakes which culminate in the famous examination-paper definition of faith as 'a means of believing that which we know not to be true'--would be avoided if we would only remember, with st. paul and most of the greater religious thinkers, that the true antithesis is not between faith and reason but between faith and sight. all religious belief implies a belief in something which cannot be touched or tasted or handled, and which cannot be established by any mere logical deduction from what can be touched or tasted or handled. so far from implying { } scepticism as to the power of reason, this opposition between faith and sight actually asserts the possibility of attaining by thought to a knowledge of realities which cannot be touched or tasted or handled--a knowledge of equal validity and trustworthiness with that which is popularly said to be due to the senses, though plato has taught us once for all[ ] that the senses by themselves never give us real knowledge, and that in the apprehension of the most ordinary matter of fact there is implied the action of the self-same intellect by which alone we can reach the knowledge of god. it may further be pointed out that, though neither religious knowledge nor moral knowledge are mere emotion, they are both of them very closely connected with certain emotions. great moral discoveries are made, not so much by superior intellectual power, as by superior interest in the subject-matter of morality. very ordinary intelligence can see, when it is really brought to bear upon the matter, the irrationality or immorality of bad customs, oppressions, social injustices; but the people who have led the revolt against these things have generally been the people who have felt intensely about them. so it is with the more distinctly religious knowledge. religious thought and insight are largely dependent upon the emotions to which religious { } ideas and beliefs appeal. the absence of religious thought and definite religious belief is very often (i am far from saying always) due to a want of interest in religion; but that does not prove that religious thought is not the work of the intellect, any more than the fact that a man is ignorant of politics because he takes no interest in politics proves that political truth is a mere matter of emotion, and has nothing to do with the understanding. thought is always guided by interest--a truth which must not be distorted with a certain modern school of thought, if indeed it can properly be called thought, into the assertion that thinking is nothing but willing, and that therefore we are at liberty to think just what we please. and that leads on to a further point. emotion and desire are very closely connected with the will. a man's moral insight and the development of his thought about moral questions depend very largely upon the extent to which he acts up to whatever light he has. vice, as aristotle put it, is _phthartike arches_--destructive of moral first principles. moral insight is largely dependent upon character. and so is religious insight. thus it is quite true to say that religious belief depends in part upon the state of the will. this doctrine has been so scandalously abused by many theologians and apologists that i use it with great hesitation. i have no sympathy { } with the idea that we are justified in believing a religious doctrine merely because we wish it to be true, or with the insinuation that non-belief in a religious truth is always or necessarily due to moral obliquity. but still it is undeniable that a man's ethical and religious beliefs are to some extent affected by the state of his will. that is so with all knowledge to some extent; for progress in knowledge requires attention, and is largely dependent upon interest. if i take no interest in the properties of curves or the square root of - , i am not very likely to make a good mathematician. this connexion of knowledge with interest applies in an exceptional degree to religious knowledge: and that is one of the points which i think many religious thinkers have intended to emphasize by their too hard and fast distinctions between faith and knowledge. belief itself is thus to some extent affected by the state of the will; and still more emphatically does the extent to which belief affects action depend upon the will. many beliefs which we quite sincerely hold are what have been called 'otiose beliefs'; we do not by an effort of the will realize them sufficiently strongly for them to affect action. many a man knows perfectly that his course of life will injure or destroy his physical health; it is not through intellectual scepticism that he disobeys his { } physician's prescriptions, but because other desires and inclinations prevent his attending to them and acting upon them. it is obvious that to men like st. paul and luther faith meant much more than a mere state of the intellect; it included a certain emotional and a certain volitional attitude; it included love and it included obedience. whether our intellectual beliefs about religion are energetic enough to influence action, does to an enormous extent depend upon our wills. faith is, then, used, and almost inevitably used, in such a great variety of senses that i do not like to lay down one definite and exclusive definition of it; but it would be safe to say that, for many purposes and in many connexions, religious faith means the deliberate adoption by an effort of the will, as practically certain for purposes of action and of feeling, of a religious belief which to the intellect is, or may be, merely probable. for purposes of life it is entirely reasonable to treat probabilities as certainties. if a man has reason to think his friend is trustworthy, he will do well to trust him wholly and implicitly. if a man has reason to think that a certain view of the universe is the most probable one, he will do well habitually to allow that conviction to dominate not merely his actions, but the habitual tenour of his emotional and spiritual life. we should not love a human being much if we allowed ourselves habitually to { } contemplate the logical possibility that the loved one was unworthy of, or irresponsive to, our affection. we could not love god if we habitually contemplated the fact that his existence rests for us upon judgements in which there is more or less possibility of error, though there is no reason why we should, in our speculative moments, claim a greater certainty for them than seems to be reasonable. the doctrine that 'probability is the guide of life' is one on which every sensible man habitually acts in all other relations of life: bishop butler was right in contending that it should be applied no less unhesitatingly to the matter of religious belief and religious aspiration. the view which i have taken of the nature of faith may be illustrated by the position of clement of alexandria. it is clear from his writings that by faith he meant a kind of conviction falling short of demonstration or immediate intellectual insight, and dependent in part upon the state of the will and the heart. clement did not disparage knowledge in the interests of faith: faith was to him a more elementary kind of knowledge resting largely upon moral conviction, and the foundation of that higher state of intellectual apprehension which he called gnosis. i do not mean, of course, to adopt clement's philosophy as a whole; i merely refer to it as illustrating the point that, properly considered, faith is, or rather includes, a particular kind or stage { } of knowledge, and is not a totally different and even opposite state of mind. it would be easy to show that this has been fully recognized by many, if not most, of the great christian thinkers. one last point. it is of the utmost importance to distinguish between the process by which psychologically a man arrives at a religious or other truth and the reasons which make it true. because i deny that the truth of god's existence can reasonably be accepted on the basis of an immediate judgement or intuition, i do not deny for one moment that an apparently intuitive conviction of the truth of christianity, as of other religions, actually exists. the religious belief of the vast majority of persons has always rested, and must always rest, very largely upon tradition, education, environment, authority of one kind or another--authority supported or confirmed by a varying measure of independent reflection or experience. and, just where the influence of authority is most complete and overwhelming, it is least felt to be authority. the person whose beliefs are most entirely produced by education or environment is very often most convinced that his opinions are due solely to his own immediate insight. but even where this is not the case--even where the religious man is taking a new departure, revolting against his environment and adopting a religious belief absolutely at variance with the established { } belief of his society--i do not contend that such new religious ideas are always due to unobserved and unanalysed processes of reasoning. that in most cases, when a person adopts a new creed, he would himself give some reason for his change of faith is obvious, though the reason which he would allege would not in all cases be the one which really caused the change of religion. there may be other psychological influences which cause belief besides the influence of environment: in some cases the psychological causes of such beliefs are altogether beyond analysis. but, though i do not think m. auguste sabatier justified in assuming that a belief is true, and must come directly from god, simply because we cannot easily explain its genesis by the individual's environment and psychological antecedents, it is of extreme importance to insist that it is not proved to be false because it was not adopted primarily, or at all, on adequate theoretical grounds. a belief which arose at first entirely without logical justification, or it may be on intellectual grounds subsequently discovered to be inadequate or false, may nevertheless be one which can and does justify itself to the reflective intellect of the person himself or of other persons. and many new, true, and valuable beliefs have undoubtedly arisen in this way. even in physical science we all know that there is no logic of discovery. it { } is a familiar criticism upon the logic of bacon that he ignored or under-estimated the part that is played in scientific thinking by hypothesis, and the consequent need of scientific imagination. very often the new scientific idea comes into the discoverer's mind, he knows not how or why. some great man of science--i think, helmholtz--said of a brilliant discovery of his, 'it was given to me.' but it was not true because it came to helmholtz in this way, but because it was subsequently verified and proved. now, undoubtedly, religious beliefs, new and old, often do present themselves to the minds of individuals in an intuitive and unaccountable way. they may subsequently be justified at the bar of reason: and yet reason might never have discovered them for itself. they would never have come into the world unless they had presented themselves at first to some mind or other as intuitions, inspirations, immediate revelations: and yet (once again) the fact that they so present themselves does not by itself prove them to be true. i may perhaps illustrate what i mean by the analogy of poetry. i suppose few people will push the sound-without-sense view of poetry to the length of denying that poets do sometimes see and teach us truths. no one--least of all one who is not even a verse-maker himself--can, i suppose, analyse the intellectual process by which a poet { } gets at his truths. the insight by which he arrives at them is closely connected with emotions of various kinds: and yet the truths are not themselves emotions, nor do they in all cases merely state the fact that the poet has felt such and such emotions. they are propositions about the nature of things, not merely about the poet's mental states. and yet the truths are not true because the poet _feels_ them, as he would say--no matter how passionately he feels them. there is no separate organ of poetic truth: and not all the things that poets have passionately felt are true. some highly poetical thoughts have been very false thoughts. but, if they are true, they must be true for good logical reasons, which a philosophical critic may even in some cases by subsequent reflection be able to disentangle and set forth. yet the poet did not get at those truths by way of philosophical reflection: or, if he was led to them by any logical process, he could not have analysed his own reasoning. the poet could not have produced the arguments of the philosopher: the philosopher without the poet's lead might never have seen the truth. i am afraid i must not stay to defend or illustrate this position: i will only say that the poets i should most naturally go to for illustration would be such poets as wordsworth, tennyson, and browning, though perhaps all three are a little { } too consciously philosophic to supply the ideal illustration. i do not think it will be difficult to apply these reflections to the case of religious and ethical truth. all religious truth, as i hold, depends logically upon inference; inference from the whole body of our experiences, among which the most important place is held by our immediate moral judgements. the truth of theism is in that sense a truth discernible by reason. but it does not follow that, when it was first discovered, it was arrived at by the inferences which i have endeavoured to some extent to analyse, or by one of the many lines of thought which may lead to the same conclusions. it was not the greek philosophers so much as the jewish prophets who taught the world true monotheism. hosea, amos, the two isaiahs probably arrived at their monotheism largely by intuition; or (in so far as it was by inferential processes) the premisses of their argument were very probably inherited beliefs of earlier judaism which would not commend themselves without qualification to a modern thinker. in its essentials the monotheism of isaiah is a reasonable belief; we accept it because it is reasonable, not because isaiah had an intuition that it was true; for we have rejected many things which to isaiah probably seemed no less self-evidently true. and yet it would be a profound mistake to assume that { } the philosophers who now defend isaiah's creed would ever have arrived at it without isaiah's aid. i hope that by this time you will have seen to some extent the spirit in which i am approaching the special subject of to-day's lecture--the question of revelation. in some of the senses that have been given to it, the idea of revelation is one which hardly any one trained in the school--that is to say, any school--of modern philosophy is likely to accept. the idea that pieces of information have been supernaturally and without any employment of their own intellectual faculties communicated at various times to particular persons, their truth being guaranteed by miracles--in the sense of interruptions of the ordinary course of nature by an extraordinary fiat of creative power--is one which is already rejected by most modern theologians, even among those who would generally be called rather conservative theologians. i will not now argue the question whether any miraculous event, however well attested, could possibly be sufficient evidence for the truth of spiritual teaching given in attestation of it. i will merely remark that to any one who has really appreciated the meaning of biblical criticism, it is scarcely conceivable that the evidence for miracles could seem sufficiently cogent to constitute such an attestation. in proof of that i will merely appeal to the modest, apologetic, tentative tone in which { } scholarly and sober-minded theologians who would usually be classed among the defenders of miracles--men like the bishop of ely or professor sanday of oxford--are content to speak of such evidences. they admit the difficulty of proving that such miraculous events really happened thousands of years ago on the strength of narratives written at the very earliest fifty years after the alleged event, and they invite us rather to believe in the miracles on the evidence of a revelation already accepted than to accept the revelation on the evidence of the miracles. i shall have a word to say on this question of miracles next time; but for the present i want to establish, or rather without much argument to put before you for your consideration, this position; that the idea of revelation cannot be admitted in the sense of a communication of truth by god, claiming to be accepted not on account of its own intrinsic reasonableness or of the intellectual or spiritual insight of the person to whom it is made, but on account of the historical evidence for miraculous occurrences said to have taken place in connexion with such communication. the most that can reasonably be contended for is that super-normal occurrences of this kind may possess a certain corroborative value in support of a revelation claiming to be accepted on other grounds. what place then is left for the idea of revelation? { } i will ask you to go back for a moment to the conclusions of our first lecture. we saw that from the idealistic point of view all knowledge may be looked upon as a partial communication to the human soul of the thoughts or experiences of the divine mind. there is a sense then in which all truth is revealed truth. in a more important sense, and a sense more nearly allied to that of ordinary usage, all moral and spiritual truth may be regarded as revealed truth. and in particular those immediate judgements about good and evil in which we have found the sole means of knowing the divine character and purposes must be looked on as divinely implanted knowledge--none the less divinely implanted because it is, in the ordinary sense of the words, quite natural, normal, and consistent with law. nobody but an atheist ought to talk about the unassisted human intellect: no one who acquiesces in the old doctrine that conscience is the voice of god ought either on the one hand to deny the existence of revelation, or on the other to speak of revelation as if it were confined to the bible. but because we ascribe some intrinsic power of judging about spiritual and moral matters to the ordinary human intellect, it would be a grievous mistake to assume that all men have an equal measure of this power. because we assert that all moral and spiritual truth comes to men by { } revelation, it does not follow that there are not degrees of revelation. and it is one of the special characteristics of religious and moral truth that it is in a peculiar degree dependent upon the superior insight of those exceptional men to whom have been accorded extraordinary degrees of moral and spiritual insight. even in science, as we have seen, we cannot dispense with genius: very ordinary men can satisfy themselves of the truth of a hypothesis when it is once suggested, though they would have been quite incompetent to discover that hypothesis for themselves. still more unquestionably are there moral and spiritual truths which, when once discovered, can be seen to be true by men of very commonplace intellect and commonplace character. the truths are seen and passed on to others, who accept them partly on authority, by way of social inheritance and tradition; partly because they are confirmed in various degrees by their own independent judgement and experience. here then--in the discovery of new spiritual truth--we encounter that higher and exceptional degree of spiritual and ethical insight which in a special and pre-eminent sense we ought to regard as revelation or inspiration. here there is room, in the evolution of religion and morality, for the influence of the men of moral or religious genius--the prophets, the apostles, the founders and reformers of religions: and, since { } moral and spiritual insight are very closely connected with character, for the moral hero, the leader of men, the saint. especially to the new departures, the turning-points, the epoch-making discoveries in ethical and religious progress connected with the appearance of such men, we may apply the term revelation in a supreme or culminating sense. it is, as it seems to me, extremely important that we should not altogether divorce the idea of revelation from those kinds of moral and religious truth which are arrived at by the ordinary working of the human intellect. the ultimate moral judgements no doubt must be intuitive or immediate, but in our deductions from them--in their application both to practical life and to theories about god and the universe--there is room for much intellectual work of the kind which we commonly associate rather with the philosopher than with the prophet. but the philosopher may be also a prophet. the philosophically trained greek fathers were surely right in recognizing that men like socrates and plato were to be numbered among those to whom the spirit of god had spoken in an exceptional degree. they too spoke in the power of the indwelling logos. but still it is quite natural that we should associate the idea of revelation or inspiration more particularly with that kind of moral and intellectual discovery which comes to exceptional men by way { } of apparent intuition or immediate insight. we associate the idea of inspiration rather with the poet than with the man of science, and with the prophet rather than with the systematic philosopher. it is quite natural, therefore, that we should associate the idea of revelation more especially with religious teachers of the intuitive order like the jewish prophets than with even those philosophers who have also been great practical teachers of ethics and religion. but it is most important to recognize that there is no hard and fast line to be drawn between the two classes. the jewish prophets did not arrive at their ideas about god without a great deal of hard thinking, though the thinking is for the most part unexplicit and the mode of expression poetic. 'their idols are silver and gold; even the work of men's hands. . . . they have hands and handle not; feet have they and walk not: neither speak they through their throat.' there is real hard reasoning underlying such noble rhetoric, though the psalmist could not perhaps have reduced his argument against polytheism and idolatry to the form of a dialectical argument like plato or st. thomas aquinas. in the highest instance of all--the case of our lord jesus christ himself--a natural instinct of reverence is apt to deter us from analysing how he came by the truth that he communicated to men; but, though i would not deny that the deepest { } truth came to him chiefly by a supreme gift of intuition, there are obvious indications of profound intellectual thought in his teaching. recall for a moment his arguments against the misuse of the sabbath, against the superstition of unclean meats, against the sadducean objection to the resurrection. i want to avoid at present dogmatic phraseology; so i will only submit in passing that this is only what we should expect if the early church was right in thinking of christ as the supreme expression in the moral and religious sphere of the logos or reason of god. the thought of great religious thinkers is none the less revelation because it involves the use of their reasoning faculties. but i guarded myself against being supposed, in contending for the possibility of a philosophical or metaphysical knowledge of god, to assume that religious truth had always come to men in this way, or even that the greatest steps in religious progress have usually taken the form of explicit reasoning. once again, it is all-important to distinguish between the way in which a belief comes to be entertained and the reasons for its being true. all sorts of psychological causes have contributed to generate religious beliefs. and when once we have discovered grounds in our own reflection or experience for believing them to be true, there is no reason why we should not regard all of them as { } pieces of divine revelation. visions and dreams, for instance, had a share in the development of religious ideas. we might even admit the possibility that the human race would never have been led to think of the immortality of the soul but for primitive ideas about ghosts suggested by the phenomena of dreams. the truth of the doctrine is neither proved nor disproved by such an account of its origin; but, if that belief is true and dreams have played a part in the process by which man has been led to it, no theist surely can refuse to recognize the divine guidance therein. and so, at a higher level, we are told by the author of the acts that st. peter was led to accept the great principle of gentile christianity by the vision of a sheet let down from heaven. there is no reason why that account should not be historically true. the psychologist may very easily account for st. peter's vision by the working in his mind of the liberal teaching of stephen, the effect of his fast, and so on. but that does not prevent us recognizing that vision as an instrument of divine revelation. we at the present day do not believe in this fundamental principle of christianity because of that dream of st. peter's; for we know that dreams are not always truth or always edifying. we believe in that principle on other grounds--the convincing grounds (among others) which st. luke puts into st. peter's mouth { } on the following morning. but that need not prevent our recognizing that god may have communicated that truth to the men of that generation--and through them to us--partly by means of that dream. the two principles then for which i wish to contend are these: ( ) that revelation is a matter of degree; ( ) that no revelation can be accepted in the long run merely because it came to a particular person in a peculiarly intuitive or immediate way. it may be that m. auguste sabatier is right in seeing the most immediate contact of god with the human soul in those intuitive convictions which can least easily be accounted for by ordinary psychological causes; in those new departures of religious insight, those unaccountable comings of new thoughts into the mind, which constitute the great crises or turning-points of religious history. but, though the coming of such thoughts may often be accepted by the individual as direct evidences of a divine origin, the metaphysician, on looking back upon them, cannot treat the fact that the psychologist cannot account for them, as a convincing proof of such an origin, apart from our judgement upon the contents of what claims to be a revelation. untrue thoughts and wicked thoughts sometimes arise equally unaccountably: the fact that they do so is even now accounted for by some as a sufficient proof of direct diabolic suggestion. when we have judged the { } thought to be true or the suggestion to be good, then we, who on other grounds believe in god, may see in it a piece of divine revelation, but not till then. from this point of view it is clear that we are able to recognize various degrees and various kinds of divine revelation in many different religions, philosophies, systems of ethical teaching. we are able to recognize the importance to the world of the great historical religions, in all of which we can acknowledge a measure of revelation. the fact that the truths which they teach (in so far as they are true) can now be recognized as true by philosophic thought, does not show that the world would ever have evolved those thoughts, apart from the influence of the great revealing personalities. philosophy itself--the philosophy of the professed philosophers--has no doubt contributed a very important element to the content of the historical religions; but it is only in proportion as they become part of a system of religious teaching, and the possession of an organized religious community, that the ideas of the philosophers really come home to multitudes of men, and shape the history of the world. nor in many cases would the philosophers themselves have seen what they have seen but for the great epoch-making thoughts of the great religion-making periods. and the same considerations which show the importance of religious movements in the { } past tend also to emphasize the importance of the historical religion and of the religious community in which it is enshrined in modern times. because religious truth can now be defended by the use of our ordinary intellectual faculties, and because all possess these faculties in some degree, it is absurd to suppose that the ordinary individual, if left to himself, would be likely to evolve a true religious system for himself--any more than he would be likely to discern for himself the truths that were first seen by euclid or newton if he were not taught them. to under-estimate the importance of the great historical religions and their creators has been the besetting sin of technical religious philosophy. metaphysicians have in truth often written about religion in great ignorance as to the real facts of religious history. but because we recognize a measure of truth in all the historical religions, it does not follow that we can recognize an equal amount of truth in all of them. the idea that all the religions teach much the same thing--or that, while they vary about that unimportant part of religion which is called doctrine or dogma, they are all agreed about morality--is an idea which could only occur to the self-complaisant ignorance which of late years has done most of the theological writing in the correspondence columns of our newspapers. the real student of comparative { } religion knows that it is only at a rather advanced stage in the development of religion that religion becomes in any important degree an ethical teacher at all. even the highest and most ethical religions are not agreed either in their ethics or in their theology. not only can we recognize higher and lower religions; but the highest religions, among many things which they have in common, are at certain points diametrically antagonistic to each other. it is impossible therefore reasonably to maintain that fashionable attitude of mind towards these religions which my friend professor inge once described as a sort of honorary membership of all religions except one's own. if we are to regard the historical religions as being of any importance to our own personal religious life, we must choose between them. if we put aside the case of judaism in its most cultivated modern form, a form in which it has been largely influenced by christianity, i suppose there is practically only one religion which would be in the least likely to appeal to a modern philosophical student of religion as a possible alternative to christianity--and that is buddhism. but buddhist ethics are not the same as christian ethics. buddhist ethics are ascetic: the christianity which christ taught was anti-ascetic. in its view of the future, buddhism is pessimistic; christianity is optimistic. much as { } buddhism has done to inculcate humanity and charity, the principle of buddhist humanity is not the same as that of christianity. humanity is encouraged by the buddhist (in so far as he is really influenced by his own formal creed) not from a motive of disinterested affection, but as a means of escaping from the evils of personal and individual existence, and so winning nirvana. we cannot at one and the same time adhere to the ethics of buddhism and to those of christianity, though i am far from saying that christians have nothing to learn either from buddhist teaching or from buddhist practice. still less can we at one and the same time be atheists with the buddhist and theists with the christian; look forward with the buddhist to the extinction of personal consciousness and with the christian to a fuller and more satisfying life. to take an interest in comparative religion is not to be religious; to be religious implies a certain exclusive attachment to some definite form of religious belief, though it may of course often be a belief to which many historical influences have contributed. i have been trying to lead you to a view of revelation which recognizes the existence and the importance of those exceptional religious minds to whom is due the foundation and development of the great historical religions, while at the same time we refuse, in the last resort, to recognize any { } revelation as true except on the ground that its truth can be independently verified. i do not mean to deny that the individual must at first, and may quite reasonably in some cases throughout life, accept much of his religious belief on authority; but that is only because he may be justified in thinking that such and such a person, or more probably such and such a religious community, is more likely to be right than himself. rational submission to authority in this or that individual postulates independent judgement on the part of others. i am far from saying that every individual is bound to satisfy himself by personal enquiry as to the truth of every element in his own religion; but, if and so far as he determines to do so, he cannot reasonably accept an alleged revelation on any other ground than that it comes home to him, that the content of that religion appeals to him as true, as satisfying the demands of his intellect and of his conscience. the question in which most of us, i imagine, are most vitally interested is whether the christian religion is a religion which we can accept on these grounds. that it possesses some truth, that whatever in it is true comes from god--that much is likely to be admitted by all who believe in any kind of religion in the sense in which we have been discussing religion. the great question for us is, 'can we find any reason for the modern man { } identifying himself in any exclusive way with the historical christian religion? granted that there is some truth in all religions, does christianity contain the most truth? is it in any sense the one absolute, final, universal religion?' that will be the subject for our consideration in the next lecture. but meanwhile i want to suggest to you one very broad provisional answer to our problem. christianity alone of the historical religions teaches those great truths to which we have been conducted by a mere appeal to reason and to conscience. it teaches ethical monotheism; that is to say, it thinks of god as a thinking, feeling, willing consciousness, and understands his nature in the light of the highest moral ideal. it teaches the belief in personal immortality, and it teaches a morality which in its broad general principles still appeals to the conscience of humanity. universal love it sets forth as at once the central point in its moral ideal and the most important element in its conception of god. in one of those metaphors which express so much more than any more exact philosophical formula, it is the religion which teaches the fatherhood of god and the brotherhood of man. and these truths were taught by the historical jesus. no one up to his time had ever taught them with equal clearness and in equal purity, and with the same freedom from other and inconsistent teachings: { } and this teaching was developed by his first followers. amid all aberrations and amid all contamination by heterogeneous elements, the society or societies which look back to christ as their founder have never in the worst times ceased altogether to teach these truths; and now they more and more tend to constitute the essence of christianity as it is to-day--all the more so on account of the church's gradual shuffling off of so many adventitious ideas and practices which were at one time associated with them. christianity is and remains the only one of the great historical religions which has taught and does teach these great truths in all their fullness.[ ] these considerations would by themselves be sufficient to put christianity in an absolutely unique position among the religions of mankind. i have so far been regarding our lord jesus christ simply as a teacher of religious and ethical truth. i think it is of fundamental importance that we should _begin_ by regarding him in this light. { } it was in this light that he first presented himself to his fellow-countrymen--even before (in all probability) he claimed to be the fulfiller of the messianic ideal which had been set before them by the prophets of their race. and i could not, without a vast array of quotation, give you a sufficient impression of the prominence of this aspect of his work and personality among the earlier greek fathers. even after the elaborate doctrines of catholic christianity had begun to be developed, it was still primarily as the supremely inspired teacher that jesus was most often thought of. when the early christians thought of him as the incarnate logos or reason of god, to teach men divine truth was still looked upon as the supreme function of the logos and the purpose of his indwelling in the historical jesus. but from the first jesus appealed to men as much more than a teacher. it is one of the distinctive peculiarities of religious and ethical knowledge that it is intimately connected with character: religious and moral teaching of the highest kind is in a peculiar degree inseparable from the personality of the teacher. jesus impressed his contemporaries, and he has impressed successive ages as having not only set before man the highest religious and moral ideal, but as having in a unique manner realized that ideal in his own life. even the word 'example' { } does not fully express the impression which he made on his followers, or do justice to the inseparability of his personality from his teaching. in the religious consciousness of christ men saw realized the ideal relation of man not merely to his fellow-man but also to his heavenly father. from the first an enthusiastic reverence for its founder has been an essential part of the christian religion amid all the variety of the phases which it has assumed. the doctrine of the christian church was in its origin an attempt to express in the philosophical language of the time its sense of this supreme value of christ for the religious and moral life of man. as to the historical success and the present usefulness of these attempts, i shall have a word to say next time. meanwhile, i would leave with you this one thought. the claim of christianity to be the supreme, the universal, in a sense the final religion, must rest mainly, in the last resort, upon the appeal which christ and his religion make to the moral and religious consciousness of the present. literature see the works mentioned at the end of the next lecture, to which, as dealing more specially with the subject of lecture v., may be added professor sanday's _inspiration_, and professor wendt's _revelation and christianity_. [ ] throughout his writings, but pre-eminently in the _theoetetus_. [ ] if it be said that judaism or any other religion does now teach these truths as fully as christianity, this may possibly apply to the creed of individual members of these religions, but it can hardly be claimed for the historical religions themselves. i should certainly be prepared to contend that even such individuals lose something by not placing in the centre of their religion the personality of him by whom they were first taught, and the communities which have been the great transmitters of them. but in this course of lectures i am chiefly concerned with giving reasons why christians should remain christians, rather than with giving reasons why others who are not so should become christians. { } lecture vi christianity in my last lecture i tried to effect a transition from the idea of religious truth as something believed by the individual, and accepted by him on the evidence of his own reason and conscience to the idea of a religion considered as a body of religious truth handed down by tradition in an organized society. the higher religions--those which have passed beyond the stage of merely tribal or national religion--are based upon the idea that religious truth of enduring value has been from time to time revealed to particular persons, the founders or apostles or reformers of such religions. we recognized the validity of this idea of revelation, and the supreme importance to the moral and religious life of such historical revelations, on one condition--that the claim of any historical religion to the allegiance of its followers must be held to rest in the last resort upon the appeal which it makes to their reason and conscience: though the individual may often be { } quite justified in accepting and relying upon the reason and conscience of the religious society rather than upon his own. the view which i have taken of revelation makes it quite independent of what are commonly called miracles. all that i have said is quite consistent with the unqualified acceptance or with the unqualified rejection of miracles. but some of you may perhaps expect me to explain a little more fully my own attitude towards that question. and therefore i will say this much--that, if we regard a miracle as implying a suspension of a law of nature, i do not think we can call such a suspension _a priori_ incredible; but the enormous experience which we have of the actual regularity of the laws of nature, and of the causes which in certain states of the human mind lead to the belief in miracles, makes such an event in the highest degree improbable. to me at least it would seem practically impossible to get sufficient evidence for the occurrence of such an event in the distant past: all our historical reasoning presupposes the reign of law. but it is being more and more admitted by theologians who are regarded as quite orthodox and rather conservative, that the idea of a miracle need not necessarily imply such a suspension of natural law. and on the other hand, decidedly critical and liberal theologians are more and more disposed to admit { } that many of the abnormal events commonly called miraculous may very well have occurred without involving any real suspension of natural law. recent advances in psychological knowledge have widened our conception of the possible influence of mind over matter and of mind over mind. whether an alleged miraculous event is to be accepted or not must, as it seems to me, depend partly upon the amount of critically sifted historical evidence which can be produced for it, partly upon the nature of the event itself--upon the question whether it is or is not of such a kind that we can with any probability suppose that it might be accounted for either by known laws or by laws at present imperfectly understood. to apply these principles in detail to the new testament narratives would involve critical discussions which are outside the purpose of these lectures. i will only say that few critical scholars would deny that some recorded miracles even in the new testament are unhistorical. when they find an incident like the healing of malchus's ear omitted in the earlier, and inserted in the later redaction of a common original, they cannot but recognize the probability of traditional amplification. at the same time few liberal theologians will be disposed to doubt the general fact that our lord did cure some diseases by spiritual influence, or that an appearance of our lord to the disciples--of whatever nature--actually { } did occur, and was the means of assuring them of his continued life and power. at all events i do not myself doubt these two facts. but at least when miracles are not regarded as constituting real exceptions to natural law, it is obvious that they will not prove the truth of any teaching which may have been connected with them; while, even if we treat the gospel miracles as real exceptions to law, the difficulty of proving them in the face of modern critical enquiry is so great that the evidence will hardly come home to any one not previously convinced, on purely spiritual grounds, of the exceptional character of our lord's personality and mission. this being so, i do not think that our answer to the problem of miracles, whatever it be, can play any very important part in christian apologetic. when we have become christians on other grounds, the acts of healing may still retain a certain value as illustrating the character of the master, and the resurrection vision as proclaiming the truth of immortality in a way which will come home to minds not easily accessible to abstract argument. the true foundation not merely for belief in the teaching of christ, but also for the christian's reverence for his person, must, as it seems to me, be found in the appeal which his words and his character still make to the conscience and reason of mankind. this proposition would be { } perhaps more generally accepted if i were to say that the claim of christ to allegiance rests upon the way in which he satisfies the heart, the aspirations, the religious needs of mankind. and i should be quite willing to adopt such language, if you will only include respect for historic fact and intellectual truth among these religious needs, and admit that a reasonable faith must rest on something better than mere emotion. fully to exhibit the grounds of this claim of christ upon us would involve an examination of the gospel narratives in detail: it would involve an attempt to present to you what was this teaching, this character, this religious consciousness which has commanded the homage of mankind. to attempt such a task would be out of place in a brief course of lectures devoted to a particular aspect of religion--its relation to philosophy. here i must assume that you feel the spiritual supremacy of christ--his unique position in the religious history of the world and his unique importance for the spiritual life of each one of us--; and go on to ask what assertions such a conviction warrants us in making about his person and nature, what in short should be our attitude towards the traditional doctrines of the christian church. you may know something of the position taken up in this matter by the dominant school of what i may call believing liberal theology in { } germany--the school which takes its name from the great theologian ritschl, but which will be best known to most englishmen in connexion with the name of prof. harnack, though it may be well to remember that harnack is nearer to the left than to the right wing of that school. the fundamental principle of that school is to base the claims of christianity mainly upon the appeal which the picture of the life, teaching, character, and personality of christ makes to the moral and religious consciousness of mankind. their teaching is christo-centric in the highest possible degree: but they are almost or entirely indifferent to the dogmatic formulae which may be employed to express this supreme religious importance of christ. in putting the personal and historical christ, and not any doctrine about him, in the centre of the religious life i believe they are right. but this principle is sometimes asserted in an exaggerated and one-sided manner. in the first place they are somewhat contemptuous of philosophy, and of philosophic argument even for such fundamental truths as the existence of god. i do not see that the subjective impression made by christ can by itself prove the fact of god's existence. we must first believe that there is a god to be revealed before we can be led to believe in christ as the supreme revealer. i do not believe that the modern world will permanently accept a view of the universe { } which does not commend itself to its reason. the ritschlians talk about the truth of religion resting upon value-judgements. i can quite understand that a value-judgement may tell us the supreme value of christ's character and his fitness to be treated as the representative of god to us, when once we believe in god: but i cannot see how any value-judgement taken by itself can assure us of that existence. value is one thing: existence is another. to my mind a christian apologetic should begin, like the old apologies of justin or aristides, with showing the essential reasonableness of christ's teaching about god and its essential harmony with the highest philosophic teaching about duty, about the divine nature, about the soul and its eternal destiny. the ritschlian is too much disposed to underrate the value of all previous religious and ethical teaching, even of judaism at its highest: he is not content with making christ the supreme revealer: he wants to make him the only revealer. and when we turn to post-christian religious history, he is apt to treat all the great developments of religious and ethical thought from the time of the apostles to our own day as simply worthless and even mischievous corruptions of the original, and only genuine, christianity. he tends to reduce christianity to the _ipsissima verba_ of its founder. the ritschlian dislikes dogma, not because it may be at times a { } misdevelopment, but because it is a development; not because some of it may be antiquated philosophy, but simply because it is philosophy.[ ] in order to treat fairly this question of doctrinal development, it must be remembered that what is commonly called dogma is only a part--perhaps not the most important part--of that development. supreme as i believe to be the value of christ's great principle of brotherhood, it is impossible to deny that, if we look in detail at the moral ideal of any educated christian at the present day, we shall find in it many elements which cannot explicitly be discovered in the _ipsissima verba_ of christ and still less of his apostles. and development in the ethical ideal always carries with it some development in a man's conception of god and the universe. some of these elements are due to a gradual bringing out into clear consciousness, and an application to new details, of principles latent in the actual words of christ; others to an infusion of greek philosophy; others to the practical experience and the scientific discoveries of the modern world. christianity in the course of nineteen centuries has gradually absorbed into itself many ideas from various sources, { } christianizing them in the process. many ideas, much hellenic philosophy, many hellenic ideals of life, many roman ideas of government and organization have thus, in the excellent phrase of professor gardner, been 'baptized into christ.' this capacity of absorbing into itself elements of spiritual life which were originally independent of it is not a defect of historical christianity, but one of its qualifications for being accepted by the modern world as a universal, an absolute, a final religion. it does not seem to me possible to recognize the claim of any historical religion to be final and ultimate, unless it include within itself a principle of development. let me, as briefly as i can, illustrate what i mean. it is most clearly and easily seen in the case of morality. if the idea of a universal religion is to mean that any detailed code of morals laid down at a definite moment of history can serve by itself for the guidance of all human life in all after ages, we may at once dismiss the notion as a dream. in nothing did our lord show his greatness and the fitness of his religion for universality more than in abstaining from drawing up such a code. he confined himself to laying down a few great principles, with illustrations applicable to the circumstances of his immediate hearers. those principles require development and application to the needs and { } circumstances of successive ages before they can suffice to guide us in the details of conduct. to effect this development and application has been historically the work of the church which owes its origin to the disciples whom he gathered around him. if we may accept the teaching of the fourth gospel as at least having germs in the actual utterances of our lord, he himself foresaw the necessity of such a development. at all events the belief in the continued work of god's spirit in human society is an essential principle of the christian religion as it was taught by the first followers of its founder. take for instance the case of slavery. our lord never condemned slavery: it is not certain that he would have done so, had the case been presented to him. very likely his answer would have been 'who made me a judge or a divider,' or 'render unto caesar the things that are caesar's.' no one on reflection can now fail to see the essential incompatibility between slavery and the christian spirit; yet it was perhaps fourteen hundred years before a single christian thinker definitely enunciated that incompatibility, and more than eighteen hundred years before slavery was actually banished from all nominally christian lands. who can doubt that many features of our existing social system are equally incompatible with the principles of christ's teaching, and that the { } accepted christian morality of a hundred years hence will definitely condemn many things which the average christian conscience now allows? and then there is another kind of development in ethics which is equally necessary. the christian law of love bids us promote the true good of our fellow-men, bids us regard another man's good as equally valuable with our own or with the like good of any other. but what is this good life which we are to promote? as to that our lord has only laid down a few very general principles--the supreme value of love itself, the superiority of the spiritual to the carnal, the importance of sexual purity. these principles our consciences still acknowledge, and there are no others of equal importance. but what of the intellectual life? has that no value? our lord never depreciated it, as so many religious founders and reformers have done. but he has given us no explicit guidance about it. when the christian ideal embraced within itself a recognition of the value and duty of culture, it was borrowing from greece. and when we turn from ethics to theology, the actual fact of development is no less indisputable. every alteration of the ethical ideal has brought with it some alteration in our idea of god. we can no longer endure theories of the atonement which are opposed to modern ideas of justice, though they were quite compatible with { } patristic or medieval ideas of justice. the advances of science have altered our whole conception of god's mode of acting upon or governing the world. none of these things are religiously so important as the great principle of the fatherhood of god, nor have they in any way tended to modify its truth or its supreme importance. but they do imply that our theology is not and cannot be in all points the same as that of the first christians. now with these presuppositions let us approach the question of that great structure of formal dogma which the church has built upon the foundation of christ's teaching. a development undoubtedly it is; but, while we must not assume that every development which has historically taken place is necessarily true or valuable, it is equally unphilosophical to assume that, because it is a development, it is necessarily false or worthless. our lord himself did, indeed, claim to be the messiah; the fact of messiahship was what was primarily meant by the title 'son of god.' even in the synoptists he exhibits a consciousness of a direct divine mission supremely important for his own race; and, before the close, we can perhaps discover a growing conviction that the truth which he was teaching was meant for a larger world. starting from and developing these ideas, his followers set themselves to devise terms which should express their own sense of their master's unique { } religious value and importance, to express what they felt he had been to their own souls, what they felt he might be to all who accepted his message. even to st. paul the term 'son of god' still meant primarily 'the messiah': but in the light of his conception of jesus, the messianic idea expanded till the christ was exalted to a position far above anything which jewish prophecy or apocalypse had ever claimed for him. and the means of expressing these new ideas were found naturally and inevitably in the current philosophical terminology of the day. with the fourth gospel, if not already with st. paul, there was infused into the teaching of the church a new element. from the jewish-alexandrian speculative theology the author borrowed the term logos to express what he conceived to be the cosmic importance of christ's position. he accepted from that speculation--probably from philo--the theory which personified or half-personified that logos or wisdom of god through which god was represented in the old testament as creating the world and inspiring the prophets. this logos through whom god had throughout the ages been more and more fully revealing himself had at last become actually incarnate in jesus christ. this word of god is also described as truly god, though in the fourth gospel the relation of the father to the word--at { } least to the word before the incarnation--is left wholly vague and undefined. from these comparatively simple beginnings sprang centuries of controversy culminating in that elaborate system of dogma which is often little understood even by its most vigorous champions. you know in a very general way the result. the logos was made more and more distinct from god, endowed with a more and more decidedly personal existence. then, when the interests of monotheism seemed to be endangered, the attempt was made to save it by asserting the subordination of the son to the father. the result was that by arianism the son was reduced to the position of an inferior god. polytheism had once more to be averted by asserting in even stronger terms not merely the equality of the son with the father but also the unity of the god who is both father and son. the doctrine of the divinity of the holy ghost went through a somewhat similar series of stages. at first regarded as identical with the word, a distinction was gradually effected. the word was said to have been incarnate in jesus; while it was through the holy ghost that the subsequent work of god was carried on in human hearts. and by similar stages the equality of the holy ghost to father and to son was gradually evolved; while it was more and more strongly asserted that, in spite of the eternal distinction of { } persons, it was one and the same god who revealed himself in all the activities attributed to each of them. side by side with these controversies about the relation between the father and the word, there was a gradual development of doctrine as to the relation between the logos and the human jesus in whom he took up his abode. frequently the idea of any real humanity in jesus was all but lost. that was at last saved by the catholic formula 'perfect god and perfect man'; though it cannot be denied that popular thought in all ages has never quite discarded the tendency to think of jesus as simply god in human form, and not really man at all. even now there are probably hundreds of people who regard themselves as particularly orthodox churchmen who yet do not know that the church teaches that our lord had a human soul and a human will. what are we to make of all that vast structure, of the elaboration and complication of which the constantinopolitan creed which we miscall nicene and even the so-called athanasian creed give very little idea to those who do not also know something of the councils, the fathers, and the schoolmen? has it all a modern meaning? can it be translated into terms of our modern thought and speech? for i suppose it hardly needs demonstration--that such { } translation is necessary, if it be possible. i doubt whether any man in this audience who has not made a special study of the subject, will get up and say that the meaning of such terms as 'substance,' 'essence,' 'nature,' 'hypostasis,' 'person,' 'eternal generation,' 'procession,' 'hypostatic union,' and the like is at once evident to him by the light of nature and an ordinary modern education. and those who know most about the matter will most fully realize the difficulty of saying exactly what was meant by such phrases at this or that particular moment or by this or that particular thinker. a thorough discussion of this subject from the point of view of one who acknowledges the supreme claims of christ upon the modern mind, and is yet willing fairly to examine the traditional creed in the light of modern philosophical culture, is a task which very much needs to be undertaken. i doubt if it has been satisfactorily performed yet. even if i possessed a tithe of the learning necessary for that task, i could obviously not undertake it now. but a few remarks on the subject may be of use for the guidance of our personal religious life in this matter: ( ) i should like once more to emphasize the fact that the really important thing, from the point of view of the spiritual life of the individual soul, is our personal attitude towards our lord himself and his teaching, and not the phrases in which we express { } it. a man who believes what christ taught about god's fatherhood, about human brotherhood and human duty, about sin, the need for repentance, the father's readiness to forgive, the value of prayer, the certainty of immortality--the man who finds the ideal of his life in the character of jesus, and strives by the help which he has supplied to think of god and feel towards god as he did, to imitate him in his life, to live (like him) in communion with the father and in the hope of immortality--he is a christian, and a christian in the fullest sense of the word. he will find in that faith all that is necessary (to use the old phrase) for salvation--for personal goodness and personal religion. and such a man will be saved, and saved through christ; even though he has never heard of the creeds, or deliberately rejects many of the formulae which the church or the churches have 'built upon' that one foundation. ( ) at the same time, if we believe in the supreme importance of christ for the world, for the religious life of the church and of the individual, it is surely convenient to have some language in which to express our sense of that importance. the actual personal attitude towards christ is the essential thing: but as a means towards that attitude it is of importance to express what christ has actually been to others, and what he ought to be to ourselves. children { } and adults alike require to have the claims of christ presented to them before they can verify them by their own experience: and this requires articulate language of some kind. religion can only be handed down, diffused, propagated by an organized society: and a religious society must have some means of handing on its religious ideas. it is possible to hold that under other conditions a different set of terms might have expressed the truth as well as those which have actually been enshrined in the new testament, the liturgies, and the creeds. but the phrases which have been actually adopted surely have a strong presumption in their favour, even if it were merely through the difficulty of changing them, and the importance of unity, continuity, corporate life. it is easier to explain, or even if need be, alter in some measure the meaning of an accepted formula than to introduce a new one. religious development has at all times taken place largely in this way. our lord himself entirely transformed the meaning of god's fatherhood, messiahship, the kingdom of god, the people of god, the true israel. at all events we should endeavour to discover the maximum of truth that any traditional formula can be made to yield before we discard it in favour of a new one. if we want to worship and to work with christ's church, we must do our best to give the maximum of meaning { } to the language in which it expresses its faith and its devotion. ( ) we must insist strongly upon the thoroughly human character of christ's own consciousness. jesus did not--so i believe the critical study of the gospels leads us to think--himself claim to be god, or to be son of god in any sense but that of messiahship. he claimed to speak with authority: he claimed a divine mission: he claimed to be a revealer of divine truth. the fourth gospel has been of infinite service to spiritual christianity. it has given the world a due sense of the spiritual importance of christ as the way, the truth, and the life. perhaps christianity could hardly have expanded into a universal religion without that gospel. but we cannot regard all that the johannine christ says about himself as the _ipsissima verba_ of jesus. the picture is idealized in accordance with the writer's own conceptions, though after all its theology is very much simpler than the later theology which has grown out of it permits most people to see. we must not let these discourses blind us to the human character of christ's consciousness. and this real humanity must carry with it the recognition of the thoroughly human limitations of his knowledge. the bishop of birmingham has prepared the way for the union of a really historical view of christ's life with a reasonable interpretation of the catholic { } doctrine about him, by reviving the ancient view as to the limitation of his intellectual knowledge;[ ] but the principle must be carried in some ways further than the bishop himself would be prepared to go. the accepted christology must be distinctly recognized as the church's reflection and comment upon christ's work and its value, not as the actual teaching of the master about himself. ( ) it must likewise be recognized that the language in which the church expressed this attitude towards christ was borrowed from greek metaphysics, particularly from plato and neo-platonism in the patristic period, and from aristotle in the middle ages. and we cannot completely separate language from thought. it was not merely greek technical phrases but greek ways of thinking which were imported into catholic christianity. and the language, the categories, the ideas of greek philosophy were to some extent different from those of modern times. the most platonically-minded thinker of modern times does not really think exactly as plato thought: the most catholic-minded thinker of modern times, if he has also breathed the atmosphere of modern science and modern culture, cannot really think exactly as athanasius or basil thought. i { } do not suppose that any modern mind can think itself back into exactly the state of mind which an ancient father was in, when he used the term logos. this central idea of the logos is not a category of modern thought. we cannot really think of a being who is as distinct from the father as he is represented as being in some of the patristic utterances--i say advisedly some, for widely different modes of thought are found in fathers of equal authority--and yet so far one with him that we can say 'one god, one spiritual being, and not two.' nor are we under any obligation to accept these formulae as representing profound mysteries which we cannot understand: they were simply pieces of metaphysical thinking, some of them valuable and successful pieces of thinking, others less so. we must use them as helps, not as fetters to our thought. but, though we cannot think ourselves back into exactly the same intellectual condition as a fourth- or fifth-century father, there is no reason why we should not recognize the fundamental truth of the religious idea which he was trying to express. a modern philosopher would probably express that thought somewhat in this manner. 'the whole world is a revelation of god in a sense, and still more so is the human mind: all through the ages god has gone on revealing himself more and more in human consciousness, especially through the prophets and other { } exceptionally inspired men. the fullest and completest revelation of himself was made once for all in the person and teaching of jesus, in whom we recognize a revelation of god adequate to all our spiritual needs, when developed and interpreted by the continued presence of god's spirit in the world and particularly in the church which grew out of the little company of jesus' friends.' ( ) i do not think at the present day even quite orthodox people are much concerned about the technicalities of the conciliar theology, or even about the niceties of the athanasian creed. they are even a little suspicious sometimes that much talk about the doctrine of the logos is only intended to evade a plain answer to the supreme question of the divinity of christ. you will expect me perhaps to say something about that question. i would first observe that the popular term 'divinity of christ' is apt to give a somewhat misleading impression of what the orthodox teaching on the subject really is. for one thing, it is apt to suggest the idea of a pre-existent human consciousness of jesus, which would be contrary to catholic teaching. the logos--the eternal son or reason of god--pre-existed; but not the man jesus christ who was born at a particular moment of history, and who is still, according to catholic theology, a distinct human soul perfectly and for ever united with the word. { } and then again, it is apt to suggest the heretical idea that the whole trinity was incarnate in christ, and not merely the word. orthodox theology does not teach that god the father became incarnate in christ, and suffered upon the cross. and lastly, the constant iteration of the phrase 'divinity of christ' tends to the concealment of the other half of the catholic doctrine--the real humanity of christ. to speak of the god-manhood of christ or the indwelling of god in christ would be a truer representation even of the strictest orthodox doctrine, apart from all modern re-interpretations. but even so, when all this is borne in mind, it may be asked, what is the real meaning of saying that a man was also god? i would answer, 'whether it is possible to give a modern, intelligible, philosophically defensible meaning to the idea of christ's divinity depends entirely upon the question what we conceive to be the true relation between humanity in general and god.' if (as i have attempted to show) we are justified in thinking of all human consciousness as constituting a partial reproduction of the divine mind; if we are justified in thinking of human reason, and particularly of the human conscience, as constituting in some measure and in some sense a revelation by means of which we can rise to a contemplation of the divine nature; if personality (as we know it in man) is the highest category within our knowledge; then { } there is a real meaning in talking of one particular man being also divine; of the divine reason or logos as dwelling after a unique, exceptional, pre-eminent manner in him. as dr. edward caird has remarked, all the metaphysical questions which were formerly discussed as to the relation between the divine and the human nature in christ, are now being discussed again in reference to the relation of humanity in general to god. we cannot say intelligibly that god dwells in christ, unless we have already recognized that in a sense god dwells and reveals himself in humanity at large, and in each particular human soul. but i fully recognize that, if this is all that is meant by the expression 'divinity of christ,' that doctrine would be evacuated of nearly all that makes it precious to the hearts of christian people. and therefore it is all-important that we should go on to insist that men do not reveal god equally. the more developed intellect reveals god more completely than that of the child or the savage: and (far more important from a religious point of view), the higher and more developed moral consciousness reveals him more than the lower, and above all the actually better man reveals god more than the worse man. now, if in the life, teaching, and character of christ--in his moral and religious consciousness, and in the life and character which { } so completely expressed and illustrated that consciousness--we can discover the highest revelation of the divine nature, we can surely attach a real meaning to the language of the creeds which singles him out from all the men that ever lived as the one in whom the ideal relation of man to god is most completely realized. if god can only be known as revealed in humanity, and christ is the highest representative of humanity, we can very significantly say 'christ is _the_ son of god, very god of very god, of one substance with the father,' though the phrase undoubtedly belongs to a philosophical dialect which we do not habitually use. ( ) behind the doctrine of the incarnation looms the still more technical doctrine of the trinity. yet after all, it is chiefly, i believe, as a sort of necessary background or presupposition to the idea of christ's divine nature that modern religious people, not professionally interested in theology, attach importance to that doctrine. they accept the doctrine in so far as it is implied by the teaching of scripture and by the doctrine of our lord's divinity, but they are not much attached to the technicalities of the athanasian creed. the great objection to that creed, apart from the damnatory clauses, is the certainty that it will be misunderstood by most of those who think they understand it at all. the { } best thing we could do with the athanasian creed is to drop it altogether: the next best thing to it is to explain it, or at least so much of it as really interests the ordinary layman--the doctrine of three persons in one god. and therefore it is important to insist in the strongest possible way that the word 'person' which has most unfortunately come to be the technical term for what the greeks more obscurely called the three _huostaseis_ in the godhead does not, and never did, mean what we commonly understand by personality--whether in the language of ordinary life or of modern philosophy. i do not deny that at certain periods theology did tend to think of the logos as a distinct being from the father, a distinct consciousness with thoughts, will, desires, emotions not identical with those of god the father. the distinction was at times pushed to a point which meant either sheer tritheism, or something which is incapable of being distinctly realized in thought at all. but that is scarcely true of the theology which was finally accepted either by east or west. this is most distinctly seen in the summa theologica of st. thomas aquinas: and i would remind you that you cannot be more orthodox than st. thomas--the source not only of the theology professed by the pope and taught in every roman seminary but of the theology embodied in our own articles. st. thomas' explanation of the trinity { } is that god is at one and the same time power or cause[ ] (father), wisdom (son), will (holy ghost); or, since the will of god is always a loving will, love (amor) is sometimes substituted for will (voluntas) in explanation of the holy spirit.[ ] how little { } st. thomas thought of the 'persons' as separate consciousnesses, is best seen from his doctrine (taken from augustine) that the love of the father for the son is the holy spirit. the love of one being for himself or for another is not a person in the natural, normal, modern sense of the word: and it would be quite unorthodox to attribute personality to the son in any other sense than that in which it is attributed to the holy ghost. i do not myself attach any great importance to these technical phrases. i do not { } deny that the supremely important truth that god has received his fullest revelation in the historical christ, and that he goes on revealing himself in the hearts of men, might have been otherwise, more simply, to modern minds more intelligibly, expressed. there are detailed features of the patristic or the scholastic version of the doctrine which involve conceptions to which the most accomplished professors of theology would find it difficult or impossible to give a modern meaning. i do not know for instance that much would have been lost had theology (with the all but canonical writers clement of rome and hermas, with ignatius, with justin, with the philosophic clement of alexandria) continued to speak indifferently of the word and the spirit. yet taken by itself this thomist doctrine of the trinity is one to which it is quite possible to give a perfectly rational meaning, and a meaning probably very much nearer to that which was really intended by its author than the meaning which is usually put upon the trinitarian formula by popular religious thought. that god is power, and wisdom, and love is simply the essence of christian theism--not the less true because few unitarians would repudiate it. ( ) once more let me briefly remind you that any claim for finality in the christian religion must be based on its power of perpetual development. { } belief in the continued work of the holy spirit in the church is an essential element of the catholic faith. we need not, with the ritschlian, contemptuously condemn the whole structure of christian doctrine because undoubtedly it is a development of what was taught by christ himself. only, if we are to justify the development of the past, we must go on to assert the same right and duty of development in ethics and in theology for the church of the future. in the pregnant phrase of loisy, the development which the church is most in need of at the present moment is precisely a development in the idea of development itself. but how can we tell (it may be asked), if we once admit that the development of religion does not end with the teaching of christ, where the development will stop? if we are to admit an indefinite possibility of growth and change, how do we know that christianity itself will not one day be outgrown? if we once admit that the final appeal is to the religious consciousness of the present, we must acknowledge that it is not possible to demonstrate _a priori_ that the christian religion is the final, universal, or absolute religion. all we can say is that we have no difficulty in recognizing that the development which has so far taken place, in so far as it is a development which we can approve and accept, seems to us a development which leaves the { } religion still essentially the religion of christ. in the whole structure of the modern christian's religious belief, that which was contributed by christ himself is incomparably the most important part--the basis of the whole structure. the essentials of religion and morality still seem to us to be contained in his teaching as they are contained nowhere else. all the rest that is included in an enlightened modern christian's religious creed is either a direct working out of the principles already contained there, or (if it has come from other sources) it has been transformed in the process of adaptation. nothing has been discovered in religion and morality which tends in any way to diminish the unique reverence which we feel for the person of christ, the perfect sufficiency of his character to represent and incarnate for us the character of god. it is a completely gratuitous assumption to suppose that it will ever lose that sufficiency. even in the development of science, there comes a time when its fundamentals are virtually beyond the reach of reconsideration. still more in practical life, mere unmotived, gratuitous possibilities may be disregarded. it weakens the hold of fundamental convictions upon the mind to be perpetually contemplating the possibility or probability of fundamental revision. we ought no doubt to keep the spiritual ear ever open that we may always be hearing what the spirit saith unto { } the churches. but to look forward to a time when any better way will be discovered of thinking of god than jesus' way of thinking of him as a loving father is as gratuitous as to contemplate the probability of something in human life at present unknown being discovered of greater value than love. until that discovery is made, our religion will still remain the religion of him who, by what he said and by what he was, taught the world to think of god as the supreme love and the supreme holiness, the source of all other love and all other holiness. literature the literature is here too vast to mention even the works of the very first importance: i can only select a very few books which have been useful to myself. the late sir john seeley's _ecce homo_ may be regarded as in the light of modern research a somewhat uncritical book, but it remains to my mind the most striking expression of the appeal which christ makes to the conscience of the modern world. it has proved a veritable fifth gospel to many seekers after light. bishop moorhouse's little book, _the teaching of christ_, will serve as an introduction to the study of christ's life and work. a more elaborate treatment of the subject, with which i am very much in sympathy, is wendt's _teaching of jesus_. the ideal life of christ perhaps remains to be written. professor sanday's article on 'jesus christ' in hastings' _dictionary of the bible_ may be mentioned as a good representative of moderate and scholarly conservatism or liberal conservatism. professor oscar holtzmann's _life of jesus_ is based on more radical, perhaps over-radical, criticism. professor harnack's { } _what is christianity?_ has become the typical expression of the ritschlian attitude. the ideas of extreme roman catholic 'modernism' may be gathered from loisy's _l'Évangile et l'Église_ and _autour d'un petit livre_. professor gardner's three books--_exploratio evangelica_, the shorter _an historic view of the new testament_, and _the growth of christianity_--may be especially commended to those who wish to satisfy themselves that a thorough-going recognition of the results of historical criticism is compatible with a whole-hearted personal acceptance of christianity. dr. fairbairn's _philosophy of the christian religion_ and bousset's _what is religion?_ are especially valuable as vindications of the supreme position of christianity combined with the fullest recognition of the measure of revelation contained in all the great historical religions. allen's _continuity of christian thought_ suggests what seems to me the right attitude of the modern thinker towards traditional dogma, though the author's position is more decidedly 'hegelian' than mine. i may also mention professor inge's contribution to _contentio veritatis_ on 'the personal christ,' and some of the essays in _lux hominum_. though i cannot always agree with him, i recognize the high value of the bishop of birmingham's bampton lectures on _the divinity of jesus christ the son of god_ and the accompanying volume of _dissertations_. [ ] in their assertion of the necessity of development, and of the religious community as the origin of development, the teaching of the abbe loisy and the roman catholic modernists seems to me to be complementary to that of the kitschlians, though i do not always accept their rather destructive critical conclusions. [ ] in his essay in _lux mundi_ ( ). he has since developed his view in his bampton lectures on _the incarnation of the son of god_ and a volume of _dissertations on subjects connected with the incarnation_. [ ] i venture thus to translate 'principium' (_arche_); in abelard and his disciple peter the lombard, the famous master of the sentences, the word is 'potentia' (l. i. dist. xxxiv.): and st. thomas himself (p. i. q. xli. art. ) explains 'principium' by 'potentia generandi filium.' [ ] thus in _summa theologica_, pars i. q. xxxvii. art. , the 'conclusio' is 'amor, personaliter acceptus, proprium nomen est spiritus sancti,' which is explained to mean that there are in the godhead 'duse processiones: una per modum intellectus, quae est processio verbi; alia per modum voluntatis, quae est processio amoris.' so again (_ibid._ q. xlv. art. ): 'in creaturis igitur rationalibus, in quibus est intellectus et voluntas, invenitur repraesentatio trinitatis per modum imaginis, inquantum invenitur in eis verbum conceptum, et amor procedens.' in a friendly review of my essay in _contentio veritatis_, in which i endeavoured to expound in a modern form this doctrine, dr. sanday (_journal of theological studies_, vol. iv., ) wrote: 'one of the passages that seem to me most open to criticism is that on the doctrine of the trinity (p. ). "power, wisdom, and will" surely cannot be a sound trichotomy as applied either to human nature or divine. surely power is an expression of will and not co-ordinate with it. the common division, power (or will), wisdom, and love is more to the point. yet dr. rashdall identifies the two triads by what i must needs think a looseness of reasoning.' the margaret professor of divinity hardly seems to recognize that he is criticizing the angelical doctor and not myself. if dr. sanday had had the formulation of the doctrine of the trinity, the result, if less metaphysically subtle, might no doubt have proved more easily intelligible to the modern mind; but the 'identification' of which he complains happens to be part of the traditional doctrine, and i was endeavouring merely to make the best of it for modern christians. i add st. thomas' justification of it, which is substantially what i gave in _contentio veritatis_ and have repeated above: 'cum processiones divinas secundum aliquas actiones necesse est accipere, secundum bonitatem, et hujusmodi alia attributa, non accipiuntur aliae processiones, nisi verbi et amoris, secundum quod deus suam essentiam, veritatem et bonitatem intelligit et amat' (q. xxvii. art. ). the source of the doctrine is to be found in st. augustine, who habitually speaks of the holy spirit as amor; but, when he refers to the 'imago trinitatia' in man the spirit is represented sometimes by 'amor,' sometimes by 'voluntas' (_de trin._, l. xiv. cap ). the other two members of the human triad are with him 'memoria' (or 'mens') and 'intelligentia.' with regard to the difficulty of distinguishing power from will, i was perhaps to blame for not giving st. thomas' own word 'principium.' the word 'principium' means the _pege theoteos_, the ultimate cause or source of being: by 'voluntas' st. thomas means that actual putting forth of power (in knowing and in loving the word or thought eternally begotten by god the father) which is the holy ghost. i am far from saying that the details of st. thomas' doctrine are not open to much criticism: a rough correspondence between his teaching and any view of god's nature which can commend itself to a modern philosopher is all that i endeavoured to point out. the modern thinker would no doubt with dr. sanday prefer the triad 'power, wisdom, love,' or (i would suggest) 'feeling, including love as the highest form of feeling.' the reason why st. thomas will not accept such an interpretation is that his aristotelianism (here not very consonant with the jewish and christian view of god) excludes all feeling or emotion from the divine nature; 'love' has therefore to be identified with 'will' and not with 'feeling.' i cannot but think that the professor might have taken a little more trouble to understand both st. thomas and myself before accusing either of us of 'looseness of reasoning.' "'attraction' and 'repulsion' seem to be the sources of _will_--that momentous element of the soul which determines the character of the individual" (p. ). "the positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of _potential_ energy; the negative imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus gathers the utmost amount of _actual_ energy. "i think that this pyknotic theory of substance will prove more acceptable to every biologist who is convinced of the unity of nature than the kinetic theory which prevails in physics to-day" (p. ). in other words, he appeals to a presumed sentiment of biologists against the knowledge of the physicist in his own sphere--a strange attitude for a man of science. after this it is less surprising to find him ignoring the elementary axiom that "action and reaction are equal and opposite," _i.e._ that internal forces can have no motive power on a body as a whole, and making the grotesque assertion that matter is moved, not by external forces, but by internal likes and desires:-- "i must lay down the following theses, which are involved in vogt's pyknotic theory, as indispensable for a truly monistic view of substance, and one that covers the whole field of organic and inorganic nature:-- " . the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest grade); they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike of strain; they strive after the one and struggle against the other" (p. ). my desire is to criticise politely, and hence i refrain from characterising this sentence as a physicist should. "every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the various elements towards each other" (p. ). "on those phenomena we base our conviction that even the _atom_ is not without a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or, as it is better expressed, of feeling (_æsthesis_) and inclination (_tropesis_)--that is, a universal 'soul' of the simplest character" (p. ). "i gave the outlines of _cellular_ psychology in in my paper on 'cell-souls and soul-cells'" (p. ). thus, then, in order to explain life and mind and consciousness by means of matter, all that is done is to assume that matter possesses these unexplained attributes. what the full meaning of that may be, and whether there be any philosophic justification for any such idea, is a matter on which i will not now express an opinion; but, at any rate, as it stands, it is not science, and its formulation gives no sort of conception of what life and will and consciousness really are. even if it were true, it contains nothing whatever in the nature of explanation: it recognises the inexplicable, and relegates it to the atoms, where it seems to hope that further quest may cease. instead of tackling the difficulty where it actually occurs; instead of associating life, will, and consciousness with the organisms in which they are actually in experience found, these ideas are foisted into the atoms of matter; and then the properties which have been conferred on the atoms are denied in all essential reality to the fully developed organisms which those atoms help to compose! i show later on (chapters v. and x.) that there is no necessary justification for assuming that a phenomenon exhibited by an aggregate of particles must be possessed by the ingredients of which it is composed; on the contrary, wholly new properties may make their appearance simply by aggregation; though i admit that such a proposition is by no means obvious, and that it may be a legitimate subject for controversy. but into that question our author does not enter; and even when he has conferred on the atoms these astounding properties, he abstains from what would seem a natural development: for his doctrine is that our power is actually less than that of the atoms,--that instead of utilising the attractions and repulsions, or "likes and dislikes," of our constituent particles, and directing them by the aggregate of conscious will-power to some preconceived end, we ourselves, on the contrary, are dominated and controlled by _them_; so that freedom of the will is an illusion. freedom being thus disposed of, immortality presents no difficulty; a soul is the operation of a group of cells, and so the existence of man clearly begins and ends with that of his terrestrial body:-- "the most important moment in the life of every man, as in that of all other complex animals, is the moment in which he begins his individual existence [coalescence of sperm cell and ovum] ... the existence of the personality, the independent individual, commences. this ontogenetic fact is supremely important, for the most far-reaching conclusions may be drawn from it. in the first place, we have a clear perception that man, like all the other complex animals, inherits all his personal characteristics, bodily and mental, from his parents; and further, we come to the momentous conclusion that the new personality which arises thus can lay no claim to 'immortality'" (p. ). others beside haeckel have held this kind of view at one time or another; but, unlike him, most of them have recanted and seen the error of their ways. he is, indeed, aware that several of his great german contemporaries have been through this phase of thought and come out on the other side, notably the physiologist-philosopher wundt, and he refers to them fairly and instructively thus:-- "what seems to me of special importance and value in wundt's work is that he 'extends the law of the persistence of force for the first time to the psychic world.' "thirty years afterwards, in a second edition, wundt emancipated himself from the fundamental errors of the first, and says that he 'learned many years ago to consider the work a sin of his youth'; it 'weighed on him as a kind of crime, from which he longed to free himself as soon as possible.' in the first, psychology is treated as a _physical_ science, on the same laws as the whole of physiology, of which it is only a part; thirty years afterwards he finds psychology to be a _spiritual_ science, with principles and objects entirely different from those of physical science. "i myself," says haeckel, "naturally consider the 'youthful sin' of the young physiologist wundt to be a correct knowledge of nature, and energetically defend it against the antagonistic view of the old philosopher wundt. this entire change of philosophical principles, which we find in wundt, as we found it in kant, virchow, du bois-reymond, carl ernst baer, and others, is very interesting" (p. ). so it is: very interesting! professor haeckel is so imbued with biological science that he loses his sense of proportion; and his enthusiasm for the work of darwin leads him to attribute to it an exaggerated scope, and enables him to eliminate the third of the kantian trilogy:-- "darwin's theory of the natural origin of species at once gave us the solution of the mystic 'problem of creation,' the great 'question of all questions'--the problem of the true character and origin of man himself" (p. ) [_cf._ p. above]. it is a great deal more than that patient observer and deep thinker charles darwin ever claimed, nor have his wiser disciples claimed it for him. it is familiar that he explained how variations once arisen would be clinched, if favourable in the struggle, by the action of heredity and survival; but the source or origin of the variations themselves he did not explain. do they arise by guidance or by chance? is natural selection akin to the verified and practical processes of artificial selection? or is it wholly alien to them and influenced by chance alone? the latter view can hardly be considered a complete explanation, though it is verbally the one adopted by professor haeckel, and it is of interest to see what he means by chance:-- "since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that there is no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to 'blind chance.' "one group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. the other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: the development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose--all is the result of chance. each party is right--according to its definition of chance. the general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. "everybody knows that chance, in this monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. that, however, does not prevent us from recognising in each 'chance' event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, _the law of substance_" (p. ). _illegitimate negations._ with regard to the possibility of revelation, or information derived from super-human sources, naturally he ridicules the idea; but in connection with the mode of origin and development of life on this planet he makes the following sensible and noteworthy admission:-- "it is very probable that these processes have gone on likewise on other planets, and that other planets have produced other types of the higher plants and animals, which are unknown on our earth; perhaps from some higher animal stem, which is superior to the vertebrate in formation, higher beings have arisen who far transcend us earthly men in intelligence." exactly; it is quite probable. it is, in fact, improbable that man is the highest type of existence. but if professor haeckel is ready to grant that probability or even possibility, why does he so strenuously exclude the idea of revelation, _i.e._, the acquiring of imparted information from higher sources? savages can certainly have "revelation" from civilised men. why, then, should it be inconceivable that human beings should receive information from beings in the universe higher than themselves? it may or may not be the case that they do; but there is no scientific ground for dogmatism on the subject, nor any reason for asserting the inconceivability of such a thing. professor haeckel would no doubt reply to some of the above criticism that he is not only a man of science, but also a philosopher, that he is looking ahead, beyond ascertained fact, and that it is his philosophic views which are in question rather than his scientific statements. to some extent it is both, as has been seen; but if even the above be widely known--if it be generally understood that the most controversial portions of his work are mainly speculative and hypothetical, it can be left to its proper purpose of doing good rather than harm. it can only do harm by misleading, it can do considerable good by criticising and stimulating and informing; and it is an interesting fact that a man so well acquainted with biology as professor haeckel is should have been so strongly impressed with the truth of some aspect of the philosophic system known as monism. many men of science have likewise been impressed with the probability, or possibility, of some such ultimate unification. the problem to be solved--and an old-world problem indeed it is--is the range, and especially the nature, of the connection between mind and matter; or, let us say, between the material universe on the one hand, and the vital, the mental, the conscious and spiritual universe or universes, on the other. it would be extremely surprising if any attempt yet made had already been thoroughly successful, though the attack on the idealistic side appears to many of us physicists to be by far the most hopeful line of advance. an excessively wide knowledge of existence would seem to be demanded for the success of any such most ambitious attempt; but, though none of us may hope to achieve it, many may strive to make some contribution towards the great end; and those who think they have such a contribution to make, or such a revelation entrusted to them, are bound to express it to the best of their ability, and leave it to their contemporaries and successors to assimilate such portions of it as are true, and to develop it further. from this point of view professor haeckel is no doubt amply justified in his writings; but, unfortunately, it appears to me that although he has been borne forward on the advancing wave of monistic philosophy, he has, in its specification, attempted such precision of materialistic detail, and subjected it to so narrow and limited a view of the totality of experience, that the progress of thought has left him, as well as his great english exemplar, herbert spencer, somewhat high and dry, belated and stranded by the tide of opinion which has now begun to flow in another direction. he is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the nineteenth century; he represents, in clear and eloquent fashion, opinions which then were prevalent among many leaders of thought--opinions which they themselves in many cases, and their successors still more, lived to outgrow; so that by this time professor haeckel's voice is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic direction. chapter iv memoranda for would-be materialists the objection which it has been found necessary to express concerning materialism as a complete system is based not on its assertions, but on its negations. in so far as it makes positive assertions, embodying the results of scientific discovery and even of scientific speculation based thereupon, there is no fault to find with it; but when, on the strength of that, it sets up to be a philosophy of the universe--all inclusive, therefore, and shutting out a number of truths otherwise perceived, or which appeal to other faculties, or which are equally true and are not really contradictory of legitimately materialistic statements--then it is that its insufficiency and narrowness have to be displayed. it will be probably instructive, and it may be sufficient, if i show that two great leaders in scientific thought (one the greatest of all men of science who have yet lived), though well aware of much that could be said positively on the materialistic side, and very willing to admit or even to extend the province of science or exact knowledge to the uttermost, yet were very far from being philosophic materialists or from imagining that other modes of regarding the universe were thereby excluded. great leaders of thought, in fact, are not accustomed to take a narrow view of existence, or to suppose that one mode of regarding it, or one set of formulæ expressing it, can possibly be sufficient and complete. even a sheet of paper has two sides: a terrestrial globe presents different aspects from different points of view; a crystal has a variety of facets; and the totality of existence is not likely to be more simple than any of these--is not likely to be readily expressible in any form of words, or to be thoroughly conceivable by any human mind. it may be well to remember that sir isaac newton was a theist of the most pronounced and thorough conviction, although he had a great deal to do with the reduction of the major cosmos to mechanics, _i.e._ with its explanation by the elaborated machinery of simple forces; and he conceived it possible that, in the progress of science, this process of reduction to mechanics would continue till it embraced nearly all phenomena. (see extract below.) that, indeed, has been the effort of science ever since, and therein lies the legitimate basis for materialistic statements, though not for a materialistic philosophy. the following sound remarks concerning newton are taken from huxley's _hume_, p. :-- "newton demonstrated all the host of heaven to be but the elements of a vast mechanism, regulated by the same laws as those which express the falling of a stone to the ground. there is a passage in the preface to the first edition of the _principia_, which shows that newton was penetrated, as completely as descartes, with the belief that all the phenomena of nature are expressible in terms of matter and motion:-- "'would that the rest of the phenomena of nature could be deduced by a like kind of reasoning from mechanical principles. for many circumstances lead me to suspect that all these phenomena may depend upon certain forces, in virtue of which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, are either mutually impelled against one another, and cohere into regular figures, or repel and recede from one another; which forces being unknown, philosophers have as yet explored nature in vain. but i hope that, either by this method of philosophising, or by some other and better, the principles here laid down may throw some light upon the matter.'" here is a full-blown anticipation of an intelligible exposition of the universe in terms of matter and force: the substantial basis of what smaller men call materialism and develop into what they consider to be a materialistic philosophy. but there is no necessity for anything of the kind; a systematic expression of facts in terms of one of their aspects does not exclude expression in terms of other and totally different aspects also. denial of all sides but one, is a poor kind of unification. denial of this sort is the weakness and delusion of the people who call themselves 'christian scientists': they have hold of one side of truth--and that should be granted them,--but they hold it in so narrow and insecure a fashion that, in self-defence, they think it safest strenuously to deny the existence of all other sides. in this futile enterprise they are imitating the attitude of the philosophic materialists, on the other side of the controversy. and then, again, professor huxley himself, who is commonly spoken of by half-informed people as if he were a philosophic materialist, was really nothing of the kind; for although, like newton, fully imbued with the mechanical doctrine, and, of course, far better informed concerning the biological departments of nature and the discoveries which have in the last century been made, and though he rightly regarded it as his mission to make the scientific point of view clear to his benighted contemporaries, and was full of enthusiasm for the facts on which materialists take their stand, he saw clearly that these alone were insufficient for a philosophy. the following extracts from the 'hume' volume will show, first, that he entirely repudiated materialism as a satisfactory or complete scheme of things; and, secondly, that he profoundly disagreed with the position which now appears to be occupied by professor haeckel. especially is he severe on gratuitous denials applied to provinces beyond our scope, saying:-- "that while it is the summit of human wisdom to learn the limit of our faculties, it may be wise to recollect that we have no more right to make denials, than to put forth affirmatives, about what lies beyond that limit. whether either mind or matter has a 'substance' or not is a problem which we are incompetent to discuss; and it is just as likely that the common notions upon the subject should be correct as any others.... 'the same principles which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense'" (p. ). and on p. he speaks concerning "substance"--that substance which constitutes the foundation of haeckel's philosophy--almost as if he were purposely confuting that rather fly-blown production:-- "thus, if any man think he has reason to believe that the '_substance_' of matter, to the existence of which no limit can be set either in time or space, is the infinite and eternal substratum of all actual and possible existences, which is the doctrine of philosophical materialism, as i understand it, i have no objection to his holding that doctrine; and i fail to comprehend how it can have the slightest influence upon any ethical or religious views he may please to hold.... "moreover, the ultimate forms of existence which we distinguish in our little speck of the universe are, possibly, only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which we are not competent so much as to conceive--in the midst of which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a london balcony, has of the life of the great city. "that which i do very strongly object to is the habit, which a great many non-philosophical materialists unfortunately fall into, of forgetting all these very obvious considerations. they talk as if the proof that the 'substance of matter' was the 'substance' of all things cleared up all the mysteries of existence. in point of fact, it leaves them exactly where they were.... your religious and ethical difficulties are just as great as mine. the speculative game is drawn--let us get to practical work" (p. ). and again on pp. and :-- "it is worth any amount of trouble to ... know by one's own knowledge the great truth ... that the honest and rigorous following up of the argument which leads us to 'materialism' inevitably carries us beyond it" (p. ). "to sum up. if the materialist affirms that the universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, berkeley replies, true; but what you call matter and motion are known to us only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or known; and the existence of a state of consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, is a contradiction in terms. "i conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. and, therefore, if i were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism, i should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative" (p. ). let the jubilant but uninstructed and comparatively ignorant amateur materialist therefore beware, and bethink himself twice or even thrice before he conceives that he understands the universe and is competent to pour scorn upon the intuitions and perceptions of great men in what may be to him alien regions of thought and experience. let him explain, if he can, what he means by his own identity, or the identity of any thinking or living being, which at different times consists of a totally different set of material particles. something there clearly is which confers personal identity and constitutes an individual: it is a property characteristic of every form of life, even the humblest; but it is not yet explained or understood, and it is no answer to assert gratuitously that there is some fundamental "substance" or material basis on which that identity depends, any more than it is an explanation to say that it depends upon a "soul." these are all forms of words. as hume says, quoted by huxley with approval in the work already cited, p. :-- "it is impossible to attach any definite meaning to the word 'substance,' when employed for the hypothetical substratum of soul and matter.... if it be said that our personal identity requires the assumption of a substance which remains the same while the accidents of perception shift and change, the question arises what is meant by personal identity?... a plant or an animal, in the course of its existence, from the condition of an egg or seed to the end of life, remains the same neither in form, nor in structure, nor in the matter of which it is composed: every attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and yet we say that it is always one and the same individual" (p. ). and in his own preface to the 'hume' volume huxley expresses himself forcibly thus,--equally antagonistic as was his wont to both ostensible friend and ostensible foe, as soon as they got off what he considered the straight path:-- "that which it may be well for us not to forget is, that the first-recorded judicial murder of a scientific thinker [socrates] was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues.... clear knowledge of what one does not know just as important as knowing what one does know.... "the development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to 'take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such'; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. the modern spirit is not the spirit 'which always denies,' delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit which works and will work 'without haste and without rest,' gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns, and devouring error with unquenchable fire" (p. viii.). the harvesting of truth is a safe enough enterprise, but the devouring of error is a more dangerous pastime, since flames are liable to spread beyond our control; and though, in a world overgrown with weeds and refuse, the cleansing influence of fire is a necessity, it would be cruel to apply the same agency again at a later stage, when a fresh young crop is springing up in the cleared ground. chapter v religion and philosophy the aphorism sometimes encountered, that "whatever properties appertain to a whole must essentially belong to the parts of which it is composed," is a fallacy. a property can be possessed by an aggregation of atoms which no atom possesses in the slightest degree. those who think otherwise are unacquainted with mathematical laws other than simple proportion or some continuous or additive functions; they are not aware of discontinuities; they are not experienced in critical values, above which certain conditions obtain, while below them there is suddenly nothing. to refute them an instance must suffice:-- a meteoric stone may seem to differ from a planet only in size, but the difference in size involves also many other differences, notably the fact that the larger body can attract and hold to itself an atmosphere--a circumstance of the utmost importance to the existence of life on its surface. in order, however, that a planet may by gravitative attraction control the roving atoms of gas, and confine their excursions to within a certain range of itself, it must have a very considerable mass. the earth is big enough to do it; the moon is not. by simply piling atoms or stones together into a mighty mass there comes a critical point at which an atmosphere becomes possible; and directly an atmosphere exists, all manner of phenomena may spring into existence, which without it were quite impossible. so, also, it may be said that a sun differs from a dark planet only in size; for it is just the fact of great size which enables its gravitative-shrinkage and earthquake-subsidence to generate an immense quantity of heat and to maintain the mass for æons at an excessively high temperature, thereby fitting it to become the centre of light and life to a number of worlds. the blaze of the sun is a property which is the outcome of its great mass. a small permanent sun is an impossibility. wherefore, properties can be possessed by an aggregate or assemblage of particles which in the particles themselves did not in the slightest degree exist. if, however, we reverse the aphorism and say that whatever is in a part must be in the whole, we are on much safer ground. i do not say that it cannot be pressed into illegitimate extremes, but in one and that the simplest sense it is little better than a platitude. the fact that an apple has pips legitimises the assertion that an apple-tree has pips, and that the peculiar property of pips represents a faculty enjoyed by the vegetable kingdom as a whole; but it would be a childish misunderstanding to expect to find actual pips in the trunk of a tree or in all vegetables. there is a tendency to call the argument or statement that whatever faculty man possesses the deity must have also; by the name anthropomorphism; but it seems to me a misnomer, and to convey quite wrong ideas. the argument represented by "he that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" need not assume for a moment that god has sense organs akin to those of man, or that he appreciates ethereal and aerial vibrations in the same sort of way. it is not an assertion of similarity between god and man, but merely a realisation that what belongs to a part _must_ be contained in the whole. it is not even necessarily pantheistic: it would hold equally well on a theistic interpretation. regarded pantheistically it is obvious and requires no stating: regarded theistically, it is a perception that faculties and powers which have come into existence, and are actually at work in the universe, cannot have arisen without the knowledge and sympathy and full understanding of the sustainer and comprehender of it all. nor can functions be expected in the creature which transcend the power of the creator. all our faculties, sensations, and emotions must therefore be understood, and in a sense possessed, in some transcendental and to us unimaginable form, by the deity. i know that it is possible to deny his existence, just as it is possible to deny the existence of an external world or to maintain that reality is limited to our sensations. if the deity has a sense of humour, as undoubtedly he has, he must be amused at the remarkable philosophising faculty recently developed by the creature which on this planet has become most vigorously selfconscious and is in the early stages of progress towards higher things--a philosophising faculty so acute as to lead him to mistrust and throw away information conveyed to him by the very instruments which have enabled him to become what he is; so that having become keenly alive to the truth that all we are directly aware of is the fruit of our own sensations and consciousness, he proceeds to the grotesque supposition that these sensations and consciousness may be all that really exists, and that the information which for ages our senses have conveyed to us concerning external things may be illusory, not only in form and detail and appearance, but in substantial fact. he must be pleased, also, with the enterprise of those eager philosophers who are so strenuously impressed with the truth of some ultimate monistic unification, as to be unwilling to concede the multifariousness of existence--who decline to speak of mind and matter, or of body and spirit, or of god and the world, as in any sense separate entities--who stigmatise as dualistic anything which does not manifestly and consciously strain after an ultimate monistic view--and who then, as a climax, on the strength of a few years' superficial experience on a planet, by the aid of the sense organs which they themselves perceive to be illusory whenever the actual reality of things is in contemplation, proceed to develop the theory that the whole has come into being without direct intelligence and apart from spiritual guidance, that it is managed so well (or so ill) that it is really not managed at all, that no deity exists, and that it is absurd to postulate the existence of a comprehensive and all-inclusive guiding mind. to be able to perceive comprehensively and state fully not only what is, but also what is not, is a wonderful achievement. i do not think that such a power has yet been acquired by any of the sons of men; nor will the semi-educated readers of this country be wise if they pin their faith and build their hopes on the utterances of any man, however eminent, who makes this superhuman claim. now, in all charity, it must be admitted that in some passages professor haeckel puts himself under the ban implied by the above paragraph, inasmuch as he conducts a sort of free and easy attack on religion, especially on what he conceives to be the fundamental doctrines of christianity. but, after all, it can be perceived that his attack, so far as it is really an attack on religion, is evidently inspired by his mistrust and dislike, and to some extent fear, of ecclesiasticism, especially of the ultramontane movement in germany, against which he says prince bismarck began a struggle in . it is this kind of semi-political religion that he is really attacking, more than the pure essence of christianity itself. he regards it as a bigoted system hostile to knowledge--which, if true, would amply justify an attack--and he says on page :-- "the great struggle between modern science and orthodox christianity has become more threatening; it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as christianity has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction." this may seem an exaggerated fear; but the following extract from a pastoral address by the bishop of newport, which accidentally i saw reported in _the tablet_, shows that the danger is not wholly imaginary, if unwise opinions are pressed to their logical practical issue:-- "if the formulas of modern science contradict the science of catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter."[ ] [ ] in case it is unfair to wrench a sentence like this from its context, i quote the larger portion of that instructive report in this note:-- _extract from "the tablet," aug. th, --an address by the bishop of newport._ "if the abbé loisy has followers within the church, as we are informed he has, it cannot be doubted that the danger for catholics is by no means imaginary. for loisy teaches that the dogmatic definitions of the church [on the incarnation], although the best that could be given at the time and under the circumstances, are only a most inadequate expression of the real truth, which they represent merely relatively and imperfectly. these definitions, he says, should now be stated afresh, because the traditional formula no longer corresponds to the way in which the mystery is regarded by contemporary thought. in his view, our present knowledge of the universe should suggest to the church a new examination of the dogma of creation; our knowledge of history should make her revise her ideas of revelation; and our progress in psychology and moral philosophy should suggest to her to re-state her theology of the incarnation. every one can see that there is a grain of truth in this kind of talk. but it is, on the whole, a pestilent and dangerous heresy. if the formulas of modern science contradict the science of catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter. if modern metaphysics are incompatible with the metaphysical terms and expressions adopted by councils and explained by the catholic schools, then modern metaphysics must be rejected as erroneous. the church does not change her christian philosophy to suit the world's speculations; she teaches the world, by her theological definitions, what true and sound philosophy is. whilst every effort should be made by catholic apologists to smooth the way for a genuine understanding of the church's dogmatic terminology, two things must never be lost sight of, first, that this terminology expresses real objective truth (however inadequate the expression may be to the full meaning, as god sees it, of any given mystery); and, secondly, that such truth is expressed in terms of sound philosophy which will not be given up, and which may be called the christian philosophy." professor haeckel continues his criticism of official christianity in the following vein:-- "the so-called 'peace between church and state' is never more than a suspension of hostilities. the modern papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured state, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. true and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. either the church wins, and then farewell to all 'free science and free teaching'--then are our universities no better than gaols, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational state proves victorious--then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century. "in order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared--a 'palace of reason,' in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century--the trinity of 'the true, the good, and the beautiful'" (p. ). these are the bases of religion, adopted from goethe, which in haeckel's view should entirely replace what he calls the trinity of kant, viz., god, freedom, and immortality--three ideas which he regards as mere superstition or as so enveloped in superstition as to be worthless. occasionally, however, he attacks not solely ecclesiastical christianity--in which enterprise he is entirely within his rights,--but he goes further and abuses some of its more primitive forms, and to some extent its practical fruits also. for instance:-- "primitive christianity preached the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation for an eternal life beyond. hence it immediately followed that all we find in the life of a man here below, all that is beautiful in art and science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. the true christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy preparation for the life beyond. contempt of nature, aversion from all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all his time in prayers in the cloister or the hermit's cell.... a christian art is a contradiction in terms" (p. ). i think it may without offence be said that if he means by "primitive christianity" the teachings of christ, he is mistaken, and has something to learn as to what those teachings really were. if he means the times of persecution under the roman empire, he could hardly expect much concentration on artistic pursuits or much enjoyment of terrestrial existence when it was liable to be violently extinguished at any moment: sufficient that the early church survived its struggle for existence. but if he is referring to mediæval christianity, of any other than a debased kind,--common knowledge concerning mediæval art and architecture sufficiently rebuts the indictment. so much so, that one may almost wonder if by chance he happened to be thinking of "mohammedanism" rather than of christianity. but he continues, in a more practical and observant vein:-- "christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly-related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.) which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially buddhism. (unfortunately, descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal.) whoever has spent much time in the south of europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. and when one expostulates with these brutal 'christians' on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: 'but the beasts are not christians'" (p. ). this, if true, and i have heard it from other sources, does constitute rather a serious indictment against the form of practical christianity understood by the ignorant classes among the latin races. to return, however, to the concluding paragraph of the extract quoted above (on page ) from his page :-- no one can have any objection to raise against the dignity and worthiness of the three great attributes which excite professor haeckel's, as they excited goethe's, worship and admiration, viz., the three "goddesses," as he calls them: truth, goodness, and beauty; but there is no necessary competition or antagonism between these and the other three great conceptions which aroused the veneration of kant: god, freedom, and immortality; nor does the upholding of the one triad mean the overthrow of the other: they may be all co-eternal together and co-equal. nor are either of these triplets inconsistent with some reasonable view of what may be meant by the christian trinity. the total possibility of existence is so vast that no simple formula, nor indeed any form of words, however complex, is likely to be able to sum it up and express its essence to the exclusion of all other modes of expression. it is a pity, therefore, that professor haeckel should think it necessary to decry one set of ideas in order to support another set. there is room for all in this large universe--room for everything, except downright lies and falseness. concerning truth there is no need to speak: it cannot but be the breath of the nostrils of every genuine scientific man; but his ideas of truth should be large enough to take into account possibilities far beyond anything of which he is at present sure, and he should be careful to be undogmatic and docile in regions of which at present he has not the key. the meaning of goodness, the whole domain of ethics, and the higher possibilities of sainthood of which the human spirit has shown itself capable, are at present outside his domain; and if a man of science seeks to dogmatise concerning the emotions and the will, and asserts that he can reduce them to atomic forces and motions, because he has learnt to recognise the undoubted truth that atomic forces and motions must accompany them and constitute the machinery of their manifestation here and now,--he is exhibiting the smallness of his conceptions and gibbeting himself as a laughing-stock to future generations. the atmosphere and full meaning of beauty also he can only dimly grasp. if he seeks to explain it in terms of sexual selection, or any other small conception which he has recently been able to form in connection with vital procedure on this planet, he is explaining nothing: he is merely showing how the perception of beauty may operate in certain cases; but the inner nature of beauty and the faculty by which it is perceived are utterly beyond him. he cannot but feel that the unconscious and unobtrusive beauty of field and hedgerow must have originated in obedience to some primal instinct or in fulfilment of some immanent desire, some lofty need quite other than anything he recognises as human. and if a poet witnessing the colours of a sunset, for instance, or the profusion of beauty with which snow mountains seem to fling themselves to the heavens in districts unpeopled and in epochs long before human consciousness awoke upon the earth: if such a seer feels the revelation weigh upon his spirit with an almost sickening pressure, and is constrained to ascribe this wealth and prodigality of beauty to the joy of the eternal being in his own existence, to an anticipation as it were of the developments which lie before the universe in which he is at work, and which he is slowly tending towards an unimaginable perfection--it behooves the man of science to put his hand upon his mouth, lest in his efforts to be true, in the absence of knowledge, he find himself uttering, in his ignorance, words of lamentable folly or blasphemy. _man and nature._ consider our own position--it is surely worth considering. we are a part of this planet; on one side certainly and distinctly a part of this material world, a part which has become self-conscious. at first we were a part which had become alive; a tremendous step that--introducing a number of powers and privileges which previously had been impossible, but that step introduced no responsibility; we were no longer, indeed, urged by mere pressure from behind, we were guided by our instincts and appetites, but we still obeyed the strongest external motive, almost like electro-magnetic automata. now, however, we have become conscious, able to look before and after, to learn consciously from the past, to strive strenuously towards the future; we have acquired a knowledge of good and evil, we can choose the one and reject the other, and are thus burdened with a sense of responsibility for our acts. we still obey the strongest motive doubtless, but there is something in ourselves which makes it a motive and regulates its strength. we _can_ drift like other animals, and often do; but we can also obey our own volition. i would not deny the rudiments of self-consciousness, and some of what it implies, to certain domestic animals, notably the dog; but domestication itself is a result of humanity, and undoubtedly the attributes we are discussing are chiefly and almost solely human, they can hardly be detected in wild nature. no other animal can have a full perception of its own individuality and personality as separate from the rest of existence. such ideas do not occur in the early periods of even human infancy: they are a later growth. self-consciousness must have become prominent at a certain stage in the evolutionary process. how it all arose is a legitimate problem for genetic psychology, but to the plain man it is a puzzle; our ancestors invented legends to account for it--legends of apples and serpents and the like; but the fact is there, however it be accounted for. the truth embedded in that old genesis legend is deep; it is the legend of man's awakening from a merely animal life to consciousness of good and evil, no longer obeying his primal instincts in a state of thoughtlessness and innocency--a state in which deliberate vice was impossible and therefore higher and purposed goodness also impossible,--it was the introduction of a new sense into the world, the sense of conscience, the power of deliberate choice; the power also of conscious guidance, the management of things and people external to himself, for preconceived ends. man was beginning to cease to be merely a passenger on the planet, controlled by outside forces; it is as if the reins were then for the first time being placed in his hands, as if he was allowed to begin to steer, to govern his own fate and destiny, and to take over some considerable part of the management of the world. the process of handing over the reins to us is still going on. the education of the human race is a long process, and we are not yet fit to be fully trusted with the steering gear; but the words of the old serpent were true enough: once open our eyes to the perception and discrimination of good and evil, once become conscious of freedom of choice, and sooner or later we must inevitably acquire some of the power and responsibility of gods. a fall it might seem, just as a vicious man sometimes seems degraded below the beasts, but in promise and potency a rise it really was. the oneness between ourselves and nature is not a thing to be deplored; it is a thing to rejoice at, when properly conceived. it awakens a kind of religious enthusiasm even in haeckel, who clearly perceives but a limited aspect of it; yet the perception is vivid enough to cause him, this so-called atheist, to close his _confession of faith_ with words such as these:-- "now, at last, it is given to the mightily advancing human mind to have its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its yearning spirit. "knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. the true, the beautiful, and the good, these are the three august divine ones before which we bow the knee in adoration.... "in the hope that free research and free teaching may always continue, i conclude my monistic _confession of faith_ with the words: 'may god, the spirit of the good, the beautiful, and the true, be with us.'" this is clearly the utterance of a man to whose type i unconsciously referred in an article written two years ago (_hibbert journal_, january ), from which i now make the following appropriate extract:-- looking at the loom of nature, the feeling not of despair, but of what has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, has arisen: atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so called--recently it has been called severe theism, indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self-generated organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this view intelligible as well as instinctive, and sure that nothing less than unrepining unfaltering unswerving acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man. the above 'confession of faith,' then, is very well; for the man himself very well indeed, but it is not enough for the race. other parts of haeckel's writings show that it is not enough, and that his conception of what he means by godhead is narrow and limited to an extent at which instinct, reason, and experience alike rebel. no one can be satisfied with conceptions below the highest which to him are possible: i doubt if it is given to man to think out a clear and consistent system higher and nobler than the real truth. our highest thoughts are likely to be nearest to reality: they must be stages in the direction of truth, else they could not have come to us and been recognised as highest. so, also, with our longings and aspirations towards ultimate perfection, those desires which we recognise as our noblest and best: surely they must have some correspondence with the facts of existence, else had they been unattainable by us. reality is not to be surpassed, except locally and temporarily, by the ideals of knowledge and goodness invented by a fraction of itself; and if we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to "shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the heart's desire," we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings. the universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless, they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character in so far as they correspond with something true and real. whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is _ipso facto_ in a sense already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality. * * * * * explanatory note on constructive thought and optimism. (_partly reprinted from "mind."_) it may be worth while to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. it is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. for instance, it can be shown that in an electric field, however complicated, any distribution of potential which satisfies boundary conditions, and one or two other essential criteria, must be the actual distribution; for it has been rigorously proved that there cannot be two or more distributions which satisfy those conditions, hence if one is arrived at theoretically, or intuitively, or by any means, it must be the correct one; and no further proof is required. so, also, in connection with analogies and working models: although they must necessarily be imperfect, so long as they are only analogies, yet the making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual processes, occurring say in the ether or elsewhere. as an addition to evidence derived from such experiments as have been found possible, and as a supplement to the experience out of which, as out of a nucleus, every conception must grow, the mind is set to design and invent a self-coherent scheme which shall imitate as far as possible the results exhibited by nature. by then using this as a working hypothesis, and pressing it into extremes, it can be gradually amended until it shows no sign of discordance or failure anywhere, and even serves as a guide to new and previously unsuspected phenomena. when that stage is reached, it is provisionally accepted and tentatively held as a step in the direction of the truth; though the mind is always kept ready to improve and modify and enlarge it, in accordance with the needs of more thorough investigation and fresh discovery. it was so, for instance, with maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light; and there are a multitude of other instances. in the transcendental or ultra-mundane or supersensual region there is the further difficulty to be encountered, that we are not acquainted with anything like all the 'boundary conditions,' so to speak; we only know our little bit of the boundary, and we may err egregiously in inferring or attempting to infer the remainder. we may even make a mistake as to the form of function adapted to the case. nevertheless there is no better clue, and the human mind is impelled to do the best it can with the confessedly imperfect data which it finds at its disposal. the result, therefore, in this region, is no system of definite and certain truth, as in physics, but is either suspense of judgment altogether, or else a tentative scheme or working hypothesis, to be held undogmatically, in an attitude of constant receptiveness for further light, and in full readiness for modification in the direction of the truth. so far concerning the ascertainment of truth alone, in intangible regions of inquiry. the further hypothesis that such truth when found will be most satisfactory, or in other words higher and better than any alternative plan,--the conviction that faith in the exceeding grandeur of reality shall not be confounded,--requires further justification; and its grounds are not so easy to formulate. perhaps the feeling is merely human and instinctive; but it is existent and customary i believe among physicists, possibly among men of science in general, though i cannot speak for all; and it must be based upon familiarity with a mass of experience in which, after long groping and guess-work, the truth has ultimately been discovered, and been recognised as 'very good.' it is illustrated, for instance, by the words in which tyndall closes the first edition of his book on sound, wherein, after explaining helmholtz's brilliant theory of corti's organ and the musical mechanism of the ear,--a theory which, amid the difficulties of actual observation, was necessarily at first saturated with hypothesis, and is not even yet fully verified,--he says:-- "within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain.... i do not ask you to consider these views as established, but only as probable. they present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form; and should they be doomed to displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the substitution of the truth." chapter vi mind and matter what, then, is the probable essence of truth in professor haeckel's philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the average man; and for the average man to consider it likely that there is no foundation whatever for the life convictions of a great specialist is as foolish as to suppose it probable that they are certain and infallible, or that they are uncritically to be accepted even in regions beyond those over which his jurisdiction extends. first as to the "law of substance," by which he sets so much store; the fact which he is really, though indistinctly, trying to emphasise, is what i have preferred to formulate as "the persistence of the really existent," see page ; and, with that modification, we can agree with haeckel, or with what i take to be his inner meaning, to some extent. we may all fairly agree, i think, that whatever really and fundamentally _exists_ must, so far as bare existence is concerned, be independent of time. it may go through many changes, and thus have a history; that is to say, must have definite time-relations, so far as its changes are concerned; but it can hardly be thought of as either going out of existence, or as coming into existence, at any given period, though it may completely change its form and accidents; everything basal must have a past and a future of some kind or other, though any special concatenation or arrangement may have a date of origin and of destruction. a crowd, for instance, is of this fugitive character: it assembles and it disperses, its existence as a crowd is over, but its constituent elements persist; and the same can be said of a planet or a sun. yet for some "soul" or underlying reality even in these temporary accretions there is permanence of a sort:--tyndall's "streak of morning cloud," though it may have "melted into infinite azure," has not thereby become non-existent, although as a visible object it has disappeared from our ken and become a memory only. it is true that it was a mere aggregate or accidental agglomeration--it had developed no self-consciousness, nothing that could be called personality or identity characterised it,--and so no individual persistence is to be expected for it; yet even it--low down in the scale of being as it is--even it has rejoined the general body of aqueous vapour whence, through the incarnating influence of night, it arose. the thing that _is_, both _was_ and _shall be_, and whatever does not satisfy this condition must be an accidental or fugitive or essentially temporary conglomeration or assemblage, and not one of the fundamental entities of the universe. it is interesting to remember that this was one of the opinions strongly held by the late professor tait, who considered that persistence or conservation was the test or criterion of real existence. the question, how many fundamental entities in this sense there are, and what they are, is a difficult one. many people, including such opposite thinkers as tait and haeckel, would say "matter" and "energy"; though haeckel chooses, on his own account, to add that these two are one. (perhaps professor ostwald would agree with him there; though to me the meaning is vague.) physical science, pushed to the last resort, would probably reply that, within its sphere of knowledge at the present stage, the fundamental entities are _ether_ and _motion_; and that of other things at present it knows next to nothing. if physical science is interrogated as to the probable persistence, _i.e._, the fundamental existence, of "life" or of "mind," it ought to reply that it does not know; if asked about "personality," or "souls," or "god,"--about all of which professor haeckel has fully-fledged opinions--it would have to ask for a definition of the terms, and would speak either not at all or with bated breath concerning them. the possibility that "life" may be a real and basal form of existence, and therefore persistent, is a possibility to be borne in mind. it may at least serve as a clue to investigation, and some day may bear fruit; at present it is no better than a working hypothesis. it is one that on the whole commends itself to me; for i conceive that though we only know of it as a function of terrestrial matter, yet that it has another aspect too, and i say this because i see it arriving and leaving--animating matter for a time and then quitting it, just as i see dew appearing and disappearing on a plate. apart from a solid surface, dew cannot exist as such; and to a savage it might seem to spring into and to go out of existence--to be an exudation from the solid, and dependent wholly upon it; but we happen to know more about it: we know that it has a permanent and continuous existence in an imperceptible, intangible, supersensual form, though its visible manifestation in the form of mist or dew is temporary and evanescent. perhaps it is permissible to trace in that elementary phenomenon some superficial analogy to an incarnation. the fact concerning life which lies at the root of professor haeckel's doctrine about its origin, is that living beings have undoubtedly made their appearance on this planet, where at one time they cannot be suspected of having existed. consequently that whatever life may be, it is something which can begin to interact with the atoms of terrestrial matter, at some period, or state of aggregation, or other condition of elaboration,--a condition which may perhaps be rather definite, if only we were aware of what it was. but that undoubted fact is quite consistent with any view as to the nature of "life," and even with any view as to the mode of its terrestrial commencement; there is nothing in that to say that it is a function of matter alone, any more than the wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence; there is nothing even to contradict the notion that it sprang into existence suddenly at a literal word of command. the improbability or absurdity of such a conception as this last, except in the symbolism of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person; but its improbability depends upon other considerations than biologic ones, and it is as repugnant to an enlightened theology as to any other science. the mode in which biological speculation as to the probable development of living out of dead matter, and the general relation of protoplasm to physics and chemistry, can be surmised or provisionally granted, without thereby concurring in any destructive criticism of other facts and experiences, is explained in chapter x. on "life," further on: and there i emphasise my agreement with parts of the speculative contentions of professor haeckel on the positive side. _soul and body._ let us consider what are the facts scientifically known concerning the interaction between mind and matter. fundamentally they amount to this: that a complex piece of matter, called the brain, is the organ or instrument of mind and consciousness; that if it be stimulated mental activity results; that if it be injured or destroyed no manifestation of mental activity is possible. moreover, it is assumed, and need not be doubted, that a portion of brain substance is consumed, oxidised let us say, in every act of mentation: using that term in the vaguest and most general sense, and including in it unconscious as well as conscious operations. suppose we grant all this, what then? we have granted that brain is the means whereby mind is made manifest on this material plane, it is the instrument through which alone we know it, but we have not granted that mind is _limited_ to its material manifestation; nor can we maintain that without matter the things we call mind, intelligence, consciousness, have no sort of existence. mind may be incorporate or incarnate in matter, but it may also transcend it; it is through the region of ideas and the intervention of mind that we have become aware of the existence of matter. it is injudicious to discard our primary and fundamental _awareness_ for what is after all an instinctive inference or interpretation of certain sensations. the realities underlying those sensations are only known to us by inference, but they have an independent existence: in their inmost nature they may be quite other than what they seem, and are in no way dependent upon our perception of them. so, also, our actual personality may be something considerably unlike that conception of it which is based on our present terrestrial consciousness--a form of consciousness suited to, and developed by, our temporary existence here, but not necessarily more than a fraction of our total self. take an analogy: the eye is the organ of vision; by it we perceive light. stimulate the retina in any way, and we are conscious of the sensation of light; injure or destroy the eye, and vision becomes imperfect or impossible. if eyes did not exist we should probably know nothing about light, and we might be tempted to say that light did not exist. in a sense, to a blind race, light would not exist--that is to say, there would be no sensation of light, there would be no sight; but the underlying physical cause of that sensation--the ripples in the ether--would be there all the time. and it is these ethereal ripples which a physicist understands by the term "light." it is quite conceivable that a race of blind physicists would be able to devise experimental means whereby they could make experiments on what to us is luminous radiation, just as we now make experiments on electric waves, for which we have no sense organ. it would be absurd for a psychologist to inform them that light did not exist because sight did not. the _term_ might have to be reconsidered and redefined; indeed, most likely a polysyllabic term would be employed, as is unfortunately usual when a thing of which the race in general has no intimate knowledge requires nomenclature. but the thing would be there, though its mode of manifestation would be different; a term like "vision" might still be employed, to signify our mode of perceiving and experiencing the agency which now manifests itself to us through our eyes; and plants might grow by the aid of that agency just as they do now. so, also, brain is truly the organ of mind and consciousness, and to a brainless race these terms, and all other terms, would be meaningless; but no one is at liberty to assert, on the strength of that fact, that the realities underlying our use of those terms have no existence apart from terrestrial brains. nor can we say with any security that the stuff called "brain" is the only conceivable machinery which they are able to utilise: though it is true that we know of no other. yet it would seem that such a proposition must be held by a materialist, or by what can be implied by the term "monist," used in its narrowest and most unphilosophic sense--a sense which would be better expressed by the term materialistic-monist, with a limitation of the term matter to the terrestrial chemical elements and their combinations, _i.e._, to that form of substance to which the human race has grown accustomed--a sense which tends to exclude ethereal and other generalisations and unknown possibilities such as would occur to a philosophic monist of the widest kind. for that it may ultimately be discovered that there is some intimate and necessary connection between a generalised form of matter and some lofty variety of mind is not to be denied; though also it cannot be asserted. it has been surmised, for instance, that just as the corpuscles and atoms of matter, in their intricate movements and relations, combine to form the brain cell of a human being; so the cosmic bodies, the planets and suns and other groupings of the ether, may perhaps combine to form something corresponding as it were to the brain cell of some transcendent mind. the idea is to be found in newton. the thing is a mere guess, it is not an impossibility, and it cannot be excluded from a philosophic system by any negative statement based on scientific fact. in some such sense as that, matter and mind may be, for all we know, eternally and necessarily connected; they can be different aspects of some fundamental unity; and a lofty kind of monism can be true, just as a lofty kind of pantheism can be true. but the miserable degraded monism and lower pantheism, which limits the term "god" to that part of existence of which we are now aware--sometimes, indeed, to a fraction only of that--which limits the term "mind" to that of which we are ourselves conscious, and the term "matter" to the dust of the earth and the other visible bodies, is a system of thought appropriate, perhaps, to a fertile and energetic portion of the nineteenth century, but not likely to survive as a system of perennial truth. the term "organ" itself should have given pause to anyone desirous of promulgating a scheme such as that. "organ" is a name popularly given to an instrument of music. without it, or some other instrument, no material manifestation or display of music is possible; it is an instrument for the incarnation of music--the means whereby it interacts with the material world and throws the air and so our ears into vibration, it is the means whereby we apprehend it. injure the organ and the music is imperfect; destroy it and it ceases to be possible. but is it to be asserted on the strength of that fact that the term "music" has no significance apart from its material manifestation? have the ideas of sir edward elgar no reality apart from their record on paper and reproduction by an orchestra? it is true that without suitable instruments and a suitable sense-organ we should know nothing of music, but it cannot be supposed that its underlying essence would be therefore extinct or non-existent and meaningless. can there not be in the universe a multitude of things which matter as we know it is incompetent to express? is it not the complaint of every genius that his material is intractable, that it is difficult to coerce matter as he knows it into the service of mind as he is conscious of it, and that his conceptions transcend his powers of expression? the connection between soul and body, or more generally between spiritual and material, has been illustrated by the connection between the meaning of a sentence and the written or spoken word conveying that meaning. the writing or the speaking may be regarded as an incarnation of the meaning, a mode of stating or exhibiting its essence. as delivered, the sentence must have time relations; it has a beginning, middle, and end; it may be repeated, and the same general meaning may be expressed in other words; but the intrinsic meaning of the sentence itself need have no time relations, it may be true _always_, it may exist as an eternal "now," though it may be perceived and expressed by humanity with varying clearness from time to time. the soul of a thing is its underlying permanent reality--that which gives it its meaning and confers upon it its attributes. the body is an instrument or mechanism for the manifestation or sensible presentation of what else would be imperceptible. it is useless to ask whether a soul is immortal--a soul is always immortal "where a soul can be discerned": the question to ask concerning any given object is whether it has a soul or meaning or personal underlying reality at all. those who think that reality is limited to its terrestrial manifestation doubtless have a philosophy of their own, to which they are entitled and to which at any rate they are welcome; but if they set up to teach others that monism signifies a limitation of mind to the potentialities of matter as at present known; if they teach a pantheism which identifies god with nature in this narrow sense; if they hold that mind and what they call matter are so intimately connected that no _transcendence_ is possible; that, without the cerebral hemispheres, consciousness and intelligence and emotion and love, and all the higher attributes towards which humanity is slowly advancing, would cease to be; that the term "soul" signifies "a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion cells"; and that the term "god" is limited to the operation of a known evolutionary process, and can be represented as "the infinite sum of all natural forces, the sum of all atomic forces and all ether vibrations," to quote professor haeckel (_confession of faith_, p. ); then such philosophers must be content with an audience of uneducated persons, or, if writing as men of science, must hold themselves liable to be opposed by other men of science, who are able, at any rate in their own judgment, to take a wider survey of existence, and to perceive possibilities to which the said narrow and over-definite philosophers were blind. _life and guidance._ matter possesses energy, in the form of persistent motion, and it is propelled by force; but neither matter nor energy possesses the power of automatic guidance and control. energy has no directing power (this has been elaborated by croll and others: see, for instance, p. , and a letter in _nature_, vol. , p. , thirteen years ago, under the heading "force and determinism"). inorganic matter is impelled solely by pressure from behind, it is not influenced by the future, nor does it follow a preconceived course nor seek a predetermined end. an organism animated by mind is in a totally different case. the intangible influences of hunger, of a call, of perception of something ahead, are then the dominant feature. an intelligent animal which is being pushed is in an ignominious position and resents it; when led, or when voluntarily obeying a call, it is in its rightful attitude. the essence of mind is design and purpose. there are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? (_cf._ pp. , ). is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? a traveller who has lost his way in a mountain district, coming across a path, may rejoice, saying, "this will guide me home." a materialist, if he were consistent, should laugh such a traveller to scorn, saying, "what guidance or purpose can there be in a material object? there is no guidance or purpose in the universe; things _are_ because they cannot be otherwise, not because of any intention underlying them. how can a path, which is little better than the absence of grass or the wearing down of stones, know where you live or guide you to any desired destination? moreover, whatever knowledge or purpose the path exhibits must be _in the path_, must be a property of the atoms of which it is composed. to them some fraction of will, of power, of knowledge, and of feeling _may_ perhaps be attributed, and from their aggregation something of the same kind may perhaps be deduced. if the traveller can decipher that, he may utilise the material object to his advantage; but if he conceives the path to have been made with any teleological object or intelligent purpose, he is abandoning himself to superstition, and is as likely to be led by it to the edge of a precipice as to anywhere else. let him follow his superstition at his peril!" this is not a quotation, of course: but it is a parable. matter is the instrument and vehicle of mind; incarnation is the mode by which mind interacts with the present scheme of things, and thereby the element of guidance is supplied; it can, in fact, be embodied in an intelligent arrangement of inert inorganic matter. even a mountain path exhibits the property of guidance, and has direction: it is an incorporation of intelligence, though itself inert. direction is not a function of energy. the energy of sound from an organ is supplied by the blower of the bellows, which may be worked by a mechanical engine; but the melody and harmony, the sequence and co-existence of notes, are determined by the dominating mind of the musician: not necessarily of the executant alone, for the composer's mind may be evoked to some extent even by a pianola. the music may be said to be incarnate in the roll of paper which is ready to be passed through the instrument. so also can the conception of any artist receive material embodiment in his work, and if a picture or a beautiful building is destroyed it can be made to rise again from its ashes provided the painter or the architect still lives: in other words, his thought can receive a fresh incarnation; and a perception of the beautiful form shall hereafter, in a kindred spirit, arouse similar ideas. there is thus a truth in materialism, but it is not a truth readily to be apprehended and formulated. matter may become imbued with life, and full of vital association; something of the personality of a departed owner seems to cling sometimes about an old garment, its curves and folds can suggest him vividly to our recollection. i would not too blatantly assert that even a doll on which much affection had been lavished was wholly inert and material in the inorganic sense. the tattered colours of a regiment are sometimes thought worthy to be hung in a church. they are a symbol truly, but they may be something more. i have reason to believe that a trace of individuality can cling about terrestrial objects in a vague and almost imperceptible fashion, but to a degree sufficient to enable those traces to be detected by persons with suitable faculties. there is a deep truth in materialism; and it is the foundation of the material parts of worship--sacraments and the like. it is possible to exaggerate their efficacy, but it is also possible to ignore it too completely. the whole universe is metrical, everything is a question of degree. a property like radio-activity or magnetism, discovered conspicuously in one form of matter, turns out to be possessed by matter of every kind, though to very varying extent. so it would appear to be with the power possessed by matter to incarnate and display mind. there are grades of incarnation: the most thorough kind is that illustrated by our bodies; in them we are incarnate, but probably not even in that case is the incarnation complete. it is quite credible that our whole and entire personality is never terrestrially manifest. there are grades of incarnation. some of the personality of an old master is locked up in a painting: and whoever wilfully destroys a great picture is guilty of something akin to murder, namely, the premature and violent separation of soul and body. some of the soul of a musician can be occluded in a piece of manuscript, to be deciphered thereafter by a perceptive mind. matter is the vehicle of mind, but it is dominated and transcended by it. a painting is held together by cohesive forces among the atoms of its pigments, and if those forces rebelled or turned repulsive the picture would be disintegrated and destroyed; yet those forces did not make the picture. a cathedral is held together by inorganic forces, and it was built in obedience to them, but they do not explain it. it may owe its existence and design to the thought of someone who never touched a stone, or even of someone who was dead before it was begun. in its symbolism it represents one who was executed many centuries ago. death and time are far from dominant. are we so sure that when we truly attribute a sunset, or the moonlight rippling on a lake, to the chemical and physical action of material forces--to the vibrations of matter and ether as we know them, that we have exhausted the whole truth of things? many a thinker, brooding over the phenomena of nature, has felt that they represent the thoughts of a dominating unknown mind partially incarnate in it all. chapter vii professor haeckel's conjectural philosophy _a reply to mr m'cabe._ part of the preceding, so far as it is a criticism of haeckel, was given by me in the first instance as a presidential address to the members of the birmingham and midland institute; and the greater portion of this address was printed in the _hibbert journal_ for january . mr m'cabe, the translator of haeckel, thereupon took up the cudgels on behalf of his chief, and wrote an article in the following july issue; to the pages of which references will be given when quoting. a few observations of mine in reply to this article emphasise one or two points which perhaps previously were not quite clear; and so this reply, from the october number of the _hibbert journal_, may be conveniently here reproduced. i have no fault to find with the tone of mr m'cabe's criticism of my criticism of haeckel, and it is satisfactory that one who has proved himself an enthusiastic disciple, as well as a most industrious and competent translator, should stand up for the honour and credit of a foreign master when he is attacked. but in admitting the appropriateness and the conciliatory tone of his article, i must not be supposed to agree with its contentions; for although he seeks to show that after all there is but little difference between myself and haeckel--and although in a sense that is true as regards the fundamental facts of science, distinguishing the facts themselves from any hypothetical and interpretative gloss--yet with haeckel's interpretations and speculative deductions from the facts, especially with the mode of presentation, and the crude and unbalanced attacks on other fields of human activity, my feeling of divergence occasionally becomes intense. and it is just these superficial, and as mr m'cabe now admits hypothetical, and as they seem to me rather rash, excursions into side issues, which have attracted the attention of the average man, and have succeeded in misleading the ignorant. if it could be universally recognised that "it is expressly as a hypothesis that haeckel formulates his conjecture as to manner of the origin of life" (p. ), and if it could be further generally admitted that his authority outside biology is so weak that "it is mere pettiness to carp at incidental statements on matters on which haeckel is known to have or to exercise no peculiar authority, or to labour in determining the precise degree of evidence for the monism of the inorganic or the organic world" (p. ), i should be quite content, and hope that i may never find it necessary to carp at these things again. also i entirely agree with mr m'cabe, though i have some doubt whether professor haeckel would equally agree with him, that "there remain the great questions whether this mechanical evolution of the universe needed intelligent control, and whether the mind of man stands out as imperishable amidst the wreck of worlds. these constitute the serious controversy of our time in the region of cosmic philosophy or science. these are the rocks that will divide the stream of higher scientific thought for long years to come. to many of us it seems that a concentration on these issues is as much to be desired as sympathy and mutual appreciation" (p. ). this is excellent; but then it is surely true that professor haeckel has taken great pains to state forcibly and clearly that these great questions cannot by him be regarded as open; in fact mr m'cabe himself says-- "haeckel's position, if expressed at times with some harshness, and not always with perfect consistency, is well enough known. he rejects the idea of intelligent and benevolent guidance, chiefly on the ground of the facts of dysteleology, and he fails to see any evidence for exempting the human mind from the general law of dissolution" (p. ). ultimately, however, he appears to have been driven to a singularly unphilosophic view, of which mr m'cabe says-- "it is interesting to note that in his latest work haeckel regards sensation (or unconscious sentience) as an ultimate and irreducible attribute of substance, like matter (or extension) and force (or spirit)" (p. ). i call this unphilosophical because--omitting any reference here to the singular parenthetical explanations or paraphrases, for which i suppose haeckel is not to be held responsible--this is simply abandoning all attempt at explanation; it even closes the door to inquiry, and is equivalent to an attitude proper to any man in the street, for it virtually says: "here the thing is anyhow, i cannot explain it." however legitimate and necessary such an attitude may be as an expression of our ignorance, we ought not to use the phrase "ultimate and irreducible," as if no one could ever explain it. moreover, if it be true that-- "haeckel does not teach--never did teach--that the spiritual universe is an aspect of the material universe, as his critic makes him say, it is his fundamental and most distinctive idea that both are attributes or aspects of a deeper reality" (p. )-- in that case there is, indeed, but little difference between us. but no reader of haeckel's _riddle_ would have anticipated that such a contention could be made by any devout disciple; and i wonder whether mr m'cabe can adduce any passage adequate to support so estimable a position. surely it is difficult to sustain in face of quotations such as these:-- "the peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is ... a physiological problem, and as such must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry" (p. ). "i therefore consider psychology a branch of natural science--a section of physiology.... we shall give to the material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of psychoplasm" (p. ). _life and energy._ the one and only point on which i think it worth while to express decided dissidence is to be found in the paragraph where mr m'cabe makes a statement concerning what he calls "vital force,"--a term i do not remember to have ever used in my life. he claims for haeckel what is represented by the following extracts from his article (pp. , , ):-- "he does not say that life is 'knocked out of existence' when the material organism decays. he says that the vital energy no longer exists _as such_, but is resolved into the inorganic energies associated with the gases and relics of the decaying body. thus the matter looks a little different when sir oliver comes to 'challenge him to say by what right he gives that answer.' he gives it on this plain right, that _science always finds these inorganic energies to reappear on the dissolution of life_, and has never in a single instance found the slightest reason to suspect (if we make an exception for the moment of psychical research) that the vital force as such has continued to exist." the italics are mine. a little further on he continues:-- "there is no serious scientific demur to haeckel's assumption of a monism of the physical world, and his identification of vital force with ordinary physical and chemical forces. "sir oliver seems to admit, indeed, that the vital force is not in its nature distinct from physical force, but holds that it needs 'guidance.'" "on all sides we hear the echo of professor le conte's words: 'vital force may now be regarded as so much force withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical forces.'" very well then, here is no conflict on a matter of opinion or philosophic speculation, but divergence on a downright question of scientific fact (let it be noted that i do not wish to hold professor haeckel responsible for these utterances of his disciple: he must surely know better), and i wish to oppose the fallacy in the strongest terms. if it were true that vital energy turned into or was anyhow convertible into inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that "these inorganic energies" always or ever "reappear on the dissolution of life," then undoubtedly _cadit quæstio_; life would immediately be proved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of physics. but inasmuch as all this is untrue--the direct contrary of the truth--i maintain that life is _not_ a form of energy, that it is _not_ included in our present physical categories, that its explanation is still to seek. and i have further stated--though there i do not dogmatise--that it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists (_cf._ p. ); for, though they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they merely utilise available energy like any other machine, live things are able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths, so as to achieve results which without such living agency could not have occurred--_e.g._ forests, ant-hills, birds' nests, forth bridge, sonatas, cathedrals. i have never taught, nor for a moment thought, that "vital force is akin to physical force, but that it needs guidance" (p. ); the phrase sounds to me nonsense. i perceive, not as a theory, but as a fact, that life is _itself_ a guiding principle, a controlling agency, _i.e._ that a live animal or plant can and does guide or influence the elements of inorganic nature. the fact of an organism possessing life enables it to build up material particles into many notable forms--oak, eagle, man,--which material aggregates last until they are abandoned by the guiding principle, when they more or less speedily fall into decay, or become resolved into their elements, until utilised by a fresh incarnation; and hence i say that whatever life is or is not, it is certainly this: it is a guiding and controlling entity which interacts with our world according to laws so partially known that we have to say they are practically unknown, and therefore appear in some respects mysterious. if it be thought that i mean by this something superstitious, and for ever inexplicable or unintelligible, i have no such meaning. i believe in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, though our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid; but this matter of "vitality" is probably not hopelessly beyond us; and it does not follow, because we have no theory of life or death now, that we shall be equally ignorant a century hence. my chief objection to professor haeckel's literary work is that he is dogmatic on such points as these, and would have people believe, what doubtless he believes himself, that he already knows the answer to a number of questions in the realms of physical nature and of philosophy. he writes in so forcible and positive and determined a fashion, from the vantage ground of scientific knowledge, that he exerts an undue influence on the uncultured among his readers, and causes them to fancy that only benighted fools or credulous dupes can really disagree with the historical criticisms, the speculative opinions, and philosophical, or perhaps unphilosophical, conjectures, thus powerfully set forth. chapter viii hypothesis and analogies concerning life the view concerning life which i have endeavoured to express is that it is neither matter nor energy, nor even a function of matter or of energy, but is something belonging to a different category; that by some means at present unknown it is able to interact with the material world for a time, but that it can also exist in some sense independently; although in that condition of existence it is by no means apprehensible by our senses. it is dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but otherwise, i conceive that it is independent, that its essential existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and i conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state. it may be well to indicate what i mean by conceiving of the possibility that life has an existence apart from its material manifestations as we know them at present. (remember note on p. .) it is easy to imagine that such a view is a mere surmise, having no intelligible meaning, and that it is merely an attempt to clutch at human immortality in an emotional and unscientific spirit. to this, however, i in no way plead guilty. my ideas about life may be quite wrong, but they are as cold-blooded and free from bias as possible; moreover, they apply not to human life alone, but to all life--to that of all animals, and even of plants; and they are held by me as a working hypothesis, the only one which enables me to fit the known facts of ordinary vitality into a thinkable scheme. without it, i should be met by all the usual puzzles:--( ) as to the stage at which existence begins, if it can be thought of as "beginning" at all;[ ] ( ) as to the nature of individuality, in the midst of diversity of particles, and the determination of form irrespective of variety of food; ( ) the extraordinary rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century. [ ] i doubt whether _existence_ can be "begun" at all, save as the result of a juxtaposition of elements, or of a conveyance of motion. we can put things together, and we can set things in motion,--statics and kinetics,--can we do more? ether can be strained, matter can be moved: i doubt whether we see more than this happening in the whole material universe. this dictum is elaborated elsewhere. with it, i cannot pretend that all these things are thoroughly intelligible, but the lines on which an explanation may be forthcoming seem to be laid down:--the notion being that what we see is a temporary apparition or incarnation of a permanent entity or idea. it is easiest to explain my meaning by aid of analogues,--by the construction, as it were, of "models," just as is the custom in physics whenever a recondite idea has to be grasped before it can be properly formulated and before a theory is complete. i will take two analogies: one from magnetism and one from politics. "parliament," or "the army," is a body which consists of individual members constantly changing, and its existence is not dependent on their existence: it pre-existed any particular set of them, and it can survive a dissolution. even after a complete slaughter, the idea of the army would survive, and another would come into being, to carry on the permanent traditions and life. except as an idea in some sentient mind, it could not be said to exist at all. the mere individuals composing it do not make it: without the idea they would be only a disorganised mob. abstractions like the british constitution, and other such things, can hardly be said to have any incarnate existence. these exist _only_ as ideas. parliament exists fundamentally as an idea, and it can be called into existence or re-incarnated again. whether it is the same parliament or not after a general election is a question that may be differently answered. it is not identical, it may have different characteristics, but there is certainly a sort of continuity; it is still a british parliament, for instance, it has not changed its character to that of the french assembly or the american congress. it is a permanent entity even when disembodied; it has a past and it has a future; it has a fundamentally continuous existence though there are breaks or dislocations in its conspicuous activity, and though each incarnation has a separate identity or personality of its own. it is larger and more comprehensive than any individual representation of it; it may be said to have a "subliminal self," of which any septennial period sees but a meagre epitome. some of those epitomes are more, some less, worthy; sometimes there appears only a poor deformity or a feeble-minded attempt, sometimes a strong and vigorous embodiment of the root idea. as to its technical continuity of existence and actual mode of reproduction, i suppose it would be merely fanciful to liken the "crown" to those germ-cells or nuclei, whose existence continues without break, which serve the purpose of collecting and composing the somatic cells in due season. other illustrations of the temporary incarnation of a permanent idea are readily furnished from the domain of art; but, after all, the best analogy to life that i can at present think of is to be found in the subject of magnetism. at one time it was possible to say that magnetism could not be produced except by antecedent magnetism; that there was no known way of generating it spontaneously; yet that, since it undoubtedly occurs in certain rocks of the earth, it must have come into existence somehow, at date unknown. it could also be said, and it can be said still, that, given an initial magnet, any number of others can be made, without loss to the generating magnet. by influence or induction exerted by proximity on other pieces of steel, the properties of one magnet can be excited in any number of such pieces,--the amount of magnetism thus producible being infinite; that is, being strictly without limit, and not dependent at all on the very finite strength of the original magnet, which indeed continues unabated. it is just as if magnetism were not really manufactured at all, but were a thing called out of some infinite reservoir: as if something were brought into active and prominent existence from a previously dormant state. and that indeed is the fact. the process of magnetisation, as conducted with a steel magnet on other pieces of previously inert steel, in no case really generates new lines of magnetic force, though it appears to generate them. we now know that the lines which thus spring into corporeal existence, as it were, are essentially closed curves or loops, which cannot be generated; they can be expanded or enlarged to cover a wide field, and they can be contracted or shrunk up into insignificance, but they cannot be created, they must be pre-existent; they were in the non-magnetised steel all the time, though they were so small and ill-arranged that they had no perceptible effect whatever; they constituted a potentiality for magnetism; they existed as molecular closed curves or loops, which, by the operation called magnetisation, could, some of them, be opened out into loops of finite area and spread out into space, where they are called "lines of force." they then constitute the region called a magnetic field, which remains a seat of so-called "permanent" magnetic activity, until by lapse of time, excessive heat, or other circumstance, they close up again; and so the magnet, as a magnet, dies. the magnetism itself, however, has not really died, it has a perpetual existence; and a fresh act of magnetisation can recall it, or something indistinguishable from it, into manifest activity again; so that it, or its equivalent, can once more interact with the rest of material energies, and be dealt with by physicists, or subserve the uses of humanity. until that time of re-appearance its existence can only be inferred by the thought of the mathematician: it is indeed a matter of theory, not necessarily recognised as true by the practical man. our present view is that the act of magnetisation consists in a re-arrangement and co-ordination of previously existing magnetic elements, lying dormant, so to speak, in iron and other magnetic materials; only a very small fraction of the whole number being usually brought into activity at any one time, and not necessarily always the same actual set. only a small and indiscriminate selection is made from all the molecular loops; and it can be a different group each time, or some elements may be different and some the same, whenever a fresh individual or magnet is brought into being. all this can be said concerning the old process of magnetisation--the process as it was doubtless familiar to the unknown discoverer of the lodestone, to the ancient users of the mariner's compass, and to dr gilbert of colchester, the discoverer of the magnetised condition of the earth. but within the nineteenth century a fresh process of magnetisation has been discovered, and this new or electrical process is no longer obviously dependent on the existence of antecedent magnetism, but seems at first sight to be a property freshly or spontaneously generated, as it were. the process was discovered as the result of setting electricity into motion. so long as electricity was studied in its condition at rest on charged conductors, as in the old science of electrostatics or frictional electricity, it possessed no magnetic properties whatever, nor did it encroach on the magnetic domain: only vague similarities in the phenomena of attraction and repulsion aroused attention. but directly electricity was set in motion, constituting what is called an electric current, magnetic lines of force instantly sprang into being, without the presence of any steel or iron; and in twenty years they were recognised. these electrically generated lines of force are similar to those previously known, but they need no matter to sustain them. they need matter to display them, but they themselves exist equally well in perfect vacuum. how did they manage to spring into being? can it be said that they too had existed previously in some dormant condition in the ether of space? that they too were closed loops opened out, and their existence thus displayed, by the electric current? that is an assertion which might reasonably be made: it is not the only way of regarding the matter, however, and the mode in which a magnetic field originates round the path of a moving charge--being generated during the acceleration-period by a pulse of radiation which travels with the speed of light, being maintained during the steady-motion period by a sort of inertia as if in accordance with the first law of motion, and being destroyed only by a return pulse of re-radiation during a retardation-period when the moving charge is stopped or diverted or reversed--all this can hardly be fully explained until the intimate nature of an electric charge has been more fully worked out; and the subject now trenches too nearly on the more advanced parts of physics to be useful any longer as an analogue for general readers. indeed it must be recollected that no analogy will bear pressing too far. all that we are concerned to show is that known magnetic behaviour exhibits a very fair analogy to some aspects of that still more mysterious entity which we call "life"; and if anyone should assert that all magnetism was pre-existent in some ethereal condition, that it would never go out of essential existence, but that it could be brought into relation with the world of matter by certain acts,--that while there it could operate in a certain way, controlling the motion of bodies, interacting with forms of energy, producing sundry effects for a time, and then disappearing from our ken to the immaterial region whence it came,--he would be saying what no physicist would think it worth while to object to, what many indeed might agree with. well, that is the kind of assertion which i want to make, as a working hypothesis, concerning life. an acorn has in itself the potentiality not of one oak-tree alone, but of a forest of oak-trees, to the thousandth generation, and indeed of oak-trees without end. there is no sort of law of "conservation" here. it is not as if something were passed on from one thing to another. it is not analogous to energy at all, it is analogous to the magnetism which can be excited by any given magnet: the required energy, in both cases, being extraneously supplied, and only transmuted into the appropriate form by the guiding principle which controls the operation. we do not know how to generate life without the action of antecedent life at present, though that may be a discovery lying ready for us in the future; but even if we did, it would still be true (as i think) that the life was in some sense pre-existent, that it was not really created _de novo_, that it was brought into actual practical every-day existence doubtless, but that it had pre-existed in some sense too: being called out, as it were, from some great reservoir or storehouse of vitality, to which, when its earthly career is ended, it will return. indeed, it cannot in any proper sense be said ever to have left that storehouse, though it has been made to interact with the world for a time; and, if we might so express it, it may be thought of as carrying back with it, into the general reservoir, any individuality, and any experience and training or development, which it can be thought of as having acquired here. such a statement as this last cannot be made of magnetism, to which no known law of evolution and progress can be supposed to apply; but of life, of anything subject to continuous evolution or linear progress embodied in the race, of any condition not cyclically determinate and returning into itself, but progressing and advancing--acquiring fresh potentialities, fresh powers, fresh beauties, new characteristics such as perhaps may never in the whole universe have been displayed before--of everything which possesses such powers as these, a statement akin to the above may certainly be made. to all such things, when they reach a high enough stage, the ideas of continued personality, of memory, of persistent individual existence, not only may, but i think must, apply; notwithstanding the admitted return of the individual after each incarnation to the central store from which it was differentiated and individualised. even so a villager, picked out as a recruit and sent to the seat of war, may serve his country, may gain experience, acquire a soul and a width of horizon such as he had not dreamt of; and when he returns, after the war is over, may be merged as before in his native village. but the village is the richer for his presence, and his individuality or personality is not really lost; though to the eye of the world, which has no further need for it, it has practically ceased to be. chapter ix will and guidance (_partially read to the synthetic society in february ._) the influence of the divine on the human, and on the material world, has been variously conceived in different ages, and various forms of difficulty have been at different times felt and suggested; but always some sort of analogy between human action and divine action has had perforce to be drawn, in order to make the latter in the least intelligible to our conception. the latest form of difficulty is peculiarly deep-seated, and is a natural outcome of an age of physical science. it consists in denying the possibility of any guidance or control,--not only on the part of a deity, but on the part of every one of his creatures. it consists in pressing the laws of physics to what may seem their logical and ultimate conclusion, in applying the conservation of energy without ruth or hesitation, and so excluding, as some have fancied, the possibility of free-will action, of guidance, of the self-determined action of mind or living things upon matter, altogether. the appearance of control has accordingly been considered illusory, and has been replaced by a doctrine of pure mechanism, enveloping living things as well as inorganic nature. and those who for any reason have felt disinclined or unable to acquiesce in this exclusion of non-mechanical agencies, whether it be by reason of faith and instinct or by reason of direct experience and sensation to the contrary, have thought it necessary of late years to seek to undermine the foundation of physics, and to show that its much-vaunted laws rest upon a hollow basis, that their exactitude is illusory,--that the conservation of energy, for instance, has been too rapid an induction, that there may be ways of eluding many physical laws and of avoiding submission to their sovereign sway. by this sacrifice it has been thought that the eliminated guidance and control can philosophically be reintroduced. this, i gather, may have been the chief motive of a critical examination of the foundations of physics by an american author, j. b. stallo, in a little book called the _concepts of physics_. but the worst of that book was that judge stallo was not fully familiar with the teachings of the great physicists; he appears to have collected his information from popular writings, where the doctrines were very imperfectly laid down; so that some of his book is occupied in demolishing constructions of straw, unrecognisable by professed physicists except as caricatures at which they also might be willing to heave an occasional missile. the armoury pressed into the service of professor james ward's not wholly dissimilar attack on physics is of heavy calibre, and his criticism cannot in general be ignored as based upon inadequate acquaintance with the principles under discussion; but still his gifford lectures raise an antithesis or antagonism between the fundamental laws of mechanics and the possibility of any intervention whether human or divine. if this antagonism is substantial it is serious; for natural philosophers will not be willing to concede fundamental inaccuracy or uncertainty about their recognised and long-established laws of motion, when applied to ordinary matter; nor will they be prepared to tolerate any the least departure from the law of the conservation of energy, when all forms of energy are taken into account. hence, if guidance and control can be admitted into the scheme by no means short of undermining and refuting those laws, there may be every expectation that the attitude of scientific men will be perennially hostile to the idea of guidance or control, and so to the efficacy of prayer, and to many another practical outcome of religious belief. it becomes therefore an important question to consider whether it is true that life or mind is incompetent to disarrange or interfere with matter at all, except as itself an automatic part of the machine,--whether in fact it is merely an ornamental appendage or phantasmal accessory of the working parts. now experience--the same kind of experience as gave us our scheme of mechanics--shows us that to all appearance live animals certainly can direct and control mechanical energies to bring about desired and preconceived results; and that man can definitely will that those results shall occur. the way the energy is provided is understood, and its mode of application is fairly understood; what is not understood is the way its activity is _determined_. undoubtedly our body is material and can act on other matter; and the energy of its operations is derived from food, like any other self-propelled and fuel-fed mechanism; but mechanism is usually controlled by an attendant. the question is whether our will or mind or life can direct our body's energy along certain channels to attain desired ends, or whether--as in a motor-car with an automaton driver--the end and aim of all activity is wholly determined by mechanical causes. and a further question concerns the mode whereby vital control, if any, is achieved. answers that might be hazarded are: (_a_) that life is itself a latent store of energy, and achieves its results by imparting to matter energy that would not otherwise be in evidence: in which case life would be a part of the machine, and as truly mechanical as all the rest. experiment lends no support to this view of the relation between life and energy, and i hold that it is false; because the essential property of energy is that it can transform itself into other forms, remaining constant in quantity, whereas life does not add to the stock of any known form of energy, nor does death affect the sum of energy in any known way. (_b_) that life is something outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and energy; though it can nevertheless control or direct material forces--timing them and determining their place of application,--subject always to the laws of energy and all other mechanical laws; supplementing or accompanying these laws, therefore, but contradicting or traversing them no whit. this second answer i hold to be true; but in order to admit its truth we must recognise that force can be exerted and energy directed, by suitable adjustment of existing energy, without any introduction of energy from without; in other words, that the energy of operations automatically going on in any active region of the universe--any region where transformation and transference of energy are continuously occurring whether life be present or not--can be guided along paths that it would not automatically have taken, and can be directed so as to produce effects that would not otherwise have occurred; and this without any breakage or suspension of the laws of dynamics, and in full correspondence with both the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum. that is where i part company with professor james ward in the second volume of _naturalism and agnosticism_; with whom nevertheless on many broad issues i find myself in fair agreement. those who find a real antinomy between "mechanism and morals" must either throw overboard the possibility of interference or guidance or willed action altogether, which is one alternative, or must assume that the laws of physics are only approximate and untrustworthy, which is the other alternative--the alternative apparently favoured by professor james ward. i wish to argue that neither of these alternatives is necessary, and that there is a third or middle course of proverbial safety: all that is necessary is to realise and admit that the laws of physical science are _incomplete_, when regarded as a formulation and philosophical summary of the universe in general. no laplacian calculator can be supplied with all the data. on a stagnant and inactive world life would admittedly be powerless: it could only make dry bones stir in such a world if itself were a form of energy; i do not suppose for a moment that it could be incarnated on such a world; it is only potent where inorganic energy is mechanically "available"--to use lord kelvin's term,--that is to say, is either potentially or actually in process of transfer and transformation. in other words, life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transmutations. it has gradually dawned upon me that the reason why philosophers who are well acquainted with physical or dynamical science are apt to fall into the error of supposing that mental and vital interference with the material world is impossible, in spite of their clamorous experience to the contrary (or else, on the strength of that experience, to conceive that there is something the matter with the formulation of physical and dynamical laws), is because all such interference is naturally and necessarily excluded from scientific methods and treatises. in pure mechanics, "force" is treated as a function of configuration and momentum: the positions, the velocities, and the accelerations of a conservative system depend solely on each other, on initial conditions, and on mass; or, if we choose so to express it, the co-ordinates, the momenta, and the kinetic energies, of the parts of any dynamical system whatever, are all functions of time and of each other, and of nothing else. in other words, we have to deal, in this mode of regarding things, with a definite and completely determinate world, to which prediction may confidently be applied. but this determinateness is got by refusing to contemplate anything outside a certain scheme: it is an internal truth within the assigned boundaries, and is quite consistent with psychical interference and indeterminateness, as soon as those boundaries are ignored; determinateness is not part of the _essence_ of dynamical doctrine, it is arrived at by the tacit assumption that no undynamical or hyperdynamical agencies exist: in short, by that process of abstraction which is invariably necessary for simplicity, and indeed for possibility, of methodical human treatment. everyone engaged in scientific research is aware that if exuberant charwomen, or intelligent but mischievous students (who for the moment may be taken to represent life and mind respectively) are admitted into a laboratory and given full scope for their activities, the subsequent scientific results--though still, no doubt, in some strained sense, concordant with law and order--are apt to be too complicated for investigation; wherefore there is usually an endeavour to exclude these incalculable influences, and to make a tacit assumption that they have not been let in. there is a similar tacit assumption in treatises on physics and chemistry; viz., that the laws of automatic nature shall be allowed unrestricted and unaided play, that nothing shall intervene in any operation from start to finish save mechanical sequent and antecedent,--that it is permissible in fact to exercise abstraction, as usual, to the exclusion of agents not necessarily connected with the problem, and not contemplated by the equations. in text-books of dynamics and in treatises of natural philosophy that is a perfectly legitimate procedure;[ ] but when later on we come to philosophise, and to deal with the universe as a whole, we must forgo the ingrained habit of abstraction, and must remember that for a _complete_ treatment _nothing_ must permanently be ignored. so if life and mind and will, and curiosity and mischief and folly, and greed and fraud and malice, and a whole catalogue of attributes and things not contemplated in natural philosophy--if these are known to have any real existence in the larger world of total experience, and if there is any reason to believe that any one of them may have had some influence in determining an observed result, then it is foolish to exclude these things from philosophic consideration, on the ground that they are out of place in the realm of natural philosophy, that they are not allowed for in its scheme, and therefore cannot possibly be supposed capable of exerting any effective interference, any real guidance or control. [ ] it is on a similar basis that there is a science of rigid dynamics, with elasticity and fluidity excluded; and thus also can there be a hydrodynamics in which the consequences of viscosity are ignored. my contention then is--and in this contention i am practically speaking for my brother physicists--that whereas life or mind can neither generate energy nor directly exert force, yet it can cause matter to exert force on matter, and so can exercise guidance and control: it can so prepare any scene of activity, by arranging the position of existing material, and timing the liberation of existing energy, as to produce results concordant with an idea or scheme or intention: it can, in short, "aim" and "fire." guidance of _matter_ can be affected by a passive exertion of force without doing work; as a quiescent rail can guide a train to its destination, provided an active engine propels it. but the analogy of the rail must not be pressed: the rail "guides" by exerting force perpendicular to the direction of motion, it does no work but it sustains an equal opposite reaction.[ ] the guidance exercised by life or mind is managed in an unknown but certainly different fashion: "determination" can sustain no reaction--if it could it would be a straightforward mechanical agent--but it can utilise the mechanical properties both of rail and of engine; it arranged for the rail to be placed in position so that the lateral force thereby exerted should guide all future trains to a desired destination, and it further took steps to design and compose locomotives of sufficient power, and to start them at a prearranged time. it "employs" mechanical stress, as a capitalist employs a labourer, not doing anything itself, but directing the operations. it is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics alone, that is to say, no mechanical analysis can be complete and all-embracing, though the whole procedure is fully subject to those laws. [ ] it is well to bear in mind the distinction between "force" and "energy." these terms have been so popularly confused that it may be difficult always to discriminate them, but in physics they are absolutely discriminated. we have a direct sense of "force," in our muscles, whether they be moving or at rest. a force in motion is a "power," it "does work" and transfers energy from one body to another, which is commonly though incorrectly spoken of as "generating" energy. but a force at rest--a mere statical stress, like that exerted by a pillar or a watershed--does no work, and "generates" or transfers no energy; yet the one sustains a roof which would otherwise fall, thereby screening a portion of ground from vegetation; while the other deflects a rain-drop into the danube or the rhine. this latter is the kind of force which constrains a stone to revolve in a circle instead of a straight line; a force like that of a groove or slot or channel or "guide." to every force there is an equal opposite force or reaction, and a reaction may be against a live body, but it is never suspected of being against the abstraction life or mind--that would indeed be enlarging the scope of mechanics!--the reaction is always against some other body. all stresses as a matter of fact occur in the ether; and they all have a material terminus at each end (or in exceptional cases a wave-front or some other recondite etherial equivalent), that is to say something possessing inertia; but the timed or _opportune_ existence of a particular stress may be the result of organisation and control. mechanical operations can be thus dominated by intelligence and purpose. when a stone is rolling over a cliff, it is all the same to "energy" whether it fall on point a or point b of the beach. but at a it shall merely dent the sand, whereas at b it shall strike a detonator and explode a mine. scribbling on a piece of paper results in a certain distribution of fluid and production of a modicum of heat: so far as energy is concerned it is the same whether we sign andrew carnegie or alexander coppersmith, yet the one effort may land us in twelve months' imprisonment or may build a library, according to circumstances, while the other achieves no result at all. john stuart mill used to say that our sole power over nature was to _move_ things; but strictly speaking we cannot do even that: we can only arrange that things shall move each other, and can determine by suitably preconceived plans the kind and direction of the motion that shall ensue at a given time and place. provided always that we include in this category of "things" our undoubtedly material bodies, muscles and nerves. but here is just the puzzle: at what point does will or determination enter into the scheme? contemplate a brain cell, whence originates a certain nerve-process whereby energy is liberated with some resultant effect; what pulled the detent in that cell which started the impulse? no \doubt some chemical process: combination or dissociation, something atomic, occurred; but what made it occur just then and in that way? i answer, not anything that we as yet understand, but apparently the same sort of pre-arrangement that determined whether the stone from the cliff should fall on point a or point b--the same sort of process that guided the pen to make legible and effective writing instead of illegible and ineffective scrawls--the same kind of control that determines when and where a trigger shall be pulled so as to secure the anticipated slaughter of a bird. so far as energy is concerned, the explosion and the trigger-pulling are the same identical operations whether the aim be exact or random. it is intelligence which directs; it is physical energy which is directed and controlled and produces the result in time and space. it will be said _some_ energy is needed to pull a hair-trigger, to open the throttle-valve of an engine, to press the button which shall shatter a rock. granted: but the work-concomitants of that energy are all familiar, and equally present whether it be arranged so as to produce any predetermined effect or not. the opening of the throttle-valve for instance demands just the same exertion, and results in just the same imperceptible transformation of fully-accounted-for energy, whether it be used to start a train in accordance with a time-table and the guard's whistle, or whether it be pushed over, as if by the wind, at random. the shouting of an order to a troop demands vocal energy and produces its due equivalent of sound; but the intelligibility of the order is something superadded, and its result may be to make not sound or heat alone, but history. energy must be _available_ for the performance of any physical operation, but the energy is independent of the determination or arrangement. guidance and control are not forms of energy, nor need they be themselves phantom modes of force: their superposition upon the scheme of physics need perturb physical and mechanical _laws_ no whit, and yet it may profoundly affect the consequences resulting from those same laws. the whole effort of civilisation would be futile if we could not guide the powers of nature. the powers are there, else we should be helpless; but life and mind are outside those powers, and, by pre-arranging their field of action, can direct them along an organised course. * * * * * and this same life or mind, as we know it, is accessible to petition, to affection, to pity, to a multitude of non-physical influences; and hence, indirectly, the little plot of physical universe which is now our temporary home has become amenable to truly spiritual control. i lay stress upon a study of the nature and mode of human action of the interfering or guiding kind, because by that study we must be led if we are to form any intelligent conception of divine action. true, it might be feasible to admit divine agency and yet to deny the possibility of any human power of the same kind,--though that would be a nebulous and at least inconclusive procedure; but if once we are constrained to admit the existence and reality of human guidance and control, superposed upon the physical scheme, we cannot deny the possibility of such power and action to any higher being, nor even to any totality of mind of which ours is a part. i do not see how the function claimed can be resented, except by those who deny "life" to be anything at all. if it exists, if it is not mere illusion, it appears to me to be something whose full significance lies in another scheme of things, but which touches and interacts with this material universe in a certain way, building its particles into notable configurations for a time--without confounding any physical laws,--and then evaporating whence it came. this language is vague and figurative undoubtedly, but, i contend, appropriately so, for we have not yet a theory of life--we have not even a theory of the essential nature of gravitation; discoveries are waiting to be made in this region, and it is absurd to suppose that we are already in possession of all the data. we can wait; but meanwhile we need not pretend that because we do not understand them, therefore life and will can accomplish nothing; we need not imagine that "life"--with its higher developments and still latent powers--is an impotent nonentity. the philosophic attitude, surely, is to observe and recognise its effects, both what it can and what it cannot achieve, and to realise that our present knowledge of it is extremely partial and incomplete. * * * * * note on free will and foreknowledge. in the above chapter i must not be understood as pretending to settle the thorny question of a reconciliation between freedom of choice and pre-determination or prevision. all i there contend for is that no mechanical or scientific determinism, subject to special conditions in a limited region, can be used to contradict freedom of the will, under generalised conditions, in the universe as a whole. nevertheless there are things which may perhaps be usefully said, even on the larger and much-worn topic of the present note. if we still endeavour to learn as much as possible from human analogies, examples are easy:-- an architect can draw in detail a building that is to be; the dwellers in a valley can be warned to evacuate their homesteads because a city has determined that a lake shall exist where none existed before. doubtless the city is free to change its mind, but it is not expected to; and all predictions are understood to be made subject to the absence of disturbing, _i.e._ unforeseen, causes. even the prediction of an eclipse is not free from a remote uncertainty, and in the case of the return of meteoric showers and comets the element of contingency is not even remote. but it will be said that to higher and superhuman knowledge all possible contingencies would be known and recognised as part of the data. that is quite possibly, though not quite certainly, true: and there comes the real difficulty of reconciling absolute prediction of events with real freedom of the actors in the drama. i anticipate that a complete solution of the problem must involve a treatment of the subject of _time_, and a recognition that "time," as it appears to us, is really part of our human limitations. we all realise that "the past" is in some sense not non-existent but only past; we may readily surmise that "the future" is similarly in some sense existent, only that we have not yet arrived at it; and our links with the future are less understood. that a seer in a moment of clairvoyance may catch a glimpse of futurity--some partial picture of what perhaps exists even now in the forethought of some higher mind--is not inconceivable. it may be after all only an unconscious and inspired inference from the present, on an enlarged and exceptional scale; and it is a matter for straightforward investigation whether such prevision ever occurs. the following article, on the general subject of "free will and determinism," reprinted from the _contemporary review_ for march , may conveniently be here reproduced:-- the conflict between free will and determinism depends on a question of boundaries. we occasionally ignore the fact that there must be a subjective partition in the universe separating the region of which we have some inkling of knowledge from the region of which we have absolutely none; we are apt to regard the portion on our side as if it were the whole, and to debate whether it must or must not be regarded as self-determined. as a matter of fact any partitioned-off region is in general not completely self-determined, since it is liable to be acted upon by influences from the other side of the partition. if the far side of the boundary is ignored, then an observer on the near side will conclude that things really initiate their own motion and act without stimulation or motive, in some cases, whereas the fact is that no act is performed without stimulus or motive; even irrational acts are caused by something, and so also are rational acts. madness and delirium are natural phenomena amenable to law. but in actual life we are living on one side of a boundary, and are aware of things on one side only; the things on this side appear to us to constitute the whole universe, since they are all of which we have any knowledge, either through our senses or in other ways. hence we are subject to certain illusions, and feel certain difficulties,--the illusion of unstimulated and unmotived freedom of action, and the difficulty of reconciling this with the felt necessity for general determinism and causation. if we speak in terms of the part of the universe that we know and have to do with, we find free agencies rampant among organic life; so that "freedom of action" is a definite and real experience, and for practical convenience is so expressed. but if we could seize the entirety of things and perceive what was occurring beyond the range of our limited conceptions we should realise that the whole was welded together, and that influences were coming through which produced the effects that we observe. those philosophers, if there are any, who assert that we are wholly chained bound and controlled by the circumstances of that part of the universe of which we are directly aware--that we are the slaves of our environment and must act as we are compelled by forces emanating from things on our side of the boundary alone,--those philosophers err. this kind of determinism is false; and the reaction against it has led other philosophers to assert that we are _lawlessly_ free, and able to initiate any action without motive or cause,--that each individual is a capricious and chaotic entity, not part of a cosmos at all! it may be doubted whether anyone has clearly and actually maintained either of these theses in all its crudity; but there are many who vigorously and cheaply deny one or other of them, and in so denying the one conceive that they are maintaining the other. both the above theses are false; yet free will and determinism are both true, and in a completely known universe would cease to be contradictories. the reconciliation between opposing views lies in realising that the universe of which we have a kind of knowledge is but a portion or an aspect of the whole. we are free, and we are controlled. we are free, in so far as our sensible surroundings and immediate environment are concerned; that is, we are free for all practical purposes, and can choose between alternatives as they present themselves. we are controlled, as being intrinsic parts of an entire cosmos suffused with law and order. no scheme of science based on knowledge of our environment can confidently predict our actions, nor the actions of any sufficiently intelligent live creature. for "mind" and "will" have their roots on the other side of the partition, and that which we perceive of them is but a fraction of the whole. nevertheless, the more developed and consistent and harmonious our character becomes, the less liable is it to random outbreaks, and the more certainly can we be depended on. we thus, even now, can exhibit some approximation to the highest state--that conscious unison with the entire scheme of existence which is identical with perfect freedom. if we could grasp the totality of things we should realise that everything was ordered and definite, linked up with everything else in a chain of causation, and that nothing was capricious and uncertain and uncontrolled. the totality of things is, however, and must remain, beyond our grasp; hence the actual working of the process, the nature of the links, the causes which create our determinations, are frequently unknown. and since it is necessary for practical purposes to treat what is utterly beyond our ken as if it were non-existent, it becomes easily possible to fall into the erroneous habit of conceiving the transcendental region to be completely inoperative. chapter x further speculation as to the origin and nature of life[ ] _preliminary remarks on recent views in chemistry._ it is a fact extremely familiar to chemists that the groupings possible to atoms of carbon are exceptionally numerous and complicated, each carbon atom having the power of linking itself with others to an extraordinary extent, so that it is no exceptional thing to find a substance which contains twenty or thirty atoms of carbon as well as other elements linked together in its molecule in a perfectly definite way, the molecule being still classifiable as that of a definite chemical compound. but there are also some non-elementary bodies which, although they are chemically complete and satisfied, retain a considerable vestige of power to link their molecules together so as to make a complex and massive compound molecule; and these are able not only to link similar molecules into a more or less indefinite chain, but to unite and include the saturated molecules of many other substances also into the unwieldy aggregate. [ ] an article reprinted from the _north american review_ for may . of the non-elementary bodies possessing this property, _water_ appears to be one of the chief; for there is evidence to show that the ordinary h- -o molecule of water, although it may be properly spoken of as a saturated or satisfied compound, seldom exists in the simple isolated shape depicted by this formula, but rather that a great number of such simple molecules attach themselves to each other by what is called their residual or outstanding affinity, and build themselves up into a complex aggregate. the doctrine of residual affinity has been long advocated by armstrong; and the present writer has recently shown that it is a necessary consequence of the electrical theory of chemical affinity,[ ] and that the structure of the resulting groupings, or compound aggregates, may be partially studied by means of floating magnets, somewhat after the manner of alfred mayer.[ ] [ ] see _nature_, vol. , p. , june , . [ ] see an article on "modern views of chemical affinity" by the present writer in a magazine called _technics_, for september . it may be well here to explain to students that one of the lines of argument which lead to the conclusion that the water molecule, as it ordinarily exists, is really complex and massive, is based upon measurements of the faraday dielectric constant for water; for this constant, or "specific inductive capacity," is found to be very large, something like times that of air or free ether; whereas for glass it is only or times that of free space. the dielectric constant of a substance generally increases with the density or massiveness of its molecule,--indeed, the value of this constant is one of the methods whereby matter displays its interaction with and loading of the free ether of space,--and any such density as the conventional nine times that of hydrogen for the molecule of water would be wholly unable to explain its immense dielectric constant. the influence of the massiveness of a water molecule is also displayed in its power of tearing asunder or dissociating any salts or other simple chemical substance introduced into it; common salt, for instance, is found always to have a certain percentage of its molecules knocked or torn asunder directly it is dissolved in water, so that, in addition to a number of salt molecules in solution, there are a few positively charged sodium atoms and a few negatively charged chlorine atoms, existing in a state of loose attraction to the water aggregate, and amenable to the smallest electric force; which, when applied, urges the chlorine one way and the sodium the other way, so that they can be removed at an electrode and their place supplied by freshly dissociated molecules of salt, thus bringing about its permanent electro-chemical decomposition, and enabling the water to behave as an electrolytic conductor directly a little salt or acid is dissolved in it. the power of the water molecule to associate itself with molecules of other substances is illustrated by the well-known fact that water is an almost universal solvent. it is its residual affinity which enables it to enter into weak chemical combination with a large number of other substances, and thus to dissolve those substances. the dissolving power usually increases when the temperature is raised, possibly because the self-contained or self-sufficient groupings of the water molecules are then to some extent broken up and the fragments enabled to cling on to the foreign or introduced matter instead of only to each other. the foreign substance is apt to be extruded again when the liquid cools, and when the affinity of the water-aggregates for each other resumes its sway. very hot water can dissolve not only the substances familiarly known to be soluble in water, but it can dissolve things like glass also; so that glass vessels are unable to retain water kept under high pressure at a very high temperature, approaching a red heat. another material which also seems to have the power of combining with a number of other bodies, under the influence of the loose mode of chemical combination spoken of as residual affinity, is carbon; so that a block of charcoal can absorb hundreds of times its own bulk of certain gases. indeed, sir james dewar has recently employed this absorbing power of very cold carbon to produce a perfect kind of vacuum, which may, perhaps, be the nearest approach to absolute vacuum that has yet been attained: probably higher than can be attained by any kind of mechanical or mercury pump. _unexpected influence of size._ suppose now a substance contains a great number of carbon molecules and a great number of water molecules, each of which has this residual affinity or power of clinging together well developed, what may be expected to be the result? surely, the formation of a molecule consisting of thousands or hundreds of thousands of atoms, constituting substances more complex even than those already known to or analysable by organic chemistry; and if these complex molecules likewise possess the adhesive faculty, a grouping of millions or even billions of atoms may ultimately be formed. (a billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting aggregate is still excessively minute. a portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million times bigger still.) such a grouping is likely to have properties differing not only in degree but in kind from the properties of simple substances. for it must not be thought that aggregation only produces quantitative change and leaves quality unaltered. fresh qualities altogether are liable to be introduced or to make their appearance at certain stages--certain critical stages--in the building up of a complex mass (_cf._ p. ). the habitability of a house, for instance, depends on its possessing a cavity of a certain size; there is a critical size of brick-aggregate which enables it to serve as a dwelling. nothing much smaller than this would do at all. the aggregate retains this property, thus conferred upon it by size, however big it may be made after that; until it becomes a palace or a cathedral, when it may perhaps reach an upper limit of size at which it would be crushed by its own weight, or at which the span of roof is too great to be supported. but the difference, as regards habitability, between a palace and a hovel is far less than that between a hovel and one of the air-holes in a brick or loaf, or any other cavity too small to act as a human habitation. the difference as regards habitability is then an infinite difference. to take a less trivial instance; a planet which is large enough to retain an atmosphere by its gravitative attraction differs utterly, in potentiality and importance, from the numerous lumps of matter scattered throughout space, which, though they may be as large as a haystack or a mountain or as the british isles, or even europe, are yet too small to hold any trace of air to their surface, and therefore cannot in any intelligible sense of the word be regarded as habitable. one of the lumps of matter in space can become a habitable planet only when it has attained a certain size, which conceivably it might do by falling together with others into a complex aggregate under the influence of gravitative attraction. the asteroids have not succeeded in doing this, but the planets have; and, accordingly, one of them, at any rate, has become a habitable world. but observe that the great size and the consequent retention of an atmosphere did not generate the inhabitants; it satisfied one of the conditions necessary for their existence. how they arose is another matter. all that we have seen so far is that an aggregate of bodies may possess properties and powers which the separate bodies themselves possess in no kind or sort of way. it is not a question of degree, but of kind. so also, further, if the aggregate is large enough, very much larger than any planet, as large as a million earths aggregated together, it acquires the property of conspicuous radio-activity, it becomes a self-heating and self-luminous body, able to keep the ether violently agitated in all space round it, and thus to supply the radiation necessary for protecting the habitable worlds from the cold of space to which they are exposed, for maintaining them at a temperature appropriate to organic existence, and likewise for supplying and generating the energy for their myriad activities. it has become in fact a central sun, and source of heat, solely because of its enormous size combined with the fact of the mutual gravitative attraction of its own constituent particles. no body of moderate size could perform this function, nor act as a perennial furnace to the rest. _application to protoplasm._ very well then, return now to our complex molecular aggregate, and ask what new property, beyond the province of ordinary chemistry and physics, is to be expected of a compound which contains millions or billions of atoms attached to each other in no rigid, stable, frigid manner, but by loose unstable links, enabling them constantly to re-arrange themselves and to be the theatre of perpetual change, aggregating and reaggregating in various ways and manifesting ceaseless activities. such unstable aggregates of matter may, like the water of a pond or a heap of organic refuse, serve as the vehicle for influences wholly novel and unexpected. too much agitation--that is, too high a temperature--will split them up and destroy the new-found potentiality of such aggregates; too little agitation--that is, too low a temperature--will permit them to begin to cohere and settle down into frozen rigid masses insusceptible of manifold activities. but take them just at the right temperature, when sufficiently complex and sufficiently mobile; take care of them, so to speak, for the structure may easily be killed; and what shall we find? we could not infer or guess what would be the result, but we can observe the result as it is. the result is that the complexes group themselves into minute masses visible in the microscope, each mass being called by us a "cell"; that these cells possess the power of uniting with or assimilating other cells, or fragments of cells, as they drift by and come into contact with them; and that they absorb into their own substance such portions as may be suitable, while the insufficiently elaborated portions--the grains of inorganic or over-simple material--are presently extruded. they thus begin the act of "feeding." another remarkable property also can be observed; for a cell which thus grows by feeding need not remain as one individual, but may split into two, or into more than two, which may cohere for a time, but will ultimately separate and continue existence on their own account. thus begins the act of "reproduction." but a still more remarkable property can be observed in some of the cells, though not in all; they can not only assimilate a fragment of matter which comes into contact with them, but they can sense it, apparently, while not yet in contact, and can protrude portions of their substance or move their whole bodies towards the fragment, thus beginning the act of "hunting"; and the incipient locomotory power can be extended till light and air and moisture and many other things can be sought and moved towards, until locomotion becomes so free that it sometimes seems apparently objectless--mere restlessness, change for the sake of change, like that of human beings. the power of locomotion is liable, however, to introduce the cell to new dangers, and to conditions hostile to its continued aggregate existence. so, in addition to the sense of food and other desirable things ahead, it seems to acquire, at any rate when still further aggregated and more developed, a sense of shrinking from and avoidance of the hostile and the dangerous,--a sense as it were of "pain." and so it enters on its long career of progress, always liable to disintegration or "death"; it begins to differentiate portions of itself for the feeding process, other portions for the reproductive process, other portions again for sensory processes, but retaining the protective sense of pain almost everywhere; until the spots sensitive to ethereal and aerial vibrations--which, arriving as they do from a distance, carry with them so much valuable information, and when duly appreciated render possible perception and prediction as to what is ahead--until these sensitive spots have become developed into the special organs which we now know as the "eye" and the "ear." then, presently, the power of communication is slowly elaborated, speech and education begin, and the knowledge of the individual is no longer limited to his own experience, but expands till it embraces the past history and the condensed acquisition of the race. and thus gradually arises a developed self-consciousness, a discrimination between the self and the external world, and a realisation of the power of choice and freedom,--a stage beyond which we have not travelled as yet, but a stage at which almost all things seem possible. the first two properties, assimilation and reproduction, overshadowed by the possibility of _death_, are properties of life of every kind, plant life as of all other. the power of locomotion and special senses, over-shadowed by the sense of _pain_, are the sign of a still further development into what we call "animal life." the further development, of mind, consciousness, and sense of freedom, overshadowed by the possibility of wilful error or _sin_, is the conspicuous attribute of life which is distinctively human. thus, our complex molecular aggregate has shown itself capable of extraordinary and most interesting processes, has proved capable of constituting the material vehicle of life, the natural basis of living organisms, and even of mind; very much as a planet of certain size proved capable of possessing an atmosphere. but is it to be supposed that the complex aggregate _generated_ the life and mind, as the planet generated its atmosphere? that is the so-called materialistic view, but to the writer it seems an erroneous one, and it is certainly one that is not proven. it is not even certain that every planet generated all the gases of its own atmosphere: some of them it may have swept up in its excursion through space. what is certain is that it possesses the power of retaining an atmosphere; it is by no means so certain how all the constituents of that atmosphere arrived. _questions concerning the origin and nature of life._ all that we have actually experienced and verified is that a complex molecular aggregate is capable of being the vehicle or material basis of life; but to the question _what life is_ we have as yet no answer. many have been the attempts to generate life _de novo_, by packing together suitable materials and keeping them pleasantly warm for a long time; but, if all germs of pre-existing life are rigorously excluded, the attempt hitherto has been a failure: so far, no life has made its appearance under observation, except from antecedent life. but, to exclude all trace of antecedent life, it is necessary not only to shut out floating germs, but to kill all germs previously existing in the material we are dealing with. this killing of previous life is usually accomplished by heat; but it has been argued that strong heat will destroy not only the life but the potentiality for life, will break up the complex aggregate on which life depends, will deprive the incubating solution not only of life but of livelihood. there is some force in the objection, and it is an illustration of the difficulty surrounding the subject. but tyndall showed that antecedent life could be destroyed, without any very high temperature, by gentle heat periodically applied: heat insufficient to kill the germs, but sufficient to kill the hatched or developed organisms. periodic heating enables the germs of successive ages to hatch, so to speak, and the product to be slain; and, although some each time may have reproduced germs before slaughter--eggs capable of standing the warmth--yet a succession of such warmings would ultimately be fatal to all, and that without necessarily breaking up the protoplasmic complex aggregates on the existence of which the whole vital potentiality depends. so far, however, all effort at spontaneous generation has been a failure; possibly because some essential ingredient or condition was omitted, possibly because great lapse of time was necessary. but suppose it was successful; what then? we should then be reproducing in the laboratory a process that must at some past age have occurred on the earth; for at one time the earth was certainly hot and molten and inorganic, whereas now it swarms with life. does that show that the earth generated the life? by no means; no more than it need necessarily have generated all the gases of its atmosphere, or the meteoric dust which lies upon its snows. life may be something not only ultra-terrestrial, but even immaterial, something outside our present categories of matter and energy; as real as they are, but different, and utilising them for its own purpose. what is certain is that life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. it is perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. while it is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the animated material body moves about and strives after many objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain individuality, a certain character. it may realise _itself_, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the mind which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit. thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns upon the nascent soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth, goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent value, as a work of art or of literature; it may enter regions of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine. is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas? there are some who try to think that it is. there are others who recognise in this extraordinary development a contact between this material frame of things and a universe higher and other than anything known to our senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry, but utilising the interactions of matter for its own purposes; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of noble contemplation, and of lofty joy, long after this planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled its present spire of destiny, and retired cold and lifeless upon its endless way. * * * * * printed by neill and co., ltd., edinburgh. sentence numbers, shown thus ( ), have been added by volunteer. a theologico-political treatise part iv of iv - chapters xvi to xx by baruch spinoza table of contents: search strings are shown thus [ :x]. search forward and back with the same string. [ : ] chapter xvi - of the foundations of a state; of the natural and civil rights of individuals; and of the rights of the sovereign power. [ : ] in nature right co-extensive with power. [ : ] this principle applies to mankind in the state of nature. [ : ] how a transition from this state to a civil state is possible. [ : ] subjects not slaves. [ : ] definition of private civil right - and wrong. [ : ] of alliance. [ : ] of treason. [ : ] in what sense sovereigns are bound by divine law. [ : ] civil government not inconsistent with religion. [ : ] chapter xvii.- it is shown, that no one can or need transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. of the hebrew republic, as it was during the lifetime of moses, and after his death till the foundation of the monarchy; and of its excellence. lastly, of the causes why the theocratic republic fell, and why it could hardly have continued without dissension. [ : ] the absolute theory, of sovereignty ideal - no one can in fact transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. evidence of this. [ : ] the greatest danger in all states from within, not without. [ : ] original independence of the jews after the exodus. [ : ] changed first to a pure democratic theocracy. [ : ] then to subjection to moses. [ : ] then to a theocracy with the power divided between the high priest and the captains. [ : ] the tribes confederate states. [ : ] restraints on the civil power. [ : ] restraints on the people. [ :a] causes of decay involved in the constitution of the levitical priesthood. [ : ] chapter xviii.- from the commonwealth of the hebrews and their history certain lessons are deduced. [ : ] the hebrew constitution no longer possible or desirable, yet lessons may be derived from its history. [ : ] as the danger of entrusting any authority in politics to ecclesiastics - the danger of identifying religion with dogma. [ : ] the necessity of keeping all judicial power with the sovereign - the danger of changes in the form of a state. [ : ] this last danger illustrated from the history of england - of rome. [ : ] and of holland. [ : ] chapter xix - it is shown that the right over matters spiritual lies wholly with the sovereign, and that the outward forms of religion should be in accordance with public peace, if we would worship god aright. [ : ] difference between external and inward religion. [ : ] positive law established only by agreement. [ : ] piety furthered by peace and obedience. [ : ] position of the apostles exceptional. [ : ] why christian states, unlike the hebrew, suffer from disputes between the civil and ecclesiastical powers. [ : ] absolute power in things spiritual of modern rulers. [ : ] chapter xx - that in a free state every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks. [ : ] the mind not subject to state authority. [ : ] therefore in general language should not be. [ : ] a man who disapproving of a law, submits his adverse opinion to the judgment of the authorities, while acting in accordance with the law, deserves well of the state. [ : ] that liberty of opinion is beneficial, shown from the history of amsterdam. [ : ] danger to the state of withholding it. - submission of the author to the judgment of his country's rulers. [author's endnotes] to the treatise. [ : ] chapter xvi - of the foundations of a state; of the natural and civil rights of individuals; and of the rights of the sovereign power. ( ) hitherto our care has been to separate philosophy from theology, and to show the freedom of thought which such separation insures to both. ( ) it is now time to determine the limits to which such freedom of thought and discussion may extend itself in the ideal state. ( ) for the due consideration of this question we must examine the foundations of a state, first turning our attention to the natural rights of individuals, and afterwards to religion and the state as a whole. ( : ) by the right and ordinance of nature, i merely mean those natural laws wherewith we conceive every individual to be conditioned by nature, so as to live and act in a given way. ( ) for instance, fishes are naturally conditioned for swimming, and the greater for devouring the less; therefore fishes enjoy the water, and the greater devour the less by sovereign natural right. [ : ] ( ) for it is certain that nature, taken in the abstract, has sovereign right to do anything, she can; in other words, her right is co-extensive with her power. ( ) the power of nature is the power of god, which has sovereign right over all things; and, inasmuch as the power of nature is simply the aggregate of the powers of all her individual components, it follows that every individual has sovereign right to do all that he can; in other words, the rights of an individual extend to the utmost limits of his power as it has been conditioned. ( ) now it is the sovereign law and right of nature that each individual should endeavour to preserve itself as it is, without regard to anything but itself; therefore this sovereign law and right belongs to every individual, namely, to exist and act according to its natural conditions. ( ) we do not here acknowledge any difference between mankind and other individual natural entities, nor between men endowed with reason and those to whom reason is unknown; nor between fools, madmen, and sane men. ( ) whatsoever an individual does by the laws of its nature it has a sovereign right to do, inasmuch as it acts as it was conditioned by nature, and cannot act otherwise. [ : ] ( ) wherefore among men, so long as they are considered as living under the sway of nature, he who does not yet know reason, or who has not yet acquired the habit of virtue, acts solely according to the laws of his desire with as sovereign a right as he who orders his life entirely by the laws of reason. ( : ) that is, as the wise man has sovereign right to do all that reason dictates, or to live according to the laws of reason, so also the ignorant and foolish man has sovereign right to do all that desire dictates, or to live according to the laws of desire. ( ) this is identical with the teaching of paul, who acknowledges that previous to the law - that is, so long as men are considered of as living under the sway of nature, there is no sin. ( : ) the natural right of the individual man is thus determined, not by sound reason, but by desire and power. ( ) all are not naturally conditioned so as to act according to the laws and rules of reason; nay, on the contrary, all men are born ignorant, and before they can learn the right way of life and acquire the habit of virtue, the greater part of their life, even if they have been well brought up, has passed away. ( ) nevertheless, they are in the meanwhile bound to live and preserve themselves as far as they can by the unaided impulses of desire. ( ) nature has given them no other guide, and has denied them the present power of living according to sound reason; so that they are no more bound to live by the dictates of an enlightened mind, than a cat is bound to live by the laws of the nature of a lion. ( : ) whatsoever, therefore, an individual (considered as under the sway of nature) thinks useful for himself, whether led by sound reason or impelled by the passions, that he has a sovereign right to seek and to take for himself as he best can, whether by force, cunning, entreaty, or any other means; consequently he may regard as an enemy anyone who hinders the accomplishment of his purpose. ( : ) it follows from what we have said that the right and ordinance of nature, under which all men are born, and under which they mostly live, only prohibits such things as no one desires, and no one can attain: it does not forbid strife, nor hatred, nor anger, nor deceit, nor, indeed, any of the means suggested by desire. ( : ) this we need not wonder at, for nature is not bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only at man's true benefit and preservation; her limits are infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal order of nature, wherein man is but a speck; it is by the necessity of this alone that all individuals are conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. ( ) if anything, therefore, in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and are almost entirely ignorant of the order and interdependence of nature as a whole, and also because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our human reason; in reality that which reason considers evil, is not evil in respect to the order and laws of nature as a whole, but only in respect to the laws of our reason. ( : ) nevertheless, no one can doubt that it is much better for us to live according to the laws and assured dictates of reason, for, as we said, they have men's true good for their object. ( ) moreover, everyone wishes to live as far as possible securely beyond the reach of fear, and this would be quite impossible so long as everyone did everything he liked, and reason's claim was lowered to a par with those of hatred and anger; there is no one who is not ill at ease in the midst of enmity, hatred, anger, and deceit, and who does not seek to avoid them as much as he can. [ : ] ( ) when we reflect that men without mutual help, or the aid of reason, must needs live most miserably, as we clearly proved in chap. v., we shall plainly see that men must necessarily come to an agreement to live together as securely and well as possible if they are to enjoy as a whole the rights which naturally belong to them as individuals, and their life should be no more conditioned by the force and desire of individuals, but by the power and will of the whole body. ( ) this end they will be unable to attain if desire be their only guide (for by the laws of desire each man is drawn in a different direction); they must, therefore, most firmly decree and establish that they will be guided in everything by reason (which nobody will dare openly to repudiate lest he should be taken for a madman), and will restrain any desire which is injurious to a man's fellows, that they will do to all as they would be done by, and that they will defend their neighbour's rights as their own. ( : ) how such a compact as this should be entered into, how ratified and established, we will now inquire. ( ) now it is a universal law of human nature that no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good, or from the fear of a greater evil; nor does anyone endure an evil except for the sake of avoiding a greater evil, or gaining a greater good. ( ) that is, everyone will, of two goods, choose that which he thinks the greatest; and, of two evils, that which he thinks the least. ( ) i say advisedly that which he thinks the greatest or the least, for it does not necessarily follow that he judges right. ( ) this law is so deeply implanted in the human mind that it ought to be counted among eternal truths and axioms. ( : ) as a necessary consequence of the principle just enunciated, no one can honestly promise to forego the right which he has over all things [endnote ], and in general no one will abide by his promises, unless under the fear of a greater evil, or the hope of a greater good. ( ) an example will make the matter clearer. ( ) suppose that a robber forces me to promise that i will give him my goods at his will and pleasure. ( ) it is plain (inasmuch as my natural right is, as i have shown, co-extensive with my power) that if i can free myself from this robber by stratagem, by assenting to his demands, i have the natural right to do so, and to pretend to accept his conditions. ( ) or again, suppose i have genuinely promised someone that for the space of twenty days i will not taste food or any nourishment; and suppose i afterwards find that was foolish, and cannot be kept without very great injury to myself; as i am bound by natural law and right to choose the least of two evils, i have complete right to break my compact, and act as if my promise had never been uttered. ( ) i say that i should have perfect natural right to do so, whether i was actuated by true and evident reason, or whether i was actuated by mere opinion in thinking i had promised rashly; whether my reasons were true or false, i should be in fear of a greater evil, which, by the ordinance of nature, i should strive to avoid by every means in my power. ( : ) we may, therefore, conclude that a compact is only made valid by its utility, without which it becomes null and void. ( ) it is, therefore, foolish to ask a man to keep his faith with us for ever, unless we also endeavour that the violation of the compact we enter into shall involve for the violator more harm than good. ( ) this consideration should have very great weight in forming a state. ( ) however, if all men could be easily led by reason alone, and could recognize what is best and most useful for a state, there would be no one who would not forswear deceit, for everyone would keep most religiously to their compact in their desire for the chief good, namely, the shield and buckler of the commonwealth. ( ) however, it is far from being the case that all men can always be easily led by reason alone; everyone is drawn away by his pleasure, while avarice, ambition, envy, hatred, and the like so engross the mind that, reason has no place therein. ( ) hence, though men make - promises with all the appearances of good faith, and agree that they will keep to their engagement, no one can absolutely rely on another man's promise unless there is something behind it. ( ) everyone has by nature a right to act deceitfully, and to break his compacts, unless he be restrained by the hope of some greater good, or the fear of some greater evil. ( : ) however, as we have shown that the natural right of the individual is only limited by his power, it is clear that by transferring, either willingly or under compulsion, this power into the hands of another, he in so doing necessarily cedes also a part of his right; and further, that the sovereign right over all men belongs to him who has sovereign power, wherewith he can compel men by force, or restrain them by threats of the universally feared punishment of death; such sovereign right he will retain only so long as he can maintain his power of enforcing his will; otherwise he will totter on his throne, and no one who is stronger than he will be bound unwillingly to obey him. ( : ) in this manner a society can be formed without any violation of natural right, and the covenant can always be strictly kept - that is, if each individual hands over the whole of his power to the body politic, the latter will then possess sovereign natural right over all things; that is, it will have sole and unquestioned dominion, and everyone will be bound to obey, under pain of the severest punishment. ( ) a body politic of this kind is called a democracy, which may be defined as a society which wields all its power as a whole. ( ) the sovereign power is not restrained by any laws, but everyone is bound to obey it in all things; such is the state of things implied when men either tacitly or expressly handed over to it all their power of self-defence, or in other words, all their right. ( ) for if they had wished to retain any right for themselves, they ought to have taken precautions for its defence and preservation; as they have not done so, and indeed could not have done so without dividing and consequently ruining the state, they placed themselves absolutely at the mercy of the sovereign power; and, therefore, having acted (as we have shown) as reason and necessity demanded, they are obliged to fulfil the commands of the sovereign power, however absurd these may be, else they will be public enemies, and will act against reason, which urges the preservation of the state as a primary duty. ( ) for reason bids us choose the least of two evils. ( : ) furthermore, this danger of submitting absolutely to the dominion and will of another, is one which may be incurred with a light heart: for we have shown that sovereigns only possess this right of imposing their will, so long as they have the full power to enforce it: if such power be lost their right to command is lost also, or lapses to those who have assumed it and can keep it. ( ) thus it is very rare for sovereigns to impose thoroughly irrational commands, for they are bound to consult their own interests, and retain their power by consulting the public good and acting according to the dictates of reason, as seneca says, "violenta imperia nemo continuit diu." ( ) no one can long retain a tyrant's sway. ( : ) in a democracy, irrational commands are still less to be feared: for it is almost impossible that the majority of a people, especially if it be a large one, should agree in an irrational design: and, moreover, the basis and aim of a democracy is to avoid the desires as irrational, and to bring men as far as possible under the control of reason, so that they may live in peace and harmony: if this basis be removed the whole fabric falls to ruin. ( : ) such being the ends in view for the sovereign power, the duty of subjects is, as i have said, to obey its commands, and to recognize no right save that which it sanctions. [ : ] ( ) it will, perhaps, be thought that we are turning subjects into slaves: for slaves obey commands and free men live as they like; but this idea is based on a misconception, for the true slave is he who is led away by his pleasures and can neither see what is good for him nor act accordingly: he alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason. ( : ) action in obedience to orders does take away freedom in a certain sense, but it does not, therefore, make a man a slave, all depends on the object of the action. ( ) if the object of the action be the good of the state, and not the good of the agent, the latter is a slave and does himself no good: but in a state or kingdom where the weal of the whole people, and not that of the ruler, is the supreme law, obedience to the sovereign power does not make a man a slave, of no use to himself, but a subject. ( ) therefore, that state is the freest whose laws are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it may, if he will, be free [endnote ]; that is, live with full consent under the entire guidance of reason. ( : ) children, though they are bound to obey all the commands of their parents, are yet not slaves: for the commands of parents look generally to the children's benefit. ( ) we must, therefore, acknowledge a great difference between a slave, a son, and a subject; their positions may be thus defined. ( ) a slave is one who is bound to obey his master's orders, though they are given solely in the master's interest: a son is one who obeys his father's orders, given in his own interest; a subject obeys the orders of the sovereign power, given for the common interest, wherein he is included. ( : ) i think i have now shown sufficiently clearly the basis of a democracy: i have especially desired to do so, for i believe it to be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most consonant with individual liberty. ( ) in it no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. thus all men remain as they were in the state of nature, equals. ( : ) this is the only form of government which i have treated of at length, for it is the one most akin to my purpose of showing the benefits of freedom in a state. ( ) i may pass over the fundamental principles of other forms of government, for we may gather from what has been said whence their right arises without going into its origin. ( ) the possessor of sovereign power, whether he be one, or many, or the whole body politic, has the sovereign right of imposing any commands he pleases: and he who has either voluntarily, or under compulsion, transferred the right to defend him to another, has, in so doing, renounced his natural right and is therefore bound to obey, in all things, the commands of the sovereign power; and will be bound so to do so long as the king, or nobles, or the people preserve the sovereign power which formed the basis of the original transfer. ( ) i need add no more. [ : ] ( ) the bases and rights of dominion being thus displayed, we shall readily be able to define private civil right, wrong, justice, and injustice, with their relations to the state; and also to determine what constitutes an ally, or an enemy, or the crime of treason. ( : ) by private civil right we can only mean the liberty every man possesses to preserve his existence, a liberty limited by the edicts of the sovereign power, and preserved only by its authority: for when a man has transferred to another his right of living as he likes, which was only limited by his power, that is, has transferred his liberty and power of self-defence, he is bound to live as that other dictates, and to trust to him entirely for his defence. ( ) wrong takes place when a citizen, or subject, is forced by another to undergo some loss or pain in contradiction to the authority of the law, or the edict of the sovereign power. ( : ) wrong is conceivable only in an organized community: nor can it ever accrue to subjects from any act of the sovereign, who has the right to do what he likes. ( ) it can only arise, therefore, between private persons, who are bound by law and right not to injure one another. ( ) justice consists in the habitual rendering to every man his lawful due: injustice consists in depriving a man, under the pretence of legality, of what the laws, rightly interpreted, would allow him. ( ) these last are also called equity and iniquity, because those who administer the laws are bound to show no respect of persons, but to account all men equal, and to defend every man's right equally, neither envying the rich nor despising the poor. [ : ]( ) the men of two states become allies, when for the sake of avoiding war, or for some other advantage, they covenant to do each other no hurt, but on the contrary, to assist each other if necessity arises, each retaining his independence. ( ) such a covenant is valid so long as its basis of danger or advantage is in force: no one enters into an engagement, or is bound to stand by his compacts unless there be a hope of some accruing good, or the fear of some evil: if this basis be removed the compact thereby becomes void: this has been abundantly shown by experience. ( ) for although different states make treaties not to harm one another, they always take every possible precaution against such treaties being broken by the stronger party, and do not rely on the compact, unless there is a sufficiently obvious object and advantage to both parties in observing it. ( ) otherwise they would fear a breach of faith, nor would there be any wrong done thereby: for who in his proper senses, and aware of the right of the sovereign power, would trust in the promises of one who has the will and the power to do what he likes, and who aims solely at the safety and advantage of his dominion? ( ) moreover, if we consult loyalty and religion, we shall see that no one in possession of power ought to abide by his promises to the injury of his dominion; for he cannot keep such promises without breaking the engagement he made with his subjects, by which both he and they are most solemnly bound. ( ) an enemy is one who lives apart from the state, and does not recognize its authority either as a subject or as an ally. it is not hatred which makes a man an enemy, but the rights of the state. ( ) the rights of the state are the same in regard to him who does not recognize by any compact the state authority, as they are against him who has done the state an injury: it has the right to force him as best it can, either to submit, or to contract an alliance. [ : ] ( ) lastly, treason can only be committed by subjects, who by compact, either tacit or expressed, have transferred all their rights to the state: a subject is said to have committed this crime when he has attempted, for whatever reason, to seize the sovereign power, or to place it in different hands. ( ) i say, has attempted, for if punishment were not to overtake him till he had succeeded, it would often come too late, the sovereign rights would have been acquired or transferred already. ( : ) i also say, has attempted, for whatever reason, to seize the sovereign power, and i recognize no difference whether such an attempt should be followed by public loss or public gain. ( ) whatever be his reason for acting, the crime is treason, and he is rightly condemned: in war, everyone would admit the justice of his sentence. ( ) if a man does not keep to his post, but approaches the enemy without the knowledge of his commander, whatever may be his motive, so long as he acts on his own motion, even if he advances with the design of defeating the enemy, he is rightly put to death, because he has violated his oath, and infringed the rights of his commander. ( ) that all citizens are equally bound by these rights in time of peace, is not so generally recognized, but the reasons for obedience are in both cases identical. ( ) the state must be preserved and directed by the sole authority of the sovereign, and such authority and right have been accorded by universal consent to him alone: if, therefore, anyone else attempts, without his consent, to execute any public enterprise, even though the state might (as we said) reap benefit therefrom, such person has none the less infringed the sovereigns right, and would be rightly punished for treason. ( : ) in order that every scruple may be removed, we may now answer the inquiry, whether our former assertion that everyone who has not the practice of reason, may, in the state of nature, live by sovereign natural right, according to the laws of his desires, is not in direct opposition to the law and right of god as revealed. ( ) for as all men absolutely (whether they be less endowed with reason or more) are equally bound by the divine command to love their neighbour as themselves, it may be said that they cannot, without wrong, do injury to anyone, or live according to their desires. ( : ) this objection, so far as the state of nature is concerned, can be easily answered, for the state of nature is, both in nature and in time, prior to religion. ( ) no one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to god [endnote ], nor can he attain thereto by any exercise of his reason, but solely by revelation confirmed by signs. ( ) therefore, previous to revelation, no one is bound by a divine law and right of which he is necessarily in ignorance. ( ) the state of nature must by no means be confounded with a state of religion, but must be conceived as without either religion or law, and consequently without sin or wrong: this is how we have described it, and we are confirmed by the authority of paul. ( ) it is not only in respect of ignorance that we conceive the state of nature as prior to, and lacking the divine revealed law and right; but in respect of freedom also, wherewith all men are born endowed. ( : ) if men were naturally bound by the divine law and right, or if the divine law and right were a natural necessity, there would have been no need for god to make a covenant with mankind, and to bind them thereto with an oath and agreement. ( : ) we must, then, fully grant that the divine law and right originated at the time when men by express covenant agreed to obey god in all things, and ceded, as it were, their natural freedom, transferring their rights to god in the manner described in speaking of the formation of a state. ( ) however, i will treat of these matters more at length presently. [ : ] ( ) it may be insisted that sovereigns are as much bound by the divine law as subjects: whereas we have asserted that they retain their natural rights, and may do whatever they like. ( : ) in order to clear up the whole difficulty, which arises rather concerning the natural right than the natural state, i maintain that everyone is bound, in the state of nature, to live according to divine law, in the same way as he is bound to live according to the dictates of sound reason; namely, inasmuch as it is to his advantage, and necessary for his salvation; but, if he will not so live, he may do otherwise at his own risk. ( ) he is thus bound to live according to his own laws, not according to anyone else's, and to recognize no man as a judge, or as a superior in religion. ( ) such, in my opinion, is the position of a sovereign, for he may take advice from his fellow-men, but he is not bound to recognize any as a judge, nor anyone besides himself as an arbitrator on any question of right, unless it be a prophet sent expressly by god and attesting his mission by indisputable signs. ( ) even then he does not recognize a man, but god himself as his judge. [ : ] ( ) if a sovereign refuses to obey god as revealed in his law, he does so at his own risk and loss, but without violating any civil or natural right. ( ) for the civil right is dependent on his own decree; and natural right is dependent on the laws of nature, which latter are not adapted to religion, whose sole aim is the good of humanity, but to the order of nature - that is, to god's eternal decree unknown to us. ( : ) this truth seems to be adumbrated in a somewhat obscurer form by those who maintain that men can sin against god's revelation, but not against the eternal decree by which he has ordained all things. ( ) we may be asked, what should we do if the sovereign commands anything contrary to religion, and the obedience which we have expressly vowed to god? should we obey the divine law or the human law? ( ) i shall treat of this question at length hereafter, and will therefore merely say now, that god should be obeyed before all else, when we have a certain and indisputable revelation of his will: but men are very prone to error on religious subjects, and, according to the diversity of their dispositions, are wont with considerable stir to put forward their own inventions, as experience more than sufficiently attests, so that if no one were bound to obey the state in matters which, in his own opinion concern religion, the rights of the state would be dependent on every man's judgment and passions. ( ) no one would consider himself bound to obey laws framed against his faith or superstition; and on this pretext he might assume unbounded license. ( ) in this way, the rights of the civil authorities would be utterly set at nought, so that we must conclude that the sovereign power, which alone is bound both by divine and natural right to preserve and guard the laws of the state, should have supreme authority for making any laws about religion which it thinks fit; all are bound to obey its behests on the subject in accordance with their promise which god bids them to keep. ( : ) however, if the sovereign power be heathen, we should either enter into no engagements therewith, and yield up our lives sooner than transfer to it any of our rights; or, if the engagement be made, and our rights transferred, we should (inasmuch as we should have ourselves transferred the right of defending ourselves and our religion) be bound to obey them, and to keep our word: we might even rightly be bound so to do, except in those cases where god, by indisputable revelation, has promised his special aid against tyranny, or given us special exemption from obedience. ( ) thus we see that, of all the jews in babylon, there were only three youths who were certain of the help of god, and, therefore, refused to obey nebuchadnezzar. ( ) all the rest, with the sole exception of daniel, who was beloved by the king, were doubtless compelled by right to obey, perhaps thinking that they had been delivered up by god into the hands of the king, and that the king had obtained and preserved his dominion by god's design. ( ) on the other hand, eleazar, before his country had utterly fallen, wished to give a proof of his constancy to his compatriots, in order that they might follow in his footsteps, and go to any lengths, rather than allow their right and power to be transferred to the greeks, or brave any torture rather than swear allegiance to the heathen. ( ) instances are occurring every day in confirmation of what i here advance. ( ) the rulers of christian kingdoms do not hesitate, with a view to strengthening their dominion, to make treaties with turks and heathen, and to give orders to their subjects who settle among such peoples not to assume more freedom, either in things secular or religious, than is set down in the treaty, or allowed by the foreign government. ( ) we may see this exemplified in the dutch treaty with the japanese, which i have already mentioned. [ : ] chapter xvii - it is shown that no one can, or need, transfer all his rights to the sovereign power. of the hebrew republic, as it was during the lifetime of moses, and after his death, till the foundation of the monarchy; and of its excellence. lastly, of the causes why the theocratic republic fell, and why it could hardly have continued without dissension. [ : ] ( ) the theory put forward in the last chapter, of the universal rights of the sovereign power, and of the natural rights of the individual transferred thereto, though it corresponds in many respects with actual practice, and though practice may be so arranged as to conform to it more and more, must nevertheless always remain in many respects purely ideal. ( ) no one can ever so utterly transfer to another his power and, consequently, his rights, as to cease to be a man; nor can there ever be a power so sovereign that it can carry out every possible wish. ( ) it will always be vain to order a subject to hate what he believes brings him advantage, or to love what brings him loss, or not to be offended at insults, or not to wish to be free from fear, or a hundred other things of the sort, which necessarily follow from the laws of human nature. ( ) so much, i think, is abundantly shown by experience: for men have never so far ceded their power as to cease to be an object of fear to the rulers who received such power and right; and dominions have always been in as much danger from their own subjects as from external enemies. ( ) if it were really the case, that men could be deprived of their natural rights so utterly as never to have any further influence on affairs [endnote ], except with the permission of the holders of sovereign right, it would then be possible to maintain with impunity the most violent tyranny, which, i suppose, no one would for an instant admit. ( : ) we must, therefore, grant that every man retains some part of his right, in dependence on his own decision, and no one else's. ( ) however, in order correctly to understand the extent of the sovereign's right and power, we must take notice that it does not cover only those actions to which it can compel men by fear, but absolutely every action which it can induce men to perform: for it is the fact of obedience, not the motive for obedience, which makes a man a subject. ( : ) whatever be the cause which leads a man to obey the commands of the sovereign, whether it be fear or hope, or love of his country, or any other emotion - the fact remains that the man takes counsel with himself, and nevertheless acts as his sovereign orders. ( ) we must not, therefore, assert that all actions resulting from a man's deliberation with himself are done in obedience to the rights of the individual rather than the sovereign: as a matter of fact, all actions spring from a man's deliberation with himself, whether the determining motive be love or fear of punishment; therefore, either dominion does not exist, and has no rights over its subjects, or else it extends over every instance in which it can prevail on men to decide to obey it. ( ) consequently, every action which a subject performs in accordance with the commands of the sovereign, whether such action springs from love, or fear, or (as is more frequently the case) from hope and fear together, or from reverence, compounded of fear and admiration, or, indeed, any motive whatever, is performed in virtue of his submission to the sovereign, and not in virtue of his own authority. ( : ) this point is made still more clear by the fact that obedience does not consist so much in the outward act as in the mental state of the person obeying; so that he is most under the dominion of another who with his whole heart determines to obey another's commands; and consequently the firmest dominion belongs to the sovereign who has most influence over the minds of his subjects; if those who are most feared possessed the firmest dominion, the firmest dominion would belong to the subjects of a tyrant, for they are always greatly feared by their ruler. ( ) furthermore, though it is impossible to govern the mind as completely as the tongue, nevertheless minds are, to a certain extent, under the control of the sovereign, for he can in many ways bring about that the greatest part of his subjects should follow his wishes in their beliefs, their loves, and their hates. ( ) though such emotions do not arise at the express command of the sovereign they often result (as experience shows) from the authority of his power, and from his direction; in other words, in virtue of his right; we may, therefore, without doing violence to our understanding, conceive men who follow the instigation of their sovereign in their beliefs, their loves, their hates, their contempt, and all other emotions whatsoever. ( : ) though the powers of government, as thus conceived, are sufficiently ample, they can never become large enough to execute every possible wish of their possessors. ( ) this, i think, i have already shown clearly enough. ( ) the method of forming a dominion which should prove lasting i do not, as i have said, intend to discuss, but in order to arrive at the object i have in view, i will touch on the teaching of divine revelation to moses in this respect, and we will consider the history and the success of the jews, gathering therefrom what should be the chief concessions made by sovereigns to their subjects with a view to the security and increase of their dominion. [ : ] ( ) that the preservation of a state chiefly depends on the subjects' fidelity and constancy in carrying out the orders they receive, is most clearly taught both by reason and experience; how subjects ought to be guided so as best to preserve their fidelity and virtue is not so obvious. ( ) all, both rulers and ruled, are men, and prone to follow after their lusts. ( ) the fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair, for it is governed solely by emotions, not by reason: it rushes headlong into every enterprise, and is easily corrupted either by avarice or luxury: everyone thinks himself omniscient and wishes to fashion all things to his liking, judging a thing to be just or unjust, lawful or unlawful, according as he thinks it will bring him profit or loss: vanity leads him to despise his equals, and refuse their guidance: envy of superior fame or fortune (for such gifts are never equally distributed) leads him to desire and rejoice in his neighbour's downfall. ( ) i need not go through the whole list, everyone knows already how much crime. results from disgust at the present - desire for change, headlong anger, and contempt for poverty - and how men's minds are engrossed and kept in turmoil thereby. ( : ) to guard against all these evils, and form a dominion where no room is left for deceit; to frame our institutions so that every man, whatever his disposition, may prefer public right to private advantage, this is the task and this the toil. ( ) necessity is often the mother of invention, but she has never yet succeeded in framing a dominion that was in less danger from its own citizens than from open enemies, or whose rulers did not fear the latter less than the former. ( ) witness the state of rome, invincible by her enemies, but many times conquered and sorely oppressed by her own citizens, especially in the war between vespasian and vitellius. ( ) (see tacitus, hist. bk. iv. for a description of the pitiable state of the city.) ( : ) alexander thought prestige abroad more easy to acquire than prestige at home, and believed that his greatness could be destroyed by his own followers. ( ) fearing such a disaster, he thus addressed his friends: "keep me safe from internal treachery and domestic plots, and i will front without fear the dangers of battle and of war. ( ) philip was more secure in the battle array than in the theatre: he often escaped from the hands of the enemy, he could not escape from his own subjects. ( ) if you think over the deaths of kings, you will count up more who have died by the assassin than by the open foe." (q. curtius, chap. vi.) ( : ) for the sake of making themselves secure, kings who seized the throne in ancient times used to try to spread the idea that they were descended from the immortal gods, thinking that if their subjects and the rest of mankind did not look on them as equals, but believed them to be gods, they would willingly submit to their rule, and obey their commands. ( ) thus augustus persuaded the romans that he was descended from aeneas, who was the son of venus, and numbered among the gods. ( ) "he wished himself to be worshipped in temples, like the gods, with flamens and priests." (tacitus, ann. i. .) ( : ) alexander wished to be saluted as the son of jupiter, not from motives of pride but of policy, as he showed by his answer to the invective of hermolaus: "it is almost laughable," said he, that hermolaus asked me to contradict jupiter, by whose oracle i am recognized. ( ) am i responsible for the answers of the gods? ( ) it offered me the name of son; acquiescence was by no means foreign to my present designs. ( ) would that the indians also would believe me to be a god! ( ) wars are carried through by prestige, falsehoods that are believed often gain the force of truth." (curtius, viii,. para. .) ( ) in these few words he cleverly contrives to palm off a fiction on the ignorant, and at the same time hints at the motive for the deception. ( : ) cleon, in his speech persuading the macedonians to obey their king, adopted a similar device: for after going through the praises of alexander with admiration, and recalling his merits, he proceeds, "the persians are not only pious, but prudent in worshipping their kings as gods: for kingship is the shield of public safety," and he ends thus, "i, myself, when the king enters a banquet hall, should prostrate my body on the ground; other men should do the like, especially those who are wise" (curtius, viii. para. ). ( ) however, the macedonians were more prudent - indeed, it is only complete barbarians who can be so openly cajoled, and can suffer themselves to be turned from subjects into slaves without interests of their own. ( ) others, notwithstanding, have been able more easily to spread the belief that kingship is sacred, and plays the part of god on the earth, that it has been instituted by god, not by the suffrage and consent of men; and that it is preserved and guarded by divine special providence and aid. ( ) similar fictions have been promulgated by monarchs, with the object of strengthening their dominion, but these i will pass over, and in order to arrive at my main purpose, will merely recall and discuss the teaching on the subject of divine revelation to moses in ancient times. [ : ] ( ) we have said in chap. v. that after the hebrews came up out of egypt they were not bound by the law and right of any other nation, but were at liberty to institute any new rites at their pleasure, and to occupy whatever territory they chose. ( ) after their liberation from the intolerable bondage of the egyptians, they were bound by no covenant to any man; and, therefore, every man entered into his natural right, and was free to retain it or to give it up, and transfer it to another. ( ) being, then, in the state of nature, they followed the advice of moses, in whom they chiefly trusted, and decided to transfer their right to no human being, but only to god; without further delay they all, with one voice, promised to obey all the commands of the deity, and to acknowledge no right that he did not proclaim as such by prophetic revelation. ( ) this promise, or transference of right to god, was effected in the same manner as we have conceived it to have been in ordinary societies, when men agree to divest themselves of their natural rights. ( ) it is, in fact, in virtue of a set covenant, and an oath (see exod. xxxiv: ), that the jews freely, and not under compulsion or threats, surrendered their rights and transferred them to god. ( ) moreover, in order that this covenant might be ratified and settled, and might be free from all suspicion of deceit, god did not enter into it till the jews had had experience of his wonderful power by which alone they had been, or could be, preserved in a state of prosperity (exod. xix: , ). ( ) it is because they believed that nothing but god's power could preserve them that they surrendered to god the natural power of self-preservation, which they formerly, perhaps, thought they possessed, and consequently they surrendered at the same time all their natural right. [ : ] ( ) god alone, therefore, held dominion over the hebrews, whose state was in virtue of the covenant called god's kingdom, and god was said to be their king; consequently the enemies of the jews were said to be the enemies of god, and the citizens who tried to seize the dominion were guilty of treason against god; and, lastly, the laws of the state were called the laws and commandments of god. ( ) thus in the hebrew state the civil and religious authority, each consisting solely of obedience to god, were one and the same. ( ) the dogmas of religion were not precepts, but laws and ordinances; piety was regarded as the same as loyalty, impiety as the same as disaffection. ( ) everyone who fell away from religion ceased to be a citizen, and was, on that ground alone, accounted an enemy: those who died for the sake of religion, were held to have died for their country; in fact, between civil and religious law and right there was no distinction whatever. {in biblical hebrew, there was no word for what we call religion." modern hebrew has selected a word whose root is "knowledge."} ( ) for this reason the government could be called a theocracy, inasmuch as the citizens were not bound by anything save the revelations of god. ( : ) however, this state of things existed rather in theory than in practice, for it will appear from what we are about to say, that the hebrews, as a matter of fact, retained absolutely in their own hands the right of sovereignty: this is shown by the method and plan by which the government was carried on, as i will now explain. ( : ) inasmuch as the hebrews did not transfer their rights to any other person but, as in a democracy, all surrendered their rights equally, and cried out with one voice, "whatsoever god shall speak (no mediator or mouthpiece being named) that will we do," it follows that all were equally bound by the covenant, and that all had an equal right to consult the deity, to accept and to interpret his laws, so that all had an exactly equal share in the government. [ : ] ( ) thus at first they all approached god together, so that they might learn his commands, but in this first salutation, they were so thoroughly terrified and so astounded to hear god speaking, that they thought their last hour was at hand: full of fear, therefore, they went afresh to moses, and said, "lo, we have heard god speaking in the fire, and there is no cause why we should wish to die: surely this great fire will consume us: if we hear again the voice of god, we shall surely die. ( ) thou, therefore, go near, and hear all the words of our god, and thou (not god) shalt speak with us: all that god shall tell us, that will we hearken to and perform." ( : ) they thus clearly abrogated their former covenant, and absolutely transferred to moses their right to consult god and interpret his commands: for they do not here promise obedience to all that god shall tell them, but to all that god shall tell moses (see deut. v: after the decalogue, and chap. xviii: , ). ( ) moses, therefore, remained the sole promulgator and interpreter of the divine laws, and consequently also the sovereign judge, who could not be arraigned himself, and who acted among the hebrews the part, of god; in other words, held the sovereign kingship: he alone had the right to consult god, to give the divine answers to the people, and to see that they were carried out. ( ) i say he alone, for if anyone during the life of moses was desirous of preaching anything in the name of the lord, he was, even if a true prophet, considered guilty and a usurper of the sovereign right (numb. xi: ) [endnote ]. ( ) we may here notice, that though the people had elected moses, they could not rightfully elect moses's successor; for having transferred to moses their right of consulting god, and absolutely promised to regard him as a divine oracle, they had plainly forfeited the whole of their right, and were bound to accept as chosen by god anyone proclaimed by moses as his successor. ( ) if moses had so chosen his successor, who like him should wield the sole right of government, possessing the sole right of consulting god, and consequently of making and abrogating laws, of deciding on peace or war, of sending ambassadors, appointing judges - in fact, discharging all the functions of a sovereign, the state would have become simply a monarchy, only differing from other monarchies in the fact, that the latter are, or should be, carried on in accordance with god's decree, unknown even to the monarch, whereas the hebrew monarch would have been the only person to whom the decree was revealed. ( ) a difference which increases, rather than diminishes the monarch's authority. ( ) as far as the people in both cases are concerned, each would be equally subject, and equally ignorant of the divine decree, for each would be dependent on the monarch's words, and would learn from him alone, what was lawful or unlawful: nor would the fact that the people believed that the monarch was only issuing commands in accordance with god's decree revealed to him, make it less in subjection, but rather more. [ : ] ( ) however, moses elected no such successor, but left the dominion to those who came after him in a condition which could not be called a popular government, nor an aristocracy, nor a monarchy, but a theocracy. ( ) for the right of interpreting laws was vested in one man, while the right and power of administering the state according to the laws thus interpreted, was vested in another man (see numb. xxvii: ) [endnote ]. ( : ) in order that the question may be thoroughly understood, i will duly set forth the administration of the whole state. ( ) first, the people were commanded to build a tabernacle, which should be, as it were, the dwelling of god - that is, of the sovereign authority of the state. ( ) this tabernacle was to be erected at the cost of the whole people, not of one man, in order that the place where god was consulted might be public property. ( ) the levites were chosen as courtiers and administrators of this royal abode; while aaron, the brother of moses, was chosen to be their chief and second, as it were, to god their king, being succeeded in the office by his legitimate sons. ( : ) he, as the nearest to god, was the sovereign interpreter of the divine laws; he communicated the answers of the divine oracle to the people, and entreated god's favour for them. ( ) if, in addition to these privileges, he had possessed the right of ruling, he would have been neither more nor less than an absolute monarch; but, in respect to government, he was only a private citizen: the whole tribe of levi was so completely divested of governing rights that it did not even take its share with the others in the partition of territory. ( ) moses provided for its support by inspiring the common people with great reverence for it, as the only tribe dedicated to god. ( : ) further, the army, formed from the remaining twelve tribes, was commanded to invade the land of canaan, to divide it into twelve portions, and to distribute it among the tribes by lot. ( ) for this task twelve captains were chosen, one from every tribe, and were, together with joshua and eleazar, the high priest, empowered to divide the land into twelve equal parts, and distribute it by lot. ( ) joshua was chosen for the chief command of the army, inasmuch as none but he had the right to consult god in emergencies, not like moses, alone in his tent, or in the tabernacle, but through the high priest, to whom only the answers of god were revealed. ( ) furthermore, he was empowered to execute, and cause the people to obey god's commands, transmitted through the high priests; to find, and to make use of, means for carrying them out; to choose as many, army captains as he liked; to make whatever choice he thought best; to send ambassadors in his own name; and, in short, to have the entire control of the war. ( ) to his office there was no rightful successor - indeed, the post was only filled by the direct order of the deity, on occasions of public emergency. ( ) in ordinary times, all the management of peace and war was vested in the captains of the tribes, as i will shortly point out. ( ) lastly, all men between the ages of twenty and sixty were ordered to bear arms, and form a citizen army, owing allegiance, not to its general-in-chief, nor to the high priest, but to religion and to god. ( ) the army, or the hosts, were called the army of god, or the hosts of god. ( ) for this reason god was called by the hebrews the god of armies; and the ark of the covenant was borne in the midst of the army in important battles, when the safety or destruction of the whole people hung upon the issue, so that the people might, as it were, see their king among them, and put forth all their strength. ( : ) from these directions, left by moses to his successors, we plainly see that he chose administrators, rather than despots, to come after him; for he invested no one with the power of consulting god, where he liked and alone, consequently, no one had the power possessed by himself of ordaining and abrogating laws, of deciding on war or peace, of choosing men to fill offices both religious and secular: all these are the prerogatives of a sovereign. ( ) the high priest, indeed, had the right of interpreting laws, and communicating the answers of god, but he could not do so when he liked, as moses could, but only when he was asked by the general-in-chief of the army, the council, or some similar authority. ( ) the general-in-chief and the council could consult god when they liked, but could only receive his answers through the high priest; so that the utterances of god, as reported by the high priest, were not decrees, as they were when reported by moses, but only answers; they were accepted by joshua and the council, and only then had the force of commands and decrees {like the separation of powers in the united states of america.} ( : ) the high priest, both in the case of aaron and of his son eleazar, was chosen by moses; nor had anyone, after moses' death, a right to elect to the office, which became hereditary. ( ) the general-in-chief of the army was also chosen by moses, and assumed his functions in virtue of the commands, not of the high priest, but of moses: indeed, after the death of joshua, the high priest did not appoint anyone in his place, and the captains did not consult god afresh about a general-in-chief, but each retained joshua's power in respect to the contingent of his own tribe, and all retained it collectively, in respect to the whole army. ( ) there seems to have been no need of a general-in-chief, except when they were obliged to unite their forces against a common enemy. ( ) this occurred most frequently during the time of joshua, when they had no fixed dwelling. place, and possessed all things in common. [ : ] ( ) after all the tribes had gained their territories by right of conquest, and had divided their allotted gains, they, became separated, having no longer their possessions in common, so that the need for a single commander ceased, for the different tribes should be considered rather in the light of confederated states than of bodies of fellow-citizens. ( ) in respect to their god and their religion, they, were fellow-citizens; but, in respect to the rights which one possessed with regard to another, they were only confederated: they, were, in fact, in much the same position (if one excepts the temple common to all) as the united states of the netherlands {or united states of america}. ( ) the division of property, held in common is only another phrase for the possession of his share by each of the owners singly, and the surrender by the others of their rights over such share. ( ) this is why moses elected captains of the tribes - namely, that when the dominion was divided, each might take care of his own part; consulting god through the high priest on the affairs of his tribe, ruling over his army, building and fortifying cities, appointing judges, attacking the enemies of his own dominion, and having complete control over all civil and military affairs. ( ) he was not bound to acknowledge any superior judge save god [endnote ], or a prophet whom god should expressly send. ( ) if he departed from the worship of god, the rest of the tribes did not arraign him as a subject, but attacked him as an enemy. ( ) of this we have examples in scripture. ( ) when joshua was dead, the children of israel (not a fresh general-in-chief) consulted god; it being decided that the tribe of judah should be the first to attack its enemies, the tribe in question contracted a single alliance with the tribe of simeon, for uniting their forces, and attacking their common enemy, the rest of the tribes not being included in the alliance (judges i: , , ). ( ) each tribe separately made war against its own enemies, and, according to its pleasure, received them as subjects or allies, though it had been commanded not to spare them on any conditions, but to destroy them utterly. ( ) such disobedience met with reproof from the rest of the tribes, but did not cause the offending tribe to be arraigned: it was not considered a sufficient reason for proclaiming a civil war, or interfering in one another's affairs. ( ) but when the tribe of benjamin offended against the others, and so loosened the bonds of peace that none of the confederated tribes could find refuge within its borders, they attacked it as an enemy, and gaining the victory over it after three battles, put to death both guilty and innocent, according to the laws of war: an act which they subsequently bewailed with tardy repentance. ( : ) these examples plainly confirm what we have said concerning the rights of each tribe. ( ) perhaps we shall be asked who elected the successors to the captains of each tribe; on this point i can gather no positive information in scripture, but i conjecture that as the tribes were divided into families, each headed by its senior member, the senior of all these heads of families succeeded by right to the office of captain, for moses chose from among these seniors his seventy coadjutors, who formed with himself the supreme council. ( ) those who administered the government after the death of joshua were called elders, and elder is a very common hebrew expression in the sense of judge, as i suppose everyone knows; however, it is not very important for us to make up our minds on this point. ( ) it is enough to have shown that after the death of moses no one man wielded all the power of a sovereign; as affairs were not all managed by one man, nor by a single council, nor by the popular vote, but partly by one tribe, partly by the rest in equal shares, it is most evident that the government, after the death of moses, was neither monarchic, nor aristocratic, nor popular, but, as we have said, theocratic. ( ) the reasons for applying this name are: ( : ) i. because the royal seat of government was the temple, and in respect to it alone, as we have shown, all the tribes were fellow-citizens. ( ) ii. because all the people owed allegiance to god, their supreme judge, to whom only they had promised implicit obedience in all things. ( : ) iii. because the general-in-chief or dictator, when there was need of such, was elected by none save god alone. ( ) this was expressly commanded by moses in the name of god (deut. xix: ), and witnessed by the actual choice of gideon, of samson, and of samuel; wherefrom we may conclude that the other faithful leaders were chosen in the same manner, though it is not expressly told us. ( : ) these preliminaries being stated, it is now time to inquire the effects of forming a dominion on this plan, and to see whether it so effectually kept within bounds both rulers and ruled, that the former were never tyrannical and the latter never rebellious. ( : ) those who administer or possess governing power, always try to surround their high-handed actions with a cloak of legality, and to persuade the people that they act from good motives; this they are easily able to effect when they are the sole interpreters of the law; for it is evident that they are thus able to assume a far greater freedom to carry out their wishes and desires than if the interpretation if the law is vested in someone else, or if the laws were so self-evident that no one could be in doubt as to their meaning. [ : ] ( ) we thus see that the power of evil-doing was greatly curtailed for the hebrew captains by the fact that the whole interpretation of the law was vested in the levites (deut. xxi: ), who, on their part, had no share in the government, and depended for all their support and consideration on a correct interpretation of the laws entrusted to them. ( ) moreover, the whole people was commanded to come together at a certain place every seven years and be instructed in the law by the high-priest; further, each individual was bidden to read the book of the law through and through continually with scrupulous care. (deut. xxxi: , , and vi: .) ( ) the captains were thus for their own sakes bound to take great care to administer everything according to the laws laid down, and well known to all, if they, wished to be held in high honour by, the people, who would regard them as the administrators of god's dominion, and as god's vicegerents; otherwise they could not have escaped all the virulence of theological hatred. ( ) there was another very important check on the unbridled license of the captains, in the fact, that the army was formed from the whole body, of the citizens, between the ages of twenty and sixty, without exception, and that the captains were not able to hire any foreign soldiery. ( ) this i say was very, important, for it is well known that princes can oppress their peoples with the single aid of the soldiery in their pay; while there is nothing more formidable to them than the freedom of citizen soldiers, who have established the freedom and glory of their country, by their valour, their toil, and their blood. ( ) thus alexander, when he was about to make wax on darius, a second time, after hearing the advice of parmenio, did not chide him who gave the advice, but polysperchon, who was standing by. ( ) for, as curtius says (iv. para. ), he did not venture to reproach parmenio again after having shortly, before reproved him too sharply. ( ) this freedom of the macedonians, which he so dreaded, he was not able to subdue till after the number of captives enlisted in the army, surpassed that of his own people: then, but not till then, he gave rein to his anger so long checked by, the independence of his chief fellow-countrymen. ( : ) if this independence of citizen soldiers can restrain the princes of ordinary states who are wont to usurp the whole glory of victories, it must have been still more effectual against the hebrew captains, whose soldiers were fighting, not for the glory of a prince, but for the glory of god, and who did not go forth to battle till the divine assent had been given. ( : ) we must also remember that the hebrew captains were associated only by the bonds of religion: therefore, if any one of them had transgressed, and begun to violate the divine right, he might have been treated by the rest as an enemy and lawfully subdued. ( : ) an additional check may be found in the fear of a new prophet arising, for if a man of unblemished life could show by certain signs that he was really a prophet, he ipso facto obtained the sovereign right to rule, which was given to him, as to moses formerly, in the name of god, as revealed to himself alone; not merely through the high priest, as in the case of the captains. ( ) there is no doubt that such an one would easily be able to enlist an oppressed people in his cause, and by trifling signs persuade them of anything he wished: on the other hand, if affairs were well ordered, the captain would be able to make provision in time; that the prophet should be submitted to his approval, and be examined whether he were really of unblemished life, and possessed indisputable signs of his mission: also, whether the teaching he proposed to set forth in the name of the lord agreed with received doctrines, and the general laws of the country; if his credentials were insufficient, or his doctrines new, he could lawfully be put to death, or else received on the captain's sole responsibility and authority. ( : ) again, the captains were not superior to the others in nobility or birth, but only administered the government in virtue of their age and personal qualities. ( ) lastly, neither captains nor army had any reason for preferring war to peace. ( ) the army, as we have stated, consisted entirely of citizens, so that affairs were managed by the same persons both in peace and war. ( ) the man who was a soldier in the camp was a citizen in the market-place, he who was a leader in the camp was a judge in the law courts, he who was a general in the camp was a ruler in the state. ( ) thus no one could desire war for its own sake, but only for the sake of preserving peace and liberty; possibly the captains avoided change as far as possible, so as not to be obliged to consult the high priest and submit to the indignity of standing in his presence. ( : ) so much for the precautions for keeping the captains within bounds. [ : ] ( ) we must now look for the restraints upon the people: these, however, are very clearly indicated in the very groundwork of the social fabric. ( : ) anyone who gives the subject the slightest attention, will see that the state was so ordered as to inspire the most ardent patriotism in the hearts of the citizens, so that the latter would be very hard to persuade to betray their country, and be ready to endure anything rather than submit to a foreign yoke. ( ) after they had transferred their right to god, they thought that their kingdom belonged to god, and that they themselves were god's children. ( ) other nations they looked upon as god's enemies, and regarded with intense hatred (which they took to be piety, see psalm cxxxix: , ): nothing would have been more abhorrent to them than swearing allegiance to a foreigner, and promising him obedience: nor could they conceive any greater or more execrable crime than the betrayal of their country, the kingdom of the god whom they adored. ( : ) it was considered wicked for anyone to settle outside of the country, inasmuch as the worship of god by which they were bound could not be carried on elsewhere: their own land alone was considered holy, the rest of the earth unclean and profane. ( : ) david, who was forced to live in exile, complained before saul as follows: "but if they be the children of men who have stirred thee up against me, cursed be they before the lord; for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the lord, saying, go, serve other gods." (i sam. xxvi: .) ( ) for the same reason no citizen, as we should especially remark, was ever sent into exile: he who sinned was liable to punishment, but not to disgrace. ( : ) thus the love of the hebrews for their country was not only patriotism, but also piety, and was cherished and nurtured by daily rites till, like their hatred of other nations, it must have passed into their nature. ( ) their daily worship was not only different from that of other nations (as it might well be, considering that they were a peculiar people and entirely apart from the rest), it was absolutely contrary. ( ) such daily reprobation naturally gave rise to a lasting hatred, deeply implanted in the heart: for of all hatreds none is more deep and tenacious than that which springs from extreme devoutness or piety, and is itself cherished as pious. ( ) nor was a general cause lacking for inflaming such hatred more and more, inasmuch as it was reciprocated; the surrounding nations regarding the jews with a hatred just as intense. ( : ) how great was the effect of all these causes, namely, freedom from man's dominion; devotion to their country; absolute rights over all other men; a hatred not only permitted but pious; a contempt for their fellow-men; the singularity of their customs and religious rites; the effect, i repeat, of all these causes in strengthening the hearts of the jews to bear all things for their country, with extraordinary constancy and valour, will at once be discerned by reason and attested by experience. ( ) never, so long as the city was standing, could they endure to remain under foreign dominion; and therefore they called jerusalem "a rebellious city" (ezra iv: ). ( ) their state after its reestablishment (which was a mere shadow of the first, for the high priests had usurped the rights of the tribal captains) was, with great difficulty, destroyed by the romans, as tacitus bears witness (hist. ii: ):- "vespasian had closed the war against the jews, abandoning the siege of jerusalem as an enterprise difficult and arduous rather from the character of the people and the obstinacy of their superstition, than from the strength left to the besieged for meeting their necessities." ( ) but besides these characteristics, which are merely ascribed by an individual opinion, there was one feature peculiar to this state and of great importance in retaining the affections of the citizens, and checking all thoughts of desertion, or abandonment of the country: namely, self-interest, the strength and life of all human action. ( ) this was peculiarly engaged in the hebrew state, for nowhere else did citizens possess their goods so securely, as did the subjects of this community, for the latter possessed as large a share in the land and the fields as did their chiefs, and were owners of their plots of ground in perpetuity; for if any man was compelled by poverty to sell his farm or his pasture, he received it back again intact at the year of jubilee: there were other similar enactments against the possibility of alienating real property. ( : ) again, poverty w as nowhere more endurable than in a country where duty towards one's neighbour, that is, one's fellow-citizen, was practised with the utmost piety, as a means of gaining the favour of god the king. ( ) thus the hebrew citizens would nowhere be so well off as in their own country; outside its limits they met with nothing but loss and disgrace. ( : ) the following considerations were of weight, not only in keeping them at home, but also in preventing civil war and removing causes of strife; no one was bound to serve his equal, but only to serve god, while charity and love towards fellow-citizens was accounted the highest piety; this last feeling was not a little fostered by the general hatred with which they regarded foreign nations and were regarded by them. ( ) furthermore, the strict discipline of obedience in which they were brought up, was a very important factor; for they were bound to carry on all their actions according to the set rules of the law: a man might not plough when he liked, but only at certain times, in certain years, and with one sort of beast at a time; so, too, he might only sow and reap in a certain method and season - in fact, his whole life was one long school of obedience (see chap. v. on the use of ceremonies); such a habit was thus engendered, that conformity seemed freedom instead of servitude, and men desired what was commanded rather than what was forbidden. ( ) this result was not a little aided by the fact that the people were bound, at certain seasons of the year, to give themselves up to rest and rejoicing, not for their own pleasure, but in order that they might worship god cheerfully. ( : ) three times in the year they feasted before the lord; on the seventh day of every week they were bidden to abstain from all work and to rest; besides these, there were other occasions when innocent rejoicing and feasting were not only allowed but enjoined. ( ) i do not think any better means of influencing men's minds could be devised; for there is no more powerful attraction than joy springing from devotion, a mixture of admiration and love. ( ) it was not easy to be wearied by constant repetition, for the rites on the various festivals were varied and recurred seldom. ( ) we may add the deep reverence for the temple which all most religiously fostered, on account of the peculiar rites and duties that they were obliged to perform before approaching thither. ( ) even now, jews cannot read without horror of the crime of manasseh, who dared to place an idol in the temple. ( ) the laws, scrupulously preserved in the inmost sanctuary, were objects of equal reverence to the people. ( ) popular reports and misconceptions were, therefore, very little to be feared in this quarter, for no one dared decide on sacred matters, but all felt bound to obey, without consulting their reason, all the commands given by the answers of god received in the temple, and all the laws which god had ordained. ( : ) i think i have now explained clearly, though briefly, the main features of the hebrew commonwealth. ( ) i must now inquire into the causes which led the people so often to fall away from the law, which brought about their frequent subjection, and, finally, the complete destruction of their dominion. ( ) perhaps i shall be told that it sprang from their hardness of heart; but this is childish, for why should this people be more hard of heart than others; was it by nature? [ :a] ( ) but nature forms individuals, not peoples; the latter are only distinguishable by the difference of their language, their customs, and their laws; while from the two last - i.e., customs and laws, - it may arise that they have a peculiar disposition, a peculiar manner of life, and peculiar prejudices. ( ) if, then, the hebrews were harder of heart than other nations, the fault lay with their laws or customs. ( : ) this is certainly true, in the sense that, if god had wished their dominion to be more lasting, he would have given them other rites and laws, and would have instituted a different form of government. ( ) we can, therefore, only say that their god was angry with them, not only, as jeremiah says, from the building of the city, but even from the founding of their laws. ( : ) this is borne witness to by ezekiel xx: : "wherefore i gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and i polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb; that i might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that i am the lord." ( : ) in order that we may understand these words, and the destruction of the hebrew commonwealth, we must bear in mind that it had at first been intended to entrust the whole duties of the priesthood to the firstborn, and not to the levites (see numb. viii: ). ( ) it was only when all the tribes, except the levites, worshipped the golden calf, that the firstborn were rejected and defiled, and the levites chosen in their stead (deut. x: ). ( ) when i reflect on this change, i feel disposed to break forth with the words of tacitus. ( ) god's object at that time was not the safety of the jews, but vengeance. ( ) i am greatly astonished that the celestial mind was so inflamed with anger that it ordained laws, which always are supposed to promote the honour, well-being, and security of a people, with the purpose of vengeance, for the sake of punishment; so that the laws do not seem so much laws - that is, the safeguard of the people - as pains and penalties. ( : ) the gifts which the people were obliged to bestow on the levites and priests - the redemption of the firstborn, the poll-tax due to the levites, the privilege possessed by the latter of the sole performance of sacred rites - all these, i say, were a continual reproach to the people, a continual reminder of their defilement and rejection. ( ) moreover, we may be sure that the levites were for ever heaping reproaches upon them: for among so many thousands there must have been many importunate dabblers in theology. ( ) hence the people got into the way of watching the acts of the levites, who were but human; of accusing the whole body of the faults of one member, and continually murmuring. ( : ) besides this, there was the obligation to keep in idleness men hateful to them, and connected by no ties of blood. ( ) especially would this seem grievous when provisions were dear. what wonder, then, if in times of peace, when striking miracles had ceased, and no men of paramount authority were forthcoming, the irritable and greedy temper of the people began to wax cold, and at length to fall away from a worship, which, though divine, was also humiliating, and even hostile, and to seek after something fresh; or can we be surprised that the captains, who always adopt the popular course, in order to gain the sovereign power for themselves by enlisting the sympathies of the people, and alienating the high priest, should have yielded to their demands, and introduced a new worship? ( ) if the state had been formed according to the original intention, the rights and honour of all the tribes would have been equal, and everything would have rested on a firm basis. ( ) who is there who would willingly violate the religious rights of his kindred? ( ) what could a man desire more than to support his own brothers and parents, thus fulfilling the duties of religion? ( ) who would not rejoice in being taught by them the interpretation of the laws, and receiving through them the answers of god? ( : ) the tribes would thus have been united by a far closer bond, if all alike had possessed the right to the priesthood. ( ) all danger would have been obviated, if the choice of the levites had not been dictated by anger and revenge. ( ) but, as we have said, the hebrews had offended their god, who, as ezekiel says, polluted them in their own gifts by rejecting all that openeth the womb, so that he might destroy them. ( : ) this passage is also confirmed by their history. as soon as the people in the wilderness began to live in ease and plenty, certain men of no mean birth began to rebel against the choice of the levites, and to make it a cause for believing that moses had not acted by the commands of god, but for his own good pleasure, inasmuch as he had chosen his own tribe before all the rest, and had bestowed the high priesthood in perpetuity on his own brother. ( ) they, therefore, stirred up a tumult, and came to him, crying out that all men were equally sacred, and that he had exalted himself above his fellows wrongfully. ( ) moses was not able to pacify them with reasons; but by the intervention of a miracle in proof of the faith, they all perished. ( ) a fresh sedition then arose among the whole people, who believed that their champions had not been put to death by the judgment of god, but by the device of moses. ( ) after a great slaughter, or pestilence, the rising subsided from inanition, but in such a manner that all preferred death to life under such conditions. ( : ) we should rather say that sedition ceased than that harmony was re-established. ( ) this is witnessed by scripture (deut. xxxi: ), where god, after predicting to moses that the people after his death will fall away from the divine worship, speaks thus: "for i know their imagination which they go about, even now before i have brought them into the land which i sware;" and, a little while after (xxxi: ), moses says: for i know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: behold while i am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the lord; and how much more after my death!" ( : ) indeed, it happened according to his words, as we all know. ( ) great changes, extreme license, luxury, and hardness of heart grew up; things went from bad to worse, till at last the people, after being frequently conquered, came to an open rupture with the divine right, and wished for a mortal king, so that the seat of government might be the court, instead of the temple, and that the tribes might remain fellow-citizens in respect to their king, instead of in respect to divine right and the high priesthood. ( : ) a vast material for new seditions was thus produced, eventually resulting in the ruin of the entire state. kings are above all things jealous of a precarious rule, and can in nowise brook a dominion within their own. ( ) the first monarchs, being chosen from the ranks of private citizens, were content with the amount of dignity to which they had risen; but their sons, who obtained the throne by right of inheritance, began gradually to introduce changes, so as to get all the sovereign rights into their own hands. ( ) this they were generally unable to accomplish, so long as the right of legislation did not rest with them, but with the high priest, who kept the laws in the sanctuary, and interpreted them to the people. ( ) the kings were thus bound to obey the laws as much as were the subjects, and were unable to abrogate them, or to ordain new laws of equal authority; moreover, they were prevented by the levites from administering the affairs of religion, king and subject being alike unclean. ( ) lastly, the whole safety of their dominion depended on the will of one man, if that man appeared to be a prophet; and of this they had seen an example, namely, how completely samuel had been able to command saul, and how easily, because of a single disobedience, he had been able to transfer the right of sovereignty to david. ( ) thus the kings found a dominion within their own, and wielded a precarious sovereignty. ( : ) in order to surmount these difficulties, they allowed other temples to be dedicated to the gods, so that there might be no further need of consulting the levites; they also sought out many who prophesied in the name of god, so that they might have creatures of their own to oppose to the true prophets. ( ) however, in spite of all their attempts, they never attained their end. ( ) for the prophets, prepared against every emergency, waited for a favourable opportunity, such as the beginning of a new reign, which is always precarious, while the memory of the previous reign remains green. ( ) at these times they could easily pronounce by divine authority that the king was tyrannical, and could produce a champion of distinguished virtue to vindicate the divine right, and lawfully to claim dominion, or a share in it. ( ) still, not even so could the prophets effect much. ( ) they could, indeed, remove a tyrant; but there were reasons which prevented them from doing more than setting up, at great cost of civil bloodshed, another tyrant in his stead. ( ) of discords and civil wars there was no end, for the causes for the violation of divine right remained always the same, and could only be removed by a complete remodelling of the state. ( : ) we have now seen how religion was introduced into the hebrew commonwealth, and how the dominion might have lasted for ever, if the just wrath of the lawgiver had allowed it. ( ) as this was impossible, it was bound in time to perish. ( ) i am now speaking only of the first commonwealth, for the second was a mere shadow of the first, inasmuch as the people were bound by the rights of the persians to whom they were subject. ( ) after the restoration of freedom, the high priests usurped the rights of the secular chiefs, and thus obtained absolute dominion. ( ) the priests were inflamed with an intense desire to wield the powers of the sovereignty and the high priesthood at the same time. ( ) i have, therefore, no need to speak further of the second commonwealth. ( ) whether the first, in so far as we deem it to have been durable, is capable of imitation, and whether it would be pious to copy it as far as possible, will appear from what fellows. ( ) i wish only to draw attention, as a crowning conclusion, to the principle indicated already - namely, that it is evident, from what we have stated in this chapter, that the divine right, or the right of religion, originates in a compact: without such compact, none but natural rights exist. ( ) the hebrews were not bound by their religion to evince any pious care for other nations not included in the compact, but only for their own fellow-citizens. [ : ] chapter xviii - from the commonwealth of the hebrews, and their history, certain political doctrines are deduced. [ : ] ( ) although the commonwealth of the hebrews, as we have conceived it, might have lasted for ever, it would be impossible to imitate it at the present day, nor would it be advisable so to do. ( ) if a people wished to transfer their rights to god it would be necessary to make an express covenant with him, and for this would be needed not only the consent of those transferring their rights, but also the consent of god. ( ) god, however, has revealed through his apostles that the covenant of god is no longer written in ink, or on tables of stone, but with the spirit of god in the fleshy tables of the heart. ( : ) furthermore, such a form of government would only be available for those who desire to have no foreign relations, but to shut themselves up within their own frontiers, and to live apart from the rest of the world; it would be useless to men who must have dealings with other nations; so that the cases where it could be adopted are very few indeed. ( : ) nevertheless, though it could not be copied in its entirety, it possessed many excellent features which might be brought to our notice, and perhaps imitated with advantage. ( ) my intention, however, is not to write a treatise on forms of government, so i will pass over most of such points in silence, and will only touch on those which bear upon my purpose. ( : ) god's kingdom is not infringed upon by the choice of an earthly ruler endowed with sovereign rights; for after the hebrews had transferred their rights to god, they conferred the sovereign right of ruling on moses, investing him with the sole power of instituting and abrogating laws in the name of god, of choosing priests, of judging, of teaching, of punishing - in fact, all the prerogatives of an absolute monarch. ( : ) again, though the priests were the interpreters of the laws, they had no power to judge the citizens, or to excommunicate anyone: this could only be done by the judges and chiefs chosen from among the people. ( ) a consideration of the successes and the histories of the hebrews will bring to light other considerations worthy of note. to wit: ( : ) i. that there were no religious sects, till after the high priests, in the second commonwealth, possessed the authority to make decrees, and transact the business of government. ( ) in order that such authority might last for ever, the high priests usurped the rights of secular rulers, and at last wished to be styled kings. ( ) the reason for this is ready to hand; in the first commonwealth no decrees could bear the name of the high priest, for he had no right to ordain laws, but only to give the answers of god to questions asked by the captains or the councils: he had, therefore, no motive for making changes in the law, but took care, on the contrary, to administer and guard what had already been received and accepted. ( ) his only means of preserving his freedom in safety against the will of the captains lay in cherishing the law intact. ( ) after the high priests had assumed the power of carrying on the government, and added the rights of secular rulers to those they already possessed, each one began both in things religious and in things secular, to seek for the glorification of his own name, settling everything by sacerdotal authority, and issuing every day, concerning ceremonies, faith, and all else, new decrees which he sought to make as sacred and authoritative as the laws of moses. ( ) religion thus sank into a degrading superstition, while the true meaning and interpretation of the laws became corrupted. ( ) furthermore, while the high priests were paving their way to the secular rule just after the restoration, they attempted to gain popular favour by assenting to every demand; approving whatever the people did, however impious, and accommodating scripture to the very depraved current morals. ( ) malachi bears witness to this in no measured terms: he chides the priests of his time as despisers of the name of god, and then goes on with his invective as follows (mal ii: , ): "for the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the lord of hosts. ( ) but ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law, ye have corrupted the covenant of levi, saith the lord of hosts." ( ) he further accuses them of interpreting the laws according to their own pleasure, and paying no respect to god but only to persons. ( ) it is certain that the high priests were never so cautious in their conduct as to escape the remark of the more shrewd among the people, for the latter were at length emboldened to assert that no laws ought to be kept save those that were written, and that the decrees which the pharisees (consisting, as josephus says in his "antiquities," chiefly, of the common people), were deceived into calling the traditions of the fathers, should not be observed at all. ( ) however this may be, we can in nowise doubt that flattery of the high priest, the corruption of religion and the laws, and the enormous increase of the extent of the last-named, gave very great and frequent occasion for disputes and altercations impossible to allay. ( ) when men begin to quarrel with all the ardour of superstition, and the magistracy to back up one side or the other, they can never come to a compromise, but are bound to split into sects. ( : ) ii. it is worthy of remark that the prophets, who were in a private station of life, rather irritated than reformed mankind by their freedom of warning, rebuke, and censure; whereas the kings, by their reproofs and punishments, could always produce an effect. ( ) the prophets were often intolerable even to pious kings, on account of the authority they assumed for judging whether an action was right or wrong, or for reproving the kings themselves if they dared to transact any business, whether public or private, without prophetic sanction. ( ) king asa who, according to the testimony of scripture, reigned piously, put the prophet hanani into a prison-house because he had ventured freely to chide and reprove him for entering into a covenant with the king of armenia. ( : ) other examples might be cited, tending to prove that religion gained more harm than good by such freedom, not to speak of the further consequence, that if the prophets had retained their rights, great civil wars would have resulted. ( ) iii. it is remarkable that during all the period, during which the people held the reins of power, there was only one civil war, and that one was completely extinguished, the conquerors taking such pity on the conquered, that they endeavoured in every way to reinstate them in their former dignity and power. ( ) but after that the people, little accustomed to kings, changed its first form of government into a monarchy, civil war raged almost continuously; and battles were so fierce as to exceed all others recorded; in one engagement (taxing our faith to the utmost) five hundred thousand israelites were slaughtered by the men of judah, and in another the israelites slew great numbers of the men of judah (the figures are not given in scripture), almost razed to the ground the walls of jerusalem, and sacked the temple in their unbridled fury. ( ) at length, laden with the spoils of their brethren, satiated with blood, they took hostages, and leaving the king in his well-nigh devastated kingdom, laid down their arms, relying on the weakness rather than the good faith of their foes. ( ) a few years after, the men of judah, with recruited strength, again took the field, but were a second time beaten by the israelites, and slain to the number of a hundred and twenty thousand, two hundred thousand of their wives and children were led into captivity, and a great booty again seized. ( ) worn out with these and similar battles set forth at length in their histories, the jews at length fell a prey to their enemies. ( : ) furthermore, if we reckon up the times during which peace prevailed under each form of government, we shall find a great discrepancy. ( ) before the monarchy forty years and more often passed, and once eighty years (an almost unparalleled period), without any war, foreign or civil. ( ) after the kings acquired sovereign power, the fighting was no longer for peace and liberty, but for glory; accordingly we find that they all, with the exception of solomon (whose virtue and wisdom would be better displayed in peace than in war) waged war, and finally a fatal desire for power gained ground, which, in many cases, made the path to the throne a bloody one. ( : ) lastly, the laws, during the rule of the people, remained uncorrupted and were studiously observed. ( ) before the monarchy there were very, few prophets to admonish the people, but after the establishment of kings there were a great number at the same time. ( ) obadiah saved a hundred from death and hid them away, lest they should be slain with the rest. ( ) the people, so far as we can see, were never deceived by false prophets till after the power had been vested in kings, whose creatures many of the prophets were. ( ) again, the people, whose heart was generally proud or humble according to its circumstances, easily corrected it-self under misfortune, turned again to god, restored his laws, and so freed itself from all peril; but the kings, whose hearts were always equally puffed up, and who could not be corrected without humiliation, clung pertinaciously to their vices, even till the last overthrow of the city. [ : ] ( ) we may now clearly see from what i have said:- ( ) i. how hurtful to religion and the state is the concession to ministers of religion of any power of issuing decrees or transacting the business of government: how, on the contrary, far greater stability is afforded, if the said ministers are only allowed to give answers to questions duly put to them, and are, as a rule, obliged to preach and practise the received and accepted doctrines. ( : ) ii how dangerous it is to refer to divine right matters merely speculative and subject or liable to dispute. ( ) the most tyrannical governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right over his thoughts - nay, such a state of things leads to the rule of popular passion. ( : ) pontius pilate made concession to the passion of the pharisees in consenting to the crucifixion of christ, whom he knew to be innocent. ( ) again, the pharisees, in order to shake the position of men richer than themselves, began to set on foot questions of religion, and accused the sadducees of impiety, and, following their example, the vilest - hypocrites, stirred, as they pretended, by the same holy wrath which they called zeal for the lord, persecuted men whose unblemished character and distinguished virtue had excited the popular hatred, publicly denounced their opinions, and inflamed the fierce passions of the people against them. ( : ) this wanton licence being cloaked with the specious garb of religion could not easily be repressed, especially when the sovereign authorities introduced a sect of which they, were not the head; they were then regarded not as interpreters of divine right, but as sectarians - that is, as persons recognizing the right of divine interpretation assumed by the leaders of the sect. ( ) the authority of the magistrates thus became of little account in such matters in comparison with the authority of sectarian leaders before whose interpretations kings were obliged to bow. ( : ) to avoid such evils in a state, there is no safer way, than to make piety and religion to consist in acts only - that is, in the practice of justice and charity, leaving everyone's judgment in other respects free. ( ) but i will speak of this more at length presently. [ : ] ( ) iii. we see how necessary it is, both in the interests of the state and in the interests of religion, to confer on the sovereign power the right of deciding what is lawful or the reverse. ( ) if this right of judging actions could not be given to the very prophets of god without great injury, to the state and religion, how much less should it be entrusted to those who can neither foretell the future nor work miracles! ( ) but this again i will treat of more fully hereafter. ( : ) iv. lastly, we see how disastrous it is for a people unaccustomed to kings, and possessing a complete code of laws, to set up a monarchy. ( ) neither can the subjects brook such a sway, nor the royal authority submit to laws and popular rights set up by anyone inferior to itself. ( ) still less can a king be expected to defend such laws, for they were not framed to support his dominion, but the dominion of the people, or some council which formerly ruled, so that in guarding the popular rights the king would seem to be a slave rather than a master. ( ) the representative of a new monarchy will employ all his zeal in attempting to frame new laws, so as to wrest the rights of dominion to his own use, and to reduce the people till they find it easier to increase than to curtail the royal prerogative. ( ) i must not, however, omit to state that it is no less dangerous to remove a monarch, though he is on all hands admitted to be a tyrant. ( ) for his people are accustomed to royal authority and will obey no other, despising and mocking at any less august control. ( : ) it is therefore necessary, as the prophets discovered of old, if one king be removed, that he should be replaced by another, who will be a tyrant from necessity rather than choice. ( ) for how will he be able to endure the sight of the hands of the citizens reeking with royal blood, and to rejoice in their regicide as a glorious exploit? ( ) was not the deed perpetrated as an example and warning for himself? ( : ) if he really wishes to be king, and not to acknowledge the people as the judge of kings and the master of himself, or to wield a precarious sway, he must avenge the death of his predecessor, making an example for his own sake, lest the people should venture to repeat a similar crime. ( ) he will not, however, be able easily to avenge the death of the tyrant by the slaughter of citizens unless he defends the cause of tyranny and approves the deeds of his predecessor, thus following in his footsteps. ( : ) hence it comes to pass that peoples have often changed their tyrants, but never removed them or changed the monarchical form of government into any other. [ : ] ( ) the english people furnish us with a terrible example of this fact. ( ) they sought how to depose their monarch under the forms of law, but when he had been removed, they were utterly unable to change the form of government, and after much bloodshed only brought it about, that a new monarch should be hailed under a different name (as though it had been a mere question of names); this new monarch could only consolidate his power by completely destroying the royal stock, putting to death the king's friends, real or supposed, and disturbing with war the peace which might encourage discontent, in order that the populace might be engrossed with novelties and divert its mind from brooding over the slaughter of the king. ( ) at last, however, the people reflected that it had accomplished nothing for the good of the country beyond violating the rights of the lawful king and changing everything for the worse. ( ) it therefore decided to retrace its steps as soon as possible, and never rested till it had seen a complete restoration of the original state of affairs. ( : ) it may perhaps be objected that the roman people was easily able to remove its tyrants, but i gather from its history a strong confirmation of my contention. ( ) though the roman people was much more than ordinarily capable of removing their tyrants and changing their form of government, inasmuch as it held in its own hands the power of electing its king and his successor, said being composed of rebels and criminals had not long been used to the royal yoke (out of its six kings it had put to death three), nevertheless it could accomplish nothing beyond electing several tyrants in place of one, who kept it groaning under a continual state of war, both foreign and civil, till at last it changed its government again to a form differing from monarchy, as in england, only in name. [ : ] ( ) as for the united states of the netherlands, they have never, as we know, had a king, but only counts, who never attained the full rights of dominion. ( ) the states of the netherlands evidently acted as principals in the settlement made by them at the time of the earl of leicester's mission: they always reserved for themselves the authority to keep the counts up to their duties, and the power to preserve this authority and the liberty of the citizens. ( ) they had ample means of vindicating their rights if their rulers should prove tyrannical, and could impose such restraints that nothing could be done without their consent and approval. ( : ) thus the rights of sovereign power have always been vested in the states, though the last count endeavoured to usurp them. ( ) it is therefore little likely that the states should give them up, especially as they have just restored their original dominion, lately almost lost. ( : ) these examples, then, confirm us in our belief, that every dominion should retain its original form, and, indeed, cannot change it without danger of the utter ruin of the whole state. ( ) such are the points i have here thought worthy of remark. [ : ] chapter xix - it is shown that the right over matters spiritual lies wholly with the sovereign, and that the outward forms of religion should be in accordance with public peace, if we would obey god aright. ( ) when i said that the possessors of sovereign power have rights over everything, and that all rights are dependent on their decree, i did not merely mean temporal rights, but also spiritual rights; of the latter, no less than the former, they ought to be the interpreters and the champions. ( ) i wish to draw special attention to this point, and to discuss it fully in this chapter, because many persons deny that the right of deciding religious questions belongs to the sovereign power, and refuse to acknowledge it as the interpreter of divine right. ( ) they accordingly assume full licence to accuse and arraign it, nay, even to excommunicate it from the church, as ambrosius treated the emperor theodosius in old time. ( ) however, i will show later on in this chapter that they take this means of dividing the government, and paving the way to their own ascendancy. ( ) i wish, however, first to point out that religion acquires its force as law solely from the decrees of the sovereign. ( ) god has no special kingdom among men except in so far as he reigns through temporal rulers. [ : ] ( ) moreover, the rites of religion and the outward observances of piety should be in accordance with the public peace and well-being, and should therefore be determined by the sovereign power alone. ( ) i speak here only of the outward observances of piety and the external rites of religion, not of piety, itself, nor of the inward worship of god, nor the means by which the mind is inwardly led to do homage to god in singleness of heart. ( : ) inward worship of god and piety in itself are within the sphere of everyone's private rights, and cannot be alienated (as i showed at the end of chapter vii.). ( ) what i here mean by the kingdom of god is, i think, sufficiently clear from what has been said in chapter xiv. ( ) i there showed that a man best fulfils gods law who worships him, according to his command, through acts of justice and charity; it follows, therefore, that wherever justice and charity have the force of law and ordinance, there is god's kingdom. ( : ) i recognize no difference between the cases where god teaches and commands the practice of justice and charity through our natural faculties, and those where he makes special revelations; nor is the form of the revelation of importance so long as such practice is revealed and becomes a sovereign and supreme law to men. ( ) if, therefore, i show that justice and charity can only acquire the force of right and law through the rights of rulers, i shall be able readily to arrive at the conclusion (seeing that the rights of rulers are in the possession of the sovereign), that religion can only acquire the force of right by means of those who have the right to command, and that god only rules among men through the instrumentality of earthly potentates. ( ) it follows from what has been said, that the practice of justice and charity only acquires the force of law through the rights of the sovereign authority; for we showed in chapter xvi. that in the state of nature reason has no more rights than desire, but that men living either by the laws of the former or the laws of the latter, possess rights co-extensive with their powers. ( : ) for this reason we could not conceive sin to exist in the state of nature, nor imagine god as a judge punishing man's transgressions; but we supposed all things to happen according to the general laws of universal nature, there being no difference between pious and impious, between him that was pure (as solomon says) and him that was impure, because there was no possibility either of justice or charity. [ : ] ( ) in order that the true doctrines of reason, that is (as we showed in chapter iv.), the true divine doctrines might obtain absolutely the force of law and right, it was necessary that each individual should cede his natural right, and transfer it either to society as a whole, or to a certain body of men, or to one man. ( ) then, and not till then, does it first dawn upon us what is justice and what is injustice, what is equity and what is iniquity. ( : ) justice, therefore, and absolutely all the precepts of reason, including love towards one's neighbour, receive the force of laws and ordinances solely through the rights of dominion, that is (as we showed in the same chapter) solely on the decree of those who possess the right to rule. ( ) inasmuch as the kingdom of god consists entirely in rights applied to justice and charity or to true religion, it follows that (as we asserted) the kingdom of god can only exist among men through the means of the sovereign powers; nor does it make any difference whether religion be apprehended by our natural faculties or by revelation: the argument is sound in both cases, inasmuch as religion is one and the same, and is equally revealed by god, whatever be the manner in which it becomes known to men. ( : ) thus, in order that the religion revealed by the prophets might have the force of law among the jews, it was necessary that every man of them should yield up his natural right, and that all should, with one accord, agree that they would only obey such commands as god should reveal to them through the prophets. ( ) just as we have shown to take place in a democracy, where men with one consent agree to live according to the dictates of reason. ( ) although the hebrews furthermore transferred their right to god, they were able to do so rather in theory than in practice, for, as a matter of fact (as we pointed out above) they absolutely retained the right of dominion till they transferred it to moses, who in his turn became absolute king, so that it was only through him that god reigned over the hebrews. ( ) for this reason (namely, that religion only acquires the force of law by means of the sovereign power) moses was not able to punish those who, before the covenant, and consequently while still in possession of their rights, violated the sabbath (exod. xvi: ), but was able to do so after the covenant (numb. xv: ), because everyone had then yielded up his natural rights, and the ordinance of the sabbath had received the force of law. ( : ) lastly, for the same reason, after the destruction of the hebrew dominion, revealed religion ceased to have the force of law; for we cannot doubt that as soon as the jews transferred their right to the king of babylon, the kingdom of god and the divine right forthwith ceased. ( ) for the covenant wherewith they promised to obey all the utterances of god was abrogated; god's kingdom, which was based thereupon, also ceased. ( ) the hebrews could no longer abide thereby, inasmuch as their rights no longer belonged to them but to the king of babylon, whom (as we showed in chapter xvi.) they were bound to obey in all things. ( ) jeremiah (chap. xxix: ) expressly admonishes them of this fact: "and seek the peace of the city, whither i have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." ( ) now, they could not seek the peace of the city as having a share in its government, but only as slaves, being, as they were, captives; by obedience in all things, with a view to avoiding seditions, and by observing all the laws of the country, however different from their own. ( ) it is thus abundantly evident that religion among the hebrews only acquired the form of law through the right of the sovereign rule; when that rule was destroyed, it could no longer be received as the law of a particular kingdom, but only as the universal precept of reason. ( ) i say of reason, for the universal religion had not yet become known by revelation. ( ) we may therefore draw the general conclusion that religion, whether revealed through our natural faculties or through prophets, receives the force of a command solely through the decrees of the holders of sovereign power; and, further, that god has no special kingdom among men, except in so far as he reigns through earthly potentates. ( : ) we may now see in a clearer light what was stated in chapter iv., namely, that all the decrees of god involve eternal truth and necessity, so that we cannot conceive god as a prince or legislator giving laws to mankind. ( ) for this reason the divine precepts, whether revealed through our natural faculties, or through prophets, do not receive immediately from god the force of a command, but only from those, or through the mediation of those, who possess the right of ruling and legislating. ( ) it is only through these latter means that god rules among men, and directs human affairs with justice and equity. ( : ) this conclusion is supported by experience, for we find traces of divine justice only in places where just men bear sway; elsewhere the same lot (to repeat, again solomon's words) befalls the just and the unjust, the pure and the impure: a state of things which causes divine providence to be doubted by many who think that god immediately reigns among men, and directs all nature for their benefit. [ : ] ( ) as, then, both reason and experience tell us that the divine right is entirely dependent on the decrees of secular rulers, it follows that secular rulers are its proper interpreters. ( ) how this is so we shall now see, for it is time to show that the outward observances of religion, and all the external practices of piety should be brought into accordance with the public peace and well-being if we would obey god rightly. ( ) when this has been shown we shall easily understand how the sovereign rulers are the proper interpreters of religion and piety. ( : ) it is certain that duties towards one's country are the highest that man can fulfil; for, if government be taken away, no good thing can last, all falls into dispute, anger and anarchy reign unchecked amid universal fear. ( ) consequently there can be no duty towards our neighbour which would not become an offence if it involved injury to the whole state, nor can there be any offence against our duty towards our neighbour, or anything but loyalty in what we do for the sake of preserving the state. ( ) for instance: it is in the abstract my duty when my neighbour quarrels with me and wishes to take my cloak, to give him my coat also; but if it be thought that such conduct is hurtful to the maintenance of the state, i ought to bring him to trial, even at the risk of his being condemned to death. ( : ) for this reason manlius torquatus is held up to honour, inasmuch as the public welfare outweighed with him his duty towards his children. ( ) this being so, it follows that the public welfare is the sovereign law to which all others, divine and human, should be made to conform. ( ) now, it is the function of the sovereign only to decide what is necessary for the public welfare and the safety of the state, and to give orders accordingly; therefore it is also the function of the sovereign only to decide the limits of our duty towards our neighbour - in other words, to determine how we should obey god. ( ) we can now clearly understand how the sovereign is the interpreter of religion, and further, that no one can obey god rightly, if the practices of his piety do not conform to the public welfare; or, consequently, if he does not implicitly obey all the commands of the sovereign. ( ) for as by god's command we are bound to do our duty to all men without exception, and to do no man an injury, we are also bound not to help one man at another's loss, still less at a loss to the whole state. ( ) now, no private citizen can know what is good for the state, except he learn it through the sovereign power, who alone has the right to transact public business: therefore no one can rightly practise piety or obedience to god, unless he obey the sovereign power's commands in all things. ( ) this proposition is confirmed by the facts of experience. ( ) for if the sovereign adjudge a man to be worthy of death or an enemy, whether he be a citizen or a foreigner, a private individual or a separate ruler, no subject is allowed to give him assistance. ( ) so also though the jews were bidden to love their fellow-citizens as themselves (levit. xix: , ), they were nevertheless bound, if a man offended against the law, to point him out to the judge (levit. v: , and deut. xiii: , ), and, if he should be condemned to death, to slay him (deut. xvii: ). ( : ) further, in order that the hebrews might preserve the liberty they had gained, and might retain absolute sway over the territory they had conquered, it was necessary, as we showed in chapter xvii., that their religion should be adapted to their particular government, and that they should separate themselves from the rest of the nations: wherefore it was commanded to them, "love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy" (matt. v: ), but after they had lost their dominion and had gone into captivity in babylon, jeremiah bid them take thought for the safety of the state into which they had been led captive; and christ when he saw that they would be spread over the whole world, told them to do their duty by all men without exception; all of which instances show that religion has always been made to conform to the public welfare. [ : ] ( ) perhaps someone will ask: by what right, then, did the disciples of christ, being private citizens, preach a new religion? ( ) i answer that they did so by the right of the power which they had received from christ against unclean spirits (see matt. x: ). ( ) i have already stated in chapter xvi. that all are bound to obey a tyrant, unless they have received from god through undoubted revelation a promise of aid against him; so let no one take example from the apostles unless he too has the power of working miracles. ( ) the point is brought out more clearly by christ's command to his disciples, "fear not those who kill the body" (matt. x: ). ( ) if this command were imposed on everyone, governments would be founded in vain, and solomon's words (prov. xxiv: ), "my son, fear god and the king," would be impious, which they certainly are not; we must therefore admit that the authority which christ gave to his disciples was given to them only, and must not be taken as an example for others. ( : ) i do not pause to consider the arguments of those who wish to separate secular rights from spiritual rights, placing the former under the control of the sovereign, and the latter under the control of the universal church; such pretensions are too frivolous to merit refutation. ( ) i cannot however, pass over in silence the fact that such persons are woefully deceived when they seek to support their seditious opinions (i ask pardon for the somewhat harsh epithet) by the example of the jewish high priest, who, in ancient times, had the right of administering the sacred offices. ( ) did not the high priests receive their right by the decree of moses (who, as i have shown, retained the sole right to rule), and could they not by the same means be deprived of it? ( ) moses himself chose not only aaron, but also his son eleazar, and his grandson phineas, and bestowed on them the right of administering the office of high priest. ( ) this right was retained by the high priests afterwards, but none the less were they delegates of moses - that is, of the sovereign power. ( ) moses, as we have shown, left no successor to his dominion, but so distributed his prerogatives, that those who came after him seemed, as it were, regents who administer the government when a king is absent but not dead. ( : ) in the second commonwealth the high priests held their right absolutely, after they had obtained the rights of principality in addition. ( ) wherefore the rights of the high priesthood always depended on the edict of the sovereign, and the high priests did not possess them till they became sovereigns also. ( ) rights in matters spiritual always remained under the control of the kings absolutely (as i will show at the end of this chapter), except in the single particular that they were not allowed to administer in person the sacred duties in the temple, inasmuch as they were not of the family of aaron, and were therefore considered unclean, a reservation which would have no force in a christian community. ( : ) we cannot, therefore, doubt that the daily sacred rites (whose performance does not require a particular genealogy but only a special mode of life, and from which the holders of sovereign power are not excluded as unclean) are under the sole control of the sovereign power; no one, save by the authority or concession of such sovereign, has the right or power of administering them, of choosing others to administer them, of defining or strengthening the foundations of the church and her doctrines; of judging on questions of morality or acts of piety; of receiving anyone into the church or excommunicating him therefrom, or, lastly, of providing for the poor. ( : ) these doctrines are proved to be not only true (as we have already pointed out), but also of primary necessity for the preservation of religion and the state. ( ) we all know what weight spiritual right and authority carries in the popular mind: how everyone hangs on the lips, as it were, of those who possess it. ( ) we may even say that those who wield such authority have the most complete sway over the popular mind. ( : ) whosoever, therefore, wishes to take this right away from the sovereign power, is desirous of dividing the dominion; from such division, contentions, and strife will necessarily spring up, as they did of old between the jewish kings and high priests, and will defy all attempts to allay them. ( ) nay, further, he who strives to deprive the sovereign power of such authority, is aiming (as we have said), at gaining dominion for himself. ( ) what is left for the sovereign power to decide on, if this right be denied him? ( ) certainly nothing concerning either war or peace, if he has to ask another man's opinion as to whether what he believes to be beneficial would be pious or impious. ( ) everything would depend on the verdict of him who had the right of deciding and judging what was pious or impious, right or wrong. ( : ) when such a right was bestowed on the pope of rome absolutely, he gradually acquired complete control over the kings, till at last he himself mounted to the summits of dominion; however much monarchs, and especially the german emperors, strove to curtail his authority, were it only by a hairsbreadth, they effected nothing, but on the contrary by their very endeavours largely increased it. ( ) that which no monarch could accomplish with fire and sword, ecclesiastics could bring about with a stroke of the pen; whereby we may easily see the force and power at the command of the church, and also how necessary it is for sovereigns to reserve such prerogatives for themselves. ( : ) if we reflect on what was said in the last chapter we shall see that such reservation conduced not a little to the increase of religion and piety; for we observed that the prophets themselves, though gifted with divine efficacy, being merely private citizens, rather irritated than reformed the people by their freedom of warning, reproof, and denunciation, whereas the kings by warnings and punishments easily bent men to their will. ( ) furthermore, the kings themselves, not possessing the right in question absolutely, very often fell away from religion and took with them nearly the whole people. ( ) the same thing has often happened from the same cause in christian states. ( : ) perhaps i shall be asked, "but if the holders of sovereign power choose to be wicked, who will be the rightful champion of piety? ( ) should the sovereigns still be its interpreters? "i meet them with the counter-question, "but if ecclesiastics (who are also human, and private citizens, and who ought to mind only their own affairs), or if others whom it is proposed to entrust with spiritual authority, choose to be wicked, should they still be considered as piety's rightful interpreters?" ( ) it is quite certain that when sovereigns wish to follow their own pleasure, whether they have control over spiritual matters or not, the whole state, spiritual and secular, will go to ruin, and it will go much faster if private citizens seditiously assume the championship of the divine rights. ( : ) thus we see that not only is nothing gained by denying such rights to sovereigns, but on the contrary, great evil ensues. ( ) for (as happened with the jewish kings who did not possess such rights absolutely) rulers are thus driven into wickedness, and the injury and loss to the state become certain and inevitable, instead of uncertain and possible. ( ) whether we look to the abstract truth, or the security of states, or the increase of piety, we are compelled to maintain that the divine right, or the right of control over spiritual matters, depends absolutely on the decree of the sovereign, who is its legitimate interpreter and champion. ( ) therefore the true ministers of god's word are those who teach piety to the people in obedience to the authority of the sovereign rulers by whose decree it has been brought into conformity with the public welfare. [ : ] ( ) there remains for me to point out the cause for the frequent disputes on the subject of these spiritual rights in christian states; whereas the hebrews, so far as i know, never, had any doubts about the matter. ( ) it seems monstrous that a question so plain and vitally important should thus have remained undecided, and that the secular rulers could never obtain the prerogative without controversy, nay, nor without great danger of sedition and injury to religion. ( ) if no cause for this state of things were forthcoming, i could easily persuade myself that all i have said in this chapter is mere theorizing, or a kind of speculative reasoning which can never be of any practical use. ( ) however, when we reflect on the beginnings of christianity the cause at once becomes manifest. ( ) the christian religion was not taught at first by kings, but by private persons, who, against the wishes of those in power, whose subjects they, were, were for a long time accustomed to hold meetings in secret churches, to institute and perform sacred rites, and on their own authority to settle and decide on their affairs without regard to the state, ( ) when, after the lapse of many years, the religion was taken up by the authorities, the ecclesiastics were obliged to teach it to the emperors themselves as they had defined it: wherefore they easily gained recognition as its teachers and interpreters, and the church pastors were looked upon as vicars of god. ( ) the ecclesiastics took good care that the christian kings should not assume their authority, by prohibiting marriage to the chief ministers of religion and to its highest interpreter. ( ) they furthermore elected their purpose by multiplying the dogmas of religion to such an extent and so blending them with philosophy that their chief interpreter was bound to be a skilled philosopher and theologian, and to have leisure for a host of idle speculations: conditions which could only be fulfilled by a private individual with much time on his hands. ( : ) among the hebrews things were very differently arranged: for their church began at the same time as their dominion, and moses, their absolute ruler, taught religion to the people, arranged their sacred rites, and chose their spiritual ministers. ( ) thus the royal authority carried very great weight with the people, and the kings kept a firm hold on their spiritual prerogatives. ( : ) although, after the death of moses, no one held absolute sway, yet the power of deciding both in matters spiritual and matters temporal was in the hands of the secular chief, as i have already pointed out. ( ) further, in order that it might be taught religion and piety, the people was bound to consult the supreme judge no less than the high priest (deut. xvii: , ). ( ) lastly, though the kings had not as much power as moses, nearly the whole arrangement and choice of the sacred ministry depended on their decision. ( ) thus david arranged the whole service of the temple (see chron. xxviii: , , &c.); from all the levites he chose twenty-four thousand for the sacred psalms; six thousand of these formed the body from which were chosen the judges and proctors, four thousand were porters, and four thousand to play on instruments (see chron. xxiii: , ). ( ) he further divided them into companies (of whom he chose the chiefs), so that each in rotation, at the allotted time, might perform the sacred rites. ( ) the priests he also divided into as many companies; i will not go through the whole catalogue, but refer the reader to chron. viii: , where it is stated, "then solomon offered burnt offerings to the lord . . . . . after a certain rate every day, offering according to the commandments of moses;" and in verse , "and he appointed, according to the order of david his father, the courses of the priests to their service . . . . . . for so had david the man of god commanded." ( ) lastly, the historian bears witness in verse : "and they departed not from the commandment of the king unto the priests and levites concerning any matter, or concerning the treasuries." [ : ] ( ) from these and other histories of the kings it is abundantly evident, that the whole practice of religion and the sacred ministry depended entirely on the commands of the king. ( : ) when i said above that the kings had not the same right as moses to elect the high priest, to consult god without intermediaries, and to condemn the prophets who prophesied during their reign; i said so simply because the prophets could, in virtue of their mission, choose a new king and give absolution for regicide, not because they could call a king who offended against the law to judgment, or could rightly act against him [endnote ]. ( : ) wherefore if there had been no prophets who, in virtue of a special revelation, could give absolution for regicide, the kings would have possessed absolute rights over all matters both spiritual and temporal. ( ) consequently the rulers of modern times, who have no prophets and would not rightly be bound in any case to receive them (for they are not subject to jewish law), have absolute possession of the spiritual prerogative, although they are not celibates, and they will always retain it, if they will refuse to allow religious dogmas to be unduly multiplied or confounded with philosophy. [ : ] chapter xx - that in a free state every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks. [ : ] ( ) if men's minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. ( ) however, we have shown already (chapter xvii.) that no man's mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. ( ) for this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of god. ( ) all these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent. ( : ) i admit that the judgment can be biassed in many ways, and to an almost incredible degree, so that while exempt from direct external control it may be so dependent on another man's words, that it may fitly be said to be ruled by him; but although this influence is carried to great lengths, it has never gone so far as to invalidate the statement, that every man's understanding is his own, and that brains are as diverse as palates. ( : ) moses, not by fraud, but by divine virtue, gained such a hold over the popular judgment that he was accounted superhuman, and believed to speak and act through the inspiration of the deity; nevertheless, even he could not escape murmurs and evil interpretations. ( ) how much less then can other monarchs avoid them! ( ) yet such unlimited power, if it exists at all, must belong to a monarch, and least of all to a democracy, where the whole or a great part of the people wield authority collectively. ( ) this is a fact which i think everyone can explain for himself. ( : ) however unlimited, therefore, the power of a sovereign may be, however implicitly it is trusted as the exponent of law and religion, it can never prevent men from forming judgments according to their intellect, or being influenced by any given emotion. ( ) it is true that it has the right to treat as enemies all men whose opinions do not, on all subjects, entirely coincide with its own; but we are not discussing its strict rights, but its proper course of action. ( ) i grant that it has the right to rule in the most violent manner, and to put citizens to death for very trivial causes, but no one supposes it can do this with the approval of sound judgment. ( ) nay, inasmuch as such things cannot be done without extreme peril to itself, we may even deny that it has the absolute power to do them, or, consequently, the absolute right; for the rights of the sovereign are limited by his power. [ : ] ( ) since, therefore, no one can abdicate his freedom of judgment and feeling; since every man is by indefeasible natural right the master of his own thoughts, it follows that men thinking in diverse and contradictory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be compelled to speak only according to the dictates of the supreme power. ( ) not even the most experienced, to say nothing of the multitude, know how to keep silence. ( ) men's common failing is to confide their plans to others, though there be need for secrecy, so that a government would be most harsh which deprived the individual of his freedom of saying and teaching what he thought; and would be moderate if such freedom were granted. ( ) still we cannot deny that authority may be as much injured by words as by actions; hence, although the freedom we are discussing cannot be entirely denied to subjects, its unlimited concession would be most baneful; we must, therefore, now inquire, how far such freedom can and ought to be conceded without danger to the peace of the state, or the power of the rulers; and this, as i said at the beginning of chapter xvi., is my principal object. ( ) it follows, plainly, from the explanation given above, of the foundations of a state, that the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work - without injury to himself or others. ( : ) no, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develope their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. ( ) in fact, the true aim of government is liberty. ( : ) now we have seen that in forming a state the power of making laws must either be vested in the body of the citizens, or in a portion of them, or in one man. ( ) for, although mens free judgments are very diverse, each one thinking that he alone knows everything, and although complete unanimity of feeling and speech is out of the question, it is impossible to preserve peace, unless individuals abdicate their right of acting entirely on their own judgment. [ : ] ( ) therefore, the individual justly cedes the right of free action, though not of free reason and judgment; no one can act against the authorities without danger to the state, though his feelings and judgment may be at variance therewith; he may even speak against them, provided that he does so from rational conviction, not from fraud, anger, or hatred, and provided that he does not attempt to introduce any change on his private authority. ( : ) for instance, supposing a man shows that a law is repugnant to sound reason, and should therefore be repealed; if he submits his opinion to the judgment of the authorities (who, alone, have the right of making and repealing laws), and meanwhile acts in nowise contrary to that law, he has deserved well of the state, and has behaved as a good citizen should; but if he accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the people against them, or if he seditiously strives to abrogate the law without their consent, he is a mere agitator and rebel. ( : ) thus we see how an individual may declare and teach what he believes, without injury to the authority of his rulers, or to the public peace; namely, by leaving in their hands the entire power of legislation as it affects action, and by doing nothing against their laws, though he be compelled often to act in contradiction to what he believes, and openly feels, to be best. ( : ) such a course can be taken without detriment to justice and dutifulness, nay, it is the one which a just and dutiful man would adopt. ( ) we have shown that justice is dependent on the laws of the authorities, so that no one who contravenes their accepted decrees can be just, while the highest regard for duty, as we have pointed out in the preceding chapter, is exercised in maintaining public peace and tranquillity; these could not be preserved if every man were to live as he pleased; therefore it is no less than undutiful for a man to act contrary to his country's laws, for if the practice became universal the ruin of states would necessarily follow. ( : ) hence, so long as a man acts in obedience to the laws of his rulers, he in nowise contravenes his reason, for in obedience to reason he transferred the right of controlling his actions from his own hands to theirs. ( ) this doctrine we can confirm from actual custom, for in a conference of great and small powers, schemes are seldom carried unanimously, yet all unite in carrying out what is decided on, whether they voted for or against. ( ) but i return to my proposition. ( : ) from the fundamental notions of a state, we have discovered how a man may exercise free judgment without detriment to the supreme power: from the same premises we can no less easily determine what opinions would be seditious. ( ) evidently those which by their very nature nullify the compact by which the right of free action was ceded. ( ) for instance, a man who holds that the supreme power has no rights over him, or that promises ought not to be kept, or that everyone should live as he pleases, or other doctrines of this nature in direct opposition to the above-mentioned contract, is seditious, not so much from his actual opinions and judgment, as from the deeds which they involve; for he who maintains such theories abrogates the contract which tacitly, or openly, he made with his rulers. ( ) other opinions which do not involve acts violating the contract, such as revenge, anger, and t he like, are not seditious, unless it be in some corrupt state, where superstitious and ambitious persons, unable to endure men of learning, are so popular with the multitude that their word is more valued than the law. ( : ) however, i do not deny that there are some doctrines which, while they are apparently only concerned with abstract truths and falsehoods, are yet propounded and published with unworthy motives. ( ) this question we have discussed in chapter xv., and shown that reason should nevertheless remain unshackled. ( ) if we hold to the principle that a man's loyalty to the state should be judged, like his loyalty to god, from his actions only - namely, from his charity towards his neighbours; we cannot doubt that the best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of religious belief. ( ) i confess that from such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise, but what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could possibly spring therefrom? ( ) he who seeks to regulate everything by law, is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. ( ) it is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. ( ) how many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness, and the like, yet these are tolerated - vices as they are - because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments. ( ) how much more then should free thought be granted, seeing that it is in itself a virtue and that it cannot be crushed! ( ) besides, the evil results can easily be checked, as i will show, by the secular authorities, not to mention that such freedom is absolutely necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts: for no man follows such pursuits to advantage unless his judgment be entirely free and unhampered. ( : ) but let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, and men be so bound down, that they do not dare to utter a whisper, save at the bidding of their rulers; nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of making them think according to authority, so that the necessary consequences would be that men would daily be thinking one thing and saying another, to the corruption of good faith, that mainstay of government, and to the fostering of hateful flattery and perfidy, whence spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art. ( : ) it is far from possible to impose uniformity of speech, for the more rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately are they resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, the flatterers, and other numskulls, who think supreme salvation consists in filling their stomachs and gloating over their money-bags, but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free. ( ) men, as generally constituted, are most prone to resent the branding as criminal of opinions which they believe to be true, and the proscription as wicked of that which inspires them with piety towards god and man; hence they are ready to forswear the laws and conspire against the authorities, thinking it not shameful but honourable to stir up seditions and perpetuate any sort of crime with this end in view. ( ) such being the constitution of human nature, we see that laws directed against opinions affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for irritating the upright; so that they cannot be maintained without great peril to the state. ( : ) moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for those who hold that the opinions proscribed are sound, cannot possibly obey the law; whereas those who already reject them as false, accept the law as a kind of privilege, and make such boast of it, that authority is powerless to repeal it, even if such a course be subsequently desired. ( : ) to these considerations may be added what we said in chapter xviii. in treating of the history of the hebrews. ( ) and, lastly, how many schisms have arisen in the church from the attempt of the authorities to decide by law the intricacies of theological controversy! ( ) if men were not allured by the hope of getting the law and the authorities on their side, of triumphing over their adversaries in the sight of an applauding multitude, and of acquiring honourable distinctions, they would not strive so maliciously, nor would such fury sway their minds. ( ) this is taught not only by reason but by daily examples, for laws of this kind prescribing what every man shall believe and forbidding anyone to speak or write to the contrary, have often been passed, as sops or concessions to the anger of those who cannot tolerate men of enlightenment, and who, by such harsh and crooked enactments, can easily turn the devotion of the masses into fury and direct it against whom they will. ( ) how much better would it be to restrain popular anger and fury, instead of passing useless laws, which can only be broken by those who love virtue and the liberal arts, thus paring down the state till it is too small to harbour men of talent. ( ) what greater misfortune for a state can be conceived then that honourable men should be sent like criminals into exile, because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise? ( ) what, i say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are enlightened, be treated as enemies and put to death, and that the scaffold, the terror of evil-doers, should become the arena where the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are displayed to the people with all the marks of ignominy that authority can devise? ( : ) he that knows himself to be upright does not fear the death of a criminal, and shrinks from no punishment; his mind is not wrung with remorse for any disgraceful deed: he holds that death in a good cause is no punishment, but an honour, and that death for freedom is glory. ( : ) what purpose then is served by the death of such men, what example in proclaimed? the cause for which they die is unknown to the idle and the foolish, hateful to the turbulent, loved by the upright. ( ) the only lesson we can draw from such scenes is to flatter the persecutor, or else to imitate the victim. ( : ) if formal assent is not to be esteemed above conviction, and if governments are to retain a firm hold of authority and not be compelled to yield to agitators, it is imperative that freedom of judgment should be granted, so that men may live together in harmony, however diverse, or even openly contradictory their opinions may be. ( ) we cannot doubt that such is the best system of government and open to the fewest objections, since it is the one most in harmony with human nature. ( ) in a democracy (the most natural form of government, as we have shown in chapter xvi.) everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his judgment and reason; that is, seeing that all cannot think alike, the voice of the majority has the force of law, subject to repeal if circumstances bring about a change of opinion. ( ) in proportion as the power of free judgment is withheld we depart from the natural condition of mankind, and consequently the government becomes more tyrannical. [ : ] ( ) in order to prove that from such freedom no inconvenience arises, which cannot easily be checked by the exercise of the sovereign power, and that men's actions can easily be kept in bounds, though their opinions be at open variance, it will be well to cite an example. ( ) such an one is not very, far to seek. ( ) the city of amsterdam reaps the fruit of this freedom in its own great prosperity and in the admiration of all other people. ( ) for in this most flourishing state, and most splendid city, men of every nation and religion live together in the greatest harmony, and ask no questions before trusting their goods to a fellow-citizen, save whether he be rich or poor, and whether he generally acts honestly, or the reverse. ( ) his religion and sect is considered of no importance: for it has no effect before the judges in gaining or losing a cause, and there is no sect so despised that its followers, provided that they harm no one, pay every man his due, and live uprightly, are deprived of the protection of the magisterial authority. ( : ) on the other hand, when the religious controversy between remonstrants and counter-remonstrants began to be taken up by politicians and the states, it grew into a schism, and abundantly showed that laws dealing with religion and seeking to settle its controversies are much more calculated to irritate than to reform, and that they give rise to extreme licence: further, it was seen that schisms do not originate in a love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentleness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy, ( ) from all these considerations it is clearer than the sun at noonday, that the true schismatics are those who condemn other men's writings, and seditiously stir up the quarrelsome masses against their authors, rather than those authors themselves, who generally write only for the learned, and appeal solely to reason. ( ) in fact, the real disturbers of the peace are those who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment which they are unable to tyrannize over. ( : ) i have thus shown:- ( ) i. that it is impossible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they think. ( ) ii. that such liberty can be conceded to every man without injury to the rights and authority of the sovereign power, and that every man may retain it without injury to such rights, provided that he does not presume upon it to the extent of introducing any new rights into the state, or acting in any way contrary, to the existing laws. ( : ) iii. that every man may enjoy this liberty without detriment to the public peace, and that no inconveniences arise therefrom which cannot easily be checked. ( ) iv. that every man may enjoy it without injury to his allegiance. ( ) v. that laws dealing with speculative problems are entirely useless. ( ) vi. lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted without prejudice to the public peace, to loyalty, and to the rights of rulers, but that it is even necessary, for their preservation. ( ) for when people try to take it away, and bring to trial, not only the acts which alone are capable of offending, but also the opinions of mankind, they only succeed in surrounding their victims with an appearance of martyrdom, and raise feelings of pity and revenge rather than of terror. ( ) uprightness and good faith are thus corrupted, flatterers and traitors are encouraged, and sectarians triumph, inasmuch as concessions have been made to their animosity, and they have gained the state sanction for the doctrines of which they are the interpreters. ( ) hence they arrogate to themselves the state authority and rights, and do not scruple to assert that they have been directly chosen by god, and that their laws are divine, whereas the laws of the state are human, and should therefore yield obedience to the laws of god - in other words, to their own laws. ( ) everyone must see that this is not a state of affairs conducive to public welfare. ( ) wherefore, as we have shown in chapter xviii., the safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks. ( : ) i have thus fulfilled the task i set myself in this treatise. [ : ] ( ) it remains only to call attention to the fact that i have written nothing which i do not most willingly submit to the examination and approval of my country's rulers; and that i am willing to retract anything which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws, or prejudicial to the public good. ( ) i know that i am a man, and as a man liable to error, but against error i have taken scrupulous care, and have striven to keep in entire accordance with the laws of my country, with loyalty, and with morality. end of part of . author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise chapter xvi. [endnote ]. ( ) "no one can honestly promise to forego the right which he has over all things." ( ) in the state of social life, where general right determines what is good or evil, stratagem is rightly distinguished as of two kinds, good and evil. ( ) but in the state of nature, where every man is his own judge, possessing the absolute right to lay down laws for himself, to interpret them as he pleases, or to abrogate them if he thinks it convenient, it is not conceivable that stratagem should be evil. [endnote ]. ( ) "every member of it may, if he will, be free." ( ) whatever be the social state a man finds; himself in, he may be free. ( ) for certainly a man is free, in so far as he is led by reason. ( ) now reason (though hobbes thinks otherwise) is always on the side of peace, which cannot be attained unless the general laws of the state be respected. ( ) therefore the more he is free, the more constantly will he respect the laws of his country, and obey the commands of the sovereign power to which he is subject. [endnote ]. ( ) "no one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to god." ( ) when paul says that men have in themselves no refuge, he speaks as a man: for in the ninth chapter of the same epistle he expressly teaches that god has mercy on whom he will, and that men are without excuse, only because they are in god's power like clay in the hands of a potter, who out of the same lump makes vessels, some for honour and some for dishonour, not because they have been forewarned. ( ) as regards the divine natural law whereof the chief commandment is, as we have said, to love god, i have called it a law in the same sense, as philosophers style laws those general rules of nature, according to which everything happens. ( ) for the love of god is not a state of obedience: it is a virtue which necessarily exists in a man who knows god rightly. ( ) obedience has regard to the will of a ruler, not to necessity and truth. ( ) now as we are ignorant of the nature of god's will, and on the other hand know that everything happens solely by god's power, we cannot, except through revelation, know whether god wishes in any way to be honoured as a sovereign. ( ) again; we have shown that the divine rights appear to us in the light of rights or commands, only so long as we are ignorant of their cause: as soon as their cause is known, they cease to be rights, and we embrace them no longer as rights but as eternal truths; in other words, obedience passes into love of god, which emanates from true knowledge as necessarily as light emanates from the sun. ( ) reason then leads us to love god, but cannot lead us to obey him; for we cannot embrace the commands of god as divine, while we are in ignorance of their cause, neither can we rationally conceive god as a sovereign laying down laws as a sovereign. chapter xvii. [endnote ]. ( ) "if men could lose their natural rights so as to be absolutely unable for the future to oppose the will of the sovereign" ( ) two common soldiers undertook to change the roman dominion, and did change it. (tacitus, hist. i: .) [endnote ]. ( ) see numbers xi. . in this passage it is written that two men prophesied in the camp, and that joshua wished to punish them. ( ) this he would not have done, if it had been lawful for anyone to deliver the divine oracles to the people without the consent of moses. ( ) but moses thought good to pardon the two men, and rebuked joshua for exhorting him to use his royal prerogative, at a time when he was so weary of reigning, that he preferred death to holding undivided sway (numb. xi: ). ( ) for he made answer to joshua, "enviest thou for my sake? ( ) would god that all the lord's people were prophets, and that the lord would put his spirit upon them." ( ) that is to say, would god that the right of taking counsel of god were general, and the power were in the hands of the people. ( ) thus joshua was not mistaken as to the right, but only as to the time for using it, for which he was rebuked by moses, in the same way as abishai was rebuked by david for counselling that shimei, who had undoubtedly been guilty of treason, should be put to death. ( ) see sam. xix: , . [endnote ]. ( ) see numbers xxvii: . ( ) the translators of the bible have rendered incorrectly verses and of this chapter. ( ) the passage does not mean that moses gave precepts or advice to joshua, but that he made or established him chief of the hebrews. ( ) the phrase is very frequent in scripture (see exodus, xviii: ; sam. xiii: ; joshua i: ; sam. xxv: ). [endnote ] ( ) "there was no judge over each of the captains save god." ( ) the rabbis and some christians equally foolish pretend that the sanhedrin, called "the great" was instituted by moses. ( ) as a matter of fact, moses chose seventy colleagues to assist him in governing, because he was not able to bear alone the burden of the whole people; but he never passed any law for forming a college of seventy members; on the contrary he ordered every tribe to appoint for itself, in the cities which god had given it, judges to settle disputes according to the laws which he himself had laid down. ( ) in cases where the opinions of the judges differed as to the interpretation of these laws, moses bade them take counsel of the high priest (who was the chief interpreter of the law), or of the chief judge, to whom they were then subordinate (who had the right of consulting the high priest), and to decide the dispute in accordance with the answer obtained. ( ) if any subordinate judge should assert, that he was not bound by the decision of the high priest, received either directly or through the chief of his state, such an one was to be put to death (deut. xvii: ) by the chief judge, whoever he might be, to whom he was a subordinate. ( ) this chief judge would either be joshua, the supreme captain of the whole people, or one of the tribal chiefs who had been entrusted, after the division of the tribes, with the right of consulting the high priest concerning the affairs of his tribe, of deciding on peace or war, of fortifying towns, of appointing inferior judges, &c. ( ) or, again, it might be the king, in whom all or some of the tribes had vested their rights.( ) i could cite many instances in confirmation of what i here advance. ( ) i will confine myself to one, which appears to me the most important of all. ( ) when the shilomitish prophet anointed jeroboam king, he, in so doing, gave him the right of consulting the high priest, of appointing judges, &c. ( ) in fact he endowed him with all the rights over the ten tribes, which rehoboam retained over the two tribes. ( ) consequently jeroboam could set up a supreme council in his court with as much right as jehoshaphat could at jerusalem ( chron. xix: ). ( ) for it is plain that neither jeroboam, who was king by god's command, nor jeroboam's subjects, were bound by the law of moses to accept the judgments of rehoboam, who was not their king. ( ) still less were they under the jurisdiction of the judge, whom rehoboam had set up in jerusalem as subordinate to himself. ( ) according, therefore, as the hebrew dominion was divided, so was a supreme council setup in each division. ( ) those who neglect the variations in the constitution of the hebrew states, and confuse them all together in one, fall into numerous difficulties. chapter xix. [endnote ]. ( ) i must here bespeak special attention for what was said in chap. xvi. concerning rights. end of part iv endnotes. sentence numbers, shown thus ( ), have been added by volunteer. a theologico-political treatise part iii - chapters xi to xv by baruch spinoza table of contents: chapter xi - an inquiry whether the apostles wrote their epistles as apostles and prophets, or merely as teachers, and an explanation of what is meant by apostle. the epistles not in the prophetic style. the apostles not commanded to write or preach in particular places. different methods of teaching adopted by the apostles. chapter xii - of the true original of the divine law, and wherefore scripture is called sacred, and the word of god. how that, in so far as it contains the word of god, it has come down to us uncorrupted. chapter xiii - it is shown, that scripture teaches only very simple doctrines, such as suffice for right conduct. error in speculative doctrine not impious - nor knowledge pious. piety consists in obedience. chapter xiv - definitions of faith, the true faith, and the foundations of faith, which is once for all separated from philosophy. danger resulting from the vulgar idea of faith. the only test of faith obedience and good works. as different men are disposed to obedience by different opinions, universal faith can contain only the simplest doctrines. fundamental distinction between faith and philosophy - the key-stone of the present treatise. chapter xv - theology is shown not to be subservient to reason, nor reason to theology: a definition of the reason which enables us to accept the authority of the bible. theory that scripture must be accommodated to reason - maintained by maimonides - already refuted in chapter vii. theory that reason must be accommodated to scripture - maintained by alpakhar - examined. and refuted. scripture and reason independent of one another. certainty, of fundamental faith not mathematical but moral. great utility of revelation. author's endnotes to the treatise. chapter xi - an inquiry whether the apostles wrote their epistles as apostles and prophets, or merely as teachers; and an explanation of what is meant by an apostle. ( ) no reader of the new testament can doubt that the apostles were prophets; but as a prophet does not always speak by revelation, but only, at rare intervals, as we showed at the end of chap. i., we may fairly inquire whether the apostles wrote their epistles as prophets, by revelation and express mandate, as moses, jeremiah, and others did, or whether only as private individuals or teachers, especially as paul, in corinthians xiv: , mentions two sorts of preaching. ( ) if we examine the style of the epistles, we shall find it totally different from that employed by the prophets. ( ) the prophets are continually asserting that they speak by the command of god: "thus saith the lord," "the lord of hosts saith," "the command of the lord," &c.; and this was their habit not only in assemblies of the prophets, but also in their epistles containing revelations, as appears from the epistle of elijah to jehoram, chron. xxi: , which begins, "thus saith the lord." ( ) in the apostolic epistles we find nothing of the sort. ( ) contrariwise, in i cor. vii: paul speaks according to his own opinion and in many passages we come across doubtful and perplexed phrase; such as, "we think, therefore," rom. iii: ; "now i think," [endnote ], rom. viii: , and so on. ( ) besides these, other expressions are met with very different from those used by the prophets. ( ) for instance, cor. vii: , "but i speak this by permission, not by commandment;" "i give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the lord to be faithful" ( cor. vii: ), and so on in many other passages. ( ) we must also remark that in the aforesaid chapter the apostle says that when he states that he has or has not the precept or commandment of god, he does not mean the precept or commandment of god revealed to himself, but only the words uttered by christ in his sermon on the mount. ( ) furthermore, if we examine the manner in which the apostles give out evangelical doctrine, we shall see that it differs materially from the method adopted by the prophets. ( ) the apostles everywhere reason as if they were arguing rather than prophesying; the prophecies, on the other hand, contain only dogmas and commands. ( ) god is therein introduced not as speaking to reason, but as issuing decrees by his absolute fiat. ( ) the authority of the prophets does not submit to discussion, for whosoever wishes to find rational ground for his arguments, by that very wish submits them to everyone's private judgment. ( ) this paul, inasmuch as he uses reason, appears to have done, for he says in cor. x: , "i speak as to wise men, judge ye what i say." ( ) the prophets, as we showed at the end of chapter i., did not perceive what was revealed by virtue of their natural reason, and though there are certain passages in the pentateuch which seem to be appeals to induction, they turn out, on nearer examination, to be nothing but peremptory commands. ( ) for instance, when moses says, deut. xxxi: , "behold, while i am yet alive with you, this day ye have been rebellious against the lord; and how much more after my death," we must by no means conclude that moses wished to convince the israelites by reason that they would necessarily fall away from the worship of the lord after his death; for the argument would have been false, as scripture itself shows: the israelites continued faithful during the lives of joshua and the elders, and afterwards during the time of samuel, david, and solomon. ( ) therefore the words of moses are merely a moral injunction, in which he predicts rhetorically the future backsliding of the people so as to impress it vividly on their imagination. ( ) i say that moses spoke of himself in order to lend likelihood to his prediction, and not as a prophet by revelation, because in verse of the same chapter we are told that god revealed the same thing to moses in different words, and there was no need to make moses certain by argument of god's prediction and decree; it was only necessary that it should be vividly impressed on his imagination, and this could not be better accomplished than by imagining the existing contumacy of the people, of which he had had frequent experience, as likely to extend into the future. ( ) all the arguments employed by moses in the five books are to be understood in a similar manner; they are not drawn from the armoury of reason, but are merely, modes of expression calculated to instil with efficacy, and present vividly to the imagination the commands of god. ( ) however, i do not wish absolutely to deny that the prophets ever argued from revelation; i only maintain that the prophets made more legitimate use of argument in proportion as their knowledge approached more nearly to ordinary knowledge, and by this we know that they possessed a knowledge above the ordinary, inasmuch as they proclaimed absolute dogmas, decrees, or judgments. ( ) thus moses, the chief of the prophets, never used legitimate argument, and, on the other hand, the long deductions and arguments of paul, such as we find in the epistle to the romans, are in nowise written from supernatural revelation. ( ) the modes of expression and discourse adopted by the apostles in the epistles, show very clearly that the latter were not written by revelation and divine command, but merely by the natural powers and judgment of the authors. ( ) they consist in brotherly admonitions and courteous expressions such as would never be employed in prophecy, as for instance, paul's excuse in romans xv: , "i have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, my brethren." ( ) we may arrive at the same conclusion from observing that we never read that the apostles were commanded to write, but only that they went everywhere preaching, and confirmed their words with signs. ( ) their personal presence and signs were absolutely necessary for the conversion and establishment in religion of the gentiles; as paul himself expressly states in rom. i: , "but i long to see you, that i may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that ye may be established." ( ) it may be objected that we might prove in similar fashion that the apostles did not preach as prophets, for they did not go to particular places, as the prophets did, by the command of god. ( ) we read in the old testament that jonah went to nineveh to preach, and at the same time that he was expressly sent there, and told that he most preach. ( ) so also it is related, at great length, of moses that he went to egypt as the messenger of god, and was told at the same time what he should say to the children of israel and to king pharaoh, and what wonders he should work before them to give credit to his words. ( ) isaiah, jeremiah, and ezekiel were expressly commanded to preach to the israelites. lastly, the prophets only preached what we are assured by scripture they had received from god, whereas this is hardly ever said of the apostles in the new testament, when they went about to preach. ( ) on the contrary, we find passages expressly implying that the apostles chose the places where they should preach on their own responsibility, for there was a difference amounting to a quarrel between paul and barnabas on the subject (acts xv: , ). ( ) often they wished to go to a place, but were prevented, as paul writes, rom. i: , "oftentimes i purposed to come to you, but was let hitherto;" and in i cor. xvi: , "as touching our brother apollos, i greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren, but his will was not at all to come at this time: but he will come when he shall have convenient time." ( ) from these expressions and differences of opinion among the apostles, and also from the fact that scripture nowhere testifies of them, as of the ancient prophets, that they went by the command of god, one might conclude that they preached as well as wrote in their capacity of teachers, and not as prophets: but the question is easily solved if we observe the difference between the mission of an apostle and that of an old testament prophet. ( ) the latter were not called to preach and prophesy to all nations, but to certain specified ones, and therefore an express and peculiar mandate was required for each of them; the apostles, on the other hand, were called to preach to all men absolutely, and to turn all men to religion. ( ) therefore, whithersoever they went, they were fulfilling christ's commandment; there was no need to reveal to them beforehand what they should preach, for they were the disciples of christ to whom their master himself said (matt. x: , ): "but, when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." ( ) we therefore conclude that the apostles were only indebted to special revelation in what they orally preached and confirmed by signs (see the beginning of chap. .); that which they taught in speaking or writing without any confirmatory signs and wonders they taught from their natural knowledge. (see i cor. xiv: .) ( ) we need not be deterred by the fact that all the epistles begin by citing the imprimatur of the apostleship, for the apostles, as i will shortly show, were granted, not only the faculty of prophecy, but also the authority to teach. ( ) we may therefore admit that they wrote their epistles as apostles, and for this cause every one of them began by citing the apostolic imprimatur, possibly with a view to the attention of the reader by asserting that they were the persons who had made such mark among the faithful by their preaching, and had shown by many marvelous works that they were teaching true religion and the way of salvation. ( ) i observe that what is said in the epistles with regard to the apostolic vocation and the holy spirit of god which inspired them, has reference to their former preaching, except in those passages where the expressions of the spirit of god and the holy spirit are used to signify a mind pure, upright, and devoted to god. ( ) for instance, in cor. vii: , paul says: but she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment, and i think also that i have the spirit of god." ( ) by the spirit of god the apostle here refers to his mind, as we may see from the context: his meaning is as follows: "i account blessed a widow who does not wish to marry a second husband; such is my opinion, for i have settled to live unmarried, and i think that i am blessed." ( ) there are other similar passages which i need not now quote. ( ) as we have seen that the apostles wrote their epistles solely by the light of natural reason, we must inquire how they were enabled to teach by natural knowledge matters outside its scope. ( ) however, if we bear in mind what we said in chap. vii. of this treatise our difficulty will vanish: for although the contents of the bible entirely surpass our understanding, we may safely discourse of them, provided we assume nothing not told us in scripture: by the same method the apostles, from what they saw and heard, and from what was revealed to them, were enabled to form and elicit many conclusions which they would have been able to teach to men had it been permissible. ( ) further, although religion, as preached by the apostles, does not come within the sphere of reason, in so far as it consists in the narration of the life of christ, yet its essence, which is chiefly moral, like the whole of christ's doctrine, can readily, be apprehended by the natural faculties of all. ( ) lastly, the apostles had no lack of supernatural illumination for the purpose of adapting the religion they had attested by signs to the understanding of everyone so that it might be readily received; nor for exhortations on the subject: in fact, the object of the epistles is to teach and exhort men to lead that manner of life which each of the apostles judged best for confirming them in religion. ( ) we may here repeat our former remark, that the apostles had received not only the faculty of preaching the history, of christ as prophets, and confirming it with signs, but also authority for teaching and exhorting according as each thought best. ( ) paul ( tim. i: ), "whereunto i am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the gentiles;" and again (i tim. ii: ), "whereunto i am ordained a preacher and an apostle (i speak the truth in christ and lie not), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and verity." ( ) these passages, i say, show clearly the stamp both of the apostleship and the teachership: the authority for admonishing whomsoever and wheresoever he pleased is asserted by paul in the epistle to philemon, v: : "wherefore, though i might be much bold in christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, yet," &c., where we may remark that if paul had received from god as a prophet what he wished to enjoin philemon, and had been bound to speak in his prophetic capacity, he would not have been able to change the command of god into entreaties. ( ) we must therefore understand him to refer to the permission to admonish which he had received as a teacher, and not as a prophet. ( ) we have not yet made it quite clear that the apostles might each choose his own way of teaching, but only that by virtue of their apostleship they were teachers as well as prophets; however, if we call reason to our aid we shall clearly see that an authority to teach implies authority to choose the method. ( ) it will nevertheless be, perhaps, more satisfactory to draw all our proofs from scripture; we are there plainly told that each apostle chose his particular method (rom. xv: ): "yea, so have i strived to preach the gospel, not where christ was named, lest i should build upon another man's foundation." ( ) if all the apostles had adopted the same method of teaching, and had all built up the christian religion on the same foundation, paul would have had no reason to call the work of a fellow-apostle "another man's foundation," inasmuch as it would have been identical with his own: his calling it another man's proved that each apostle built up his religious instruction on different foundations, thus resembling other teachers who have each their own method, and prefer instructing quite ignorant people who have never learnt under another master, whether the subject be science, languages, or even the indisputable truths of mathematics. ( ) furthermore, if we go through the epistles at all attentively, we shall see that the apostles, while agreeing about religion itself, are at variance as to the foundations it rests on. ( ) paul, in order to strengthen men's religion, and show them that salvation depends solely on the grace of god, teaches that no one can boast of works, but only of faith, and that no one can be justified by works (rom. iii: , ); in fact, he preaches the complete doctrine of predestination. ( ) james, on the other hand, states that man is justified by works, and not by faith only (see his epistle, ii: ), and omitting all the disputations of paul, confines religion to a very few elements. ( ) lastly, it is indisputable that from these different ground; for religion selected by the apostles, many quarrels and schisms distracted the church, even in the earliest times, and doubtless they will continue so to distract it for ever, or at least till religion is separated from philosophical speculations, and reduced to the few simple doctrines taught by christ to his disciples; such a task was impossible for the apostles, because the gospel was then unknown to mankind, and lest its novelty should offend men's ears it had to be adapted to the disposition of contemporaries ( cor. ix: , ), and built up on the groundwork most familiar and accepted at the time. ( ) thus none of the apostles philosophized more than did paul, who was called to preach to the gentiles; other apostles preaching to the jews, who despised philosophy, similarly, adapted themselves to the temper of their hearers (see gal. ii. ), and preached a religion free from all philosophical speculations. ( ) how blest would our age be if it could witness a religion freed also from all the trammels of superstition! chapter xii - of the true original of the divine law, and wherefore scripture is called sacred, and the word of god. how that, in so far as it contains the word of god, it has come down to us uncorrupted. ( ) those who look upon the bible as a message sent down by god from heaven to men, will doubtless cry out that i have committed the sin against the holy ghost because i have asserted that the word of god is faulty, mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; that we possess it only in fragments, and that the original of the covenant which god made with the jews has been lost. ( ) however, i have no doubt that a little reflection will cause them to desist from their uproar: for not only reason but the expressed opinions of prophets and apostles openly proclaim that god's eternal word and covenant, no less than true religion, is divinely inscribed in human hearts, that is, in the human mind, and that this is the true original of god's covenant, stamped with his own seal, namely, the idea of himself, as it were, with the image of his godhood. ( ) religion was imparted to the early hebrews as a law written down, because they were at that time in the condition of children, but afterwards moses (deut. xxx: ) and jeremiah (xxxi: ) predicted a time coming when the lord should write his law in their hearts. ( ) thus only the jews, and amongst them chiefly the sadducees, struggled for the law written on tablets; least of all need those who bear it inscribed on their hearts join in the contest. ( ) those, therefore, who reflect, will find nothing in what i have written repugnant either to the word of god or to true religion and faith, or calculated to weaken either one or the other: contrariwise, they will see that i have strengthened religion, as i showed at the end of chapter x.; indeed, had it not been so, i should certainly have decided to hold my peace, nay, i would even have asserted as a way out of all difficulties that the bible contains the most profound hidden mysteries; however, as this doctrine has given rise to gross superstition and other pernicious results spoken of at the beginning of chapter v., i have thought such a course unnecessary, especially as religion stands in no need of superstitious adornments, but is, on the contrary, deprived by such trappings of some of her splendour. ( ) still, it will be said, though the law of god is written in the heart, the bible is none the less the word of god, and it is no more lawful to say of scripture than of god's word that it is mutilated and corrupted. ( ) i fear that such objectors are too anxious to be pious, and that they are in danger of turning religion into superstition, and worshipping paper and ink in place of god's word. ( ) i am certified of thus much: i have said nothing unworthy of scripture or god's word, and i have made no assertions which i could not prove by most plain argument to be true. ( ) i can, therefore, rest assured that i have advanced nothing which is impious or even savours of impiety. ( ) from what i have said, assume a licence to sin, and without any reason, at i confess that some profane men, to whom religion is a burden, may, the simple dictates of their lusts conclude that scripture is everywhere faulty and falsified, and that therefore its authority is null; but such men are beyond the reach of help, for nothing, as the pro verb has it, can be said so rightly that it cannot be twisted into wrong. ( ) those who wish to give rein to their lusts are at no loss for an excuse, nor were those men of old who possessed the original scriptures, the ark of the covenant, nay, the prophets and apostles in person among them, any better than the people of to-day. ( ) human nature, jew as well as gentile, has always been the same, and in every age virtue has been exceedingly rare. ( ) nevertheless, to remove every scruple, i will here show in what sense the bible or any inanimate thing should be called sacred and divine; also wherein the law of god consists, and how it cannot be contained in a certain number of books; and, lastly, i will show that scripture, in so far as it teaches what is necessary for obedience and salvation, cannot have been corrupted. ( ) from these considerations everyone will be able to judge that i have neither said anything against the word of god nor given any foothold to impiety. ( ) a thing is called sacred and divine when it is designed for promoting piety, and continues sacred so long as it is religiously used: if the users cease to be pious, the thing ceases to be sacred: if it be turned to base uses, that which was formerly sacred becomes unclean and profane. ( ) for instance, a certain spot was named by the patriarch jacob the house of god, because he worshipped god there revealed to him: by the prophets the same spot was called the house of iniquity (see amos v: , and hosea x: ), because the israelites were wont, at the instigation of jeroboam, to sacrifice there to idols. ( ) another example puts the matter in the plainest light. ( ) words gain their meaning solely from their usage, and if they are arranged according to their accepted signification so as to move those who read them to devotion, they will become sacred, and the book so written will be sacred also. ( ) but if their usage afterwards dies out so that the words have no meaning, or the book becomes utterly neglected, whether from unworthy motives, or because it is no longer needed, then the words and the book will lose both their use and their sanctity: lastly, if these same words be otherwise arranged, or if their customary meaning becomes perverted into its opposite, then both the words and the book containing them become, instead of sacred, impure and profane. ( ) from this it follows that nothing is in itself absolutely sacred, or profane, and unclean, apart from the mind, but only relatively thereto. ( ) thus much is clear from many passages in the bible. ( ) jeremiah (to select one case out of many) says (chap. vii: ), that the jews of his time were wrong in calling solomon's temple, the temple of god, for, as he goes on to say in the same chapter, god's name would only be given to the temple so long as it was frequented by men who worshipped him, and defended justice, but that, if it became the resort of murderers, thieves, idolaters, and other wicked persons, it would be turned into a den of malefactors. ( ) scripture, curiously enough, nowhere tells us what became of the ark of the covenant, though there is no doubt that it was destroyed, or burnt together with the temple; yet there was nothing which the hebrews considered more sacred, or held in greater reverence. ( ) thus scripture is sacred, and its words divine so long as it stirs mankind to devotion towards god: but if it be utterly neglected, as it formerly was by the jews, it becomes nothing but paper and ink, and is left to be desecrated or corrupted: still, though scripture be thus corrupted or destroyed, we must not say that the word of god has suffered in like manner, else we shall be like the jews, who said that the temple which would then be the temple of god had perished in the flames. ( ) jeremiah tells us this in respect to the law, for he thus chides the ungodly of his time, "wherefore, say you we are masters, and the law of the lord is with us? ( ) surely it has been given in vain, it is in vain that the pen of the scribes" (has been made) - that is, you say falsely that the scripture is in your power, and that you possess the law of god; for ye have made it of none effect. ( ) so also, when moses broke the first tables of the law, he did not by any means cast the word of god from his hands in anger and shatter it - such an action would be inconceivable, either of moses or of god's word - he only broke the tables of stone, which, though they had before been holy from containing the covenant wherewith the jews had bound themselves in obedience to god, had entirely lost their sanctity when the covenant had been violated by the worship of the calf, and were, therefore, as liable to perish as the ark of the covenant. ( ) it is thus scarcely to be wondered at, that the original documents of moses are no longer extant, nor that the books we possess met with the fate we have described, when we consider that the true original of the divine covenant, the most sacred object of all, has totally perished. ( ) let them cease, therefore, who accuse us of impiety, inasmuch as we have said nothing against the word of god, neither have we corrupted it, but let them keep their anger, if they would wreak it justly, for the ancients whose malice desecrated the ark, the temple, and the law of god, and all that was held sacred, subjecting them to corruption. ( ) furthermore, if, according to the saying of the apostle in cor. iii: , they possessed "the epistle of christ, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living god, not in tables of stone, but in the fleshy tables of the heart," let them cease to worship the letter, and be so anxious concerning it. ( ) i think i have now sufficiently shown in what respect scripture should be accounted sacred and divine; we may now see what should rightly be understood by the expression, the word of the lord; debar (the hebrew original) signifies word, speech, command, and thing. ( ) the causes for which a thing is in hebrew said to be of god, or is referred to him, have been already detailed in chap. i., and we can therefrom easily gather what meaning scripture attaches to the phrases, the word, the speech, the command, or the thing of god. ( ) i need not, therefore, repeat what i there said, nor what was shown under the third head in the chapter on miracles. ( ) it is enough to mention the repetition for the better understanding of what i am about to say - viz., that the word of the lord when it has reference to anyone but god himself, signifies that divine law treated of in chap. iv.; in other words, religion, universal and catholic to the whole human race, as isaiah describes it (chap. i: ), teaching that the true way of life consists, not in ceremonies, but in charity, and a true heart, and calling it indifferently god's law and god's word. ( ) the expression is also used metaphorically for the order of nature and destiny (which, indeed, actually depend and follow from the eternal mandate of the divine nature), and especially for such parts of such order as were foreseen by the prophets, for the prophets did not perceive future events as the result of natural causes, but as the fiats and decrees of god. ( ) lastly, it is employed for the command of any prophet, in so far as he had perceived it by his peculiar faculty or prophetic gift, and not by the natural light of reason; this use springs chiefly from the usual prophetic conception of god as a legislator, which we remarked in chap. iv. ( ) there are, then, three causes for the bible's being called the word of god: because it teaches true religion, of which god is the eternal founder; because it narrates predictions of future events as though they were decrees of god; because its actual authors generally perceived things not by their ordinary natural faculties, but by a power peculiar to themselves, and introduced these things perceived, as told them by god. ( ) although scripture contains much that is merely historical and can be perceived by natural reason, yet its name is acquired from its chief subject matter. ( ) we can thus easily see how god can be said to be the author of the bible: it is because of the true religion therein contained, and not because he wished to communicate to men a certain number of books. ( ) we can also learn from hence the reason for the division into old and new testament. ( ) it was made because the prophets who preached religion before christ, preached it as a national law in virtue of the covenant entered into under moses; while the apostles who came after christ, preached it to all men as a universal religion solely in virtue of christ's passion: the cause for the division is not that the two parts are different in doctrine, nor that they were written as originals of the covenant, nor, lastly, that the catholic religion (which is in entire harmony with our nature) was new except in relation to those who had not known it: "it was in the world," as john the evangelist says, "and the world knew it not." ( ) thus, even if we had fewer books of the old and new testament than we have, we should still not be deprived of the word of god (which, as we have said, is identical with true religion), even as we do not now hold ourselves to be deprived of it, though we lack many cardinal writings such as the book of the law, which was religiously guarded in the temple as the original of the covenant, also the book of wars, the book of chronicles, and many others, from whence the extant old testament was taken and compiled. ( ) the above conclusion may be supported by many reasons. ( ) i. because the books of both testaments were not written by express command at one place for all ages, but are a fortuitous collection of the works of men, writing each as his period and disposition dictated. ( ) so much is clearly shown by the call of the prophets who were bade to admonish the ungodly of their time, and also by the apostolic epistles. ( ) ii. because it is one thing to understand the meaning of scripture and the prophets, and quite another thing to understand the meaning of god, or the actual truth. ( ) this follows from what we said in chap. ii. ( ) we showed, in chap. vi., that it applied to historic narratives, and to miracles: but it by no means applies to questions concerning true religion and virtue. ( ) iii. because the books of the old testament were selected from many, and were collected and sanctioned by a council of the pharisees, as we showed in chap. x. ( ) the books of the new testament were also chosen from many by councils which rejected as spurious other books held sacred by many. ( ) but these councils, both pharisee and christian, were not composed of prophets, but only of learned men and teachers. ( ) still, we must grant that they were guided in their choice by a regard for the word of god; and they must, therefore, have known what the law of god was. ( ) iv. because the apostles wrote not as prophets, but as teachers (see last chapter), and chose whatever method they thought best adapted for those whom they addressed: and consequently, there are many things in the epistles (as we showed at the end of the last chapter) which are not necessary to salvation. ( ) v. lastly, because there are four evangelists in the new testament, and it is scarcely credible that god can have designed to narrate the life of christ four times over, and to communicate it thus to mankind. ( ) for though there are some details related in one gospel which are not in another, and one often helps us to understand another, we cannot thence conclude that all that is set down is of vital importance to us, and that god chose the four evangelists in order that the life of christ might be better understood; for each one preached his gospel in a separate locality, each wrote it down as he preached it, in simple language, in order that the history of christ might be clearly told, not with any view of explaining his fellow-evangelists. ( ) if there are some passages which can be better, and more easily understood by comparing the various versions, they are the result of chance, and are not numerous: their continuance in obscurity would have impaired neither the clearness of the narrative nor the blessedness of mankind. ( ) we have now shown that scripture can only be called the word of god in so far as it affects religion, or the divine law; we must now point out that, in respect to these questions, it is neither faulty, tampered with, nor corrupt. ( ) by faulty, tampered with, and corrupt, i here mean written so incorrectly, that the meaning cannot be arrived at by a study of the language, nor from the authority of scripture. ( ) i will not go to such lengths as to say that the bible, in so far as it contains the divine law, has always preserved the same vowel-points, the same letters, or the same words (i leave this to be proved by, the massoretes and other worshippers of the letter), i only, maintain that the meaning by, which alone an utterance is entitled to be called divine, has come down to us uncorrupted, even though the original wording may have been more often changed than we suppose. ( ) such alterations, as i have said above, detract nothing from the divinity of the bible, for the bible would have been no less divine had it been written in different words or a different language. ( ) that the divine law has in this sense come down to us uncorrupted, is an assertion which admits of no dispute. ( ) for from the bible itself we learn, without the smallest difficulty or ambiguity, that its cardinal precept is: to love god above all things, and one's neighbour as one's self. ( ) this cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teaching, for this is the corner-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong to the ground. ( ) the bible would not be the work we have been examining, but something quite different. ( ) we remain, then, unshaken in our belief that this has always been the doctrine of scripture, and, consequently, that no error sufficient to vitiate it can have crept in without being instantly, observed by all; nor can anyone have succeeded in tampering with it and escaped the discovery of his malice. ( ) as this corner-stone is intact, we must perforce admit the same of whatever other passages are indisputably dependent on it, and are also fundamental, as, for instance, that a god exists, that he foresees all things, that he is almighty, that by his decree the good prosper and the wicked come to naught, and, finally, that our salvation depends solely on his grace. ( ) these are doctrines which scripture plainly teaches throughout, and which it is bound to teach, else all the rest would be empty and baseless; nor can we be less positive about other moral doctrines, which plainly are built upon this universal foundation - for instance, to uphold justice, to aid the weak, to do no murder, to covet no man's goods, &c. ( ) precepts, i repeat, such as these, human malice and the lapse of ages are alike powerless to destroy, for if any part of them perished, its loss would immediately be supplied from the fundamental principle, especially the doctrine of charity, which is everywhere in both testaments extolled above all others. ( ) moreover, though it be true that there is no conceivable crime so heinous that it has never been committed, still there is no one who would attempt in excuse for his crimes to destroy, the law, or introduce an impious doctrine in the place of what is eternal and salutary; men's nature is so constituted that everyone (be he king or subject) who has committed a base action, tries to deck out his conduct with spurious excuses, till he seems to have done nothing but what is just and right. ( ) we may conclude, therefore, that the whole divine law, as taught by scripture, has come down to us uncorrupted. ( ) besides this there are certain facts which we may be sure have been transmitted in good faith. ( ) for instance, the main facts of hebrew history, which were perfectly well known to everyone. ( ) the jewish people were accustomed in former times to chant the ancient history of their nation in psalms. ( ) the main facts, also, of christ's life and passion were immediately spread abroad through the whole roman empire. ( ) it is therefore scarcely credible, unless nearly everybody, consented thereto, which we cannot suppose, that successive generations have handed down the broad outline of the gospel narrative otherwise than as they received it. ( ) whatsoever, therefore, is spurious or faulty can only have reference to details - some circumstances in one or the other history or prophecy designed to stir the people to greater devotion; or in some miracle, with a view of confounding philosophers; or, lastly, in speculative matters after they had become mixed up with religion, so that some individual might prop up his own inventions with a pretext of divine authority. ( ) but such matters have little to do with salvation, whether they be corrupted little or much, as i will show in detail in the next chapter, though i think the question sufficiently plain from what i have said already, especially in chapter ii. chapter xiii - it is shown that scripture teaches only very simple doctrines, such as suffice for right conduct. ( ) in the second chapter of this treatise we pointed out that the prophets were gifted with extraordinary powers of imagination, but not of understanding; also that god only revealed to them such things as are very simple - not philosophic mysteries, - and that he adapted his communications to their previous opinions. ( ) we further showed in chap. v. that scripture only transmits and teaches truths which can readily be comprehended by all; not deducing and concatenating its conclusions from definitions and axioms, but narrating quite simply, and confirming its statements, with a view to inspiring belief, by an appeal to experience as exemplified in miracles and history, and setting forth its truths in the style and phraseology which would most appeal to the popular mind (cf. chap. vi., third division). ( ) lastly, we demonstrated in chap. viii. that the difficulty of understanding scripture lies in the language only, and not in the abstruseness of the argument. ( ) to these considerations we may add that the prophets did not preach only to the learned, but to all jews, without exception, while the apostles were wont to teach the gospel doctrine in churches where there were public meetings; whence it follows that scriptural doctrine contains no lofty speculations nor philosophic reasoning, but only very simple matters, such as could be understood by the slowest intelligence. ( ) i am consequently lost in wonder at the ingenuity of those whom i have already mentioned, who detect in the bible mysteries so profound that they cannot be explained in human language, and who have introduced so many philosophic speculations into religion that the church seems like an academy, and religion like a science, or rather a dispute. ( ) it is not to be wondered at that men, who boast of possessing supernatural intelligence, should be unwilling to yield the palm of knowledge to philosophers who have only their ordinary, faculties; still i should be surprised if i found them teaching any new speculative doctrine, which was not a commonplace to those gentile philosophers whom, in spite of all, they stigmatize as blind; for, if one inquires what these mysteries lurking in scripture may be, one is confronted with nothing but the reflections of plato or aristotle, or the like, which it would often be easier for an ignorant man to dream than for the most accomplished scholar to wrest out of the bible. ( ) however, i do not wish to affirm absolutely that scripture contains no doctrines in the sphere of philosophy, for in the last chapter i pointed out some of the kind, as fundamental principles; but i go so far as to say that such doctrines are very few and very simple. ( ) their precise nature and definition i will now set forth. ( ) the task will be easy, for we know that scripture does not aim at imparting scientific knowledge, and, therefore, it demands from men nothing but obedience, and censures obstinacy, but not ignorance. ( ) furthermore, as obedience to god consists solely in love to our neighbour - for whosoever loveth his neighbour, as a means of obeying god, hath, as st. paul says (rom. xiii: ), fulfilled the law, - it follows that no knowledge is commended in the bible save that which is necessary for enabling all men to obey god in the manner stated, and without which they would become rebellious, or without the discipline of obedience. ( ) other speculative questions, which have no direct bearing on this object, or are concerned with the knowledge of natural events, do not affect scripture, and should be entirely separated from religion. ( ) now, though everyone, as we have said, is now quite able to see this truth for himself, i should nevertheless wish, considering that the whole of religion depends thereon, to explain the entire question more accurately and clearly. ( ) to this end i must first prove that the intellectual or accurate knowledge of god is not a gift, bestowed upon all good men like obedience; and, further, that the knowledge of god, required by him through his prophets from everyone without exception, as needful to be known, is simply a knowledge of his divine justice and charity. ( ) both these points are easily proved from scripture. ( ) the first plainly follows from exodus vi: , where god, in order to show the singular grace bestowed upon moses, says to him: "and i appeared unto abraham, unto isaac, and unto jacob by the name of el sadai (a. v. god almighty); but by my name jehovah was i not known to them" - for the better understanding of which passage i may remark that el sadai, in hebrew, signifies the god who suffices, in that he gives to every man that which suffices for him; and, although sadai is often used by itself, to signify god, we cannot doubt that the word el (god, {power, might}) is everywhere understood. ( ) furthermore, we must note that jehovah is the only word found in scripture with the meaning of the absolute essence of god, without reference to created things. ( ) the jews maintain, for this reason, that this is, strictly speaking, the only name of god; that the rest of the words used are merely titles; and, in truth, the other names of god, whether they be substantives or adjectives, are merely attributive, and belong to him, in so far as he is conceived of in relation to created things, or manifested through them. ( ) thus el, or eloah, signifies powerful, as is well known, and only applies to god in respect to his supremacy, as when we call paul an apostle; the faculties of his power are set forth in an accompanying adjective, as el, great, awful, just, merciful, &c., or else all are understood at once by the use of el in the plural number, with a singular signification, an expression frequently adopted in scripture. ( ) now, as god tells moses that he was not known to the patriarchs by the name of jehovah, it follows that they were not cognizant of any attribute of god which expresses his absolute essence, but only of his deeds and promises that is, of his power, as manifested in visible things. ( ) god does not thus speak to moses in order to accuse the patriarchs of infidelity, but, on the contrary, as a means of extolling their belief and faith, inasmuch as, though they possessed no extraordinary knowledge of god (such as moses had), they yet accepted his promises as fixed and certain; whereas moses, though his thoughts about god were more exalted, nevertheless doubted about the divine promises, and complained to god that, instead of the promised deliverance, the prospects of the israelites had darkened. ( ) as the patriarchs did not know the distinctive name of god, and as god mentions the fact to moses, in praise of their faith and single-heartedness, and in contrast to the extraordinary grace granted to moses, it follows, as we stated at first, that men are not bound by, decree to have knowledge of the attributes of god, such knowledge being only granted to a few of the faithful: it is hardly worth while to quote further examples from scripture, for everyone must recognize that knowledge of god is not equal among all good men. ( ) moreover, a man cannot be ordered to be wise any more than he can be ordered to live and exist. ( ) men, women, and children are all alike able to obey by, commandment, but not to be wise. if any tell us that it is not necessary to understand the divine attributes, but that we must believe them simply, without proof, he is plainly, trifling. ( ) for what is invisible and can only, be perceived by the mind, cannot be apprehended by any, other means than proofs; if these are absent the object remains ungrasped; the repetition of what has been heard on such subjects no more indicates or attains to their meaning than the words of a parrot or a puppet speaking without sense or signification. ( ) before i proceed i ought to explain how it comes that we are often told in genesis that the patriarchs preached in the name of jehovah, this being in plain contradiction to the text above quoted. ( ) a reference to what was said in chap. viii. will readily explain the difficulty. ( ) it was there shown that the writer of the pentateuch did not always speak of things and places by the names they bore in the times of which he was writing, but by the names best known to his contemporaries. ( ) god is thus said in the pentateuch to have been preached by the patriarchs under the name of jehovah, not because such was the name by which the patriarchs knew him, but because this name was the one most reverenced by the jews. ( ) this point, i say, must necessarily be noticed, for in exodus it is expressly stated that god was not known to the patriarchs by this name; and in chap. iii: , it is said that moses desired to know the name of god. ( ) now, if this name had been already known it would have been known to moses. ( ) we must therefore draw the conclusion indicated, namely, that the faithful patriarchs did not know this name of god, and that the knowledge of god is bestowed and not commanded by the deity. ( ) it is now time to pass on to our second point, and show that god through his prophets required from men no other knowledge of himself than is contained in a knowledge of his justice and charity - that is, of attributes which a certain manner of life will enable men to imitate. ( ) jeremiah states this in so many words (xxii: , ): "did not thy father eat, and drink, and do judgment and justice? and then it was well with him. ( ) he judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the lord." ( ) the words in chap. ix: of the same book are equally, clear. ( ) "but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that i am the lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things i delight, saith the lord." ( ) the same doctrine maybe gathered from exod. xxxiv: , where god revealed to moses only, those of his attributes which display the divine justice and charity. ( ) lastly, we may call attention to a passage in john which we shall discuss at more length hereafter; the apostle explains the nature of god (inasmuch as no one has beheld him) through charity only, and concludes that he who possesses charity possesses, and in very, truth knows god. ( ) we have thus seen that moses, jeremiah, and john sum up in a very short compass the knowledge of god needful for all, and that they state it to consist in exactly what we said, namely, that god is supremely just, and supremely merciful - in other words, the one perfect pattern of the true life. ( ) we may add that scripture nowhere gives an express definition of god, and does not point out any other of his attributes which should be apprehended save these, nor does it in set terms praise any others. ( ) wherefore we may draw the general conclusion that an intellectual knowledge of god, which takes cognizance of his nature in so far as it actually is, and which cannot by any manner of living be imitated by mankind or followed as an example, has no bearing whatever on true rules of conduct, on faith, or on revealed religion; consequently that men may be in complete error on the subject without incurring the charge of sinfulness. ( ) we need now no longer wonder that god adapted himself to the existing opinions and imaginations of the prophets, or that the faithful held different ideas of god, as we showed in chap. ii.; or, again, that the sacred books speak very inaccurately of god, attributing to him hands, feet, eyes, ears, a mind, and motion from one place to another; or that they ascribe to him emotions, such as jealousy, mercy, &c., or, lastly, that they describe him as a judge in heaven sitting on a royal throne with christ on his right hand. ( ) such expressions are adapted to the understanding of the multitude, it being the object of the bible to make men not learned but obedient. ( ) in spite of this the general run of theologians, when they come upon any of these phrases which they cannot rationally harmonize with the divine nature, maintain that they should be interpreted metaphorically, passages they cannot understand they say should be interpreted literally. ( ) but if every expression of this kind in the bible is necessarily to be interpreted and understood metaphorically, scripture must have been written, not for the people and the unlearned masses, but chiefly for accomplished experts and philosophers. ( ) if it were indeed a sin to hold piously and simply the ideas about god we have just quoted, the prophets ought to have been strictly on their guard against the use of such expressions, seeing the weak-mindedness of the people, and ought, on the other hand, to have set forth first of all, duly and clearly, those attributes of god which are needful to be understood. ( ) this they have nowhere done; we cannot, therefore, think that opinions taken in themselves without respect to actions are either pious or impious, but must maintain that a man is pious or impious in his beliefs only in so far as he is thereby incited to obedience, or derives from them license to sin and rebel. ( ) if a man, by believing what is true, becomes rebellious, his creed is impious; if by believing what is false he becomes obedient, his creed is pious; for the true knowledge of god comes not by commandment, but by divine gift. ( ) god has required nothing from man but a knowledge of his divine justice and charity, and that not as necessary to scientific accuracy, but to obedience. chapter xiv - definitions of faith, the faith, and the foundations of faith, which is once for all separated from philosophy. ( ) for a true knowledge of faith it is above all things necessary to understand that the bible was adapted to the intelligence, not only of the prophets, but also of the diverse and fickle jewish multitude. ( ) this will be recognized by all who give any thought to the subject, for they will see that a person who accepted promiscuously everything in scripture as being the universal and absolute teaching of god, without accurately defining what was adapted to the popular intelligence, would find it impossible to escape confounding the opinions of the masses with the divine doctrines, praising the judgments and comments of man as the teaching of god, and making a wrong use of scriptural authority. ( ) who, i say, does not perceive that this is the chief reason why so many sectaries teach contradictory opinions as divine documents, and support their contentions with numerous scriptural texts, till it has passed in belgium into a proverb, geen ketter sonder letter - no heretic without a text? ( ) the sacred books were not written by one man, nor for the people of a single period, but by many authors of different temperaments, at times extending from first to last over nearly two thousand years, and perhaps much longer. ( ) we will not, however, accuse the sectaries of impiety because they have adapted the words of scripture to their own opinions; it is thus that these words were adapted to the understanding of the masses originally, and everyone is at liberty so to treat them if he sees that he can thus obey god in matters relating to justice and charity with a more full consent: but we do accuse those who will not grant this freedom to their fellows, but who persecute all who differ from them, as god's enemies, however honourable and virtuous be their lives; while, on the other hand, they cherish those who agree with them, however foolish they may be, as god's elect. ( ) such conduct is as wicked and dangerous to the state as any that can be conceived. ( ) in order, therefore, to establish the limits to which individual freedom should extend, and to decide what persons, in spite of the diversity of their opinions, are to be looked upon as the faithful, we must define faith and its essentials. ( ) this task i hope to accomplish in the present chapter, and also to separate faith from philosophy, which is the chief aim of the whole treatise. ( ) in order to proceed duly to the demonstration let us recapitulate the chief aim and object of scripture; this will indicate a standard by which we may define faith. ( ) we have said in a former chapter that the aim and object of scripture is only to teach obedience. ( ) thus much, i think, no one can question. ( ) who does not see that both testaments are nothing else but schools for this object, and have neither of them any aim beyond inspiring mankind with a voluntary obedience? ( ) for (not to repeat what i said in the last chapter) i will remark that moses did not seek to convince the jews by reason, but bound them by a covenant, by oaths, and by conferring benefits; further, he threatened the people with punishment if they should infringe the law, and promised rewards if they should obey it. ( ) all these are not means for teaching knowledge, but for inspiring obedience. ( ) the doctrine of the gospels enjoins nothing but simple faith, namely, to believe in god and to honour him, which is the same thing as to obey him. ( ) there is no occasion for me to throw further light on a question so plain by citing scriptural texts commending obedience, such as may be found in great numbers in both testaments. ( ) moreover, the bible teaches very clearly in a great many passages what everyone ought to do in order to obey god; the whole duty is summed up in love to one's neighbour. ( ) it cannot, therefore, be denied that he who by god's command loves his neighbour as himself is truly obedient and blessed according to the law, whereas he who hates his neighbour or neglects him is rebellious and obstinate. ( ) lastly, it is plain to everyone that the bible was not written and disseminated only, for the learned, but for men of every age and race; wherefore we may, rest assured that we are not bound by scriptural command to believe anything beyond what is absolutely necessary, for fulfilling its main precept. ( ) this precept, then, is the only standard of the whole catholic faith, and by it alone all the dogmas needful to be believed should be determined. ( ) so much being abundantly manifest, as is also the fact that all other doctrines of the faith can be legitimately deduced therefrom by reason alone, i leave it to every man to decide for himself how it comes to pass that so many divisions have arisen in the church: can it be from any other cause than those suggested at the beginning of chap. viii.? ( ) it is these same causes which compel me to explain the method of determining the dogmas of the faith from the foundation we have discovered, for if i neglected to do so, and put the question on a regular basis, i might justly be said to have promised too lavishly, for that anyone might, by my showing, introduce any doctrine he liked into religion, under the pretext that it was a necessary means to obedience: especially would this be the case in questions respecting the divine attributes. ( ) in order, therefore, to set forth the whole matter methodically, i will begin with a definition of faith, which on the principle above given, should be as follows:- ( ) faith consists in a knowledge of god, without which obedience to him would be impossible, and which the mere fact of obedience to him implies. ( ) this definition is so clear, and follows so plainly from what we have already proved, that it needs no explanation. ( ) the consequences involved therein i will now briefly show. ( ) (i.) faith is not salutary in itself, but only in respect to the obedience it implies, or as james puts it in his epistle, ii: , "faith without works is dead" (see the whole of the chapter quoted). ( ) (ii.) he who is truly obedient necessarily possesses true and saving faith; for if obedience be granted, faith must be granted also, as the same apostle expressly says in these words (ii: ), "show me thy faith without thy works, and i will show thee my faith by my works." ( ) so also john, i ep. iv: : "everyone that loveth is born of god, and knoweth god: he that loveth not, knoweth not god; for god is love." ( ) from these texts, i repeat, it follows that we can only judge a man faithful or unfaithful by his works. ( ) if his works be good, he is faithful, however much his doctrines may differ from those of the rest of the faithful: if his works be evil, though he may verbally conform, he is unfaithful. ( ) for obedience implies faith, and faith without works is dead. ( ) john, in the th verse of the chapter above quoted, expressly teaches the same doctrine: "hereby," he says, "know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit," i.e. love. ( ) he had said before that god is love, and therefore he concludes (on his own received principles), that whoso possesses love possesses truly the spirit of god. ( ) as no one has beheld god he infers that no one has knowledge or consciousness of god, except from love towards his neighbour, and also that no one can have knowledge of any of god's attributes, except this of love, in so far as we participate therein. ( ) if these arguments are not conclusive, they, at any rate, show the apostle's meaning, but the words in chap. ii: , , of the same epistle are much clearer, for they state in so many words our precise contention: "and hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. ( ) he that saith, i know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." ( ) from all this, i repeat, it follows that they are the true enemies of christ who persecute honourable and justice-loving men because they differ from them, and do not uphold the same religious dogmas as themselves: for whosoever loves justice and charity we know, by that very fact, to be faithful: whosoever persecutes the faithful, is an enemy to christ. ( ) lastly, it follows that faith does not demand that dogmas should be true as that they should be pious - that is, such as will stir up the heart to obey; though there be many such which contain not a shadow of truth, so long as they be held in good faith, otherwise their adherents are disobedient, for how can anyone, desirous of loving justice and obeying god, adore as divine what he knows to be alien from the divine nature? ( ) however, men may err from simplicity of mind, and scripture, as we have seen, does not condemn ignorance, but obstinacy. ( ) this is the necessary result of our definition of faith, and all its branches should spring from the universal rule above given, and from the evident aim and object of the bible, unless we choose to mix our own inventions therewith. ( ) thus it is not true doctrines which are expressly required by the bible, so much as doctrines necessary for obedience, and to confirm in our hearts the love of our neighbour, wherein (to adopt the words of john) we are in god, and god in us. ( ) as, then, each man's faith must be judged pious or impious only in respect of its producing obedience or obstinacy, and not in respect of its truth; and as no one will dispute that men's dispositions are exceedingly varied, that all do not acquiesce in the same things, but are ruled some by one opinion some by another, so that what moves one to devotion moves another to laughter and contempt, it follows that there can be no doctrines in the catholic, or universal, religion, which can give rise to controversy among good men. ( ) such doctrines might be pious to some and impious to others, whereas they should be judged solely by their fruits. ( ) to the universal religion, then, belong only such dogmas as are absolutely required in order to attain obedience to god, and without which such obedience would be impossible; as for the rest, each man - seeing that he is the best judge of his own character should adopt whatever he thinks best adapted to strengthen his love of justice. ( ) if this were so, i think there would be no further occasion for controversies in the church. ( ) i have now no further fear in enumerating the dogmas of universal faith or the fundamental dogmas of the whole of scripture, inasmuch as they all tend (as may be seen from what has been said) to this one doctrine, namely, that there exists a god, that is, a supreme being, who loves justice and charity, and who must be obeyed by whosoever would be saved; that the worship of this being consists in the practice of justice and love towards one's neighbour, and that they contain nothing beyond the following doctrines:- ( ) i. that god or a supreme being exists, sovereignly just and merciful, the exemplar of the true life; that whosoever is ignorant of or disbelieves in his existence cannot obey him or know him as a judge. ( ) ii. that he is one. ( ) nobody will dispute that this doctrine is absolutely necessary for entire devotion, admiration, and love towards god. ( ) for devotion, admiration, and love spring from the superiority of one over all else. ( ) iii. that he is omnipresent, or that all things are open to him, for if anything could be supposed to be concealed from him, or to be unnoticed by, him, we might doubt or be ignorant of the equity of his judgment as directing all things. ( ) iv. that he has supreme right and dominion over all things, and that he does nothing under compulsion, but by his absolute fiat and grace. ( ) all things are bound to obey him, he is not bound to obey any. ( ) v. that the worship of god consists only in justice and charity, or love towards one's neighbour. ( ) vi. that all those, and those only, who obey god by their manner of life are saved; the rest of mankind, who live under the sway of their pleasures, are lost. ( ) if we did not believe this, there would be no reason for obeying god rather than pleasure. ( ) vii. lastly, that god forgives the sins of those who repent. ( ) no one is free from sin, so that without this belief all would despair of salvation, and there would be no reason for believing in the mercy of god. ( ) he who firmly believes that god, out of the mercy and grace with which he directs all things, forgives the sins of men, and who feels his love of god kindled thereby, he, i say, does really, know christ according to the spirit, and christ is in him. ( ) no one can deny that all these doctrines are before all things necessary, to be believed, in order that every man, without exception, may be able to obey god according to the bidding of the law above explained, for if one of these precepts be disregarded obedience is destroyed. ( ) but as to what god, or the exemplar of the true life, may be, whether fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, or what not, this, i say, has nothing to do with faith any more than has the question how he comes to be the exemplar of the true life, whether it be because he has a just and merciful mind, or because all things exist and act through him, and consequently that we understand through him, and through him see what is truly just and good. ( ) everyone may think on such questions as he likes. ( ) furthermore, faith is not affected, whether we hold that god is omnipresent essentially or potentially; that he directs all things by absolute fiat, or by the necessity of his nature; that he dictates laws like a prince, or that he sets them forth as eternal truths; that man obeys him by virtue of free will, or by virtue of the necessity of the divine decree; lastly, that the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked is natural or supernatural: these and such like questions have no bearing on faith, except in so far as they are used as means to give us license to sin more, or to obey god less. ( ) i will go further, and maintain that every man is bound to adapt these dogmas to his own way of thinking, and to interpret them according as he feels that he can give them his fullest and most unhesitating assent, so that he may the more easily obey god with his whole heart. ( ) such was the manner, as we have already pointed out, in which the faith was in old time revealed and written, in accordance with the understanding and opinions of the prophets and people of the period; so, in like fashion, every man is bound to adapt it to his own opinions, so that he may accept it without any hesitation or mental repugnance. ( ) we have shown that faith does not so much re quire truth as piety, and that it is only quickening and pious through obedience, consequently no one is faithful save by obedience alone. ( ) the best faith is not necessarily possessed by him who displays the best reasons, but by him who displays the best fruits of justice and charity. ( ) how salutary and necessary this doctrine is for a state, in order that men may dwell together in peace and concord; and how many and how great causes of disturbance and crime are thereby cut off, i leave everyone to judge for himself! ( ) before we go further, i may remark that we can, by means of what we have just proved, easily answer the objections raised in chap. i., when we were discussing god's speaking with the israelites on mount sinai. ( ) for, though the voice heard by the israelites could not give those men any philosophical or mathematical certitude of god's existence, it was yet sufficient to thrill them with admiration for god, as they already knew him, and to stir them up to obedience: and such was the object of the display. ( ) god did not wish to teach the israelites the absolute attributes of his essence (none of which he then revealed), but to break down their hardness of heart, and to draw them to obedience: therefore he did not appeal to them with reasons, but with the sound of trumpets, thunder, and lightnings. ( ) it remains for me to show that between faith or theology, and philosophy, there is no connection, nor affinity. ( ) i think no one will dispute the fact who has knowledge of the aim and foundations of the two subjects, for they are as wide apart as the poles. ( ) philosophy has no end in view save truth: faith, as we have abundantly proved, looks for nothing but obedience and piety. ( ) again, philosophy is based on axioms which must be sought from nature alone: faith is based on history and language, and must be sought for only in scripture and revelation, as we showed in chap. vii. ( ) faith, therefore, allows the greatest latitude in philosophic speculation, allowing us without blame to think what we like about anything, and only condemning, as heretics and schismatics, those who teach opinions which tend to produce obstinacy, hatred, strife, and anger; while, on the other hand, only considering as faithful those who persuade us, as far as their reason and faculties will permit, to follow justice and charity. ( ) lastly, as what we are now setting forth are the most important subjects of my treatise, i would most urgently beg the reader, before i proceed, to read these two chapters with especial attention, and to take the trouble to weigh them well in his mind: let him take for granted that i have not written with a view to introducing novelties, but in order to do away with abuses, such as i hope i may, at some future time, at last see reformed. chapter xv - theology is shown not to be subservient to reason, nor reason to theology: a definition of the reason which enables us to accept the authority of the bible. ( ) those who know not that philosophy and reason are distinct, dispute whether scripture should be made subservient to reason, or reason to scripture: that is, whether the meaning of scripture should be made to agreed with reason; or whether reason should be made to agree with scripture: the latter position is assumed by the sceptics who deny the certitude of reason, the former by the dogmatists. ( ) both parties are, as i have shown, utterly in the wrong, for either doctrine would require us to tamper with reason or with scripture. ( ) we have shown that scripture does not teach philosophy, but merely obedience, and that all it contains has been adapted to the understanding and established opinions of the multitude. ( ) those, therefore, who wish to adapt it to philosophy, must needs ascribe to the prophets many ideas which they never even dreamed of, and give an extremely forced interpretation to their words: those on the other hand, who would make reason and philosophy subservient to theology, will be forced to accept as divine utterances the prejudices of the ancient jews, and to fill and confuse their mind therewith. ( ) in short, one party will run wild with the aid of reason, and the other will run wild without the aid of reason. ( ) the first among the pharisees who openly maintained that scripture should be made to agree with reason, was maimonides, whose opinion we reviewed, and abundantly refuted in chap. viii.: now, although this writer had much authority among his contemporaries, he was deserted on this question by almost all, and the majority went straight over to the opinion of a certain r. jehuda alpakhar, who, in his anxiety to avoid the error of maimonides, fell into another, which was its exact contrary. ( ) he held that reason should be made subservient, and entirely give way to scripture. ( ) he thought that a passage should not be interpreted metaphorically, simply because it was repugnant to reason, but only in the cases when it is inconsistent with scripture itself - that is, with its clear doctrines. ( ) therefore he laid down the universal rule, that whatsoever scripture teaches dogmatically, and affirms expressly, must on its own sole authority be admitted as absolutely true: that there is no doctrine in the bible which directly contradicts the general tenour of the whole: but only some which appear to involve a difference, for the phrases of scripture often seem to imply something contrary to what has been expressly taught. ( ) such phrases, and such phrases only, we may interpret metaphorically. ( ) for instance, scripture clearly teaches the unity of god (see deut. vi: ), nor is there any text distinctly asserting a plurality of gods; but in several passages god speaks of himself, and the prophets speak of him, in the plural number; such phrases are simply a manner of speaking, and do not mean that there actually are several gods: they are to be explained metaphorically, not because a plurality of gods is repugnant to reason, but because scripture distinctly asserts that there is only one. ( ) so, again, as scripture asserts (as alpakhar thinks) in deut. iv: , that god is incorporeal, we are bound, solely by the authority of this text, and not by reason, to believe that god has no body: consequently we must explain metaphorically, on the sole authority of scripture, all those passages which attribute to god hands, feet, &c., and take them merely as figures of speech. ( ) such is the opinion of alpakhar. in so far as he seeks to explain scripture by scripture, i praise him, but i marvel that a man gifted with reason should wish to debase that faculty. ( ) it is true that scripture should be explained by scripture, so long as we are in difficulties about the meaning and intention of the prophets, but when we have elicited the true meaning, we must of necessity make use of our judgment and reason in order to assent thereto. ( ) if reason, however, much as she rebels, is to be entirely subjected to scripture, i ask, are we to effect her submission by her own aid, or without her, and blindly? ( ) if the latter, we shall surely act foolishly and injudiciously; if the former, we assent to scripture under the dominion of reason, and should not assent to it without her. ( ) moreover, i may ask now, is a man to assent to anything against his reason? ( ) what is denial if it be not reason's refusal to assent? ( ) in short, i am astonished that anyone should wish to subject reason, the greatest of gifts and a light from on high, to the dead letter which may have been corrupted by human malice; that it should be thought no crime to speak with contempt of mind, the true handwriting of god's word, calling it corrupt, blind, and lost, while it is considered the greatest of crimes to say the same of the letter, which is merely the reflection and image of god's word. ( ) men think it pious to trust nothing to reason and their own judgment, and impious to doubt the faith of those who have transmitted to us the sacred books. ( ) such conduct is not piety, but mere folly. and, after all, why are they so anxious? what are they afraid of? ( ) do they think that faith and religion cannot be upheld unless - men purposely keep themselves in ignorance, and turn their backs on reason? ( ) if this be so, they have but a timid trust in scripture. ( ) however, be it far from me to say that religion should seek to enslave reason, or reason religion, or that both should not be able to keep their sovereignity in perfect harmony. ( ) i will revert to this question presently, for i wish now to discuss alpakhar's rule. ( ) he requires, as we have stated, that we should accept as true, or reject as false, everything asserted or denied by scripture, and he further states that scripture never expressly asserts or denies anything which contradicts its assertions or negations elsewhere. ( ) the rashness of such a requirement and statement can escape no one. ( ) for (passing over the fact that he does not notice that scripture consists of different books, written at different times, for different people, by different authors: and also that his requirement is made on his own authority without any corroboration from reason or scripture) he would be bound to show that all passages which are indirectly contradictory of the rest, can be satisfactorily explained metaphorically through the nature of the language and the context: further, that scripture has come down to us untampered with. ( ) however, we will go into the matter at length. ( ) firstly, i ask what shall we do if reason prove recalcitrant? ( ) shall we still be bound to affirm whatever scripture affirms, and to deny whatever scripture denies? ( ) perhaps it will be answered that scripture contains nothing repugnant to reason. ( ) but i insist that it expressly affirms and teaches that god is jealous (namely, in the decalogue itself, and in exod. xxxiv: , and in deut. iv: , and in many other places), and i assert that such a doctrine is repugnant to reason. ( ) it must, i suppose, in spite of all, be accepted as true. if there are any passages in scripture which imply that god is not jealous, they must be taken metaphorically as meaning nothing of the kind. ( ) so, also, scripture expressly states (exod. xix: , &c.) that god came down to mount sinai, and it attributes to him other movements from place to place, nowhere directly stating that god does not so move. ( ) wherefore, we must take the passage literally, and solomon's words (i kings viii: ), "but will god dwell on the earth? ( ) behold the heavens and earth cannot contain thee," inasmuch as they do not expressly state that god does not move from place to place, but only imply it, must be explained away till they have no further semblance of denying locomotion to the deity. ( ) so also we must believe that the sky is the habitation and throne of god, for scripture expressly says so; and similarly many passages expressing the opinions of the prophets or the multitude, which reason and philosophy, but not scripture, tell us to be false, must be taken as true if we are to follow the guidance of our author, for according to him, reason has nothing to do with the matter. ( ) further, it is untrue that scripture never contradicts itself directly, but only by implication. ( ) for moses says, in so many words (deut. iv: ), "the lord thy god is a consuming fire," and elsewhere expressly denies that god has any likeness to visible things. (deut. iv. .) ( ) if it be decided that the latter passage only contradicts the former by implication, and must be adapted thereto, lest it seem to negative it, let us grant that god is a fire; or rather, lest we should seem to have taken leave of our senses, let us pass the matter over and take another example. ( ) samuel expressly denies that god ever repents, "for he is not a man that he should repent" (i sam. xv: ). ( ) jeremiah, on the other hand, asserts that god does repent, both of the evil and of the good which he had intended to do (jer. xviii: - ). ( ) what? ( ) are not these two texts directly contradictory? ( ) which of the two, then, would our author want to explain metaphorically? ( ) both statements are general, and each is the opposite of the other - what one flatly affirms, the other flatly, denies. ( ) so, by his own rule, he would be obliged at once to reject them as false, and to accept them as true. ( ) again, what is the point of one passage, not being contradicted by another directly, but only by implication, if the implication is clear, and the nature and context of the passage preclude metaphorical interpretation? ( ) there are many such instances in the bible, as we saw in chap. ii. (where we pointed out that the prophets held different and contradictory opinions), and also in chaps. ix. and x., where we drew attention to the contradictions in the historical narratives. ( ) there is no need for me to go through them all again, for what i have said sufficiently exposes the absurdities which would follow from an opinion and rule such as we are discussing, and shows the hastiness of its propounder. ( ) we may, therefore, put this theory, as well as that of maimonides, entirely out of court; and we may, take it for indisputable that theology is not bound to serve reason, nor reason theology, but that each has her own domain. ( ) the sphere of reason is, as we have said, truth and wisdom; the sphere of theology, is piety and obedience. ( ) the power of reason does not extend so far as to determine for us that men may be blessed through simple obedience, without understanding. ( ) theology, tells us nothing else, enjoins on us no command save obedience, and has neither the will nor the power to oppose reason: she defines the dogmas of faith (as we pointed out in the last chapter) only in so far as they may be necessary, for obedience, and leaves reason to determine their precise truth: for reason is the light of the mind, and without her all things are dreams and phantoms. ( ) by theology, i here mean, strictly speaking, revelation, in so far as it indicates the object aimed at by scripture namely, the scheme and manner of obedience, or the true dogmas of piety and faith. ( ) this may truly be called the word of god, which does not consist in a certain number of books (see chap. xii.). ( ) theology thus understood, if we regard its precepts or rules of life, will be found in accordance with reason; and, if we look to its aim and object, will be seen to be in nowise repugnant thereto, wherefore it is universal to all men. ( ) as for its bearing on scripture, we have shown in chap. vii. that the meaning of scripture should be gathered from its own history, and not from the history of nature in general, which is the basis of philosophy. ( ) we ought not to be hindered if we find that our investigation of the meaning of scripture thus conducted shows us that it is here and there repugnant to reason; for whatever we may find of this sort in the bible, which men may be in ignorance of, without injury to their charity, has, we may be sure, no bearing on theology or the word of god, and may, therefore, without blame, be viewed by every one as he pleases. ( ) to sum up, we may draw the absolute conclusion that the bible must not be accommodated to reason, nor reason to the bible. ( ) now, inasmuch as the basis of theology - the doctrine that man may be saved by obedience alone - cannot be proved by reason whether it be true or false, we may be asked, why, then, should we believe it? ( ) if we do so without the aid of reason, we accept it blindly, and act foolishly and injudiciously; if, on the other hand, we settle that it can be proved by reason, theology becomes a part of philosophy, and inseparable therefrom. ( ) but i make answer that i have absolutely established that this basis of theology cannot be investigated by the natural light of reason, or, at any rate, that no one ever has proved it by such means, and, therefore, revelation was necessary. ( ) we should, however, make use of our reason, in order to grasp with moral certainty what is revealed - i say, with moral certainty, for we cannot hope to attain greater certainty, than the prophets: yet their certainty was only, moral, as i showed in chap. ii. ( ) those, therefore, who attempt to set forth the authority of scripture with mathematical demonstrations are wholly in error: for the authority, of the bible is dependent on the authority of the prophets, and can be supported by no stronger arguments than those employed in old time by the prophets for convincing the people of their own authority. ( ) our certainty on the same subject can be founded on no other basis than that which served as foundation for the certainty of the prophets. ( ) now the certainty of the prophets consisted (as we pointed out) in these elements:- ( ) (i.) a distinct and vivid imagination. ( ) (ii.) a sign. ( ) (iii.) lastly, and chiefly, a mind turned to what is just and good. it was based on no other reasons than these, and consequently they cannot prove their authority by any other reasons, either to the multitude whom they addressed orally, nor to us whom they address in writing. ( ) the first of these reasons, namely, the vivid imagination, could be valid only for the prophets; therefore, our certainty concerning revelation must, and ought to be, based on the remaining two - namely, the sign and the teaching. ( ) such is the express doctrine of moses, for (in deut. xviii.) he bids the people obey the prophet who should give a true sign in the name of the lord, but if he should predict falsely, even though it were in the name of the lord, he should be put to death, as should also he who strives to lead away the people from the true religion, though he confirm his authority with signs and portents. ( ) we may compare with the above deut. xiii. ( ) whence it follows that a true prophet could be distinguished from a false one, both by his doctrine and by the miracles he wrought, for moses declares such an one to be a true prophet, and bids the people trust him without fear of deceit. ( ) he condemns as false, and worthy, of death, those who predict anything falsely even in the name of the lord, or who preach false gods, even though their miracles be real. ( ) the only reason, then, which we have for belief in scripture or the writings of the prophets, is the doctrine we find therein, and the signs by which it is confirmed. ( ) for as we see that the prophets extol charity and justice above all things, and have no other object, we conclude that they did not write from unworthy motives, but because they really thought that men might become blessed through obedience and faith: further, as we see that they confirmed their teaching with signs and wonders, we become persuaded that they did not speak at random, nor run riot in their prophecies. ( ) we are further strengthened in our conclusion by the fact that the morality they teach is in evident agreement with reason, for it is no accidental coincidence that the word of god which we find in the prophets coincides with the word of god written in our hearts. ( ) we may, i say, conclude this from the sacred books as certainly as did the jews of old from the living voice of the prophets: for we showed in chap. xii. that scripture has come down to us intact in respect to its doctrine and main narratives. ( ) therefore this whole basis of theology and scripture, though it does not admit of mathematical proof, may yet be accepted with the approval of our judgment. ( ) it would be folly to refuse to accept what is confirmed by such ample prophetic testimony, and what has proved such a comfort to those whose reason is comparatively weak, and such a benefit to the state; a doctrine, moreover, which we may believe in without the slightest peril or hurt, and should reject simply because it cannot be mathematically proved: it is as though we should admit nothing as true, or as a wise rule of life, which could ever, in any possible way, be called in question; or as though most of our actions were not full of uncertainty and hazards. ( ) i admit that those who believe that theology and philosophy are mutually contradictory, and that therefore either one or the other must be thrust from its throne - i admit, i say, that such persons are not unreasonable in attempting to put theology on a firm basis, and to demonstrate its truth mathematically. ( ) who, unless he were desperate or mad, would wish to bid an incontinent farewell to reason, or to despise the arts and sciences, or to deny reason's certitude? ( ) but, in the meanwhile, we cannot wholly absolve them from blame, inasmuch as they invoke the aid of reason for her own defeat, and attempt infallibly to prove her fallible. ( ) while they are trying to prove mathematically the authority and truth of theology, and to take away the authority of natural reason, they are in reality only bringing theology under reason's dominion, and proving that her authority has no weight unless natural reason be at the back of it. ( ) if they boast that they themselves assent because of the inward testimony of the holy spirit, and that they only invoke the aid of reason because of unbelievers, in order to convince them, not even so can this meet with our approval, for we can easily show that they have spoken either from emotion or vain-glory. ( ) it most clearly follows from the last chapter that the holy spirit only gives its testimony in favour of works, called by paul (in gal. v: ) the fruits of the spirit, and is in itself really nothing but the mental acquiescence which follows a good action in our souls. ( ) no spirit gives testimony concerning the certitude of matters within the sphere of speculation, save only reason, who is mistress, as we have shown, of the whole realm of truth. ( ) if then they assert that they possess this spirit which makes them certain of truth, they speak falsely, and according to the prejudices of the emotions, or else they are in great dread lest they should be vanquished by philosophers and exposed to public ridicule, and therefore they flee, as it were, to the altar; but their refuge is vain, for what altar will shelter a man who has outraged reason? ( ) however, i pass such persons over, for i think i have fulfilled my purpose, and shown how philosophy should be separated from theology, and wherein each consists; that neither should be subservient to the other, but that each should keep her unopposed dominion. ( ) lastly, as occasion offered, i have pointed out the absurdities, the inconveniences, and the evils following from the extraordinary confusion which has hitherto prevailed between the two subjects, owing to their not being properly distinguished and separated. ( ) before i go further i would expressly state (though i have said it before) that i consider the utility and the need for holy scripture or revelation to be very great. ( ) for as we cannot perceive by the natural light of reason that simple obedience is the path of salvation [endnote ], and are taught by revelation only that it is so by the special grace of god, which our reason cannot attain, it follows that the bible has brought a very great consolation to mankind. ( ) all are able to obey, whereas there are but very few, compared with the aggregate of humanity, who can acquire the habit of virtue under the unaided guidance of reason. ( ) thus if we had not the testimony of scripture, we should doubt of the salvation of nearly all men. end of part - chapters xi to xv. author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise chapter xi. endnote . ( ) "now i think." ( ) the translators render the {greek} word "i infer", and assert that paul uses it as synonymous with {a greek word}. ( ) but the former word has, in greek, the same meaning as the hebrew word rendered to think, to esteem, to judge. ( ) and this signification would be in entire agreement with the syriac translation. ( ) this syriac translation (if it be a translation, which is very doubtful, for we know neither the time of its appearance, nor the translators and syriac was the vernacular of the apostles) renders the text before us in a way well explained by tremellius as "we think, therefore." chapter xv. endnote . ( ) "that simple obedience is the path of salvation." ( ) in other words, it is enough for salvation or blessedness, that we should embrace the divine decrees as laws or commands; there is no need to conceive them as eternal truths. ( ) this can be taught us by revelation, not reason, as appears from the demonstrations given in chapter iv. end of part iii - chapters xi to xv. sentence numbers, shown thus ( ), have been added by volunteer. a theologico-political treatise part - chapters vi to x by baruch spinoza table of contents: chapter vi - of miracles. confused ideas of the vulgar on the subject. a miracle in the sense of a contravention of natural laws an absurdity. in the sense of an event, whose cause is unknown, less edifying than an event better understood. god's providence identical with the course of nature. how scripture miracles may be interpreted. chapter vii - of the interpretation of scripture. current systems of interpretation erroneous. only true system to interpret it by itself. reasons why this system cannot now be carried out in its entirety. yet these difficulties do not interfere with our understanding the plainest and most important passages. rival systems examined - that of a supernatural faculty being necessary - refuted. that of maimonides. refuted. traditions of the pharisees and the papists rejected. chapter viii. - of the authorship of the pentateuch, and the other historical books of the old testament. the pentateuch not written by moses. his actual writings distinct. traces of late authorship in the other historical books. all the historical books the work of one man. probably ezra. who compiled first the book of deuteronomy. and then a history, distinguishing the books by the names of their subjects. chapter ix. - other questions about these books. that these books have not been thoroughly revised and made to agree. that there are many doubtful readings. that the existing marginal notes are often such. the other explanations of these notes refuted. the hiatus. chapter x. - an examination of the remaining books of the old testament according to the preceding method. chronicles, psalms, proverbs. isaiah, jeremiah. ezekiel, hosea. other prophets, jonah, job. daniel, ezra, nehemiah, esther. the author declines to undertake a similar detailed examination of the new testament. author's endnotes to the treatise chapter vi. - of miracles. ( ) as men are accustomed to call divine the knowledge which transcends human understanding, so also do they style divine, or the work of god, anything of which the cause is not generally known: for the masses think that the power and providence of god are most clearly displayed by events that are extraordinary and contrary to the conception they have formed of nature, especially if such events bring them any profit or convenience: they think that the clearest possible proof of god's existence is afforded when nature, as they suppose, breaks her accustomed order, and consequently they believe that those who explain or endeavour to understand phenomena or miracles through their natural causes are doing away with god and his providence. ( ) they suppose, forsooth, that god is inactive so long as nature works in her accustomed order, and vice versa, that the power of nature and natural causes are idle so long as god is acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one from the other, the power of god and the power of nature, though the latter is in a sense determined by god, or (as most people believe now) created by him. ( ) what they mean by either, and what they understand by god and nature they do not know, except that they imagine the power of god to be like that of some royal potentate, and nature's power to consist in force and energy. ( ) the masses then style unusual phenomena, "miracles," and partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing the students of science, prefer to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and only to hear of those things which they know least, and consequently admire most. ( ) in fact, the common people can only adore god, and refer all things to his power by removing natural causes, and conceiving things happening out of their due course, and only admires the power of god when the power of nature is conceived of as in subjection to it. ( ) this idea seems to have taken its rise among the early jews who saw the gentiles round them worshipping visible gods such as the sun, the moon, the earth, water, air, &c., and in order to inspire the conviction that such divinities were weak and inconstant, or changeable, told how they themselves were under the sway of an invisible god, and narrated their miracles, trying further to show that the god whom they worshipped arranged the whole of nature for their sole benefit: this idea was so pleasing to humanity that men go on to this day imagining miracles, so that they may believe themselves god's favourites, and the final cause for which god created and directs all things. ( ) what pretension will not people in their folly advance! ( ) they have no single sound idea concerning either god or nature, they confound god's decrees with human decrees, they conceive nature as so limited that they believe man to be its chief part! ( ) i have spent enough space in setting forth these common ideas and prejudices concerning nature and miracles, but in order to afford a regular demonstration i will show - ( ) i. that nature cannot be contravened, but that she preserves a fixed and immutable order, and at the same time i will explain what is meant by a miracle. ( ) ii. that god's nature and existence, and consequently his providence cannot be known from miracles, but that they can all be much better perceived from the fixed and immutable order of nature. ( ) iii. that by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of god, scripture (as i will prove by scriptural examples) means nothing but nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws. ( ) iv. lastly, i will treat of the method of interpreting scriptural miracles, and the chief points to be noted concerning the narratives of them. ( ) such are the principal subjects which will be discussed in this chapter, and which will serve, i think, not a little to further the object of this treatise. ( ) our first point is easily proved from what we showed in chap. iv. about divine law - namely, that all that god wishes or determines involves eternal necessity, and truth, for we demonstrated that god's understanding is identical with his will, and that it is the same thing to say that god wills a thing, as to say, that he understands it; hence, as it follows necessarily, from the divine nature and perfection that god understands a thing as it is, it follows no less necessarily that he wills it as it is. ( ) now, as nothing is necessarily true save only by, divine decree, it is plain that the universal laws of nature are decrees of god following from the necessity and perfection of the divine nature. ( ) hence, any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene the divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that god acts in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that god acted against his own nature - an evident absurdity. ( ) one might easily show from the same premises that the power and efficiency, of nature are in themselves the divine power and efficiency, and that the divine power is the very essence of god, but this i gladly pass over for the present. ( ) nothing, then, comes to pass in nature (n.b. i do not mean here by "nature," merely matter and its modifications, but infinite other things besides matter.) in contravention to her universal laws, nay, everything agrees with them and follows from them, for whatsoever comes to pass, comes to pass by the will and eternal decree of god; that is, as we have just pointed out, whatever comes to pass, comes to pass according to laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and truth; nature, therefore, always observes laws and rules which involve eternal necessity, and truth, although they may not all be known to us, and therefore she keeps a fixed and mutable order. ( ) nor is there any sound reason for limiting the power and efficacy of nature, and asserting that her laws are fit for certain purposes, but not for all; for as the efficacy, and power of nature, are the very, efficacy and power of god, and as the laws and rules of nature are the decrees of god, it is in every way to be believed that the power of nature is infinite, and that her laws are broad enough to embrace everything conceived by, the divine intellect; the only alternative is to assert that god has created nature so weak, and has ordained for her laws so barren, that he is repeatedly compelled to come afresh to her aid if he wishes that she should be preserved, and that things should happen as he desires: a conclusion, in my opinion, very far removed from reason. ( ) further, as nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything conceived by the divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. ( ) we may, in fact, say that a miracle is an event of which the causes annot be explained by the natural reason through a reference to ascertained workings of nature; but since miracles were wrought according to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly ignorant of the workings of nature, it is certain that the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could not explain by the method adopted by the unlearned in such cases, namely, an appeal to the memory, a recalling of something similar, which is ordinarily regarded without wonder; for most people think they sufficiently understand a thing when they have ceased to wonder at it. ( ) the ancients, then, and indeed most men up to the present day, had no other criterion for a miracle; hence we cannot doubt that many things are narrated in scripture as miracles of which the causes could easily be explained by reference to ascertained workings of nature. ( ) we have hinted as much in chap. ii., in speaking of the sun standing still in the time of joshua, and to say on the subject when we come to treat of the interpretation of miracles later on in this chapter. ( ) it is now time to pass on to the second point, and show that we cannot gain an understanding of god's essence, existence, or providence by means of miracles, but that these truths are much better perceived through the fixed and immutable order of nature. ( ) i thus proceed with the demonstration. ( ) as god's existence is not self-evident ( ) it must necessarily be inferred from ideas so firmly and incontrovertibly true, that no power can be postulated or conceived sufficient to impugn them. ( ) they ought certainly so to appear to us when we infer from them god's existence, if we wish to place our conclusion beyond the reach of doubt; for if we could conceive that such ideas could be impugned by any power whatsoever, we should doubt of their truth, we should doubt of our conclusion, namely, of god's existence, and should never be able to be certain of anything. ( ) further, we know that nothing either agrees with or is contrary to nature, unless it agrees with or is contrary to these primary ideas; wherefore if we would conceive that anything could be done in nature by any power whatsoever which would be contrary to the laws of nature, it would also be contrary to our primary ideas, and we should have either to reject it as absurd, or else to cast doubt (as just shown) on our primary ideas, and consequently on the existence of god, and on everything howsoever perceived. ( ) therefore miracles, in the sense of events contrary to the laws of nature, so far from demonstrating to us the existence of god, would, on the contrary, lead us to doubt it, where, otherwise, we might have been absolutely certain of it, as knowing that nature follows a fixed and immutable order. ( ) let us take miracle as meaning that which cannot be explained through natural causes. ( ) this may be interpreted in two senses: either as that which has natural causes, but cannot be examined by the human intellect; or as that which has no cause save god and god's will. ( ) but as all things which come to pass through natural causes, come to pass also solely through the will and power of god, it comes to this, that a miracle, whether it has natural causes or not, is a result which cannot be explained by its cause, that is a phenomenon which surpasses human understanding; but from such a phenomenon, and certainly from a result surpassing our understanding, we can gain no knowledge. ( ) for whatsoever we understand clearly and distinctly should be plain to us either in itself or by means of something else clearly and distinctly understood; wherefore from a miracle or a phenomenon which we cannot understand, we can gain no knowledge of god's essence, or existence, or indeed anything about god or nature; whereas when we know that all things are ordained and ratified by god, that the operations of nature follow from the essence of god, and that the laws of nature are eternal decrees and volitions of god, we must perforce conclude that our knowledge of god, and of god's will increases in proportion to our knowledge and clear understanding of nature, as we see how she depends on her primal cause, and how she works according to eternal law. ( ) wherefore so far as our understanding goes, those phenomena which we clearly and distinctly understand have much better right to be called works of god, and to be referred to the will of god than those about which we are entirely ignorant, although they appeal powerfully to the imagination, and compel men's admiration. ( ) it is only phenomena that we clearly and distinctly understand, which heighten our knowledge of god, and most clearly indicate his will and decrees. ( ) plainly, they are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of god; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance. ( ) again, even supposing that some conclusion could be drawn from miracles, we could not possibly infer from them the existence of god: for a miracle being an event under limitations is the expression of a fixed and limited power; therefore we could not possibly infer from an effect of this kind the existence of a cause whose power is infinite, but at the utmost only of a cause whose power is greater than that of the said effect. ( ) i say at the utmost, for a phenomenon may be the result of many concurrent causes, and its power may be less than the power of the sum of such causes, but far greater than that of any one of them taken individually. ( ) on the other hand, the laws of nature, as we have shown, extend over infinity, and are conceived by us as, after a fashion, eternal, and nature works in accordance with them in a fixed and immutable order; therefore, such laws indicate to us in a certain degree the infinity, the eternity, and the immutability of god. ( ) we may conclude, then, that we cannot gain knowledge of the existence and providence of god by means of miracles, but that we can far better infer them from the fixed and immutable order of nature. ( ) by miracle, i here mean an event which surpasses, or is thought to surpass, human comprehension: for in so far as it is supposed to destroy or interrupt the order of nature or her laws, it not only can give us no knowledge of god, but, contrariwise, takes away that which we naturally have, and makes us doubt of god and everything else. ( ) neither do i recognize any difference between an event against the laws of nature and an event beyond the laws of nature (that is, according to some, an event which does not contravene nature, though she is inadequate to produce or effect it) - for a miracle is wrought in, and not beyond nature, though it may be said in itself to be above nature, and, therefore, must necessarily interrupt the order of nature, which otherwise we conceive of as fixed and unchangeable, according to god's decrees. ( ) if, therefore, anything should come to pass in nature which does not follow from her laws, it would also be in contravention to the order which god has established in nature for ever through universal natural laws: it would, therefore, be in contravention to god's nature and laws, and, consequently, belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and lead to atheism. ( ) i think i have now sufficiently established my second point, so that we can again conclude that a miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity; and, therefore, that what is meant in scripture by a miracle can only be a work of nature, which surpasses, or is believed to surpass, human comprehension. ( ) before passing on to my third point, i will adduce scriptural authority for my assertion that god cannot be known from miracles. ( ) scripture nowhere states the doctrine openly, but it can readily be inferred from several passages. ( ) firstly, that in which moses commands (deut. xiii.) that a false prophet should be put to death, even though he work miracles: "if there arise a prophet among you, and giveth thee a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, saying, let us go after other gods . . . thou shalt not hearken unto the voice of that prophet; for the lord your god proveth you, and that prophet shall be put to death." ( ) from this it clearly follows that miracles could be wrought even by false prophets; and that, unless men are honestly endowed with the true knowledge and love of god, they may be as easily led by miracles to follow false gods as to follow the true god; for these words are added: "for the lord your god tempts you, that he may know whether you love him with all your heart and with all your mind." ( ) further, the israelites, from all their miracles, were unable to form a sound conception of god, as their experience testified: for when they had persuaded themselves that moses had departed from among them, they petitioned aaron to give them visible gods; and the idea of god they had formed as the result of all their miracles was - a calf! ( ) asaph, though he had heard of so many miracles, yet doubted of the providence of god, and would have turned himself from the true way, if he had not at last come to understand true blessedness. (see ps. lxxxiii.) ( ) solomon, too, at a time when the jewish nation was at the height of its prosperity, suspects that all things happen by chance. (see eccles. iii: , , ; and chap. ix: , , &c.) ( ) lastly, nearly all the prophets found it very hard to reconcile the order of nature and human affairs with the conception they had formed of god's providence, whereas philosophers who endeavour to understand things by clear conceptions of them, rather than by miracles, have always found the task extremely easy - at least, such of them as place true happiness solely in virtue and peace of mind, and who aim at obeying nature, rather than being obeyed by her. ( ) such persons rest assured that god directs nature according to the requirements of universal laws, not according to the requirements of the particular laws of human nature, and trial, therefore, god's scheme comprehends, not only the human race, but the whole of nature. ( ) it is plain, then, from scripture itself, that miracles can give no knowledge of god, nor clearly teach us the providence of god. ( ) as to the frequent statements in scripture, that god wrought miracles to make himself plain to man - as in exodus x: , where he deceived the egyptians, and gave signs of himself, that the israelites might know that he was god,- it does not, therefore, follow that miracles really taught this truth, but only that the jews held opinions which laid them easily open to conviction by miracles. ( ) we have shown in chap. ii. that the reasons assigned by the prophets, or those which are formed from revelation, are not assigned in accordance with ideas universal and common to all, but in accordance with the accepted doctrines, however absurd, and with the opinions of those to whom the revelation was given, or those whom the holy spirit wished to convince. ( ) this we have illustrated by many scriptural instances, and can further cite paul, who to the greeks was a greek, and to the jews a jew. ( ) but although these miracles could convince the egyptians and jews from their standpoint, they could not give a true idea and knowledge of god, but only cause them to admit that there was a deity more powerful than anything known to them, and that this deity took special care of the jews, who had just then an unexpectedly happy issue of all their affairs. ( ) they could not teach them that god cares equally for all, for this can be taught only by philosophy: the jews, and all who took their knowledge of god's providence from the dissimilarity of human conditions of life and the inequalities of fortune, persuaded themselves that god loved the jews above all men, though they did not surpass their fellows in true human perfection. ( ) i now go on to my third point, and show from scripture that the decrees and mandates of god, and consequently his providence, are merely the order of nature - that is, when scripture describes an event as accomplished by god or god's will, we must understand merely that it was in accordance with the law and order of nature, not, as most people believe, that nature had for a season ceased to act, or that her order was temporarily interrupted. ( ) but scripture does not directly teach matters unconnected with its doctrine, wherefore it has no care to explain things by their natural causes, nor to expound matters merely speculative. ( ) wherefore our conclusion must be gathered by inference from those scriptural narratives which happen to be written more at length and circumstantially than usual. ( ) of these i will cite a few. ( ) in the first book of samuel, ix: , , it is related that god revealed to samuel that he would send saul to him, yet god did not send saul to samuel as people are wont to send one man to another. ( ) his "sending" was merely the ordinary course of nature. ( ) saul was looking for the asses he had lost, and was meditating a return home without them, when, at the suggestion of his servant, he went to the prophet samuel, to learn from him where he might find them. ( ) from no part of the narrative does it appear that saul had any command from god to visit samuel beyond this natural motive. ( ) in psalm cv. it is said that god changed the hearts of the egyptians, so that they hated the israelites. ( ) this was evidently a natural change, as appears from exodus, chap.i., where we find no slight reason for the egyptians reducing the israelites to slavery. ( ) in genesis ix: , god tells noah that he will set his bow in the cloud; this action of god's is but another way of expressing the refraction and reflection which the rays of the sun are subjected to in drops of water. ( ) in psalm cxlvii: , the natural action and warmth of the wind, by which hoar frost and snow are melted, are styled the word of the lord, and in verse wind and cold are called the commandment and word of god. ( ) in psalm civ: , wind and fire are called the angels and ministers of god, and various other passages of the same sort are found in scripture, clearly showing that the decree, commandment, fiat, and word of god are merely expressions for the action and order of nature. ( ) thus it is plain that all the events narrated in scripture came to pass naturally, and are referred directly to god because scripture, as we have shown, does not aim at explaining things by their natural causes, but only at narrating what appeals to the popular imagination, and doing so in the manner best calculated to excite wonder, and consequently to impress the minds of the masses with devotion. ( ) if, therefore, events are found in the bible which we cannot refer to their causes, nay, which seem entirely to contradict the order of nature, we must not come to a stand, but assuredly believe that whatever did really happen happened naturally. ( ) this view is confirmed by the fact that in the case of every miracle there were many attendant circumstances, though these were not always related, especially where the narrative was of a poetic character. ( ) the circumstances of the miracles clearly show, i maintain, that natural causes were needed. ( ) for instance, in order to infect the egyptians with blains, it was necessary that moses should scatter ashes in the air (exod. ix: ); the locusts also came upon the land of egypt by a command of god in accordance with nature, namely, by an east wind blowing for a whole day and night; and they departed by a very strong west wind (exod. x: , ). ( ) by a similar divine mandate the sea opened a way for the jews (exo. xiv: ), namely, by an east wind which blew very strongly all night. ( ) so, too, when elisha would revive the boy who was believed to be dead, he was obliged to bend over him several times until the flesh of the child waxed warm, and at last he opened his eyes ( kings iv: , ). ( ) again, in john's gospel (chap. ix.) certain acts are mentioned as performed by christ preparatory to healing the blind man, and there are numerous other instances showing that something further than the absolute fiat of god is required for working a miracle. ( ) wherefore we may believe that, although the circumstances attending miracles are not related always or in full detail, yet a miracle was never performed without them. ( ) this is confirmed by exodus xiv: , where it is simply stated that "moses stretched forth his hand, and the waters of the sea returned to their strength in the morning," no mention being made of a wind; but in the song of moses (exod. xv: ) we read, "thou didst blow with thy wind (i.e. with a very strong wind), and the sea covered them." ( ) thus the attendant circumstance is omitted in the history, and the miracle is thereby enhanced. ( ) but perhaps someone will insist that we find many things in scripture which seem in nowise explicable by natural causes, as for instance, that the sins of men and their prayers can be the cause of rain and of the earth's fertility, or that faith can heal the blind, and so on. ( ) but i think i have already made sufficient answer: i have shown that scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and the style which has most power to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion; and therefore it speaks inaccurately of god and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination. ( ) if the bible were to describe the destruction of an empire in the style of political historians, the masses would remain unstirred, whereas the contrary is the case when it adopts the method of poetic description, and refers all things immediately to god. ( ) when, therefore, the bible says that the earth is barren because of men's sins, or that the blind were healed by faith, we ought to take no more notice than when it says that god is angry at men's sins, that he is sad, that he repents of the good he has promised and done; or that on seeing a sign he remembers something he had promised, and other similar expressions, which are either thrown out poetically or related according to the opinion and prejudices of the writer. ( ) we may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws; and if anything is there set down which can be proved in set terms to contravene the order of nature, or not to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to have been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious hands; for whatsoever is contrary to nature is also contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd, and, ipso facto, to be rejected. ( ) there remain some points concerning the interpretation of miracles to be noted, or rather to be recapitulated, for most of them have been already stated. ( ) these i proceed to discuss in the fourth division of my subject, and i am led to do so lest anyone should, by wrongly interpreting a miracle, rashly suspect that he has found something in scripture contrary to human reason. ( ) it is very rare for men to relate an event simply as it happened, without adding any element of their own judgment. ( ) when they see or hear anything new, they are, unless strictly on their guard, so occupied with their own preconceived opinions that they perceive something quite different from the plain facts seen or heard, especially if such facts surpass the comprehension of the beholder or hearer, and, most of all, if he is interested in their happening in a given way. ( ) thus men relate in chronicles and histories their own opinions rather than actual events, so that one and the same event is so differently related by two men of different opinions, that it seems like two separate occurrences; and, further, it is very easy from historical chronicles to gather the personal opinions of the historian. ( ) i could cite many instances in proof of this from the writings both of natural philosophers and historians, but i will content myself with one only from scripture, and leave the reader to judge of the rest. ( ) in the time of joshua the hebrews held the ordinary opinion that the sun moves with a daily motion, and that the earth remains at rest; to this preconceived opinion they adapted the miracle which occurred during their battle with the five kings. ( ) they did not simply relate that that day was longer than usual, but asserted that the sun and moon stood still, or ceased from their motion - a statement which would be of great service to them at that time in convincing and proving by experience to the gentiles, who worshipped the sun, that the sun was under the control of another deity who could compel it to change its daily course. ( ) thus, partly through religious motives, partly through preconceived opinions, they conceived of and related the occurrence as something quite different from what really happened. ( ) thus in order to interpret the scriptural miracles and understand from the narration of them how they really happened, it is necessary to know the opinions of those who first related them, and have recorded them for us in writing, and to distinguish such opinions from the actual impression made upon their senses, otherwise we shall confound opinions and judgments with the actual miracle as it really occurred: nay, further, we shall confound actual events with symbolical and imaginary ones. ( ) for many things are narrated in scripture as real, and were believed to be real, which were in fact only symbolical and imaginary. ( ) as, for instance, that god came down from heaven (exod. xix: , deut. v: ), and that mount sinai smoked because god descended upon it surrounded with fire; or, again that elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire; all these things were assuredly merely symbols adapted to the opinions of those who have handed them down to us as they were represented to them, namely, as real. ( ) all who have any education know that god has no right hand nor left; that he is not moved nor at rest, nor in a particular place, but that he is absolutely infinite and contains in himself all perfections. ( ) these things, i repeat, are known to whoever judges of things by the perception of pure reason, and not according as his imagination is affected by his outward senses. ( ) following the example of the masses who imagine a bodily deity, holding a royal court with a throne on the convexity of heaven, above the stars, which are believed to be not very, far off from the earth. ( ) to these and similar opinions very many narrations in scripture are adapted, and should not, therefore, be mistaken by philosophers for realities. ( ) lastly, in order to understand, in the case of miracles, what actually took place, we ought to be familiar with jewish phrases and metaphors; anyone who did not make sufficient allowance for these, would be continually seeing miracles in scripture where nothing of the kind is intended by the writer; he would thus miss the knowledge not only of what actually happened, but also of the mind of the writers of the sacred text. ( ) for instance, zechariah speaking of some future war says (chap. xiv: ): "it shall be one day which shall be known to the lord, not day, nor night; but at even time it shall be light." in these words he seems to predict a great miracle, yet he only means that the battle will be doubtful the whole day, that the issue will be known only to god, but that in the evening they will gain the victory: the prophets frequently used to predict victories and defeats of the nations in similar phrases. ( ) thus isaiah, describing the destruction of babylon, says (chap. xiii.): "the stars of heaven, and the constellations thereof, shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine." ( ) now i suppose no one imagines that at the destruction of babylon these phenomena actually occurred any more than that which the prophet adds, "for i will make the heavens to tremble, and remove the earth out of her place." ( ) so, too, isaiah in foretelling to the jews that they would return from babylon to jerusalem in safety, and would not suffer from thirst on their journey, says: "and they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow out of the rocks for them; he clave the rocks, and the waters gushed out." ( ) these words merely mean that the jews, like other people, found springs in the desert, at which they quenched their thirst; for when the jews returned to jerusalem with the consent of cyrus, it is admitted that no similar miracles befell them. ( ) in this way many occurrences in the bible are to be regarded merely as jewish expressions. ( ) there is no need for me to go through them in detail; but i will call attention generally to the fact that the jews employed such phrases not only rhetorically, but also, and indeed chiefly, from devotional motives. ( ) such is the reason for the substitution of "bless god" for "curse god" in kings xxi: , and job ii: , and for all things being referred to god, whence it appears that the bible seems to relate nothing but miracles, even when speaking of the most ordinary occurrences, as in the examples given above. ( ) hence we must believe that when the bible says that the lord hardened pharaoh's heart, it only means that pharaoh was obstinate; when it says that god opened the windows of heaven, it only means that it rained very hard, and so on. ( ) when we reflect on these peculiarities, and also on the fact that most things are related very shortly, with very little details and almost in abridgments, we shall see that there is hardly anything in scripture which can be proved contrary to natural reason, while, on the other hand, many things which before seemed obscure, will after a little consideration be understood and easily explained. ( ) i think i have now very clearly explained all that i proposed to explain, but before i finish this chapter i would call attention to the fact that i have adopted a different method in speaking of miracles to that which i employed in treating of prophecy. ( ) of prophecy i have asserted nothing which could not be inferred from promises revealed in scripture, whereas in this chapter i have deduced my conclusions solely from the principles ascertained by the natural light of reason. ( ) i have proceeded in this way advisedly, for prophecy, in that it surpasses human knowledge, is a purely theological question; therefore, i knew that i could not make any assertions about it, nor learn wherein it consists, except through deductions from premises that have been revealed; therefore i was compelled to collate the history of prophecy, and to draw therefrom certain conclusions which would teach me, in so far as such teaching is possible, the nature and properties of the gift. ( ) but in the case of miracles, as our inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes or does not follow from the laws of nature), i was not under any such necessity: i therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental principles of scripture: in order that everyone may acknowledge this, i will briefly show how it could be done. ( ) scripture makes the general assertion in several passages that nature's course is fixed and unchangeable. ( ) in ps. cxlviii: , for instance, and jer. xxxi: . ( ) the wise man also, in eccles. i: , distinctly teaches that "there is nothing new under the sun," and in verses , , illustrating the same idea, he adds that although something occasionally happens which seems new, it is not really new, but "hath been already of old time, which was before us, whereof there is no remembrance, neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that come after." ( ) again in chap. iii: , he says, "god hath made everything beautiful in his time," and immediately afterwards adds, "i know that whatsoever god doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it." ( ) now all these texts teach most distinctly that nature preserves a fixed and unchangeable order, and that god in all ages, known and unknown, has been the same; further, that the laws of nature are so perfect, that nothing can be added thereto nor taken therefrom; and, lastly, that miracles only appear as something new because of man's ignorance. ( ) such is the express teaching of scripture: nowhere does scripture assert that anything happens which contradicts, or cannot follow from the laws of nature; and, therefore, we should not attribute to it such a doctrine. ( ) to these considerations we must add, that miracles require causes and attendant circumstances, and that they follow, not from some mysterious royal power which the masses attribute to god, but from the divine rule and decree, that is (as we have shown from scripture itself) from the laws and order of nature; lastly, that miracles can be wrought even by false prophets, as is proved from deut. xiii. and matt. xxiv: . ( ) the conclusion, then, that is most plainly put before us is, that miracles were natural occurrences, and must therefore be so explained as to appear neither new (in the words of solomon) nor contrary to nature, but, as far as possible, in complete agreement with ordinary events. ( ) this can easily be done by anyone, now that i have set forth the rules drawn from scripture. ( ) nevertheless, though i maintain that scripture teaches this doctrine, i do not assert that it teaches it as a truth necessary to salvation, but only that the prophets were in agreement with ourselves on the point; therefore everyone is free to think on the subject as he likes, according as he thinks it best for himself, and most likely to conduce to the worship of god and to singlehearted religion. ( ) this is also the opinion of josephus, for at the conclusion of the second book of his "antiquities," he writes: let no man think this story incredible of the sea's dividing to save these people, for we find it in ancient records that this hath been seen before, whether by god's extraordinary will or by the course of nature it is indifferent. ( ) the same thing happened one time to the macedonians, under the command of alexander, when for want of another passage the pamphylian sea divided to make them way; god's providence making use of alexander at that time as his instrument for destroying the persian empire. ( ) this is attested by all the historians who have pretended to write the life of that prince. ( ) but people are at liberty to think what they please." ( ) such are the words of josephus, and such is his opinion on faith in miracles. chapter vii. - of the interpretation of scripture ( ) when people declare, as all are ready, to do, that the bible is the word of god teaching man true blessedness and the way of salvation, they evidently do not mean what they, say; for the masses take no pains at all to live according to scripture, and we see most people endeavouring to hawk about their own commentaries as the word of god, and giving their best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others to think as they do: we generally see, i say, theologians anxious to learn how to wring their inventions and sayings out of the sacred text, and to fortify, them with divine authority. ( ) such persons never display, less scruple or more zeal than when they, are interpreting scripture or the mind of the holy ghost; if we ever see them perturbed, it is not that they fear to attribute some error to the holy spirit, and to stray from the right path, but that they are afraid to be convicted of error by, others, and thus to overthrow and bring into contempt their own authority. ( ) but if men really believed what they verbally testify of scripture, they would adopt quite a different plan of life: their minds would not be agitated by so many contentions, nor so many hatreds, and they would cease to be excited by such a blind and rash passion for interpreting the sacred writings, and excogitating novelties in religion. ( ) on the contrary, they would not dare to adopt, as the teaching of scripture, anything which they could not plainly deduce therefrom: lastly, those sacrilegious persons who have dared, in several passages, to interpolate the bible, would have shrunk from so great a crime, and would have stayed their sacrilegious hands. ( ) ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so powerful, that religion is thought to consist, not so much in respecting the writings of the holy ghost, as in defending human commentaries, so that religion is no longer identified with charity, but with spreading discord and propagating insensate hatred disguised under the name of zeal for the lord, and eager ardour. ( ) to these evils we must add superstition, which teaches men to despise reason and nature, and only to admire and venerate that which is repugnant to both: whence it is not wonderful that for the sake of increasing the admiration and veneration felt for scripture, men strive to explain it so as to make it appear to contradict, as far as possible, both one and the other: thus they dream that most profound mysteries lie hid in the bible, and weary themselves out in the investigation of these absurdities, to the neglect of what is useful. ( ) every result of their diseased imagination they attribute to the holy ghost, and strive to defend with the utmost zeal and passion; for it is an observed fact that men employ their reason to defend conclusions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at by the passions are defended by the passions. ( ) if we would separate ourselves from the crowd and escape from theological prejudices, instead of rashly accepting human commentaries for divine documents, we must consider the true method of interpreting scripture and dwell upon it at some length: for if we remain in ignorance of this we cannot know, certainly, what the bible and the holy spirit wish to teach. ( )i may sum up the matter by saying that the method of interpreting scripture does not widely differ from the method of interpreting nature - in fact, it is almost the same. ( ) for as the interpretation of nature consists in the examination of the history of nature, and therefrom deducing definitions of natural phenomena on certain fixed axioms, so scriptural interpretation proceeds by the examination of scripture, and inferring the intention of its authors as a legitimate conclusion from its fundamental principles. ( ) by working in this manner everyone will always advance without danger of error - that is, if they admit no principles for interpreting scripture, and discussing its contents save such as they find in scripture itself - and will be able with equal security to discuss what surpasses our understanding, and what is known by the natural light of reason. ( ) in order to make clear that such a method is not only correct, but is also the only one advisable, and that it agrees with that employed in interpreting nature, i must remark that scripture very often treats of matters which cannot be deduced from principles known to reason: for it is chiefly made up of narratives and revelation: the narratives generally contain miracles - that is, as we have shown in the last chapter, relations of extraordinary natural occurrences adapted to the opinions and judgment of the historians who recorded them: the revelations also were adapted to the opinions of the prophets, as we showed in chap. ii., and in themselves surpassed human comprehension. ( ) therefore the knowledge of all these - that is, of nearly the whole contents of scripture, must be sought from scripture alone, even as the knowledge of nature is sought from nature. ( ) as for the moral doctrines which are also contained in the bible, they may be demonstrated from received axioms, but we cannot prove in the same manner that scripture intended to teach them, this can only be learned from scripture itself. ( ) if we would bear unprejudiced witness to the divine origin of scripture, we must prove solely on its own authority that it teaches true moral doctrines, for by such means alone can its divine origin be demonstrated: we have shown that the certitude of the prophets depended chiefly on their having minds turned towards what is just and good, therefore we ought to have proof of their possessing this quality before we repose faith in them. ( ) from miracles god's divinity cannot be proved, as i have already shown, and need not now repeat, for miracles could be wrought by false prophets. ( ) wherefore the divine origin of scripture must consist solely in its teaching true virtue. ( ) but we must come to our conclusion simply on scriptural grounds, for if we were unable to do so we could not, unless strongly prejudiced accept the bible and bear witness to its divine origin. ( ) our knowledge of scripture must then be looked for in scripture only. ( ) lastly, scripture does not give us definition of things any more than nature does: therefore, such definitions must be sought in the latter case from the diverse workings of nature; in the former case, from the various narratives about the given subject which occur in the bible. ( ) the universal rule, then, in interpreting scripture is to accept nothing as an authoritative scriptural statement which we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history. ( ) what i mean by its history, and what should be the chief points elucidated, i will now explain. ( ) the history of a scriptural statement comprises - ( ) i. the nature and properties of the language in which the books of the bible were written, and in which their authors were, accustomed to speak. ( ) we shall thus be able to investigate every expression by comparison with common conversational usages. ( ) now all the writers both of the old testament and the new were hebrews: therefore, a knowledge of the hebrew language is before all things necessary, not only for the comprehension of the old testament, which was written in that tongue, but also of the new: for although the latter was published in other languages, yet its characteristics are hebrew. ( ) ii. an analysis of each book and arrangement of its contents under heads; so that we may have at hand the various texts which treat of a given subject. ( ) lastly, a note of all the passages which are ambiguous or obscure, or which seem mutually contradictory. ( ) i call passages clear or obscure according as their meaning is inferred easily or with difficulty in relation to the context, not according as their truth is perceived easily or the reverse by reason. ( ) we are at work not on the truth of passages, but solely on their meaning. ( ) we must take especial care, when we are in search of the meaning of a text, not to be led away by our reason in so far as it is founded on principles of natural knowledge (to say nothing of prejudices): in order not to confound the meaning of a passage with its truth, we must examine it solely by means of the signification of the words, or by a reason acknowledging no foundation but scripture. ( ) i will illustrate my meaning by an example. ( ) the words of moses, "god is a fire" and "god is jealous," are perfectly clear so long as we regard merely the signification of the words, and i therefore reckon them among the clear passages, though in relation to reason and truth they are most obscure: still, although the literal meaning is repugnant to the natural light of reason, nevertheless, if it cannot be clearly overruled on grounds and principles derived from its scriptural "history," it, that is, the literal meaning, must be the one retained: and contrariwise if these passages literally interpreted are found to clash with principles derived from scripture, though such literal interpretation were in absolute harmony with reason, they must be interpreted in a different manner, i.e. metaphorically. ( ) if we would know whether moses believed god to be a fire or not, we must on no account decide the question on grounds of the reasonableness or the reverse of such an opinion, but must judge solely by the other opinions of moses which are on record. ( ) in the present instance, as moses says in several other passages that god has no likeness to any visible thing, whether in heaven or in earth, or in the water, either all such passages must be taken metaphorically, or else the one before us must be so explained. ( ) however, as we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense, we must first ask whether this text, god is a fire, admits of any but the literal meaning - that is, whether the word fire ever means anything besides ordinary natural fire. ( ) if no such second meaning can be found, the text must be taken literally, however repugnant to reason it may be: and all the other passages, though in complete accordance with reason, must be brought into harmony with it. ( ) if the verbal expressions would not admit of being thus harmonized, we should have to set them down as irreconcilable, and suspend our judgment concerning them. ( ) however, as we find the name fire applied to anger and jealousy (see job xxxi: ) we can thus easily reconcile the words of moses, and legitimately conclude that the two propositions god is a fire, and god is jealous, are in meaning identical. ( ) further, as moses clearly teaches that god is jealous, and nowhere states that god is without passions or emotions, we must evidently infer that moses held this doctrine himself, or at any rate, that he wished to teach it, nor must we refrain because such a belief seems contrary to reason: for as we have shown, we cannot wrest the meaning of texts to suit the dictates of our reason, or our preconceived opinions. ( ) the whole knowledge of the bible must be sought solely from itself. ( ) iii. lastly, such a history should relate the environment of all the prophetic books extant; that is, the life, the conduct, and the studies of the author of each book, who he was, what was the occasion, and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write for, and in what language. ( ) further, it should inquire into the fate of each book: how it was first received, into whose hands it fell, how many different versions there were of it, by whose advice was it received into the bible, and, lastly, how all the books now universally accepted as sacred, were united into a single whole. ( ) all such information should, as i have said, be contained in the "history" of scripture. ( ) for, in order to know what statements are set forth as laws, and what as moral precepts, it is important to be acquainted with the life, the conduct, and the pursuits of their author: moreover, it becomes easier to explain a man's writings in proportion as we have more intimate knowledge of his genius and temperament. ( ) further, that we may not confound precepts which are eternal with those which served only a temporary purpose, or were only meant for a few, we should know what was the occasion, the time, the age, in which each book was written, and to what nation it was addressed.( ) lastly, we should have knowledge on the other points i have mentioned, in order to be sure, in addition to the authenticity of the work, that it has not been tampered with by sacrilegious hands, or whether errors can have crept in, and, if so, whether they have been corrected by men sufficiently skilled and worthy of credence. ( ) all these things should be known, that we may not be led away by blind impulse to accept whatever is thrust on our notice, instead of only that which is sure and indisputable. ( ) now when we are in possession of this history of scripture, and have finally decided that we assert nothing as prophetic doctrine which does not directly follow from such history, or which is not clearly deducible from it, then, i say, it will be time to gird ourselves for the task of investigating the mind of the prophets and of the holy spirit. ( ) but in this further arguing, also, we shall require a method very like that employed in interpreting nature from her history. ( ) as in the examination of natural phenomena we try first to investigate what is most universal and common to all nature - such, for instance, as motion and rest, and their laws and rules, which nature always observes, and through which she continually works - and then we proceed to what is less universal; so, too, in the history of scripture, we seek first for that which is most universal, and serves for the basis and foundation of all scripture, a doctrine, in fact, that is commended by all the prophets as eternal and most profitable to all men. ( ) for example, that god is one, and that he is omnipotent, that he alone should be worshipped, that he has a care for all men, and that he especially loves those who adore him and love their neighbour as themselves, &c. ( ) these and similar doctrines, i repeat, scripture everywhere so clearly and expressly teaches, that no one was ever in doubt of its meaning concerning them. ( ) the nature of god, his manner of regarding and providing for things, and similar doctrines, scripture nowhere teaches professedly, and as eternal doctrine; on the contrary, we have shown that the prophets themselves did not agree on the subject; therefore, we must not lay down any doctrine as scriptural on such subjects, though it may appear perfectly clear on rational grounds. ( ) from a proper knowledge of this universal doctrine of scripture, we must then proceed to other doctrines less universal, but which, nevertheless, have regard to the general conduct of life, and flow from the universal doctrine like rivulets from a source; such are all particular external manifestations of true virtue, which need a given occasion for their exercise; whatever is obscure or ambiguous on such points in scripture must be explained and defined by its universal doctrine; with regard to contradictory instances, we must observe the occasion and the time in which they were written. ( ) for instance, when christ says, "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" we do not know, from the actual passage, what sort of mourners are meant; as, however, christ afterwards teaches that we should have care for nothing, save only for the kingdom of god and his righteousness, which is commended as the highest good (see matt. vi: ), it follows that by mourners he only meant those who mourn for the kingdom of god and righteousness neglected by man: for this would be the only cause of mourning to those who love nothing but the divine kingdom and justice, and who evidently despise the gifts of fortune. ( ) so, too, when christ says: "but if a man strike you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also," and the words which follow. ( ) if he had given such a command, as a lawgiver, to judges, he would thereby have abrogated the law of moses, but this he expressly says he did not do (matt. v: ). ( ) wherefore we must consider who was the speaker, what was the occasion, and to whom were the words addressed. ( ) now christ said that he did not ordain laws as a legislator, but inculcated precepts as a teacher: inasmuch as he did not aim at correcting outward actions so much as the frame of mind. ( ) further, these words were spoken to men who were oppressed, who lived in a corrupt commonwealth on the brink of ruin, where justice was utterly neglected. ( ) the very doctrine inculcated here by christ just before the destruction of the city was also taught by jeremiah before the first destruction of jerusalem, that is, in similar circumstances, as we see from lamentations iii: - . ( ) now as such teaching was only set forth by the prophets in times of oppression, and was even then never laid down as a law; and as, on the other hand, moses (who did not write in times of oppression, but - mark this - strove to found a well-ordered commonwealth), while condemning envy and hatred of one's neighbour, yet ordained that an eye should be given for an eye, it follows most clearly from these purely scriptural grounds that this precept of christ and jeremiah concerning submission to injuries was only valid in places where justice is neglected, and in a time of oppression, but does not hold good in a well-ordered state. ( ) in a well-ordered state where justice is administered every one is bound, if he would be accounted just, to demand penalties before the judge (see lev: ), not for the sake of vengeance (lev. xix: , ), but in order to defend justice and his country's laws, and to prevent the wicked rejoicing in their wickedness. ( ) all this is plainly in accordance with reason. ( ) i might cite many other examples in the same manner, but i think the foregoing are sufficient to explain my meaning and the utility of this method, and this is all my present purpose. ( ) hitherto we have only shown how to investigate those passages of scripture which treat of practical conduct, and which, therefore, are more easily examined, for on such subjects there was never really any controversy among the writers of the bible. ( ) the purely speculative passages cannot be so easily, traced to their real meaning: the way becomes narrower, for as the prophets differed in matters speculative among themselves, and the narratives are in great measure adapted to the prejudices of each age, we must not, on any, account infer the intention of one prophet from clearer passages in the writings of another; nor must we so explain his meaning, unless it is perfectly plain that the two prophets were at one in the matter. ( ) how we are to arrive at the intention of the prophets in such cases i will briefly explain. ( ) here, too, we must begin from the most universal proposition, inquiring first from the most clear scriptural statements what is the nature of prophecy or revelation, and wherein does it consist; then we must proceed to miracles, and so on to whatever is most general till we come to the opinions of a particular prophet, and, at last, to the meaning of a particular revelation, prophecy, history, or miracle. ( ) we have already pointed out that great caution is necessary not to confound the mind of a prophet or historian with the mind of the holy spirit and the truth of the matter; therefore i need not dwell further on the subject. ( ) i would, however, here remark concerning the meaning of revelation, that the present method only teaches us what the prophets really saw or heard, not what they desired to signify or represent by symbols. ( ) the latter may be guessed at but cannot be inferred with certainty from scriptural premises. ( ) we have thus shown the plan for interpreting scripture, and have, at the same time, demonstrated that it is the one and surest way of investigating its true meaning. ( ) i am willing indeed to admit that those persons (if any such there be) would be more absolutely certainly right, who have received either a trustworthy tradition or an assurance from the prophets themselves, such as is claimed by the pharisees; or who have a pontiff gifted with infallibility in the interpretation of scripture, such as the roman catholics boast. ( ) but as we can never be perfectly sure, either of such a tradition or of the authority of the pontiff, we cannot found any certain conclusion on either: the one is denied by the oldest sect of christians, the other by the oldest sect of jews. ( ) indeed, if we consider the series of years (to mention no other point) accepted by the pharisees from their rabbis, during which time they say they have handed down the tradition from moses, we shall find that it is not correct, as i show elsewhere. ( ) therefore such a tradition should be received with extreme suspicion; and although, according to our method, we are bound to consider as uncorrupted the tradition of the jews, namely, the meaning of the hebrew words which we received from them, we may accept the latter while retaining our doubts about the former. ( ) no one has ever been able to change the meaning of a word in ordinary use, though many have changed the meaning of a particular sentence. ( ) such a proceeding would be most difficult; for whoever attempted to change the meaning of a word, would be compelled, at the same time, to explain all the authors who employed it, each according to his temperament and intention, or else, with consummate cunning, to falsify them. ( ) further, the masses and the learned alike preserve language, but it is only the learned who preserve the meaning of particular sentences and books: thus, we may easily imagine that the learned having a very rare book in their power, might change or corrupt the meaning of a sentence in it, but they could not alter the signification of the words; moreover, if anyone wanted to change the meaning of a common word he would not be able to keep up the change among posterity, or in common parlance or writing. ( ) for these and such-like reasons we may readily conclude that it would never enter into the mind of anyone to corrupt a language, though the intention of a writer may often have been falsified by changing his phrases or interpreting them amiss. ( ) as then our method (based on the principle that the knowledge of scripture must be sought from itself alone) is the sole true one, we must evidently renounce any knowledge which it cannot furnish for the complete understanding of scripture. ( ) i will now point out its difficulties and shortcomings, which prevent our gaining a complete and assured knowledge of the sacred text. ( ) its first great difficulty consists in its requiring a thorough knowledge of the hebrew language. ( ) where is such knowledge to be obtained? ( ) the men of old who employed the hebrew tongue have left none of the principles and bases of their language to posterity; we have from them absolutely nothing in the way of dictionary, grammar, or rhetoric. ( ) now the hebrew nation has lost all its grace and beauty (as one would expect after the defeats and persecutions it has gone through), and has only retained certain fragments of its language and of a few books. ( ) nearly all the names of fruits, birds, and fishes, and many other words have perished in the wear and tear of time. ( ) further, the meaning of many nouns and verbs which occur in the bible are either utterly lost, or are subjects of dispute. ( ) and not only are these gone, but we are lacking in a knowledge of hebrew phraseology. ( ) the devouring tooth of time has destroyed turns of expression peculiar to the hebrews, so that we know them no more. ( ) therefore we cannot investigate as we would all the meanings of a sentence by the uses of the language; and there are many phrases of which the meaning is most obscure or altogether inexplicable, though the component words are perfectly plain. ( ) to this impossibility of tracing the history of the hebrew language must be added its particular nature and composition: these give rise to so many ambiguities that it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in scripture, [endnote ]. ( ) in addition to the sources of ambiguities common to all languages, there are many peculiar to hebrew. ( ) these, i think, it worth while to mention. ( ) firstly, an ambiguity often arises in the bible from our mistaking one letter for another similar one. ( ) the hebrews divide the letters of the alphabet into five classes, according to the five organs of the month employed in pronouncing them, namely, the lips, the tongue, the teeth, the palate, and the throat. ( ) for instance, alpha, ghet, hgain, he, are called gutturals, and are barely distinguishable, by any sign that we know, one from the other. ( ) el, which signifies to, is often taken for hgal, which signifies above, and vice versa. ( ) hence sentences are often rendered rather ambiguous or meaningless. ( ) a second difficulty arises from the multiplied meaning of conjunctions and adverbs. ( ) for instance, vau serves promiscuously for a particle of union or of separation, meaning, and, but, because, however, then: ki, has seven or eight meanings, namely, wherefore, although, if, when, inasmuch as, because, a burning, &c., and so on with almost all particles. ( ) the third very fertile source of doubt is the fact that hebrew verbs in the indicative mood lack the present, the past imperfect, the pluperfect, the future perfect, and other tenses most frequently employed in other languages; in the imperative and infinitive moods they are wanting in all except the present, and a subjunctive mood does not exist. ( ) now, although all these defects in moods and tenses may be supplied by certain fundamental rules of the language with ease and even elegance, the ancient writers evidently neglected such rules altogether, and employed indifferently future for present and past, and vice versa past for future, and also indicative for imperative and subjunctive, with the result of considerable confusion. ( ) besides these sources of ambiguity there are two others, one very important. ( ) firstly, there are in hebrew no vowels; secondly, the sentences are not separated by any marks elucidating the meaning or separating the clauses. ( ) though the want of these two has generally been supplied by points and accents, such substitutes cannot be accepted by us, inasmuch as they were invented and designed by men of an after age whose authority should carry no weight. ( ) the ancients wrote without points (that is, without vowels and accents), as is abundantly testified; their descendants added what was lacking, according to their own ideas of scriptural interpretation; wherefore the existing accents and points are simply current interpretations, and are no more authoritative than any other commentaries. ( ) those who are ignorant of this fact cannot justify the author of the epistle to the hebrews for interpreting (chap. xi: ) genesis (xlvii: ) very differently from the version given in our hebrew text as at present pointed, as though the apostle had been obliged to learn the meaning of scripture from those who added the points. ( ) in my opinion the latter are clearly wrong. ( ) in order that everyone may judge for himself, and also see how the discrepancy arose simply from the want of vowels, i will give both interpretations. ( )those who pointed our version read, "and israel bent himself over, or (changing hqain into aleph, a similar letter) towards, the head of the bed." ( ) the author of the epistle reads, "and israel bent himself over the head of his staff," substituting mate for mita, from which it only differs in respect of vowels. ( ) now as in this narrative it is jacob's age only that is in question, and not his illness, which is not touched on till the next chapter, it seems more likely that the historian intended to say that jacob bent over the head of his staff (a thing commonly used by men of advanced age for their support) than that he bowed himself at the head of his bed, especially as for the former reading no substitution of letters is required. ( ) in this example i have desired not only to reconcile the passage in the epistle with the passage in genesis, but also and chiefly to illustrate how little trust should be placed in the points and accents which are found in our present bible, and so to prove that he who would be without bias in interpreting scripture should hesitate about accepting them, and inquire afresh for himself. ( ) such being the nature and structure of the hebrew language, one may easily understand that many difficulties are likely to arise, and that no possible method could solve all of them. ( ) it is useless to hope for a way out of our difficulties in the comparison of various parallel passages (we have shown that the only method of discovering the true sense of a passage out of many alternative ones is to see what are the usages of the language), for this comparison of parallel passages can only accidentally throw light on a difficult point, seeing that the prophets never wrote with the express object of explaining their own phrases or those of other people, and also because we cannot infer the meaning of one prophet or apostle by the meaning of another, unless on a purely practical question, not when the matter is speculative, or if a miracle, or history is being narrated. ( ) i might illustrate my point with instances, for there are many inexplicable phrases in scripture, but i would rather pass on to consider the difficulties and imperfections of the method under discussion. ( ) a further difficulty attends the method, from the fact that it requires the history of all that has happened to every book in the bible; such a history we are often quite unable to furnish. ( ) of the authors, or (if the expression be preferred), the writers of many of the books, we are either in complete ignorance, or at any rate in doubt, as i will point out at length. ( ) further, we do not know either the occasions or the epochs when these books of unknown authorship were written; we cannot say into what hands they fell, nor how the numerous varying versions originated; nor, lastly, whether there were not other versions, now lost. ( ) i have briefly shown that such knowledge is necessary, but i passed over certain considerations which i will now draw attention to. ( ) if we read a book which contains incredible or impossible narratives, or is written in a very obscure style, and if we know nothing of its author, nor of the time or occasion of its being written, we shall vainly endeavour to gain any certain knowledge of its true meaning. ( ) for being in ignorance on these points we cannot possibly know the aim or intended aim of the author; if we are fully informed, we so order our thoughts as not to be in any way prejudiced either in ascribing to the author or him for whom the author wrote either more or less than his meaning, and we only take into consideration what the author may have had in his mind, or what the time and occasion demanded. ( ) i think this must be tolerably evident to all. ( ) it often happens that in different books we read histories in themselves similar, but which we judge very differently, according to the opinions we have formed of the authors. ( ) i remember once to have read in some book that a man named orlando furioso used to drive a kind of winged monster through the air, fly over any countries he liked, kill unaided vast numbers of men and giants, and such like fancies, which from the point of view of reason are obviously absurd. ( ) a very similar story i read in ovid of perseus, and also in the books of judges and kings of samson, who alone and unarmed killed thousands of men, and of elijah, who flew through the air, said at last went up to heaven in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire. ( ) all these stories are obviously alike, but we judge them very differently. ( ) the first only sought to amuse, the second had a political object, the third a religious object.( ) we gather this simply from the opinions we had previously formed of the authors. ( ) thus it is evidently necessary to know something of the authors of writings which are obscure or unintelligible, if we would interpret their meaning; and for the same reason, in order to choose the proper reading from among a great variety, we ought to have information as to the versions in which the differences are found, and as to the possibility of other readings having been discovered by persons of greater authority. ( ) a further difficulty attends this method in the case of some of the books of scripture, namely, that they are no longer extant in their original language. ( ) the gospel according to matthew, and certainly the epistle to the hebrews, were written, it is thought, in hebrew, though they no longer exist in that form. ( ) aben ezra affirms in his commentaries that the book of job was translated into hebrew out of another language, and that its obscurity arises from this fact. ( ) i say nothing of the apocryphal books, for their authority stands on very inferior ground. ( ) the foregoing difficulties in this method of interpreting scripture from its own history, i conceive to be so great that i do not hesitate to say that the true meaning of scripture is in many places inexplicable, or at best mere subject for guesswork; but i must again point out, on the other hand, that such difficulties only arise when we endeavour to follow the meaning of a prophet in matters which cannot be perceived, but only imagined, not in things, whereof the understanding can give a clear idea, and which are conceivable through themselves:, [endnote ], matters which by their nature are easily perceived cannot be expressed so obscurely as to be unintelligible; as the proverb says, "a word is enough to the wise." ( ) euclid, who only wrote of matters very simple and easily understood, can easily be comprehended by anyone in any language; we can follow his intention perfectly, and be certain of his true meaning, without having a thorough knowledge of the language in which he wrote; in fact, a quite rudimentary acquaintance is sufficient. ( ) we need make no researches concerning the life, the pursuits, or the habits of the author; nor need we inquire in what language, nor when he wrote, nor the vicissitudes of his book, nor its various readings, nor how, nor by whose advice it has been received. ( ) what we here say of euclid might equally be said of any book which treats of things by their nature perceptible: thus we conclude that we can easily follow the intention of scripture in moral questions, from the history we possess of it, and we can be sure of its true meaning. ( ) the precepts of true piety are expressed in very ordinary language, and are equally simple and easily understood. ( ) further, as true salvation and blessedness consist in a true assent of the soul - and we truly assent only to what we clearly understand - it is most plain that we can follow with certainty the intention of scripture in matters relating to salvation and necessary to blessedness; therefore, we need not be much troubled about what remains: such matters, inasmuch as we generally cannot grasp them with our reason and understanding, are more curious than profitable. ( ) i think i have now set forth the true method of scriptural interpretation, and have sufficiently explained my own opinion thereon. ( ) besides, i do not doubt that everyone will see that such a method only requires the aid of natural reason. ( ) the nature and efficacy of the natural reason consists in deducing and proving the unknown from the known, or in carrying premises to their legitimate conclusions; and these are the very processes which our method desiderates. ( ) though we must admit that it does not suffice to explain everything in the bible, such imperfection does not spring from its own nature, but from the fact that the path which it teaches us, as the true one, has never been tended or trodden by men, and has thus, by the lapse of time, become very difficult, and almost impassable, as, indeed, i have shown in the difficulties i draw attention to. ( ) there only remains to examine the opinions of those who differ from me. ( ) the first which comes under our notice is, that the light of nature has no power to interpret scripture, but that a supernatural faculty is required for the task. ( ) what is meant by this supernatural faculty i will leave to its propounders to explain. ( ) personally, i can only suppose that they have adopted a very obscure way of stating their complete uncertainty about the true meaning of scripture. ( ) if we look at their interpretations, they contain nothing supernatural, at least nothing but the merest conjectures. ( ) let them be placed side by side with the interpretations of those who frankly confess that they have no faculty beyond their natural ones; we shall see that the two are just alike - both human, both long pondered over, both laboriously invented. ( ) to say that the natural reason is insufficient for such results is plainly untrue, firstly, for the reasons above stated, namely, that the difficulty of interpreting scripture arises from no defect in human reason, but simply from the carelessness (not to say malice) of men who neglected the history of the bible while there were still materials for inquiry; secondly, from the fact (admitted, i think, by all) that the supernatural faculty is a divine gift granted only to the faithful. ( ) but the prophets and apostles did not preach to the faithful only, but chiefly to the unfaithful and wicked. ( ) such persons, therefore, were able to understand the intention of the prophets and apostles, otherwise the prophets and apostles would have seemed to be preaching to little boys and infants, not to men endowed with reason. ( ) moses, too, would have given his laws in vain, if they could only be comprehended by the faithful, who need no law. ( ) indeed, those who demand supernatural faculties for comprehending the meaning of the prophets and apostles seem truly lacking in natural faculties, so that we should hardly suppose such persons the possessors of a divine supernatural gift. ( ) the opinion of maimonides was widely different. ( ) he asserted that each passage in scripture admits of various, nay, contrary, meanings; but that we could never be certain of any particular one till we knew that the passage, as we interpreted it, contained nothing contrary or repugnant to reason. ( ) if the literal meaning clashes with reason, though the passage seems in itself perfectly clear, it must be interpreted in some metaphorical sense. ( ) this doctrine he lays down very plainly in chap. xxv. part ii. of his book, "more nebuchim," for he says: "know that we shrink not from affirming that the world hath existed from eternity, because of what scripture saith concerning the world's creation. ( ) for the texts which teach that the world was created are not more in number than those which teach that god hath a body; neither are the approaches in this matter of the world's creation closed, or even made hard to us: so that we should not be able to explain what is written, as we did when we showed that god hath no body, nay, peradventure, we could explain and make fast the doctrine of the world's eternity more easily than we did away with the doctrines that god hath a beatified body. ( ) yet two things hinder me from doing as i have said, and believing that the world is eternal. ( ) as it hath been clearly shown that god hath not a body, we must perforce explain all those passages whereof the literal sense agreeth not with the demonstration, for sure it is that they can be so explained. ( ) but the eternity of the world hath not been so demonstrated, therefore it is not necessary to do violence to scripture in support of some common opinion, whereof we might, at the bidding of reason, embrace the contrary." ( ) such are the words of maimonides, and they are evidently sufficient to establish our point: for if he had been convinced by reason that the world is eternal, he would not have hesitated to twist and explain away the words of scripture till he made them appear to teach this doctrine. ( ) he would have felt quite sure that scripture, though everywhere plainly denying the eternity of the world, really intends to teach it. ( ) so that, however clear the meaning of scripture may be, he would not feel certain of having grasped it, so long as he remained doubtful of the truth of what, was written. ( ) for we are in doubt whether a thing is in conformity with reason, or contrary thereto, so long as we are uncertain of its truth, and, consequently, we cannot be sure whether the literal meaning of a passage be true or false. ( ) if such a theory as this were sound, i would certainly grant that some faculty beyond the natural reason is required for interpreting scripture. ( ) for nearly all things that we find in scripture cannot be inferred from known principles of the natural reason, and, therefore, we should be unable to come to any conclusion about their truth, or about the real meaning and intention of scripture, but should stand in need of some further assistance. ( ) further, the truth of this theory would involve that the masses, having generally no comprehension of, nor leisure for, detailed proofs, would be reduced to receiving all their knowledge of scripture on the authority and testimony of philosophers, and, consequently, would be compelled to suppose that the interpretations given by philosophers were infallible. ( ) truly this would be a new form of ecclesiastical authority, and a new sort of priests or pontiffs, more likely to excite men's ridicule than their veneration. ( ) certainly our method demands a knowledge of hebrew for which the masses have no leisure; but no such objection as the foregoing can be brought against us. ( ) for the ordinary jews or gentiles, to whom the prophets and apostles preached and wrote, understood the language, and, consequently, the intention of the prophet or apostle addressing them; but they did not grasp the intrinsic reason of what was preached, which, according to maimonides, would be necessary for an understanding of it. ( ) there is nothing, then, in our method which renders it necessary that the masses should follow the testimony of commentators, for i point to a set of unlearned people who understood the language of the prophets and apostles; whereas maimonides could not point to any such who could arrive at the prophetic or apostolic meaning through their knowledge of the causes of things. ( ) as to the multitude of our own time, we have shown that whatsoever is necessary to salvation, though its reasons may be unknown, can easily be understood in any language, because it is thoroughly ordinary and usual; it is in such understanding as this that the masses acquiesce, not in the testimony of commentators; with regard to other questions, the ignorant and the learned fare alike. ( ) but let us return to the opinion of maimonides, and examine it more closely. in the first place, he supposes that the prophets were in entire agreement one with another, and that they were consummate philosophers and theologians; for he would have them to have based their conclusions on the absolute truth. ( ) further, he supposes that the sense of scripture cannot be made plain from scripture itself, for the truth of things is not made plain therein (in that it does not prove any thing, nor teach the matters of which it speaks through their definitions and first causes), therefore, according to maimonides, the true sense of scripture cannot be made plain from itself, and must not be there sought. ( ) the falsity of such a doctrine is shown in this very chapter, for we have shown both by reason and examples that the meaning of scripture is only made plain through scripture itself, and even in questions deducible from ordinary knowledge should be looked for from no other source. ( ) lastly, such a theory supposes that we may explain the words of scripture according to our preconceived opinions, twisting them about, and reversing or completely changing the literal sense, however plain it may be. ( ) such licence is utterly opposed to the teaching of this and the preceding chapters, and, moreover, will be evident to everyone as rash and excessive. ( ) but if we grant all this licence, what can it effect after all? absolutely nothing. ( ) those things which cannot be demonstrated, and which make up the greater part of scripture, cannot be examined by reason, and cannot therefore be explained or interpreted by this rule; whereas, on the contrary, by following our own method, we can explain many questions of this nature, and discuss them on a sure basis, as we have already shown, by reason and example. ( ) those matters which are by their nature comprehensible we can easily explain, as has been pointed out, simply by means of the context. ( ) therefore, the method of maimonides is clearly useless: to which we may add, that it does away with all the certainty which the masses acquire by candid reading, or which is gained by any other persons in any other way. ( ) in conclusion, then, we dismiss maimonides' theory as harmful, useless, and absurd. ( ) as to the tradition of the pharisees, we have already shown that it is not consistent, while the authority of the popes of rome stands in need of more credible evidence; the latter, indeed, i reject simply on this ground, for if the popes could point out to us the meaning of scripture as surely as did the high priests of the jews, i should not be deterred by the fact that there have been heretic and impious roman pontiffs; for among the hebrew high-priests of old there were also heretics and impious men who gained the high- priesthood by improper means, but who, nevertheless, had scriptural sanction for their supreme power of interpreting the law. (see deut. xvii: , , and xxxiii: , also malachi ii: .) ( ) however, as the popes can show no such sanction, their authority remains open to very grave doubt, nor should anyone be deceived by the example of the jewish high-priests and think that the catholic religion also stands in need of a pontiff; he should bear in mind that the laws of moses being also the ordinary laws of the country, necessarily required some public authority to insure their observance; for, if everyone were free to interpret the laws of his country as he pleased, no state could stand, but would for that very reason be dissolved at once, and public rights would become private rights. ( ) with religion the case is widely different. inasmuch as it consists not so much in outward actions as in simplicity and truth of character, it stands outside the sphere of law and public authority. ( ) simplicity and truth of character are not produced by the constraint of laws, nor by the authority of the state, no one the whole world over can be forced or legislated into a state of blessedness; the means required for such a consummation are faithful and brotherly admonition, sound education, and, above all, free use of the individual judgment. ( ) therefore, as the supreme right of free thinking, even on religion, is in every man's power, and as it is inconceivable that such power could be alienated, it is also in every man's power to wield the supreme right and authority of free judgment in this behalf, and to explain and interpret religion for himself. ( ) the only reason for vesting the supreme authority in the interpretation of law, and judgment on public affairs in the hands of the magistrates, is that it concerns questions of public right. ( ) similarly the supreme authority in explaining religion, and in passing judgment thereon, is lodged with the individual because it concerns questions of individual right. ( ) so far, then, from the authority of the hebrew high-priests telling in confirmation of the authority of the roman pontiffs to interpret religion, it would rather tend to establish individual freedom of judgment. ( ) thus in this way also, we have shown that our method of interpreting scripture is the best. ( ) for as the highest power of scriptural interpretation belongs to every man, the rule for such interpretation should be nothing but the natural light of reason which is common to all - not any supernatural light nor any external authority; moreover, such a rule ought not to be so difficult that it can only be applied by very skilful philosophers, but should be adapted to the natural and ordinary faculties and capacity of mankind. ( ) and such i have shown our method to be, for such difficulties as it has arise from men's carelessness, and are no part of its nature. chapter viii. - of the authorship of the pentateuch and the other historical books of the old testament ( ) in the former chapter we treated of the foundations and principles of scriptural knowledge, and showed that it consists solely in a trustworthy history of the sacred writings; such a history, in spite of its indispensability, the ancients neglected, or at any rate, whatever they may have written or handed down has perished in the lapse of time, consequently the groundwork for such an investigation is to a great extent, cut from under us. ( ) this might be put up with if succeeding generations had confined themselves within the limits of truth, and had handed down conscientiously what few particulars they had received or discovered without any additions from their own brains: as it is, the history of the bible is not so much imperfect as untrustworthy: the foundations are not only too scanty for building upon, but are also unsound. ( ) it is part of my purpose to remedy these defects, and to remove common theological prejudices. ( ) but i fear that i am attempting my task too late, for men have arrived at the pitch of not suffering contradiction, but defending obstinately whatever they have adopted under the name of religion. ( ) so widely have these prejudices taken possession of men's minds, that very few, comparatively speaking, will listen to reason. ( ) however, i will make the attempt, and spare no efforts, for there is no positive reason for despairing of success. ( ) in order to treat the subject methodically, i will begin with the received opinions concerning the true authors of the sacred books, and in the first place, speak of the author of the pentateuch, who is almost universally supposed to have been moses. ( ) the pharisees are so firmly convinced of his identity, that they account as a heretic anyone who differs from them on the subject. ( ) wherefore, aben ezra, a man of enlightened intelligence, and no small learning, who was the first, so far as i know, to treat of this opinion, dared not express his meaning openly, but confined himself to dark hints which i shall not scruple to elucidate, thus throwing, full light on the subject. ( ) the words of aben ezra which occur in his commentary on deuteronomy are as follows: "beyond jordan, &c . . . if so be that thou understandest the mystery of the twelve . . . moreover moses wrote the law . . . the canaanite was then in the land . . . . it shall be revealed on the mount of god . . . . then also behold his bed, his iron bed, then shalt thou know the truth." ( ) in these few words he hints, and also shows that it was not moses who wrote the pentateuch, but someone who lived long after him, and further, that the book which moses wrote was something different from any now extant. ( ) to prove this, i say, he draws attention to the facts: ( ) . that the preface to deuteronomy could not have been written by moses, inasmuch as he ad never crossed the jordan. ( ) ii. that the whole book of moses was written at full length on the circumference of a single altar (deut. xxvii, and josh. viii: ), which altar, according to the rabbis, consisted of only twelve stones: therefore the book of moses must have been of far less extent than the pentateuch. ( ) this is what our author means, i think, by the mystery of the twelve, unless he is referring to the twelve curses contained in the chapter of deuteronomy above cited, which he thought could not have been contained in the law, because moses bade the levites read them after the recital of the law, and so bind the people to its observance. ( ) or again, he may have had in his mind the last chapter of deuteronomy which treats of the death of moses, and which contains twelve verses. ( ) but there is no need to dwell further on these and similar conjectures. ( ) iii. that in deut. xxxi: , the expression occurs, "and moses wrote the law:" words that cannot be ascribed to moses, but must be those of some other writer narrating the deeds and writings of moses. ( ) iv. that in genesis xii: , the historian, after narrating that abraham journeyed through the and of canaan, adds, "and the canaanite was then in the land," thus clearly excluding the time at which he wrote. ( ) so that this passage must have been written after the death of moses, when the canaanites had been driven out, and no longer possessed the land. ( ) aben ezra, in his commentary on the passage, alludes to the difficulty as follows:- "and the canaanite was then in the land: it appears that canaan, the grandson of noah, took from another the land which bears his name; if this be not the true meaning, there lurks some mystery in the passage, and let him who understands it keep silence." ( ) that is, if canaan invaded those regions, the sense will be, the canaanite was then in the land, in contradistinction to the time when it had been held by another: but if, as follows from gen. chap. x. canaan was the first to inhabit the land, the text must mean to exclude the time present, that is the time at which it was written; therefore it cannot be the work of moses, in whose time the canaanites still possessed those territories: this is the mystery concerning which silence is recommended. ( ) v. that in genesis xxii: mount moriah is called the mount of god, [endnote ], a name which it did not acquire till after the building of the temple; the choice of the mountain was not made in the time of moses, for moses does not point out any spot as chosen by god; on the contrary, he foretells that god will at some future time choose a spot to which this name will be given. ( ) vi. lastly, that in deut. chap. iii., in the passage relating to og, king of bashan, these words are inserted: "for only og king of bashan remained of the remnant of giants: behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron: is it not in rabbath of the children of ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." ( ) this parenthesis most plainly shows that its writer lived long after moses; for this mode of speaking is only employed by one treating of things long past, and pointing to relics for the sake of gaining credence: moreover, this bed was almost certainly first discovered by david, who conquered the city of rabbath ( sam. xii: .) ( ) again, the historian a little further on inserts after the words of moses, "jair, the son of manasseh, took all the country of argob unto the coasts of geshuri and maachathi; and called them after his own name, bashan-havoth-jair, unto this day." ( ) this passage, i say, is inserted to explain the words of moses which precede it. ( ) "and the rest of gilead, and all bashan, being the kingdom of og, gave i unto the half tribe of manasseh; all the region of argob, with all bashan, which is called the land of the giants." ( ) the hebrews in the time of the writer indisputably knew what territories belonged to the tribe of judah, but did not know them under the name of the jurisdiction of argob, or the land of the giants. ( ) therefore the writer is compelled to explain what these places were which were anciently so styled, and at the same time to point out why they were at the time of his writing known by the name of jair, who was of the tribe of manasseh, not of judah. ( ) we have thus made clear the meaning of aben ezra and also the passages of the pentateuch which he cites in proof of his contention. ( ) however, aben ezra does not call attention to every instance, or even the chief ones; there remain many of greater importance, which may be cited. ( ) namely (i.), that the writer of the books in question not only speaks of moses in the third person, but also bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, "moses talked with god;" "the lord spoke with moses face to face;" "moses was the meekest of men" (numb. xii: ); "moses was wrath with the captains of the host; "moses, the man of god, "moses, the servant of the lord, died;" "there was never a prophet in israel like unto moses," &c. ( ) on the other hand, in deuteronomy, where the law which moses had expounded to the people and written is set forth, moses speaks and declares what he has done in the first person: "god spake with me" (deut. ii: , , &c.), "i prayed to the lord," &c. ( ) except at the end of the book, when the historian, after relating the words of moses, begins again to speak in the third person, and to tell how moses handed over the law which he had expounded to the people in writing, again admonishing them, and further, how moses ended his life. ( ) all these details, the manner of narration, the testimony, and the context of the whole story lead to the plain conclusion that these books were written by another, and not by moses in person. ( ) iii. we must also remark that the history relates not only the manner of moses' death and burial, and the thirty days' mourning of the hebrews, but further compares him with all the prophets who came after him, and states that he surpassed them all. ( ) "there was never a prophet in israel like unto moses, whom the lord knew face to face." ( ) such testimony cannot have been given of moses by, himself, nor by any who immediately succeeded him, but it must come from someone who lived centuries afterwards, especially, as the historian speaks of past times. ( ) "there was never a prophet," &c. ( ) and of the place of burial, "no one knows it to this day." ( ) iii. we must note that some places are not styled by the names they bore during moses' lifetime, but by others which they obtained subsequently. ( ) for instance, abraham is said to have pursued his enemies even unto dan, a name not bestowed on the city till long after the death of joshua (gen. xiv: , judges xviii: ). ( ) iv. the narrative is prolonged after the death of moses, for in exodus xvi: we read that "the children of israel did eat manna forty years until they came to a land inhabited, until they came unto the borders of the land of canaan." ( ) in other words, until the time alluded to in joshua vi: . ( ) so, too, in genesis xxxvi: it is stated, "these are the kings that reigned in edom before there reigned any king over the children of israel." ( ) the historian, doubtless, here relates the kings of idumaea before that territory was conquered by david [endnote ] and garrisoned, as we read in sam. viii: . ( ) from what has been said, it is thus clearer than the sun at noonday that the pentateuch was not written by moses, but by someone who lived long after moses. ( ) let us now turn our attention to the books which moses actually did write, and which are cited in the pentateuch; thus, also, shall we see that they were different from the pentateuch. ( ) firstly, it appears from exodus xvii: that moses, by the command of god, wrote an account of the war against amalek. ( ) the book in which he did so is not named in the chapter just quoted, but in numb. xxi: a book is referred to under the title of the wars of god, and doubtless this war against amalek and the castrametations said in numb. xxxiii: to have been written by moses are therein described. ( ) we hear also in exod. xxiv: of another book called the book of the covenant, which moses read before the israelites when they first made a covenant with god. ( ) but this book or this writing contained very little, namely, the laws or commandments of god which we find in exodus xx: to the end of chap. xxiv., and this no one will deny who reads the aforesaid chapter rationally and impartially. ( ) it is there stated that as soon as moses had learnt the feeling of the people on the subject of making a covenant with god, he immediately wrote down god's laws and utterances, and in the morning, after some ceremonies had been performed, read out the conditions of the covenant to an assembly of the whole people. ( ) when these had been gone through, and doubtless understood by all, the whole people gave their assent. ( ) now from the shortness of the time taken in its perusal and also from its nature as a compact, this document evidently contained nothing more than that which we have just described. ( ) further, it is clear that moses explained all the laws which he had received in the fortieth year after the exodus from egypt; also that he bound over the people a second time to observe them, and that finally he committed them to writing (deut. i: ; xxix: ; xxxi: ), in a book which contained these laws explained, and the new covenant, and this book was therefore called the book of the law of god: the same which was afterwards added to by joshua when he set forth the fresh covenant with which he bound over the people and which he entered into with god (josh. xxiv: , ). ( ) now, as we have extent no book containing this covenant of moses and also the covenant of joshua, we must perforce conclude that it has perished, unless, indeed, we adopt the wild conjecture of the chaldean paraphrast jonathan, and twist about the words of scripture to our heart's content. ( ) this commentator, in the face of our present difficulty, preferred corrupting the sacred text to confessing his own ignorance. ( ) the passage in the book of joshua which runs, "and joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of god," he changes into "and joshua wrote these words and kept them with the book of the law of god." ( ) what is to be done with persons who will only see what pleases them? ( ) what is such a proceeding if it is not denying scripture, and inventing another bible out of our own heads? ( ) we may therefore conclude that the book of the law of god which moses wrote was not the pentateuch, but something quite different, which the author of the pentateuch duly inserted into his book. ( ) so much is abundantly plain both from what i have said and from what i am about to add. ( ) for in the passage of deuteronomy above quoted, where it is related that moses wrote the book of the law, the historian adds that he handed it over to the priests and bade them read it out at a stated time to the whole people. ( ) this shows that the work was of much less length than the pentateuch, inasmuch as it could be read through at one sitting so as to be understood by all; further, we must not omit to notice that out of all the books which moses wrote, this one book of the second covenant and the song (which latter he wrote afterwards so that all the people might learn it), was the only one which he caused to be religiously guarded and preserved. ( ) in the first covenant he had only bound over those who were present, but in the second covenant he bound over all their descendants also (dent. xxix: ), and therefore ordered this covenant with future ages to be religiously preserved, together with the song, which was especially addressed to posterity: as, then, we have no proof that moses wrote any book save this of the covenant, and as he committed no other to the care of posterity; and, lastly, as there are many passages in the pentateuch which moses could not have written, it follows that the belief that moses was the author of the pentateuch is ungrounded and even irrational. ( ) someone will perhaps ask whether moses did not also write down other laws when they were first revealed to him - in other words, whether, during the course of forty years, he did not write down any of the laws which he promulgated, save only those few which i have stated to be contained in the book of the first covenant. ( ) to this i would answer, that although it seems reasonable to suppose that moses wrote down the laws at the time when he wished to communicate them to the people, yet we are not warranted to take it as proved, for i have shown above that we must make no assertions in such matters which we do not gather from scripture, or which do not flow as legitimate consequences from its fundamental principles. ( ) we must not accept whatever is reasonably probable. ( ) however even reason in this case would not force such a conclusion upon us: for it may be that the assembly of elders wrote down the decrees of moses and communicated them to the people, and the historian collected them, and duly set them forth in his narrative of the life of moses. ( ) so much for the five books of moses: it is now time for us to turn to the other sacred writings. ( ) the book of joshua may be proved not to be an autograph by reasons similar to those we have just employed: for it must be some other than joshua who testifies that the fame of joshua was spread over the whole world; that he omitted nothing of what moses had taught (josh. vi: ; viii. last verse; xi: ); that he grew old and summoned an assembly of the whole people, and finally that he departed this life. ( ) furthermore, events are related which took place after joshua's death. ( ) for instance, that the israelites worshipped god, after his death, so long as there were any old men alive who remembered him; and in chap. xvi: , we read that "ephraim and manasseh did not drive out the canaanites which dwelt in gezer, but the canaanite dwelt in the land of ephraim unto this day, and was tributary to him." ( ) this is the same statement as that in judges, chap. i., and the phrase "unto this day" shows that the writer was speaking of ancient times. ( ) with these texts we may compare the last verse of chap. xv., concerning the sons of judah, and also the history of caleb in the same chap. v: . ( ) further, the building of an altar beyond jordan by the two tribes and a half, chap. xxii: , sqq., seems to have taken place after the death of joshua, for in the whole narrative his name is never mentioned, but the people alone held council as to waging war, sent out legates, waited for their return, and finally approved of their answer. ( ) lastly, from chap. x: , it is clear that the book was written many generations after the death of joshua, for it bears witness, there was never any, day like unto, that day, either before or after, that the lord hearkened to the voice of a man," &c. ( ) if, therefore, joshua wrote any book at all, it was that which is quoted in the work now before us, chap. x: . ( ) with regard to the book of judges, i suppose no rational person persuades himself that it was written by the actual judges. ( ) for the conclusion of the whole history contained in chap. ii. clearly shows that it is all the work - of a single historian. ( ) further, inasmuch as the writer frequently tells us that there was then no king in israel, it is evident that the book was written after the establishment of the monarchy. ( ) the books of samuel need not detain us long, inasmuch as the narrative in them is continued long after samuel's death; but i should like to draw attention to the fact that it was written many generations after samuel's death. ( ) for in book i. chap. ix: , the historian remarks in a, parenthesis, "beforetime, in israel, when a man went to inquire of god, thus he spake: come, and let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a seer." ( ) lastly, the books of kings, as we gather from internal evidence, were compiled from the books of king solomon (i kings xi: ), from the chronicles of the kings of judah ( kings xiv: , ), and the chronicles of the kings of israel. ( ) we may, therefore, conclude that all the books we have considered hitherto are compilations, and that the events therein are recorded as having happened in old time. ( ) now, if we turn our attention to the connection and argument of all these books, we shall easily see that they were all written by a single historian, who wished to relate the antiquities of the jews from their first beginning down to the first destruction of the city. ( ) the way in which the several books are connected one with the other is alone enough to show us that they form the narrative of one and the same writer. ( ) for as soon as he has related the life of moses, the historian thus passes on to the story of joshua: "and it came to pass after that moses the servant of the lord was dead, that god spake unto joshua," &c., so in the same way, after the death of joshua was concluded, he passes with identically the same transition and connection to the history of the judges: "and it came to pass after that joshua was dead, that the children of israel sought from god," &c. ( ) to the book of judges he adds the story of ruth, as a sort of appendix, in these words: "now it came to pass in the days that the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land." ( ) the first book of samuel is introduced with a similar phrase; and so is the second book of samuel. ( ) then, before the history of david is concluded, the historian passes in the same way to the first book of kings, and, after david's death, to the second book of kings. ( ) the putting together, and the order of the narratives, show that they are all the work of one man, writing with a create aim; for the historian begins with relating the first origin of the hebrew nation, and then sets forth in order the times and the occasions in which moses put forth his laws, and made his predictions. ( ) he then proceeds to relate how the israelites invaded the promised land in accordance with moses' prophecy (deut. vii.); and how, when the land was subdued, they turned their backs on their laws, and thereby incurred many misfortunes (deut. xxxi: , ). ( ) he tells how they wished to elect rulers, and how, according as these rulers observed the law, the people flourished or suffered (deut. xxviii: ); finally, how destruction came upon the nation, even as moses had foretold. ( ) in regard to other matters, which do not serve to confirm the law, the writer either passes over them in silence, or refers the reader to other books for information. ( ) all that is set down in the books we have conduces to the sole object of setting forth the words and laws of moses, and proving them by subsequent events.( ) when we put together these three considerations, namely, the unity of the subject of all the books, the connection between them, and the fact that they are compilations made many generations after the events they relate had taken place, we come to the conclusion, as i have just stated, that they are all the work of a single historian. ( ) who this historian was, it is not so easy to show; but i suspect that he was ezra, and there are several strong reasons for adopting this hypothesis. ( ) the historian whom we already know to be but one individual brings his history down to the liberation of jehoiakim, and adds that he himself sat at the king's table all his life - that is, at the table either of jehoiakim, or of the son of nebuchadnezzar, for the sense of the passage is ambiguous: hence it follows that he did not live before the time of ezra. ( ) but scripture does not testify of any except of ezra (ezra vii: ), that he "prepared his heart to seek the law of the lord, and to set it forth, and further that he was a ready scribe in the law of moses." ( ) therefore, i can not find anyone, save ezra, to whom to attribute the sacred books. ( ) further, from this testimony concerning ezra, we see that he prepared his heart, not only to seek the law of the lord, but also to set it forth; and, in nehemiah viii: , we read that "they read in the book of the law of god distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading." ( ) as, then, in deuteronomy, we find not only the book of the law of moses, or the greater part of it, but also many things inserted for its better explanation, i conjecture that this deuteronomy is the book of the law of god, written, set forth, and explained by ezra, which is referred to in the text above quoted. ( ) two examples of the way matters were inserted parenthetically in the text of deuteronomy, with a view to its fuller explanation, we have already given, in speaking of aben ezra's opinion. ( ) many others are found in the course of the work: for instance, in chap. ii: : "the horims dwelt also in seir beforetime; but the children of esau succeeded them, when they had destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead; as israel did unto the land of his possession, which the lord gave unto them." ( ) this explains verses and of the same chapter, where it is stated that mount seir, which had come to the children of esau for a possession, did not fall into their hands uninhabited; but that they invaded it, and turned out and destroyed the horims, who formerly dwelt therein, even as the children of israel had done unto the canaanites after the death of moses. ( ) so, also, verses , , , , of the tenth chapter are inserted parenthetically among the words of moses. everyone must see that verse , which begins, "at that time the lord separated the tribe of levi," necessarily refers to verse , and not to the death of aaron, which is only mentioned here by ezra because moses, in telling of the golden calf worshipped by the people, stated that he had prayed for aaron. ( ) he then explains that at the time at which moses spoke, god had chosen for himself the tribe of levi in order that he may point out the reason for their election, and for the fact of their not sharing in the inheritance; after this digression, he resumes the thread of moses' speech. ( ) to these parentheses we must add the preface to the book, and all the passages in which moses is spoken of in the third person, besides many which we cannot now distinguish, though, doubtless, they would have been plainly recognized by the writer's contemporaries. ( ) if, i say, we were in possession of the book of the law as moses wrote it, i do not doubt that we should find a great difference in the words of the precepts, the order in which they are given, and the reasons by which they are supported. ( ) a comparison of the decalogue in deuteronomy with the decalogue in exodus, where its history is explicitly set forth, will be sufficient to show us a wide discrepancy in all these three particulars, for the fourth commandment is given not only in a different form, but at much greater length, while the reason for its observance differs wholly from that stated in exodus. ( ) again, the order in which the tenth commandment is explained differs in the two versions. ( ) i think that the differences here as elsewhere are the work of ezra, who explained the law of god to his contemporaries, and who wrote this book of the law of god, before anything else; this i gather from the fact that it contains the laws of the country, of which the people stood in most need, and also because it is not joined to the book which precedes it by any connecting phrase, but begins with the independent statement, "these are the words of moses." ( ) after this task was completed, i think ezra set himself to give a complete account of the history of the hebrew nation from the creation of the world to the entire destruction of the city, and in this account he inserted the book of deuteronomy, and, possibly, he called the first five books by the name of moses, because his life is chiefly contained therein, and forms their principal subject; for the same reason he called the sixth joshua, the seventh judges, the eighth ruth, the ninth, and perhaps the tenth, samuel, and, lastly, the eleventh and twelfth kings. ( ) whether ezra put the finishing touches to this work and finished it as he intended, we will discuss in the next chapter. chapter ix - other questions concerning the same books: namely, whether they were completely finished by ezra, and, further, whether the marginal notes which are found in the hebrew texts were various readings. ( ) how greatly the inquiry we have just made concerning the real writer of the twelve books aids us in attaining a complete understanding of them, may be easily gathered solely from the passages which we have adduced in confirmation of our opinion, and which would be most obscure without it. ( ) but besides the question of the writer, there are other points to notice which common superstition forbids the multitude to apprehend. ( ) of these the chief is, that ezra (whom i will take to be the author of the aforesaid books until some more likely person be suggested) did not put the finishing touches to the narrative contained therein, but merely collected the histories from various writers, and sometimes simply set them down, leaving their examination and arrangement to posterity. ( ) the cause (if it were not untimely death) which prevented him from completing his work in all its portions, i cannot conjecture, but the fact remains most clear, although we have lost the writings of the ancient hebrew historians, and can only judge from the few fragments which are still extant. ( ) for the history of hezekiah ( kings xviii: ), as written in the vision of isaiah, is related as it is found in the chronicles of the kings of judah. ( ) we read the same story, told with few exceptions, [endnote ], in the same words, in the book of isaiah which was contained in the chronicles of the kings of judah ( chron. xxxii: ). ( ) from this we must conclude that there were various versions of this narrative of isaiah's, unless, indeed, anyone would dream that in this, too, there lurks a mystery. ( ) further, the last chapter of kings - is repeated in the last chapter of jeremiah, v. - . ( ) again, we find sam. vii. repeated in i chron. xvii., but the expressions in the two passages are so curiously varied [endnote ], that we can very easily see that these two chapters were taken from two different versions of the history of nathan. ( ) lastly, the genealogy of the kings of idumaea contained in genesis xxxvi: , is repeated in the same words in chron. i., though we know that the author of the latter work took his materials from other historians, not from the twelve books we have ascribed to ezra. ( ) we may therefore be sure that if we still possessed the writings of the historians, the matter would be made clear; however, as we have lost them, we can only examine the writings still extant, and from their order and connection, their various repetitions, and, lastly, the contradictions in dates which they contain, judge of the rest. ( ) these, then, or the chief of them, we will now go through. ( ) first, in the story of judah and tamar (gen. xxxviii.) the historian thus begins: "and it came to pass at that time that judah went down from his brethren." ( ) this time cannot refer to what immediately precedes [endnote ], but must necessarily refer to something else, for from the time when joseph was sold into egypt to the time when the patriarch jacob, with all his family, set out thither, cannot be reckoned as more than twenty-two years, for joseph, when he was sold by his brethren, was seventeen years old, and when he was summoned by pharaoh from prison was thirty; if to this we add the seven years of plenty and two of famine, the total amounts to twenty-two years. ( ) now, in so short a period, no one can suppose that so many things happened as are described; that judah had three children, one after the other, from one wife, whom he married at the beginning of the period; that the eldest of these, when he was old enough, married tamar, and that after he died his next brother succeeded to her; that, after all this, judah, without knowing it, had intercourse with his daughter-in-law, and that she bore him twins, and, finally, that the eldest of these twins became a father within the aforesaid period. ( ) as all these events cannot have taken place within the period mentioned in genesis, the reference must necessarily be to something treated of in another book: and ezra in this instance simply related the story, and inserted it without examination among his other writings. ( ) however, not only this chapter but the whole narrative of joseph and jacob is collected and set forth from various histories, inasmuch as it is quite inconsistent with itself. ( ) for in gen. xlvii. we are told that jacob, when he came at joseph's bidding to salute pharaoh, was years old. ( ) if from this we deduct the twenty-two years which he passed sorrowing for the absence of joseph and the seventeen years forming joseph's age when he was sold, and, lastly, the seven years for which jacob served for rachel, we find that he was very advanced in life, namely, eighty four, when he took leah to wife, whereas dinah was scarcely seven years old when she was violated by shechem, [endnote ]. ( ) simeon and levi were aged respectively eleven and twelve when they spoiled the city and slew all the males therein with the sword. ( ) there is no need that i should go through the whole pentateuch. ( ) if anyone pays attention to the way in which all the histories and precepts in these five books are set down promiscuously and without order, with no regard for dates; and further, how the same story is often repeated, sometimes in a different version, he will easily, i say, discern that all the materials were promiscuously collected and heaped together, in order that they might at some subsequent time be more readily examined and reduced to order. ( ) not only these five books, but also the narratives contained in the remaining seven, going down to the destruction of the city, are compiled in the same way. ( ) for who does not see that in judges ii: a new historian is being quoted, who had also written of the deeds of joshua, and that his words are simply copied? ( ) for after our historian has stated in the last chapter of the book of joshua that joshua died and was buried, and has promised, in the first chapter of judges, to relate what happened after his death, in what way, if he wished to continue the thread of his history, could he connect the statement here made about joshua with what had gone before? ( ) so, too, sam. , , are taken from another historian, who assigns a cause for david's first frequenting saul's court very different from that given in chap. xvi. of the same book. ( ) for he did not think that david came to saul in consequence of the advice of saul's servants, as is narrated in chap. xvi., but that being sent by chance to the camp by his father on a message to his brothers, he was for the first time remarked by saul on the occasion of his victory, over goliath the philistine, and was retained at his court. ( ) i suspect the same thing has taken place in chap. xxvi. of the same book, for the historian there seems to repeat the narrative given in chap. xxiv. according to another man's version. ( ) but i pass over this, and go on to the computation of dates. ( ) in i kings, chap. vi., it is said that solomon built the temple in the four hundred and eightieth year after the exodus from egypt; but from the historians themselves we get a much longer period, for: years. moses governed the people in the desert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . joshua, who lived years, did not, according to josephus and others' opinion rule more than . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cusban rishathaim held the people in subjection . . . . . . . . . . . othniel, son of kenag, was judge for . . . . . . . . . [endnote ] eglon, king of moab, governed the people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ehud and shamgar were judges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jachin, king of canaan, held the people in subjection . . . . . . . . the people was at peace subsequently for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . it was under subjection to median . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . it obtained freedom under gideon for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . it fell under the rule of abimelech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tola, son of puah, was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jair was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the people was in subjection to the philistines and ammonites . . . . jephthah was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ibzan, the bethlehemite, was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . elon, the zabulonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . abclon, the pirathonite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the people was again subject to the philistines . . . . . . . . . . . samson was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [endnote ] eli was judge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the people again fell into subjection to the philistines, till they were delivered by samuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . david reigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . solomon reigned before he built the temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . ( ) all these periods added together make a total of years. ( ) but to these must be added the years during which the hebrew republic flourished after the death of joshua, until it was conquered by cushan rishathaim, which i take to be very numerous, for i cannot bring myself to believe that immediately after the death of joshua all those who had witnessed his miracles died simultaneously, nor that their successors at one stroke bid farewell to their laws, and plunged from the highest virtue into the depth of wickedness and obstinacy. ( ) nor, lastly, that cushan rishathaim subdued them on the instant; each one of these circumstances requires almost a generation, and there is no doubt that judges ii: , , , comprehends a great many years which it passes over in silence. ( ) we must also add the years during which samuel was judge, the number of which is not stated in scripture, and also the years during which saul reigned, which are not clearly shown from his history. ( ) it is, indeed, stated in sam. xiii: , that he reigned two years, but the text in that passage is mutilated, and the records of his reign lead us to suppose a longer period. ( ) that the text is mutilated i suppose no one will doubt who has ever advanced so far as the threshold of the hebrew language, for it runs as follows: "saul was in his -- year, when he began to reign, and he reigned two years over israel." ( ) who, i say, does not see that the number of the years of saul's age when he began to reign has been omitted? ( ) that the record of the reign presupposes a greater number of years is equally beyond doubt, for in the same book, chap. xxvii: , it is stated that david sojourned among the philistines, to whom he had fled on account of saul, a year and four months; thus the rest of the reign must have been comprised in a space of eight months, which i think no one will credit. ( ) josephus, at the end of the sixth book of his antiquities, thus corrects the text: saul reigned eighteen years while samuel was alive, and two years after his death. ( ) however, all the narrative in chap. xiii. is in complete disagreement with what goes before. ( ) at the end of chap. vii. it is narrated that the philistines were so crushed by the hebrews that they did not venture, during samuel's life, to invade the borders of israel; but in chap. xiii. we are told that the hebrews were invaded during the life of samuel by the philistines, and reduced by them to such a state of wretchedness and poverty that they were deprived not only of weapons with which to defend themselves, but also of the means of making more. ( ) i should be at pains enough if i were to try and harmonize all the narratives contained in this first book of samuel so that they should seem to be all written and arranged by a single historian. ( ) but i return to my object. ( ) the years, then, during which saul reigned must be added to the above computation; and, lastly, i have not counted the years of the hebrew anarchy, for i cannot from scripture gather their number. ( ) i cannot, i say, be certain as to the period occupied by the events related in judges chap. xvii. on till the end of the book. ( ) it is thus abundantly evident that we cannot arrive at a true computation of years from the histories, and, further, that the histories are inconsistent themselves on the subject. ( ) we are compelled to confess that these histories were compiled from various writers without previous arrangement and examination. ( ) not less discrepancy is found between the dates given in the chronicles of the kings of judah, and those in the chronicles of the kings of israel; in the latter, it is stated that jehoram, the son of ahab, began to reign in the second year of the reign of jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat ( kings i: ), but in the former we read that jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat, began to reign in the fifth year of jehoram, the son of ahab ( kings viii: ). ( ) anyone who compares the narratives in chronicles with the narratives in the books of kings, will find many similar discrepancies. ( ) these there is no need for me to examine here, and still less am i called upon to treat of the commentaries of those who endeavour to harmonize them. ( ) the rabbis evidently let their fancy run wild. ( ) such commentators as i have, read, dream, invent, and as a last resort, play fast and loose with the language. ( ) for instance, when it is said in chronicles, that ahab was forty-two years old when he began to reign, they pretend that these years are computed from the reign of omri, not from the birth of ahab. ( ) if this can be shown to be the real meaning of the writer of the book of chronicles, all i can say is, that he did not know how to state a fact. ( ) the commentators make many other assertions of this kind, which if true, would prove that the ancient hebrews were ignorant both of their own language, and of the way to relate a plain narrative. ( ) i should in such case recognize no rule or reason in interpreting scripture, but it would be permissible to hypothesize to one's heart's content. ( ) if anyone thinks that i am speaking too generally, and without sufficient warrant, i would ask him to set himself to showing us some fixed plan in these histories which might be followed without blame by other writers of chronicles, and in his efforts at harmonizing and interpretation, so strictly to observe and explain the phrases and expressions, the order and the connections, that we may be able to imitate these also in our writings ( ). ( ) if he succeeds, i will at once give him my hand, and he shall be to me as great apollo; for i confess that after long endeavours i have been unable to discover anything of the kind. ( ) i may add that i set down nothing here which i have not long reflected upon, and that, though i was imbued from my boyhood up with the ordinary opinions about the scriptures, i have been unable to withstand the force of what i have urged. ( ) however, there is no need to detain the reader with this question, and drive him to attempt an impossible task; i merely mentioned the fact in order to throw light on my intention. ( ) i now pass on to other points concerning the treatment of these books. ( ) for we must remark, in addition to what has been shown, that these books were not guarded by posterity with such care that no faults crept in. ( ) the ancient scribes draw attention to many doubtful readings, and some mutilated passages, but not to all that exist: whether the faults are of sufficient importance to greatly embarrass the reader i will not now discuss. ( ) i am inclined to think that they are of minor moment to those, at any rate, who read the scriptures with enlightenment: and i can positively, affirm that i have not noticed any fault or various reading in doctrinal passages sufficient to render them obscure or doubtful. ( ) there are some people, however, who will not admit that there is any corruption, even in other passages, but maintain that by some unique exercise of providence god has preserved from corruption every word in the bible: they say that the various readings are the symbols of profoundest mysteries, and that mighty secrets lie hid in the twenty-eight hiatus which occur, nay, even in the very form of the letters. ( ) whether they are actuated by folly and anile devotion, or whether by arrogance and malice so that they alone may be held to possess the secrets of god, i know not: this much i do know, that i find in their writings nothing which has the air of a divine secret, but only childish lucubrations. ( ) i have read and known certain kabbalistic triflers, whose insanity provokes my unceasing as astonishment. ( ) that faults have crept in will, i think, be denied by no sensible person who reads the passage about saul, above quoted ( sam. xiii: ) and also sam. vi: : "and david arose and went with all the people that were with him from judah, to bring up from thence the ark of god." ( ) no one can fail to remark that the name of their destination, viz., kirjath-jearim [endnote ], has been omitted: nor can we deny that sam. xiii: , has been tampered with and mutilated. "and absalom fled, and went to talmai, the son of ammihud, king of geshur. ( ) and he mourned for his son every day. so absalom fled, and went to geshur, and was there three years." ( ) i know that i have remarked other passages of the same kind, but i cannot recall them at the moment. ( ) that the marginal notes which are found continually in the hebrew codices are doubtful readings will, i think, be evident to everyone who has noticed that they often arise from the great similarity, of some of the hebrew letters, such for instance, as the similarity between kaph and beth, jod and van, daleth and reth, &c. ( ) for example, the text in sam. v: , runs "in the time when thou hearest," and similarly in judges xxi: , "and it shall be when their fathers or their brothers come unto us often," the marginal version is "come unto us to complain." ( ) so also many various readings have arisen from the use of the letters named mutes, which are generally not sounded in pronunciation, and are taken promiscuously, one for the other. ( ) for example, in levit. xxv: , it is written, "the house shall be established which is not in the walled city," but the margin has it, "which is in a walled city." ( ) though these matters are self-evident, [endnore ], it is necessary, to answer the reasonings of certain pharisees, by which they endeavour to convince us that the marginal notes serve to indicate some mystery, and were added or pointed out by the writers of the sacred books. ( ) the first of these reasons, which, in my opinion, carries little weight, is taken from the practice of reading the scriptures aloud. ( ) if, it is urged, these notes were added to show various readings which could not be decided upon by posterity, why has custom prevailed that the marginal readings should always be retained? ( ) why has the meaning which is preferred been set down in the margin when it ought to have been incorporated in the text, and not relegated to a side note? ( ) the second reason is more specious, and is taken from the nature of the case. ( ) it is admitted that faults have crept into the sacred writings by chance and not by design; but they say that in the five books the word for a girl is, with one exception, written without the letter "he," contrary to all grammatical rules, whereas in the margin it is written correctly according to the universal rule of grammar. ( ) can this have happened by mistake? is it possible to imagine a clerical error to have been committed every, time the word occurs? ( ) moreover, it would have been easy, to supply the emendation. ( ) hence, when these readings are not accidental or corrections of manifest mistakes, it is supposed that they must have been set down on purpose by the original writers, and have a meaning. ( ) however, it is easy to answer such arguments; as to the question of custom having prevailed in the reading of the marginal versions, i will not spare much time for its consideration: i know not the promptings of superstition, and perhaps the practice may have arisen from the idea that both readings were deemed equally good or tolerable, and therefore, lest either should be neglected, one was appointed to be written, and the other to be read. ( ) they feared to pronounce judgment in so weighty a matter lest they should mistake the false for the true, and therefore they would give preference to neither, as they must necessarily have done if they had commanded one only to be both read and written. ( ) this would be especially the case where the marginal readings were not written down in the sacred books: or the custom may have originated because some things though rightly written down were desired to be read otherwise according to the marginal version, and therefore the general rule was made that the marginal version should be followed in reading the scriptures. ( ) the cause which induced the scribes to expressly prescribe certain passages to be read in the marginal version, i will now touch on, for not all the marginal notes are various readings, but some mark expressions which have passed out of common use, obsolete words and terms which current decency did not allow to be read in a public assembly. ( ) the ancient writers, without any evil intention, employed no courtly paraphrase, but called things by their plain names. ( ) afterwards, through the spread of evil thoughts and luxury, words which could be used by the ancients without offence, came to be considered obscene. ( ) there was no need for this cause to change the text of scripture. ( ) still, as a concession to the popular weakness, it became the custom to substitute more decent terms for words denoting sexual intercourse, exereta, &c., and to read them as they were given in the margin. ( ) at any rate, whatever may have been the origin of the practice of reading scripture according to the marginal version, it was not that the true interpretation is contained therein. ( ) for besides that, the rabbins in the talmud often differ from the massoretes, and give other readings which they approve of, as i will shortly show, certain things are found in the margin which appear less warranted by the uses of the hebrew language. ( ) for example, in samuel xiv: , we read, "in that the king hath fulfilled the request of his servant," a construction plainly regular, and agreeing with that in chap. xvi. ( ) but the margin has it "of thy servant," which does not agree with the person of the verb. ( ) so, too, chap. xvi: of the same book, we find, "as if one had inquired at the oracle of god," the margin adding "someone" to stand as a nominative to the verb. ( ) but the correction is not apparently warranted, for it is a common practice, well known to grammarians in the hebrew language, to use the third person singular of the active verb impersonally. ( ) the second argument advanced by the pharisees is easily answered from what has just been said, namely, that the scribes besides the various readings called attention to obsolete words. ( ) for there is no doubt that in hebrew as in other languages, changes of use made many words obsolete and antiquated, and such were found by the later scribes in the sacred books and noted by them with a view to the books being publicly read according to custom. ( ) for this reason the word nahgar is always found marked because its gender was originally common, and it had the same meaning as the latin juvenis (a young person). ( ) so also the hebrew capital was anciently called jerusalem, not jerusalaim. ( ) as to the pronouns himself and herself, i think that the later scribes changed vau into jod (a very frequent change in hebrew) when they wished to express the feminine gender, but that the ancients only distinguished the two genders by a change of vowels. ( ) i may also remark that the irregular tenses of certain verbs differ in the ancient and modern forms, it being formerly considered a mark of elegance to employ certain letters agreeable to the ear. ( ) in a word, i could easily multiply proofs of this kind if i were not afraid of abusing the patience of the reader. ( ) perhaps i shall be asked how i became acquainted with the fact that all these expressions are obsolete. ( ) i reply that i have found them in the most ancient hebrew writers in the bible itself, and that they have not been imitated by subsequent authors, and thus they are recognized as antiquated, though the language in which they occur is dead. ( ) but perhaps someone may press the question why, if it be true, as i say, that the marginal notes of the bible generally mark various readings, there are never more than two readings of a passage, that in the text and that in the margin, instead of three or more; and further, how the scribes can have hesitated between two readings, one of which is evidently contrary to grammar, and the other a plain correction. ( ) the answer to these questions also is easy: i will premise that it is almost certain that there once were more various readings than those now recorded. ( ) for instance, one finds many in the talmud which the massoretes have neglected, and are so different one from the other that even the superstitious editor of the bomberg bible confesses that he cannot harmonize them. ( ) "we cannot say anything," he writes, "except what we have said above, namely, that the talmud is generally in contradiction to the massorete." ( ) so that we are nor bound to hold that there never were more than two readings of any passage, yet i am willing to admit, and indeed i believe that more than two readings are never found: and for the following reasons:-( ) (i.) the cause of the differences of reading only admits of two, being generally the similarity of certain letters, so that the question resolved itself into which should be written beth, or kaf, jod or vau, daleth or reth: cases which are constantly occurring, and frequently yielding a fairly good meaning whichever alternative be adopted. ( ) sometimes, too, it is a question whether a syllable be long or short, quantity being determined by the letters called mutes. ( ) moreover, we never asserted that all the marginal versions, without exception, marked various readings; on the contrary, we have stated that many were due to motives of decency or a desire to explain obsolete words. ( ) (ii.) i am inclined to attribute the fact that more than two readings are never found to the paucity of exemplars, perhaps not more than two or three, found by the scribes. ( ) in the treatise of the scribes, chap. vi., mention is made of three only, pretended to have been found in the time of ezra, in order that the marginal versions might be attributed to him. ( ) however that may be, if the scribes only had three codices we may easily imagine that in a given passage two of them would be in accord, for it would be extraordinary if each one of the three gave a different reading of the same text. ( ) the dearth of copies after the time of ezra will surprise no one who has read the st chapter of maccabees, or josephus's "antiquities," bk. , chap. . ( ) nay, it appears wonderful considering the fierce and daily persecution, that even these few should have been preserved. ( ) this will, i think, be plain to even a cursory reader of the history of those times. ( ) we have thus discovered the reasons why there are never more than two readings of a passage in the bible, but this is a long way from supposing that we may therefore conclude that the bible was purposely written incorrectly in such passages in order to signify some mystery. ( ) as to the second argument, that some passages are so faultily written that they are at plain variance with all grammar, and should have been corrected in the text and not in the margin, i attach little weight to it, for i am not concerned to say what religious motive the scribes may have had for acting as they did: possibly they did so from candour, wishing to transmit the few exemplars of the bible which they had found exactly in their original state, marking the differences they discovered in the margin, not as doubtful readings, but as simple variants. ( ) i have myself called them doubtful readings, because it would be generally impossible to say which of the two versions is preferable. ( ) lastly, besides these doubtful readings the scribes have (by leaving a hiatus in the middle of a paragraph) marked several passages as mutilated. ( ) the massoretes have counted up such instances, and they amount to eight-and-twenty. ( ) i do not know whether any mystery is thought to lurk in the number, at any rate the pharisees religiously preserve a certain amount of empty space. ( ) one of such hiatus occurs (to give an instance) in gen. iv: , where it is written, "and cain said to his brother . . . . and it came to pass while they were in the field, &c.," a space being left in which we should expect to hear what it was that cain said. ( ) similarly there are (besides those points we have noticed) eight-and-twenty hiatus left by the scribes. ( ) many of these would not be recognized as mutilated if it were not for the empty space left. but i have said enough on this subject. chapter x. - an examination of the remaining books of the old testament according to the preceding method. ( ) i now pass on to the remaining books of the old testament. ( ) concerning the two books of chronicles i have nothing particular or important to remark, except that they were certainly written after the time of ezra, and possibly after the restoration of the temple by judas maccabaeus [endnote ]. ( ) for in chap. ix. of the first book we find a reckoning of the families who were the first to live in jerusalem, and in verse the names of the porters, of which two recur in nehemiah. ( ) this shows that the books were certainly compiled after the rebuilding of the city. ( ) as to their actual writer, their authority, utility, and doctrine, i come to no conclusion. ( ) i have always been astonished that they have been included in the bible by men who shut out from the canon the books of wisdom, tobit, and the others styled apocryphal. ( ) i do not aim at disparaging their authority, but as they are universally received i will leave them as they are. ( ) the psalms were collected and divided into five books in the time of the second temple, for ps. lxxxviii. was published, according to philo-judaeus, while king jehoiachin was still a prisoner in babylon; and ps. lxxxix. when the same king obtained his liberty: i do not think philo would have made the statement unless either it had been the received opinion in his time, or else had been told him by trustworthy persons. ( ) the proverbs of solomon were, i believe, collected at the same time, or at least in the time of king josiah; for in chap. xxv: , it is written, "these are also proverbs of solomon which the men of hezekiah, king of judah, copied out." ( ) i cannot here pass over in silence the audacity of the rabbis who wished to exclude from the sacred canon both the proverbs and ecclesiastes, and to put them both in the apocrypha. ( ) in fact, they would actually have done so, if they had not lighted on certain passages in which the law of moses is extolled. ( ) it is, indeed, grievous to think that the settling of the sacred canon lay in the hands of such men; however, i congratulate them, in this instance, on their suffering us to see these books in question, though i cannot refrain from doubting whether they have transmitted them in absolute good faith; but i will not now linger on this point. ( ) i pass on, then, to the prophetic books. ( ) an examination of these assures me that the prophecies therein contained have been compiled from other books, and are not always set down in the exact order in which they were spoken or written by the prophets, but are only such as were collected here and there, so that they are but fragmentary. ( ) isaiah began to prophecy in the reign of uzziah, as the writer himself testifies in the first verse. ( ) he not only prophesied at that time, but furthermore wrote the history of that king (see chron. xxvi: ) in a volume now lost. ( ) that which we possess, we have shown to have been taken from the chronicles of the kings of judah and israel. ( ) we may add that the rabbis assert that this prophet prophesied in the reign of manasseh, by whom he was eventually put to death, and, although this seems to be a myth, it yet shows that they did not think that all isaiah's prophecies are extant. ( ) the prophecies of jeremiah, which are related historically are also taken from various chronicles; for not only are they heaped together confusedly, without any account being taken of dates, but also the same story is told in them differently in different passages. ( ) for instance, in chap. xxi. we are told that the cause of jeremiah's arrest was that he had prophesied the destruction of the city to zedekiah who consulted him. ( ) this narrative suddenly passes, in chap xxii., to the prophet's remonstrances to jehoiakim (zedekiah's predecessor), and the prediction he made of that king's captivity; then, in chap. xxv., come the revelations granted to the prophet previously, that is in the fourth year of jehoiakim, and, further on still, the revelations received in the first year of the same reign. ( ) the continuator of jeremiah goes on heaping prophecy upon prophecy without any regard to dates, until at last, in chap. xxxviii. (as if the intervening chapters had been a parenthesis), he takes up the thread dropped in chap. xxi. ( ) in fact, the conjunction with which chap. xxxviii. begins, refers to the th, th, and th verses of chap. xxi. jeremiah's last arrest is then very differently described, and a totally separate cause is given for his daily retention in the court of the prison. ( ) we may thus clearly see that these portions of the book have been compiled from various sources, and are only from this point of view comprehensible. ( ) the prophecies contained in the remaining chapters, where jeremiah speaks in the first person, seem to be taken from a book written by baruch, at jeremiah's dictation. ( ) these, however, only comprise (as appears from chap. xxxvi: ) the prophecies revealed to the prophet from the time of josiah to the fourth year of jehoiakim, at which period the book begins. ( ) the contents of chap. xlv: , on to chap. li: , seem taken from the same volume. ( ) that the book of ezekiel is only a fragment, is clearly indicated by the first verse. ( ) for anyone may see that the conjunction with which it begins, refers to something already said, and connects what follows therewith. ( ) however, not only this conjunction, but the whole text of the discourse implies other writings. ( ) the fact of the present work beginning the thirtieth year shows that the prophet is continuing, not commencing a discourse; and this is confirmed by the writer, who parenthetically states in verse , "the word of the lord came often unto ezekiel the priest, the son of buzi, in the land of the chaldeans," as if to say that the prophecies which he is about to relate are the sequel to revelations formerly received by ezekiel from god. ( ) furthermore, josephus, antiq." x: , says that ezekiel prophesied that zedekiah should not see babylon, whereas the book we now have not only contains no such statement, but contrariwise asserts in chap. xvii. that he should be taken to babylon as a captive, [endnote ]. ( ) of hosea i cannot positively state that he wrote more than is now extant in the book bearing his name, but i am astonished at the smallness of the quantity, we possess, for the sacred writer asserts that the prophet prophesied for more than eighty years. ( ) we may assert, speaking generally, that the compiler of the prophetic books neither collected all the prophets, nor all the writings of those we have; for of the prophets who are said to have prophesied in the reign of manasseh and of whom general mention is made in chron. xxxiii: , , we have, evidently, no prophecies extant; neither have we all the prophecies of the twelve who give their names to books. ( ) of jonah we have only, the prophecy concerning the ninevites, though he also prophesied to the children of israel, as we learn in kings xiv: . ( ) the book and the personality of job have caused much controversy. ( ) some think that the book is the work of moses, and the whole narrative merely allegorical. ( ) such is the opinion of the rabbins recorded in the talmud, and they are supported by, maimonides in his "more nebuchim." ( ) others believe it to be a true history, and some suppose that job lived in the time of jacob, and was married to his daughter dinah. ( ) aben ezra, however, as i have already stated, affirms, in his commentaries, that the work is a translation into hebrew from some other language: i could wish that he could advance more cogent arguments than he does, for we might then conclude that the gentiles also had sacred books. ( ) i myself leave the matter undecided, but i conjecture job to have been a gentile, and a man of very stable character, who at first prospered, then was assailed with terrible calamities, and finally, was restored to great happiness. ( ) (he is thus named, among others, by ezekiel, xiv: .) ( ) i take it that the constancy of his mind amid the vicissitudes of his fortune occasioned many men to dispute about god's providence, or at least caused the writer of the book in question to compose his dialogues; for the contents, and also the style, seem to emanate far less from a man wretchedly ill and lying among ashes, than from one reflecting at ease in his study. ( ) i should also be inclined to agree with aben ezra that the book is a translation, for its poetry seems akin to that of the gentiles; thus the father of gods summons a council, and momus, here called satan, criticizes the divine decrees with the utmost freedom. ( ) but these are mere conjectures without any solid foundation. ( ) i pass on to the book of daniel, which, from chap. viii. onwards, undoubtedly contains the writing of daniel himself. ( ) whence the first seven chapters are derived i cannot say; we may, however, conjecture that, as they were first written in chaldean, they are taken from chaldean chronicles. ( ) if this could be proved, it would form a very striking proof of the fact that the sacredness of scripture depends on our understanding of the doctrines therein signified, and not on the words, the language, and the phrases in which these doctrines are conveyed to us; and it would further show us that books which teach and speak of whatever is highest and best are equally sacred, whatever be the tongue in which they are written, or the nation to which they belong. ( ) we can, however, in this case only remark that the chapters in question were written in chaldee, and yet are as sacred as the rest of the bible. ( ) the first book of ezra is so intimately connected with the book of daniel that both are plainly recognizable as the work of the same author, writing of jewish history from the time of the first captivity onwards. ( ) i have no hesitation in joining to this the book of esther, for the conjunction with which it begins can refer to nothing else. ( ) it cannot be the same work as that written by mordecai, for, in chap. ix: - , another person relates that mordecai wrote letters, and tells us their contents; further, that queen esther confirmed the days of purim in their times appointed, and that the decree was written in the book that is (by a hebraism), in a book known to all then living, which, as aben ezra and the rest confess, has now perished. ( ) lastly, for the rest of the acts of mordecai, the historian refers us to the chronicles of the kings of persia. ( ) thus there is no doubt that this book was written by the same person as he who recounted the history of daniel and ezra, and who wrote nehemiah, [endnote ], sometimes called the second book of ezra. ( ) we may, then, affirm that all these books are from one hand; but we have no clue whatever to the personality of the author. ( ) however, in order to determine whence he, whoever he was, had gained a knowledge of the histories which he had, perchance, in great measure himself written, we may remark that the governors or chiefs of the jews, after the restoration of the temple, kept scribes or historiographers, who wrote annals or chronicles of them. ( ) the chronicles of the kings are often quoted in the books of kings, but the chronicles of the chiefs and priests are quoted for the first time in nehemiah xii: , and again in macc. xvi: . ( ) this is undoubtedly the book referred to as containing the decree of esther and the acts of mordecai; and which, as we said with aben ezra, is now lost. ( ) from it were taken the whole contents of these four books, for no other authority is quoted by their writer, or is known to us. ( ) that these books were not written by either ezra or nehemiah is plain from nehemiah xii: , where the descendants of the high priest, joshua are traced down to jaddua, the sixth high priest, who went to meet alexander the great, when the persian empire was almost subdued (josephus, "ant." ii. ), or who, according to philo-judaeus, was the sixth and last high priest under the persians. ( ) in the same chapter of nehemiah, verse , this point is clearly brought out: "the levites in the days of eliashib, joiada, and johanan, and jaddua, were recorded chief of the fathers: also the priests, to the reign of darius the persian" - that is to say, in the chronicles; and, i suppose, no one thinks, [endnote ], that the lives of nehemiah and ezra were so prolonged that they outlived fourteen kings of persia. ( ) cyrus was the first who granted the jews permission to rebuild their temple: the period between his time and darius, fourteenth and last king of persia, extends over years. ( ) i have, therefore, no doubt that these books were written after judas maccabaeus had restored the worship in the temple, for at that time false books of daniel, ezra, and esther were published by evil-disposed persons, who were almost certainly sadducees, for the writings were never recognized by the pharisees, so far as i am aware; and, although certain myths in the fourth book of ezra are repeated in the talmud, they must not be set down to the pharisees, for all but the most ignorant admit that they have been added by some trifler: in fact, i think, someone must have made such additions with a view to casting ridicule on all the traditions of the sect. ( ) perhaps these four books were written out and published at the time i have mentioned with a view to showing the people that the prophecies of daniel had been fulfilled, and thus kindling their piety, and awakening a hope of future deliverance in the midst of their misfortunes. ( ) in spite of their recent origin, the books before us contain many errors, due, i suppose, to the haste with which they were written. ( ) marginal readings, such as i have mentioned in the last chapter, are found here as elsewhere, and in even greater abundance; there are, moreover, certain passages which can only be accounted for by supposing some such cause as hurry. ( ) however, before calling attention to the marginal readings, i will remark that, if the pharisees are right in supposing them to have been ancient, and the work of the original scribes, we must perforce admit that these scribes (if there were more than one) set them down because they found that the text from which they were copying was inaccurate, and did yet not venture to alter what was written by their predecessors and superiors. ( ) i need not again go into the subject at length, and will, therefore, proceed to mention some discrepancies not noticed in the margin. ( ) i. some error has crept into the text of the second chapter of ezra, for in verse we are told that the total of all those mentioned in the rest of the chapter amounts to , ; but, when we come to add up the several items we get as result only , . ( ) there must, therefore, be an error, either in the total, or in the details. ( ) the total is probably correct, for it would most likely be well known to all as a noteworthy thing; but with the details, the case would be different. ( ) if, then, any error had crept into the total, it would at once have been remarked, and easily corrected. ( ) this view is confirmed by nehemiah vii., where this chapter of ezra is mentioned, and a total is given in plain correspondence thereto; but the details are altogether different - some are larger, and some less, than those in ezra, and altogether they amount to , . ( ) we may, therefore, conclude that both in ezra and in nehemiah the details are erroneously given. ( ) the commentators who attempt to harmonize these evident contradictions draw on their imagination, each to the best of his ability; and while professing adoration for each letter and word of scripture, only succeed in holding up the sacred writers to ridicule, as though they knew not how to write or relate a plain narrative. ( ) such persons effect nothing but to render the clearness of scripture obscure. ( ) if the bible could everywhere be interpreted after their fashion, there would be no such thing as a rational statement of which the meaning could be relied on. ( ) however, there is no need to dwell on the subject; only i am convinced that if any historian were to attempt to imitate the proceedings freely attributed to the writers of the bible, the commentators would cover him with contempt. ( ) if it be blasphemy to assert that there are any errors in scripture, what name shall we apply to those who foist into it their own fancies, who degrade the sacred writers till they seem to write confused nonsense, and who deny the plainest and most evident meanings? ( ) what in the whole bible can be plainer than the fact that ezra and his companions, in the second chapter of the book attributed to him, have given in detail the reckoning of all the hebrews who set out with them for jerusalem? ( ) this is proved by the reckoning being given, not only of those who told their lineage, but also of those who were unable to do so. ( ) is it not equally clear from nehemiah vii: , that the writer merely there copies the list given in ezra? ( ) those, therefore, who explain these pas sages otherwise, deny the plain meaning of scripture - nay, they deny scripture itself. ( ) they think it pious to reconcile one passage of scripture with another - a pretty piety, forsooth, which accommodates the clear passages to the obscure, the correct to the faulty, the sound to the corrupt. ( ) far be it from me to call such commentators blasphemers, if their motives be pure: for to err is human. but i return to my subject. ( ) besides these errors in numerical details, there are others in the genealogies, in the history, and, i fear also in the prophecies. ( ) the prophecy of jeremiah (chap. xxii.), concerning jechoniah, evidently does not agree with his history, as given in i chronicles iii: - , and especially with the last words of the chapter, nor do i see how the prophecy, "thou shalt die in peace," can be applied to zedekiah, whose eyes were dug out after his sons had been slain before him. ( ) if prophecies are to be interpreted by their issue, we must make a change of name, and read jechoniah for zedekiah, and vice versa ( ) this, however, would be too paradoxical a proceeding; so i prefer to leave the matter unexplained, especially as the error, if error there be, must be set down to the historian, and not to any fault in the authorities. ( ) other difficulties i will not touch upon, as i should only weary the reader, and, moreover, be repeating the remarks of other writers. ( ) for r. selomo, in face of the manifest contradiction in the above-mentioned genealogies, is compelled to break forth into these words (see his commentary on chron. viii.): "ezra (whom he supposes to be the author of the book of chronicles) gives different names and a different genealogy to the sons of benjamin from those which we find in genesis, and describes most of the levites differently from joshua, because he found original discrepancies." ( ) and, again, a little later: "the genealogy of gibeon and others is described twice in different ways, from different tables of each genealogy, and in writing them down ezra adopted the version given in the majority of the texts, and when the authority was equal he gave both." ( ) thus granting that these books were compiled from sources originally incorrect and uncertain. ( ) in fact the commentators, in seeking to harmonize difficulties, generally do no more than indicate their causes: for i suppose no sane person supposes that the sacred historians deliberately wrote with the object of appearing to contradict themselves freely. ( ) perhaps i shall be told that i am overthrowing the authority of scripture, for that, according to me, anyone may suspect it of error in any passage; but, on the contrary, i have shown that my object has been to prevent the clear and uncorrupted passages being accommodated to and corrupted by the faulty ones; neither does the fact that some passages are corrupt warrant us in suspecting all. ( ) no book ever was completely free from faults, yet i would ask, who suspects all books to be everywhere faulty? ( ) surely no one, especially when the phraseology is clear and the intention of the author plain. ( ) i have now finished the task i set myself with respect to the books of the old testament. ( ) we may easily conclude from what has been said, that before the time of the maccabees there was no canon of sacred books, [endnote ], but that those which we now possess were selected from a multitude of others at the period of the restoration of the temple by the pharisees (who also instituted the set form of prayers), who are alone responsible for their acceptance. ( ) those, therefore, who would demonstrate the authority of holy scripture, are bound to show the authority of each separate book; it is not enough to prove the divine origin of a single book in order to infer the divine origin of the rest. ( ) in that case we should have to assume that the council of pharisees was, in its choice of books, infallible, and this could never be proved. ( ) i am led to assert that the pharisees alone selected the books of the old testament, and inserted them in the canon, from the fact that in daniel ii. is proclaimed the doctrine of the resurrection, which the sadducees denied; and, furthermore, the pharisees plainly assert in the talmud that they so selected them. ( ) for in the treatise of sabbathus, chapter ii., folio , page , it is written: r. jehuda, surnamed rabbi, reports that the experts wished to conceal the book of ecclesiastes because they found therein words opposed to the law (that is, to the book of the law of moses). ( ) why did they not hide it? ( ) "because it begins in accordance with the law, and ends according to the law;" and a little further on we read: "they sought also to conceal the book of proverbs." ( ) and in the first chapter of the same treatise, fol. , page : "verily, name one man for good, even he who was called neghunja, the son of hezekiah: for, save for him, the book of ezekiel would been concealed, because it agreed not with the words of the law." ( ) it is thus abundantly clear that men expert in the law summoned a council to decide which books should be received into the canon, and which excluded. ( ) if any man, therefore, wishes to be certified as to the authority of all the books, let him call a fresh council, and ask every member his reasons. ( ) the time has now come for examining in the same manner the books in the new testament; but as i learn that the task has been already performed by men highly skilled in science and languages, and as i do not myself possess a knowledge of greek sufficiently exact for the task; lastly, as we have lost the originals of those books which were written in hebrew, i prefer to decline the undertaking. ( ) however, i will touch on those points which have most bearing on my subject in the following chapter. end of part . author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise part - chapters vi to x chapter vi. endnote . ( ) we doubt of the existence of god, and consequently of all else, so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of god, but only a confused one. ( ) for as he who knows not rightly the nature of a triangle, knows not that its three angles are equal to two right angles, so he who conceives the divine nature confusedly, does not see that it pertains to the nature of god to exist. ( ) now, to conceive the nature of god clearly and distinctly, it is necessary to pay attention to a certain number of very simple notions, called general notions, and by their help to associate the conceptions which we form of the attributes of the divine nature. ( ) it then, for the first time, becomes clear to us, that god exists necessarily, that he is omnipresent, and that all our conceptions involve in themselves the nature of god and are conceived through it. ( ) lastly, we see that all our adequate ideas are true. ( ) compare on this point the prolegomena to book, "principles of descartes's philosophy set forth geometrically." chapter vii. endnote . ( ) "it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in scripture." ( ) i mean impossible for us who have not the habitual use of the language, and have lost the precise meaning of its phraseology. endnote . ( ) "not in things whereof the understanding can gain a clear and distinct idea, and which are conceivable through themselves." ( ) by things conceivable i mean not only those which are rigidly proved, but also those whereof we are morally certain, and are wont to hear without wonder, though they are incapable of proof. ( ) everyone can see the truth of euclid's propositions before they are proved. ( ) so also the histories of things both future and past which do not surpass human credence, laws, institutions, manners, i call conceivable and clear, though they cannot be proved mathematically. ( ) but hieroglyphics and histories which seem to pass the bounds of belief i call inconceivable; yet even among these last there are many which our method enables us to investigate, and to discover the meaning of their narrator. chapter viii. endnote . ( ) "mount moriah is called the mount of god." ( ) that is by the historian, not by abraham, for he says that the place now called "in the mount of the lord it shall be revealed," was called by abraham, "the lord shall provide." endnote . ( ) "before that territory [idumoea] was conquered by david." ( ) from this time to the reign of jehoram when they again separated from the jewish kingdom ( kings viii: ), the idumaeans had no king, princes appointed by the jews supplied the place of kings ( kings xxii: ), in fact the prince of idumaea is called a king ( kings iii: ). ( ) it may be doubted whether the last of the idumaean kings had begun to reign before the accession of saul, or whether scripture in this chapter of genesis wished to enumerate only such kings as were independent. ( ) it is evidently mere trifling to wish to enrol among hebrew kings the name of moses, who set up a dominion entirely different from a monarchy. chapter ix. endnote . ( ) "with few exceptions." ( ) one of these exceptions is found in kings xviii: , where we read, "thou sayest (but they are but vain words)," the second person being used. ( ) in isaiah xxxvi: , we read "i say (but they are but vain words) i have counsel and strength for war," and in the twenty-second verse of the chapter in kings it is written, "but if ye say," the plural number being used, whereas isaiah gives the singular. ( ) the text in isaiah does not contain the words found in kings xxxii: . ( ) thus there are several cases of various readings where it is impossible to distinguish the best. endnote . ( ) "the expressions in the two passages are so varied." ( ) for instance we read in sam. vii: , "but i have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle." ( ) whereas in chron. xvii: , "but have gone from tent to tent and from one tabernacle to another." ( ) in sam. vii: , we read, "to afflict them," whereas in chron. vii: , we find a different expression. ( ) i could point out other differences still greater, but a single reading of the chapters in question will suffice to make them manifest to all who are neither blind nor devoid of sense. endnote . ( ) "this time cannot refer to what immediately precedes." ( ) it is plain from the context that this passage must allude to the time when joseph was sold by his brethren. ( ) but this is not all. ( ) we may draw the same conclusion from the age of judah, who was than twenty-two years old at most, taking as basis of calculation his own history just narrated. ( ) it follows, indeed, from the last verse of gen. xxx., that judah was born in the tenth of the years of jacob's servitude to laban, and joseph in the fourteenth. ( ) now, as we know that joseph was seventeen years old when sold by his brethren, judah was then not more than twenty-one. ( ) hence, those writers who assert that judah's long absence from his father's house took place before joseph was sold, only seek to delude themselves and to call in question the scriptural authority which they are anxious to protect. endnote . ( ) "dinah was scarcely seven years old when she was violated by schechem." ( ) the opinion held by some that jacob wandered about eight or ten years between mesopotamia and bethel, savours of the ridiculous; if respect for aben ezra, allows me to say so. ( ) for it is clear that jacob had two reasons for haste: first, the desire to see his old parents; secondly, and chiefly to perform, the vow made when he fled from his brother (gen. xxviii: and xxxi: , and xxxv: ). ( ) we read (gen. xxxi: ), that god had commanded him to fulfill his vow, and promised him help for returning to his country. ( ) if these considerations seem conjectures rather than reasons, i will waive the point and admit that jacob, more unfortunate than ulysses, spent eight or ten years or even longer, in this short journey. ( ) at any rate it cannot be denied that benjamin was born in the last year of this wandering, that is by the reckoning of the objectors, when joseph was sixteen or seventeen years old, for jacob left laban seven years after joseph's birth. ( ) now from the seventeenth year of joseph's age till the patriarch went into egypt, not more than twenty-two years elapsed, as we have shown in this chapter. ( ) consequently benjamin, at the time of the journey to egypt, was twenty-three or twenty- four at the most. ( ) he would therefore have been a grandfather in the flower of his age (gen. xlvi: , cf. numb. xxvi: , , and chron. viii: ), for it is certain that bela, benjamin's eldest son, had at that time, two sons, addai and naa-man. ( ) this is just as absurd as the statement that dinah was violated at the age of seven, not to mention other impossibilities which would result from the truth of the narrative. ( ) thus we see that unskillful endeavours to solve difficulties, only raise fresh ones, and make confusion worse confounded. endnote . ( ) "othniel, son of kenag, was judge for forty years." ( ) rabbi levi ben gerson and others believe that these forty years which the bible says were passed in freedom, should be counted from the death of joshua, and consequently include the eight years during which the people were subject to kushan rishathaim, while the following eighteen years must be added on to the eighty years of ehud's and shamgar's judgeships. ( ) in this case it would be necessary to reckon the other years of subjection among those said by the bible to have been passed in freedom. ( ) but the bible expressly notes the number of years of subjection, and the number of years of freedom, and further declares (judges ii: ) that the hebrew state was prosperous during the whole time of the judges. ( ) therefore it is evident that levi ben gerson (certainly a very learned man), and those who follow him, correct rather than interpret the scriptures. ( ) the same fault is committed by those who assert, that scripture, by this general calculation of years, only intended to mark the period of the regular administration of the hebrew state, leaving out the years of anarchy and subjection as periods of misfortune and interregnum. ( ) scripture certainly passes over in silence periods of anarchy, but does not, as they dream, refuse to reckon them or wipe them out of the country's annals. ( ) it is clear that ezra, in kings vi., wished to reckon absolutely all the years since the flight from egypt. ( ) this is so plain, that no one versed in the scriptures can doubt it. ( ) for, without going back to the precise words of the text, we may see that the genealogy of david given at the end of the book of ruth, and i chron. ii., scarcely accounts for so great a number of years. ( ) for nahshon, who was prince of the tribe of judah (numb. vii: ), two years after the exodus, died in the desert, and his son salmon passed the jordan with joshua. ( ) now this salmon, according to the genealogy, was david's great-grandfather. ( ) deducting, then, from the total of years, four years for solomon's reign, seventy for david's life, and forty for the time passed in the desert, we find that david was born years after the passage of the jordan. ( ) hence we must believe that david's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather begat children when they were ninety years old. endnote . ( ) "samson was judge for twenty years." ( ) samson was born after the hebrews had fallen under the dominion of the philistines. endnote . ( ) otherwise, they rather correct than explain scripture. endnote . ( ) "kirjath-jearim." kirjath-jearim is also called baale of judah. ( ) hence kimchi and others think that the words baale judah, which i have translated "the people of judah," are the name of a town. ( ) but this is not so, for the word baale is in the plural. ( ) moreover, comparing this text in samuel with i chron. xiii: , we find that david did not rise up and go forth out of baale, but that he went thither. ( ) if the author of the book of samuel had meant to name the place whence david took the ark, he would, if he spoke hebrew correctly, have said, "david rose up, and set forth from baale judah, and took the ark from thence." chapter x. endnote . ( ) "after the restoration of the temple by judas maccaboeus." ( ) this conjecture, if such it be, is founded on the genealogy of king jeconiah, given in chron. iii., which finishes at the sons of elioenai, the thirteenth in direct descent from him: whereon we must observe that jeconiah, before his captivity, had no children; but it is probable that he had two while he was in prison, if we may draw any inference from the names he gave them. ( ) as to his grandchildren, it is evident that they were born after his deliverance, if the names be any guide, for his grandson, pedaiah (a name meaning god hath delivered me), who, according to this chapter, was the father of zerubbabel, was born in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of jeconiah's life, that is thirty-three years before the restoration of liberty to the jews by cyrus. ( ) therefore zerubbabel, to whom cyrus gave the principality of judaea, was thirteen or fourteen years old. ( ) but we need not carry the inquiry so far: we need only read attentively the chapter of chron., already quoted, where (v. , sqq.) mention is made of all the posterity of jeconiah, and compare it with the septuagint version to see clearly that these books were not published, till after maccabaeus had restored the temple, the sceptre no longer belonging to the house of jeconiah. endnote . ( ) "zedekiah should be taken to babylon." ( ) no one could then have suspected that the prophecy of ezekiel contradicted that of jeremiah, but the suspicion occurs to everyone who reads the narrative of josephus. ( ) the event proved that both prophets were in the right. endnote . ( ) "and who wrote nehemiah." ( ) that the greater part of the book of nehemiah was taken from the work composed by the prophet nehemiah himself, follows from the testimony of its author. (see chap. i.). ( ) but it is obvious that the whole of the passage contained between chap. viii. and chap. xii. verse , together with the two last verses of chap. xii., which form a sort of parenthesis to nehemiah's words, were added by the historian himself, who outlived nehemiah. endnote . ( ) "i suppose no one thinks" that ezra was the uncle of the first high priest, named joshua (see ezra vii., and chron. vi: ), and went to jerusalem from babylon with zerubbabel (see nehemiah xii: ). ( ) but it appears that when he saw, that the jews were in a state of anarchy, he returned to babylon, as also did others (nehem. i: ), and remained there till the reign of artaxerxes, when his requests were granted and he went a second time to jerusalem. ( ) nehemiah also went to jerusalem with zerubbabel in the time of cyrus (ezra ii: and , cf. x: , and nehemiah x: ). ( ) the version given of the hebrew word, translated "ambassador," is not supported by any authority, while it is certain that fresh names were given to those jews who frequented the court. ( ) thus daniel was named balteshazzar, and zerubbabel sheshbazzar (dan. i: ). ( ) nehemiah was called atirsata, while in virtue of his office he was styled governor, or president. (nehem. v. , xii: .) endnote . ( ) "before the time of the maccabees there was no canon of sacred books." ( ) the synagogue styled "the great" did not begin before the subjugation of asia by the macedonians. ( ) the contention of maimonides, rabbi abraham, ben-david, and others, that the presidents of this synagogue were ezra, daniel, nehemiah, haggai, zechariah, &c., is a pure fiction, resting only on rabbinical tradition. ( ) indeed they assert that the dominion of the persians only lasted thirty-four years, and this is their chief reason for maintaining that the decrees of the "great synagogue," or synod (rejected by the sadducees, but accepted by the pharisees) were ratified by the prophets, who received them from former prophets, and so in direct succession from moses, who received them from god himself. ( ) such is the doctrine which the pharisees maintain with their wonted obstinacy. ( ) enlightened persons, however, who know the reasons for the convoking of councils, or synods, and are no strangers to the differences between pharisees and sadducees, can easily divine the causes which led to the assembling of this great synagogue. ( ) it is very certain that no prophet was there present, and that the decrees of the pharisees, which they style their traditions, derive all their authority from it. end of endnotes to part ii. - chapters vi to x. sentence numbers, shown thus ( ), have been added by volunteer. a theologico-political treatise part - chapters i to v baruch spinoza a theologico-political treatise part - chapters i to v table of contents: preface. origin and consequences of superstition. causes that have led the author to write. course of his investigation. for what readers the treatise is designed. submission of author to the rulers of his country. chapter i - of prophecy. definition of prophecy. distinction between revelation to moses and to the other prophets. between christ and other recipients of revelation. ambiguity of the word "spirit." the different senses in which things may be referred to god. different senses of "spirit of god." prophets perceived revelation by imagination. chapter ii - of prophets. a mistake to suppose that prophecy can give knowledge of phenomena certainty of prophecy based on: ( ) vividness of imagination, ( ) a sign, ( ) goodness of the prophet. variation of prophecy with the temperament and opinions of the individual. chapter iii - of the vocation of the hebrews, and whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to them. happiness of hebrews did not consist in the inferiority of the gentile. nor in philosophic knowledge or virtue. but in their conduct of affairs of state and escape from political dangers. even this distinction did not exist in the time of abraham. testimony from the old testament itself to the share of the gentiles in the law and favour of god. explanation of apparent discrepancy of the epistle to the romans. answer to the arguments for the eternal election of the jews. chapter iv - of the divine law. laws either depend on natural necessity or on human decree. the existence of the latter not inconsistent with the former class of laws. divine law a kind of law founded on human decree: called divine from its object. divine law: ( ) universal; ( ) independent of the truth of any historical narrative; ( ) independent of rites and ceremonies; ( ) its own reward. reason does not present god as a law-giver for men. such a conception a proof of ignorance - in adam - in the israelites - in christians. testimony of the scriptures in favour of reason and the rational view of the divine. chapter v - of the ceremonial law. ceremonial law of the old testament no part of the divine universal law, but partial and temporary. testimony of the prophets themselves to this testimony of the new testament. how the ceremonial law tended to preserve the hebrew kingdom. christian rites on a similar footing. what part of the scripture narratives is one bound to believe? authors endnotes to the treatise. a theologico-political treatise part - chapters i to v preface. ( )men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. ( ) the human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over - confident, and vain. ( ) this as a general fact i suppose everyone knows, though few, i believe, know their own nature; no one can have lived in the world without observing that most people, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. ( ) no plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a lucky or unlucky omen. ( ) anything which excites their astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying the anger of the gods or of the supreme being, and, mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. ( ) signs and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, till one might think nature as mad as themselves, they interpret her so fantastically. ( ) thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from god: upbraiding reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of heaven. ( ) as though god had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! ( ) superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. if anyone desire an example, let him take alexander, who only began superstitiously to seek guidance from seers, when he first learnt to fear fortune in the passes of sysis (curtius, v. ); whereas after he had conquered darius he consulted prophets no more, till a second time frightened by reverses. ( ) when the scythians were provoking a battle, the bactrians had deserted, and he himself was lying sick of his wounds, "he once more turned to superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire the issue of affairs with sacrificed victims." ( ) very numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, clearly showing the fact, that only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril. ( ) i think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject. ( ) the origin of superstition above given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of god, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. ( ) furthermore, we may readily understand how difficult it is, to maintain in the same course men prone to every form of credulity. ( ) for, as the mass of mankind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always best pleased by a novelty which has not yet proved illusive. ( ) this element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. ): "the mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. ( ) immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people--a system which has been brought to great perfection by the turks, for they consider even controversy impious, and so clog men's minds with dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound reason, not even enough to doubt with. ( ) but if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them clown, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but highest honour to risk their blood and their lives for the vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted. ( ) wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such devices as enthralling men's minds with prejudices, forcing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, but to their opponents' hatred and cruelty. ( ) if deeds only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and fast line. ( ) now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone's judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship god as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, i have believed that i should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure. ( ) such is the chief conclusion i seek to establish in this treatise; but, in order to reach it, i must first point out the misconceptions which, like scars of our former bondage, still disfigure our notion of religion, and must expose the false views about the civil authority which many have most impudently advocated, endeavouring to turn the mind of the people, still prone to heathen superstition, away from its legitimate rulers, and so bring us again into slavery. ( ) as to the order of my treatise i will speak presently, but first i will recount the causes which led me to write. ( ) i have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith. ( ) matters have long since come to such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man christian, turk, jew, or heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a particular sect - as for manner of life, it is in all cases the same. ( ) inquiry into the cause of this anomaly leads me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact, that the ministries of the church are regarded by the masses merely as dignities, her offices as posts of emolument - in short, popular religion may be summed up as respect for ecclesiastics. ( ) the spread of this misconception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing god's religion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. ( ) every church became a theatre, where orators, instead of church teachers, harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation. ( ) this state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the deity), and that faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices - aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! ( ) piety, great god! and religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, i say, these of all men, are thought, lie most horrible! to possess light from on high. ( ) verily, if they had but one spark of light from on high, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship god more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents' souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion. ( ) furthermore, if any divine light were in them, it would appear from their doctrine. ( ) i grant that they are never tired of professing their wonder at the profound mysteries of holy writ; still i cannot discover that they teach anything but speculations of platonists and aristotelians, to which (in order to save their credit for christianity) they have made holy writ conform; not content to rave with the greeks themselves, they want to make the prophets rave also; showing conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught a glimpse of scripture's divine nature. ( ) the very vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly attests, that their belief in the bible is a formal assent rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true and divine. ( ) such a doctrine should be reached only after strict scrutiny and thorough comprehension of the sacred books (which would teach it much better, for they stand in need no human factions), and not be set up on the threshold, as it were, of inquiry. ( ) as i pondered over the facts that the light of reason is not only despised, but by many even execrated as a source of impiety, that human commentaries are accepted as divine records, and that credulity is extolled as faith; as i marked the fierce controversies of philosophers raging in church and state, the source of bitter hatred and dissension, the ready instruments of sedition and other ills innumerable, i determined to examine the bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which i do not find clearly therein set down. ( ) with these precautions i constructed a method of scriptural interpretation, and thus equipped proceeded to inquire - what is prophecy? ( ) in what sense did god reveal himself to the prophets, and why were these particular men - chosen by him? ( ) was it on account of the sublimity of their thoughts about the deity and nature, or was it solely on account of their piety? ( ) these questions being answered, i was easily able to conclude, that the authority of the prophets has weight only in matters of morality, and that their speculative doctrines affect us little. ( ) next i inquired, why the hebrews were called god's chosen people, and discovering that it was only because god had chosen for them a certain strip of territory, where they might live peaceably and at ease, i learnt that the law revealed by god to moses was merely the law of the individual hebrew state, therefore that it was binding on none but hebrews, and not even on hebrews after the downfall of their nation. ( ) further, in order to ascertain, whether it could be concluded from scripture, that the human understanding standing is naturally corrupt, i inquired whether the universal religion, the divine law revealed through the prophets and apostles to the whole human race, differs from that which is taught by the light of natural reason, whether miracles can take place in violation of the laws of nature, and if so, whether they imply the existence of god more surely and clearly than events, which we understand plainly and distinctly through their immediate natural causes. ( ) now, as in the whole course of my investigation i found nothing taught expressly by scripture, which does not agree with our understanding, or which is repugnant thereto, and as i saw that the prophets taught nothing, which is not very simple and easily to be grasped by all, and further, that they clothed their leaching in the style, and confirmed it with the reasons, which would most deeply move the mind of the masses to devotion towards god, i became thoroughly convinced, that the bible leaves reason absolutely free, that it has nothing in common with philosophy, in fact, that revelation and philosophy stand on different footings. in order to set this forth categorically and exhaust the whole question, i point out the way in which the bible should be interpreted, and show that all of spiritual questions should be sought from it alone, and not from the objects of ordinary knowledge. ( ) thence i pass on to indicate the false notions, which have from the fact that the multitude - ever prone to superstition, and caring more for the shreds of antiquity for eternal truths - pays homage to the books of the bible, rather than to the word of god. ( ) i show that the word of god has not been revealed as a certain number of books, was displayed to the prophets as a simple idea of the mind, namely, obedience to god in singleness of heart, and in the practice of justice and charity; and i further point out, that this doctrine is set forth in scripture in accordance with the opinions and understandings of those, among whom the apostles and prophets preached, to the end that men might receive it willingly, and with their whole heart. ( ) having thus laid bare the bases of belief, i draw the conclusion that revelation has obedience for its sole object, therefore, in purpose no less than in foundation and method, stands entirely aloof from ordinary knowledge; each has its separate province, neither can be called the handmaid of the other. ( ) furthermore, as men's habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, i conclude, in accordance with what has gone before, that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey god freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity. ( ) having thus drawn attention to the liberty conceded to everyone by the revealed law of god, i pass on to another part of my subject, and prove that this same liberty can and should be accorded with safety to the state and the magisterial authority - in fact, that it cannot be withheld without great danger to peace and detriment to the community. ( ) in order to establish my point, i start from the natural rights of the individual, which are co-extensive with his desires and power, and from the fact that no one is bound to live as another pleases, but is the guardian of his own liberty. ( ) i show that these rights can only be transferred to those whom we depute to defend us, who acquire with the duties of defence the power of ordering our lives, and i thence infer that rulers possess rights only limited by their power, that they are the sole guardians of justice and liberty, and that their subjects should act in all things as they dictate: nevertheless, since no one can so utterly abdicate his own power of self-defence as to cease to be a man, i conclude that no one can be deprived of his natural rights absolutely, but that subjects, either by tacit agreement, or by social contract, retain a certain number, which cannot be taken from them without great danger to the state. ( ) from these considerations i pass on to the hebrew state, which i describe at some length, in order to trace the manner in which religion acquired the force of law, and to touch on other noteworthy points. ( ) i then prove, that the holders of sovereign power are the depositories and interpreters of religious no less than of civil ordinances, and that they alone have the right to decide what is just or unjust, pious or impious; lastly, i conclude by showing, that they best retain this right and secure safety to their state by allowing every man to think what he likes, and say what he thinks. ( ) such, philosophical reader, are the questions i submit to your notice, counting on your approval, for the subject matter of the whole book and of the several chapters is important and profitable. ( ) i would say more, but i do not want my preface to extend to a volume, especially as i know that its leading propositions are to philosophers but common places. ( ) to the rest of mankind i care not to commend my treatise, for i cannot expect that it contains anything to please them: i know how deeply rooted are the prejudices embraced under the name of religion; i am aware that in the mind of the masses superstition is no less deeply rooted than fear; i recognize that their constancy is mere obstinacy, and that they are led to praise or blame by impulse rather than reason. ( ) therefore the multitude, and those of like passions with the multitude, i ask not to read my book; nay, i would rather that they should utterly neglect it, than that they should misinterpret it after their wont. ( ) they would gain no good themselves, and might prove a stumbling-block to others, whose philosophy is hampered by the belief that reason is a mere handmaid to theology, and whom i seek in this work especially to benefit. ( ) but as there will be many who have neither the leisure, nor, perhaps, the inclination to read through all i have written, i feel bound here, as at the end of my treatise, to declare that i have written nothing, which i do not most willingly submit to the examination and judgment of my country's rulers, and that i am ready to retract anything, which they shall decide to be repugnant to the laws or prejudicial to the public good. ( ) i know that i am a man and, as a man, liable to error, but against error i have taken scrupulous care, and striven to keep in entire accordance with the laws of my country, with loyalty, and with morality. chapter i. - of prophecy ( ) prophecy, or revelation is sure knowledge revealed by god to man. ( ) a prophet is one who interprets the revelations of god {insights} to those who are unable to attain to sure knowledge of the matters revealed, and therefore can only apprehend them by simple faith. ( ) the hebrew word for prophet is "naw-vee'", strong: , [endnote ] i.e. speaker or interpreter, but in scripture its meaning is restricted to interpreter of god, as we may learn from exodus vii: , where god says to moses, "see, i have made thee a god to pharaoh, and aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet;" implying that, since in interpreting moses' words to pharaoh, aaron acted the part of a prophet, moses would be to pharaoh as a god, or in the attitude of a god. ( ) prophets i will treat of in the next chapter, and at present consider prophecy. ( ) now it is evident, from the definition above given, that prophecy really includes ordinary knowledge; for the knowledge which we acquire by our natural faculties depends on knowledge of god and his eternal laws; but ordinary knowledge is common to all men as men, and rests on foundations which all share, whereas the multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. ( ) nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called divine, for god's nature, in so far as we share therein, and god's laws, dictate it to us; nor does it suffer from that to which we give the preeminence, except in so far as the latter transcends its limits and cannot be accounted for by natural laws taken in themselves. ( ) in respect to the certainty it involves, and the source from which it is derived, i.e. god, ordinary, knowledge is no whit inferior to prophetic, unless indeed we believe, or rather dream, that the prophets had human bodies but superhuman minds, and therefore that their sensations and consciousness were entirely different from our own. ( ) but, although ordinary knowledge is divine, its professors cannot be called prophets [endnote ], for they teach what the rest of mankind could perceive and apprehend, not merely by simple faith, but as surely and honourably as themselves. ( ) seeing then that our mind subjectively contains in itself and partakes of the nature of god, and solely from this cause is enabled to form notions explaining natural phenomena and inculcating morality, it follows that we may rightly assert the nature of the human mind (in so far as it is thus conceived) to be a primary cause of divine revelation. ( ) all that we clearly and distinctly understand is dictated to us, as i have just pointed out, by the idea and nature of god; not indeed through words, but in a way far more excellent and agreeing perfectly with the nature of the mind, as all who have enjoyed intellectual certainty will doubtless attest. ( ) here, however, my chief purpose is to speak of matters having reference to scripture, so these few words on the light of reason will suffice. ( ) i will now pass on to, and treat more fully, the other ways and means by which god makes revelations to mankind, both of that which transcends ordinary knowledge, and of that within its scope; for there is no reason why god should not employ other means to communicate what we know already by the power of reason. ( ) our conclusions on the subject must be drawn solely from scripture; for what can we affirm about matters transcending our knowledge except what is told us by the words or writings of prophets? ( ) and since there are, so far as i know, no prophets now alive, we have no alternative but to read the books of prophets departed, taking care the while not to reason from metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which they do not themselves distinctly state. ( ) i must further premise that the jews never make any mention or account of secondary, or particular causes, but in a spirit of religion, piety, and what is commonly called godliness, refer all things directly to the deity. ( ) for instance if they make money by a transaction, they say god gave it to them; if they desire anything, they say god has disposed their hearts towards it; if they think anything, they say god told them. ( ) hence we must not suppose that everything is prophecy or revelation which is described in scripture as told by god to anyone, but only such things as are expressly announced as prophecy or revelation, or are plainly pointed to as such by the context. ( ) a perusal of the sacred books will show us that all god's revelations to the prophets were made through words or appearances, or a combination of the two. ( ) these words and appearances were of two kinds; .- real when external to the mind of the prophet who heard or saw them, .- imaginary when the imagination of the prophet was in a state which led him distinctly to suppose that he heard or saw them. ( ) with a real voice god revealed to moses the laws which he wished to be transmitted to the hebrews, as we may see from exodus xxv: , where god says, "and there i will meet with thee and i will commune with thee from the mercy seat which is between the cherubim." ( ) some sort of real voice must necessarily have been employed, for moses found god ready to commune with him at any time. this, as i shall shortly show, is the only instance of a real voice. ( ) we might, perhaps, suppose that the voice with which god called samuel was real, for in sam. iii: , we read, "and the lord appeared again in shiloh, for the lord revealed himself to samuel in shiloh by the word of the lord;" implying that the appearance of the lord consisted in his making himself known to samuel through a voice; in other words, that samuel heard the lord speaking. ( ) but we are compelled to distinguish between the prophecies of moses and those of other prophets, and therefore must decide that this voice was imaginary, a conclusion further supported by the voice's resemblance to the voice of eli, which samuel was in the habit of hearing, and therefore might easily imagine; when thrice called by the lord, samuel supposed it to have been eli. ( ) the voice which abimelech heard was imaginary, for it is written, gen. xx: , "and god said unto him in a dream." ( ) so that the will of god was manifest to him, not in waking, but only, in sleep, that is, when the imagination is most active and uncontrolled. ( ) some of the jews believe that the actual words of the decalogue were not spoken by god, but that the israelites heard a noise only, without any distinct words, and during its continuance apprehended the ten commandments by pure intuition; to this opinion i myself once inclined, seeing that the words of the decalogue in exodus are different from the words of the decalogue in deuteronomy, for the discrepancy seemed to imply (since god only spoke once) that the ten commandments were not intended to convey the actual words of the lord, but only his meaning. ( ) however, unless we would do violence to scripture, we must certainly admit that the israelites heard a real voice, for scripture expressly says, deut. v: , "god spake with you face to face," i.e. as two men ordinarily interchange ideas through the instrumentality of their two bodies; and therefore it seems more consonant with holy writ to suppose that god really did create a voice of some kind with which the decalogue was revealed. ( ) the discrepancy of the two versions is treated of in chap. viii. ( ) yet not even thus is all difficulty removed, for it seems scarcely reasonable to affirm that a created thing, depending on god in the same manner as other created things, would be able to express or explain the nature of god either verbally or really by means of its individual organism: for instance, by declaring in the first person, "i am the lord your god." ( ) certainly when anyone says with his mouth, "i understand," we do not attribute the understanding to the mouth, but to the mind of the speaker; yet this is because the mouth is the natural organ of a man speaking, and the hearer, knowing what understanding is, easily comprehends, by a comparison with himself, that the speaker's mind is meant; but if we knew nothing of god beyond the mere name and wished to commune with him, and be assured of his existence, i fail to see how our wish would be satisfied by the declaration of a created thing (depending on god neither more nor less than ourselves), "i am the lord." ( ) if god contorted the lips of moses, or, i will not say moses, but some beast, till they pronounced the words, "i am the lord," should we apprehend the lord's existence therefrom? ( ) scripture seems clearly to point to the belief that god spoke himself, having descended from heaven to mount sinai for the purpose - and not only that the israelites heard him speaking, but that their chief men beheld him (ex:xxiv.) ( ) further the law of moses, which might neither be added to nor curtailed, and which was set up as a national standard of right, nowhere prescribed the belief that god is without body, or even without form or figure, but only ordained that the jews should believe in his existence and worship him alone: it forbade them to invent or fashion any likeness of the deity, but this was to insure purity of service; because, never having seen god, they could not by means of images recall the likeness of god, but only the likeness of some created thing which might thus gradually take the place of god as the object of their adoration. ( ) nevertheless, the bible clearly implies that god has a form, and that moses when he heard god speaking was permitted to behold it, or at least its hinder parts. ( ) doubtless some mystery lurks in this question which we will discuss more fully below. ( ) for the present i will call attention to the passages in scripture indicating the means by which god has revealed his laws to man. ( ) revelation may be through figures only, as in i chron:xxii., where god displays his anger to david by means of an angel bearing a sword, and also in the story of balaam. ( ) maimonides and others do indeed maintain that these and every other instance of angelic apparitions (e.g. to manoah and to abraham offering up isaac) occurred during sleep, for that no one with his eyes open ever could see an angel, but this is mere nonsense. ( ) the sole object of such commentators seems to be to extort from scripture confirmations of aristotelian quibbles and their own inventions, a proceeding which i regard as the acme of absurdity. ( ) in figures, not real but existing only in the prophet's imagination, god revealed to joseph his future lordship, and in words and figures he revealed to joshua that he would fight for the hebrews, causing to appear an angel, as it were the captain of the lord's host, bearing a sword, and by this means communicating verbally. ( ) the forsaking of israel by providence was portrayed to isaiah by a vision of the lord, the thrice holy, sitting on a very lofty throne, and the hebrews, stained with the mire of their sins, sunk as it were in uncleanness, and thus as far as possible distant from god. ( ) the wretchedness of the people at the time was thus revealed, while future calamities were foretold in words. i could cite from holy writ many similar examples, but i think they are sufficiently well known already. ( ) however, we get a still more clear confirmation of our position in num xii: , , as follows: "if there be any prophet among you, i the lord will make myself known unto him in a vision" (i.e. by appearances and signs, for god says of the prophecy of moses that it was a vision without signs), "and will speak unto him in a dream" (i.e. not with actual words and an actual voice). ( ) "my servant moses is not so; with him will i speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the lord he shall behold," i.e. looking on me as a friend and not afraid, he speaks with me (cf. ex xxxiii: ). ( ) this makes it indisputable that the other prophets did not hear a real voice, and we gather as much from deut. xxiv: : "and there arose not a prophet since in israel like unto moses whom the lord knew face to face," which must mean that the lord spoke with none other; for not even moses saw the lord's face. ( ) these are the only media of communication between god and man which i find mentioned in scripture, and therefore the only ones which may be supposed or invented. ( ) we may be able quite to comprehend that god can communicate immediately with man, for without the intervention of bodily means he communicates to our minds his essence; still, a man who can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the foundations of our natural knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do i believe that any have been so endowed save christ. ( ) to him the ordinances of god leading men to salvation were revealed directly without words or visions, so that god manifested himself to the apostles through the mind of christ as he formerly did to moses through the supernatural voice. ( ) in this sense the voice of christ, like the voice which moses heard, may be called the voice of god, and it may be said that the wisdom of god (i.e. wisdom more than human) took upon itself in christ human nature, and that christ was the way of salvation. ( ) i must at this juncture declare that those doctrines which certain churches put forward concerning christ, i neither affirm nor deny, for i freely confess that i do not understand them. ( ) what i have just stated i gather from scripture, where i never read that god appeared to christ, or spoke to christ, but that god was revealed to the apostles through christ; that christ was the way of life, and that the old law was given through an angel, and not immediately by god; whence it follows that if moses spoke with god face to face as a man speaks with his friend (i.e. by means of their two bodies) christ communed with god mind to mind. ( ) thus we may conclude that no one except christ received the revelations of god without the aid of imagination, whether in words or vision. ( ) therefore the power of prophecy implies not a peculiarly perfect mind, but a peculiarly vivid imagination, as i will show more clearly in the next chapter. ( ) we will now inquire what is meant in the bible by the spirit of god breathed into the prophets, or by the prophets speaking with the spirit of god; to that end we must determine the exact signification of the hebrew word roo'-akh, strong: , commonly translated spirit. ( ) the word roo'-akh, strong: , literally means a wind, e..q. the south wind, but it is frequently employed in other derivative significations. it is used as equivalent to, ( ) ( .) breath: "neither is there any spirit in his mouth," ps. cxxxv: . ( ) ( .) life, or breathing: "and his spirit returned to him" sam. xxx: ; i.e. he breathed again. ( ) ( .) courage and strength: "neither did there remain any more spirit in any man," josh. ii: ; "and the spirit entered into me, and made me stand on my feet," ezek. ii: . ( ) ( .) virtue and fitness: "days should speak, and multitudes of years should teach wisdom; but there is a spirit in man," job xxxii: ; i.e. wisdom is not always found among old men for i now discover that it depends on individual virtue and capacity. so, "a man in whom is the spirit," numbers xxvii: . ( ) ( .) habit of mind: "because he had another spirit with him," numbers xiv: ; i.e. another habit of mind. "behold i will pour out my spirit unto you," prov. i: . ( ) ( .) will, purpose, desire, impulse: "whither the spirit was to go, they went," ezek. : ; "that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit," is. xxx: ; "for the lord hath poured out on you the spirit of deep sleep," is. xxix: ; "then was their spirit softened," judges viii: ; "he that ruleth his spirit, is better than he that taketh a city," prov. xvi: ; "he that hath no ru over his own spirit," prov. xxv: ; "your spirit as fire shall devour you," isaiah xxxiii: . from the meaning of disposition we get - ( ) ( .) passions and faculties. a lofty spirit means pride, a lowly spirit humility, an evil spirit hatred and melancholy. so, too, the expressions spirits of jealousy, fornication, wisdom, counsel, bravery, stand for a jealous, lascivious, wise, prudent, or brave mind (for we hebrews use substantives in preference to adjectives), or these various qualities. ( ) ( .) the mind itself, or the life: "yea, they have all one spirit," eccles. iii: "the spirit shall return to god who gave it." ( ) ( .) the quarters of the world (from the winds which blow thence), or even the side of anything turned towards a particular quarter - ezek. xxxvii: ; xlii: , , , , &c. ( ) i have already alluded to the way in which things are referred to god, and said to be of god. ( ) ( .) as belonging to his nature, and being, as it were, part of him; e.g. the power of god, the eyes of god. ( ) ( .) as under his dominion, and depending on his pleasure; thus the heavens are called the heavens of the lord, as being his chariot and habitation. so nebuchadnezzar is called the servant of god, assyria the scourge of god, &c. ( ) ( .) as dedicated to him, e.g. the temple of god, a nazarene of god, the bread of god. ( ) ( .) as revealed through the prophets and not through our natural faculties. in this sense the mosaic law is called the law of god. ( ) ( .) as being in the superlative degree. very high mountains are styled the mountains of god, a very deep sleep, the sleep of god, &c. in this sense we must explain amos iv: : "i have overthrown you as the overthrow of the lord came upon sodom and gomorrah," i.e. that memorable overthrow, for since god himself is the speaker, the passage cannot well be taken otherwise. the wisdom of solomon is called the wisdom of god, or extraordinary. the size of the cedars of lebanon is alluded to in the psalmist's expression, "the cedars of the lord." ( ) similarly, if the jews were at a loss to understand any phenomenon, or were ignorant of its cause, they referred it to god. ( ) thus a storm was termed the chiding of god, thunder and lightning the arrows of god, for it was thought that god kept the winds confined in caves, his treasuries; thus differing merely in name from the greek wind-god eolus. ( ) in like manner miracles were called works of god, as being especially marvellous; though in reality, of course, all natural events are the works of god, and take place solely by his power. ( ) the psalmist calls the miracles in egypt the works of god, because the hebrews found in them a way of safety which they had not looked for, and therefore especially marvelled at. ( ) as, then, unusual natural phenomena are called works of god, and trees of unusual size are called trees of god, we cannot wonder that very strong and tall men, though impious robbers and whoremongers, are in genesis called sons of god. ( ) this reference of things wonderful to god was not peculiar to the jews. ( ) pharaoh, on hearing the interpretation of his dream, exclaimed that the mind of the gods was in joseph. ( ) nebuchadnezzar told daniel that he possessed the mind of the holy gods; so also in latin anything well made is often said to be wrought with divine hands, which is equivalent to the hebrew phrase, wrought with the hand of god. ( ) we can now very easily understand and explain those passages of scripture which speak of the spirit of god. ( ) in some places the expression merely means a very strong, dry, and deadly wind, as in isaiah xl: , "the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the lord bloweth upon it." ( ) similarly in gen. i: : "the spirit of the lord moved over the face of the waters." ( ) at other times it is used as equivalent to a high courage, thus the spirit of gideon and of samson is called the spirit of the lord, as being very bold, and prepared for any emergency. ( ) any unusual virtue or power is called the spirit or virtue of the lord, ex. xxxi: : "i will fill him (bezaleel) with the spirit of the lord," i.e., as the bible itself explains, with talent above man's usual endowment. ( ) so isa. xi: : "and the spirit of the lord shall rest upon him," is explained afterwards in the text to mean the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might. ( ) the melancholy of saul is called the melancholy of the lord, or a very deep melancholy, the persons who applied the term showing that they understood by it nothing supernatural, in that they sent for a musician to assuage it by harp-playing. ( ) again, the "spirit of the lord" is used as equivalent to the mind of man, for instance, job xxvii: : "and the spirit of the lord in my nostrils," the allusion being to gen. ii: : "and god breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life." ( ) ezekiel also, prophesying to the dead, says (xxvii: ), "and i will give to you my spirit, and ye shall live;" i.e. i will restore you to life. ( ) in job xxxiv: , we read: "if he gather unto himself his spirit and breath;" in gen. vi: : "my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh," i.e. since man acts on the dictates of his body, and not the spirit which i gave him to discern the good, i will let him alone. ( ) so, too, ps. li: : "create in me a clean heart, god, and renew a right spirit within me; cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me." ( ) it was supposed that sin originated only from the body, and that good impulses come from the mind; therefore the psalmist invokes the aid of god against the bodily appetites, but prays that the spirit which the lord, the holy one, had given him might be renewed. ( ) again, inasmuch as the bible, in concession to popular ignorance, describes god as having a mind, a heart, emotions - nay, even a body and breath - the expression spirit of the lord is used for god's mind, disposition, emotion, strength, or breath. ( ) thus, isa. xl: : "who hath disposed the spirit of the lord?" i.e. who, save himself, hath caused the mind of the lord to will anything,? and isa. lxiii: : "but they rebelled, and vexed the holy spirit." ( ) the phrase comes to be used of the law of moses, which in a sense expounds god's will, is. lxiii. , "where is he that put his holy spirit within him?" meaning, as we clearly gather from the context, the law of moses. ( ) nehemiah, speaking of the giving of the law, says, i: , "thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them." ( ) this is referred to in deut. iv: , "this is your wisdom and understanding," and in ps. cxliii: , "thy good spirit will lead me into the land of uprightness." ( ) the spirit of the lord may mean the breath of the lord, for breath, no less than a mind, a heart, and a body are attributed to god in scripture, as in ps. xxxiii: . ( ) hence it gets to mean the power, strength, or faculty of god, as in job xxxiii: , "the spirit of the lord made me," i.e. the power, or, if you prefer, the decree of the lord. ( ) so the psalmist in poetic language declares, xxxiii: , "by the word of the lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth," i.e. by a mandate issued, as it were, in one breath. ( ) also ps. cxxxix: , "wither shall i go from thy spirit, or whither shall i flee from thy presence?" i.e. whither shall i go so as to be beyond thy power and thy presence? ( ) lastly, the spirit of the lord is used in scripture to express the emotions of god, e.g. his kindness and mercy, micah ii: , "is the spirit [i.e. the mercy] of the lord straitened? ( ) are these cruelties his doings?" ( ) zech. iv: , "not by might or by power, but my spirit [i.e. mercy], saith the lord of hosts." ( ) the twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of the same prophet must, i think, be interpreted in like manner: "yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit [i.e. in his mercy] by the former prophets." ( ) so also haggai ii: : "so my spirit remaineth among you: fear not." ( ) the passage in isaiah xlviii: , "and now the lord and his spirit hath sent me," may be taken to refer to god's mercy or his revealed law; for the prophet says, "from the beginning" (i.e. from the time when i first came to you, to preach god's anger and his sentence forth against you) "i spoke not in secret; from the time that it was, there am i," and now i am sent by the mercy of god as a joyful messenger to preach your restoration. ( ) or we may understand him to mean by the revealed law that he had before come to warn them by the command of the law (levit. xix: ) in the same manner under the same conditions as moses had warned them, that now, like moses, he ends by preaching their restoration. ( ) but the first explanation seems to me the best. ( ) returning, then, to the main object of our discussion, we find that the scriptural phrases, "the spirit of the lord was upon a prophet," "the lord breathed his spirit into men," "men were filled with the spirit of god, with the holy spirit," &c., are quite clear to us, and mean that prophets were endowed with a peculiar and extraordinary power, and devoted themselves to piety with especial constancy( ); that thus they perceived the mind or the thought of god, for we have shown that god's spirit signifies in hebrew god's mind or thought, and that the law which shows his mind and thought is called his spirit; hence that the imagination of the prophets, inasmuch as through it were revealed the decrees of god, may equally be called the mind of god, and the prophets be said to have possessed the mind of god. ( ) on our minds also the mind of god and his eternal thoughts are impressed; but this being the same for all men is less taken into account, especially by the hebrews, who claimed a pre-eminence, and despised other men and other men's knowledge. ( ) lastly, the prophets were said to possess the spirit of god because men knew not the cause of prophetic knowledge, and in their wonder referred it with other marvels directly to the deity, styling it divine knowledge. ( ) we need no longer scruple to affirm that the prophets only perceived god's revelation by the aid of imagination, that is, by words and figures either real or imaginary. ( ) we find no other means mentioned in scripture, and therefore must not invent any. ( ) as to the particular law of nature by which the communications took place, i confess my ignorance. ( ) i might, indeed, say as others do, that they took place by the power of god; but this would be mere trifling, and no better than explaining some unique specimen by a transcendental term. ( ) everything takes place by the power of god. ( ) nature herself is the power of god under another name, and our ignorance of the power of god is co-extensive with our ignorance of nature. ( ) it is absolute folly, therefore, to ascribe an event to the power of god when we know not its natural cause, which is the power of god. ( ) however, we are not now inquiring into the causes of prophetic knowledge. ( ) we are only attempting, as i have said, to examine the scriptural documents, and to draw our conclusions from them as from ultimate natural facts; the causes of the documents do not concern us. ( ) as the prophets perceived the revelations of god by the aid of imagination, they could indisputably perceive much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect, for many more ideas can be constructed from words and figures than from the principles and notions on which the whole fabric of reasoned knowledge is reared. ( ) thus we have a clue to the fact that the prophets perceived nearly everything in parables and allegories, and clothed spiritual truths in bodily forms, for such is the usual method of imagination. ( ) we need no longer wonder that scripture and the prophets speak so strangely and obscurely of god's spirit or mind (cf. numbers xi: , kings xxii: , &c.), that the lord was seen by micah as sitting, by daniel as an old man clothed in white, by ezekiel as a fire, that the holy spirit appeared to those with christ as a descending dove, to the apostles as fiery tongues, to paul on his conversion as a great light. ( ) all these expressions are plainly in harmony with the current ideas of god and spirits. ( ) inasmuch as imagination is fleeting and inconstant, we find that the power of prophecy did not remain with a prophet for long, nor manifest itself frequently, but was very rare; manifesting itself only in a few men, and in them not often. ( ) we must necessarily inquire how the prophets became assured of the truth of what they perceived by imagination, and not by sure mental laws; but our investigation must be confined to scripture, for the subject is one on which we cannot acquire certain knowledge, and which we cannot explain by the immediate causes. ( ) scripture teaching about the assurance of prophets i will treat of in the next chapter. chapter ii. - of prophets. ( ) it follows from the last chapter that, as i have said, the prophets were endowed with unusually vivid imaginations, and not with unusually, perfect minds. ( ) this conclusion is amply sustained by scripture, for we are told that solomon was the wisest of men, but had no special faculty of prophecy. ( ) heman, calcol, and dara, though men of great talent, were not prophets, whereas uneducated countrymen, nay, even women, such as hagar, abraham's handmaid, were thus gifted. ( ) nor is this contrary to ordinary experience and reason. ( ) men of great imaginative power are less fitted for abstract reasoning, whereas those who excel in intellect and its use keep their imagination more restrained and controlled, holding it in subjection, so to speak, lest it should usurp the place of reason. ( ) thus to suppose that knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena can be gained from the prophetic books, is an utter mistake, which i shall endeavour to expose, as i think philosophy, the age, and the question itself demand. ( ) i care not for the girdings of superstition, for superstition is the bitter enemy, of all true knowledge and true morality. ( ) yes; it has come to this! ( ) men who openly confess that they can form no idea of god, and only know him through created things, of which they know not the causes, can unblushingly, accuse philosophers of atheism. ( ) treating the question methodically, i will show that prophecies varied, not only according to the imagination and physical temperament of the prophet, but also according to his particular opinions; and further that prophecy never rendered the prophet wiser than he was before. ( ) but i will first discuss the assurance of truth which the prophets received, for this is akin to the subject-matter of the chapter, and will serve to elucidate somewhat our present point. ( ) imagination does not, in its own nature, involve any certainty of truth, such as is implied in every clear and distinct idea, but requires some extrinsic reason to assure us of its objective reality: hence prophecy cannot afford certainty, and the prophets were assured of god's revelation by some sign, and not by the fact of revelation, as we may see from abraham, who, when he had heard the promise of god, demanded a sign, not because he did not believe in god, but because he wished to be sure that it was god who made the promise. ( ) the fact is still more evident in the case of gideon: "show me," he says to god, "show me a sign, that i may know that it is thou that talkest with me." ( ) god also says to moses: "and let this be a sign that i have sent thee." ( ) hezekiah, though he had long known isaiah to be a prophet, none the less demanded a sign of the cure which he predicted. ( ) it is thus quite evident that the prophets always received some sign to certify them of their prophetic imaginings; and for this reason moses bids the jews (deut. xviii.) ask of the prophets a sign, namely, the prediction of some coming event. ( ) in this respect, prophetic knowledge is inferior to natural knowledge, which needs no sign, and in itself implies certitude. ( ) moreover, scripture warrants the statement that the certitude of the prophets was not mathematical, but moral. ( ) moses lays down the punishment of death for the prophet who preaches new gods, even though he confirm his doctrine by signs and wonders (deut. xiii.); "for," he says, "the lord also worketh signs and wonders to try his people." ( ) and jesus christ warns his disciples of the same thing (matt. xxiv: ). ( ) furthermore, ezekiel (xiv: ) plainly states that god sometimes deceives men with false revelations; and micaiah bears like witness in the case of the prophets of ahab. ( ) although these instances go to prove that revelation is open to doubt, it nevertheless contains, as we have said, a considerable element of certainty, for god never deceives the good, nor his chosen, but (according to the ancient proverb, and as appears in the history of abigail and her speech), god uses the good as instruments of goodness, and the wicked as means to execute his wrath. ( ) this may be seen from the case of micaiah above quoted; for although god had determined to deceive ahab, through prophets, he made use of lying prophets; to the good prophet he revealed the truth, and did not forbid his proclaiming it. ( ) still the certitude of prophecy, remains, as i have said, merely, moral; for no one can justify himself before god, nor boast that he is an instrument for god's goodness. ( ) scripture itself teaches and shows that god led away david to number the people, though it bears ample witness to david's piety. ( ) the whole question of the certitude of prophecy, was based on these three considerations: . that the things revealed were imagined very vividly, affecting the prophets in the same way as things seen when awake; . the presence of a sign; . lastly, and chiefly, that the mind of the prophet was given wholly, to what was right and good. ( ) although scripture does not always make mention of a sign, we must nevertheless suppose that a sign was always vouchsafed; for scripture does not always relate every condition and circumstance (as many, have remarked), but rather takes them for granted. ( ) we may, however, admit that no sign was needed when the prophecy declared nothing that was not already contained in the law of moses, because it was confirmed by that law. ( ) for instance, jeremiah's prophecy, of the destruction of jerusalem was confirmed by the prophecies of other prophets, and by the threats in the law, and, therefore, it needed no sign; whereas hananiah, who, contrary to all the prophets, foretold the speedy restoration of the state, stood in need of a sign, or he would have been in doubt as to the truth of his prophecy, until it was confirmed by facts. ( ) "the prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known that the lord hath truly sent him." ( ) as, then, the certitude afforded to the prophet by signs was not mathematical (i.e. did not necessarily follow from the perception of the thing perceived or seen), but only moral, and as the signs were only given to convince the prophet, it follows that such signs were given according to the opinions and capacity of each prophet, so that a sign which convince one prophet would fall far short of convincing another who was imbued with different opinions. ( ) therefore the signs varied according to the individual prophet. ( ) so also did the revelation vary, as we have stated, according to individual disposition and temperament, and according to the opinions previously held. ( ) it varied according to disposition, in this way: if a prophet was cheerful, victories, peace, and events which make men glad, were revealed to him; in that he was naturally more likely to imagine such things. ( ) if, on the contrary, he was melancholy, wars, massacres, and calamities were revealed; and so, according as a prophet was merciful, gentle, quick to anger, or severe, he was more fitted for one kind of revelation than another. ( ) it varied according to the temper of imagination in this way: if a prophet was cultivated he perceived the mind of god in a cultivated way, if he was confused he perceived it confusedly. ( ) and so with revelations perceived through visions. ( ) if a prophet was a countryman he saw visions of oxen, cows, and the like; if he was a soldier, he saw generals and armies; if a courtier, a royal throne, and so on. ( ) lastly, prophecy varied according to the opinions held by the prophets; for instance, to the magi, who believed in the follies of astrology, the birth of christ was revealed through the vision of a star in the east. ( ) to the augurs of nebuchadnezzar the destruction of jerusalem was revealed through entrails, whereas the king himself inferred it from oracles and the direction of arrows which he shot into the air. ( ) to prophets who believed that man acts from free choice and by his own power, god was revealed as standing apart from and ignorant of future human actions. ( ) all of which we will illustrate from scripture. ( ) the first point is proved from the case of elisha, who, in order to prophecy to jehoram, asked for a harp, and was unable to perceive the divine purpose till he had been recreated by its music; then, indeed, he prophesied to jehoram and to his allies glad tidings, which previously he had been unable to attain to because he was angry with the king, and these who are angry with anyone can imagine evil of him, but not good. ( ) the theory that god does not reveal himself to the angry or the sad, is a mere dream: for god revealed to moses while angry, the terrible slaughter of the firstborn, and did so without the intervention of a harp. ( ) to cain in his rage, god was revealed, and to ezekiel, impatient with anger, was revealed the contumacy and wretchedness of the jews. ( ) jeremiah, miserable and weary of life, prophesied the disasters of the hebrews, so that josiah would not consult him, but inquired of a woman, inasmuch as it was more in accordance with womanly nature that god should reveal his mercy thereto. ( ) so, micaiah never prophesied good to ahab, though other true prophets had done so, but invariably evil. ( ) thus we see that individual prophets were by temperament more fitted for one sort of revelation than another. ( ) the style of the prophecy also varied according to the eloquence of the individual prophet. ( ) the prophecies of ezekiel and amos are not written in a cultivated style like those of isaiah and nahum, but more rudely. ( ) any hebrew scholar who wishes to inquire into this point more closely, and compares chapters of the different prophets treating of the same subject, will find great dissimilarity of style. ( ) compare, for instance, chap. i. of the courtly isaiah, verse to verse , with chap. v. of the countryman amos, verses - . ( ) compare also the order and reasoning of the prophecies of jeremiah, written in idumaea (chap. xlix.), with the order and reasoning of obadiah. ( ) compare, lastly, isa. xl: , , and xliv: , with hosea viii: , and xiii: . and so on. ( ) a due consideration of these passage will clearly show us that god has no particular style in speaking, but, according to the learning and capacity of the prophet, is cultivated, compressed, severe, untutored, prolix, or obscure. ( ) there was, moreover, a certain variation in the visions vouchsafed to the prophets, and in the symbols by which they expressed them, for isaiah saw the glory of the lord departing from the temple in a different form from that presented to ezekiel. ( ) the rabbis, indeed, maintain that both visions were really the same, but that ezekiel, being a countryman, was above measure impressed by it, and therefore set it forth in full detail; but unless there is a trustworthy tradition on the subject, which i do not for a moment believe, this theory is plainly an invention. isaiah saw seraphim with six wings, ezekiel beasts with four wings; isaiah saw god clothed and sitting on a royal throne, ezekiel saw him in the likeness of a fire; each doubtless saw god under the form in which he usually imagined him. ( ) further, the visions varied in clearness as well as in details; for the revelations of zechariah were too obscure to be understood by the prophet without explanation, as appears from his narration of them; the visions of daniel could not be understood by him even after they had been explained, and this obscurity did not arise from the difficulty of the matter revealed (for being merely human affairs, these only transcended human capacity in being future), but solely in the fact that daniel's imagination was not so capable for prophecy while he was awake as while he was asleep; and this is further evident from the fact that at the very beginning of the vision he was so terrified that he almost despaired of his strength. ( ) thus, on account of the inadequacy of his imagination and his strength, the things revealed were so obscure to him that he could not understand them even after they had been explained. ( ) here we may note that the words heard by daniel, were, as we have shown above, simply imaginary, so that it is hardly wonderful that in his frightened state he imagined them so confusedly and obscurely that afterwards he could make nothing of them. ( ) those who say that god did not wish to make a clear revelation, do not seem to have read the words of the angel, who expressly says that he came to make the prophet understand what should befall his people in the latter days (dan. x: ). ( ) the revelation remained obscure because no one was found, at that time, with imagination sufficiently strong to conceive it more clearly. ( ) lastly, the prophets, to whom it was revealed that god would take away elijah, wished to persuade elisha that he had been taken somewhere where they would find him; showing sufficiently clearly that they had not understood god's revelation aright. ( ) there is no need to set this out more amply, for nothing is more plain in the bible than that god endowed some prophets with far greater gifts of prophecy than others. ( ) but i will show in greater detail and length, for i consider the point more important, that the prophecies varied according to the opinions previously embraced by the prophets, and that the prophets held diverse and even contrary opinions and prejudices. ( ) (i speak, be it understood, solely of matters speculative, for in regard to uprightness and morality the case is widely different.) ( ) from thence i shall conclude that prophecy never rendered the prophets more learned, but left them with their former opinions, and that we are, therefore, not at all bound to trust them in matters of intellect. ( ) everyone has been strangely hasty in affirming that the prophets knew everything within the scope of human intellect; and, although certain passages of scripture plainly affirm that the prophets were in certain respects ignorant, such persons would rather say that they do not understand the passages than admit that there was anything which the prophets did not know; or else they try to wrest the scriptural words away from their evident meaning. ( ) if either of these proceedings is allowable we may as well shut our bibles, for vainly shall we attempt to prove anything from them if their plainest passages may be classed among obscure and impenetrable mysteries, or if we may put any interpretation on them which we fancy. ( ) for instance, nothing is more clear in the bible than that joshua, and perhaps also the author who wrote his history, thought that the sun revolves round the earth, and that the earth is fixed, and further that the sun for a certain period remained still. ( ) many, who will not admit any movement in the heavenly bodies, explain away the passage till it seems to mean something quite different; others, who have learned to philosophize more correctly, and understand that the earth moves while the sun is still, or at any rate does not revolve round the earth, try with all their might to wrest this meaning from scripture, though plainly nothing of the sort is intended. ( ) such quibblers excite my wonder! ( ) are we, forsooth, bound to believe that joshua the soldier was a learned astronomer? or that a miracle could not be revealed to him, or that the light of the sun could not remain longer than usual above the horizon, without his knowing the cause? ( ) to me both alternatives appear ridiculous, and therefore i would rather say, that joshua was ignorant of the true cause of the lengthened day, and that he and the whole host with him thought that the sun moved round the earth every day, and that on that particular occasion it stood still for a time, thus causing the light to remain longer; and i would say, that they did not conjecture that, from the amount of snow in the air (see josh. x: ), the refraction may have been greater than usual, or that there may have been some other cause which we will not now inquire into. ( ) so also the sign of the shadow going back was revealed to isaiah according to his understanding; that is, as proceeding from a going backwards of the sun; for he, too, thought that the sun moves and that the earth is still; of parhelia he perhaps never even dreamed. ( ) we may arrive at this conclusion without any, scruple, for the sign could really have come to pass, and have been predicted by isaiah to the king, without the prophet being aware of the real cause. ( ) with regard to the building of the temple by solomon, if it was really dictate by god we must maintain the same doctrine: namely, that all the measurements were revealed according to the opinions and understanding of the king; for as we are not bound to believe that solomon was a mathematician, we may affirm that he was ignorant of the true ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, and that, like the generality of workmen, he thought that it was as three to one. ( ) but if it is allowable to declare that we do not understand the passage, in good sooth i know nothing in the bible that we can understand; for the process of building is there narrated simply and as a mere matter of history. ( ) if, again, it is permitted to pretend that the passage has another meaning, and was written as it is from some reason unknown to us, this is no less than a complete subversal of the bible; for every absurd and evil invention of human perversity could thus, without detriment to scriptural authority, be defended and fostered. ( ) our conclusion is in no wise impious, for though solomon, isaiah, joshua, &c. were prophets, they were none the less men, and as such not exempt from human shortcomings. ( ) according to the understanding of noah it was revealed to him that god as about to destroy the whole human race, for noah thought that beyond the limits of palestine the world was not inhabited. ( ) not only in matters of this kind, but in others more important, the about the divine attributes, but held quite ordinary notions about god, and to these notions their revelations were adapted, as i will demonstrate by ample scriptural testimony; from all which one may easily see that they were praised and commended, not so much for the sublimity and eminence of their intellect as for their piety and faithfulness. ( ) adam, the first man to whom god was revealed, did not know that he is omnipotent and omniscient; for he hid himself from him, and attempted to make excuses for his fault before god, as though he had had to do with a man; therefore to him also was god revealed according to his understanding - that is, as being unaware of his situation or his sin, for adam heard, or seemed to hear, the lord walling, in the garden, calling him and asking him where he was; and then, on seeing his shamefacedness, asking him whether he had eaten of the forbidden fruit. ( ) adam evidently only knew the deity as the creator of all things. ( ) to cain also god was revealed, according to his understanding, as ignorant of human affairs, nor was a higher conception of the deity required for repentance of his sin. ( ) to laban the lord revealed himself as the god of abraham, because laban believed that each nation had its own special divinity (see gen. xxxi: ). ( ) abraham also knew not that god is omnipresent, and has foreknowledge of all things; for when he heard the sentence against the inhabitants of sodom, he prayed that the lord should not execute it till he had ascertained whether they all merited such punishment; for he said (see gen. xviii: ), "peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city," and in accordance with this belief god was revealed to him; as abraham imagined, he spake thus: "i will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and, if not, i will know." ( ) further, the divine testimony concerning abraham asserts nothing but that he was obedient, and that he "commanded his household after him that they should keep the way of the lord" (gen. xviii: ); it does not state that he held sublime conceptions of the deity. ( ) moses, also, was not sufficiently aware that god is omniscient, and directs human actions by his sole decree, for although god himself says that the israelites should hearken to him, moses still considered the matter doubtful and repeated, "but if they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice." ( ) to him in like manner god was revealed as taking no part in, and as being ignorant of, future human actions: the lord gave him two signs and said, "and it shall come to pass that if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign; but if not, thou shalt take of the water of the river," &c. ( ) indeed, if any one considers without prejudice the recorded opinions of moses, he will plainly see that moses conceived the deity as a being who has always existed, does exist, and always will exist, and for this cause he calls him by the name jehovah, which in hebrew signifies these three phases of existence: as to his nature, moses only taught that he is merciful, gracious, and exceeding jealous, as appears from many passages in the pentateuch. ( ) lastly, he believed and taught that this being was so different from all other beings, that he could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that he could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of his power he was without equal and unique. ( ) moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the lord) who acted as god's vicegerents - that is, beings to whom god had given the right, authority, and power to direct nations, and to provide and care for them; but he taught that this being whom they were bound to obey was the highest and supreme god, or (to use the hebrew phrase) god of gods, and thus in the song (exod. xv: ) he exclaims, "who is like unto thee, lord, among the gods?" and jethro says (exod. xviii: ), "now i know that the lord is greater than all gods." ( ) that is to say, "i am at length compelled to admit to moses that jehovah is greater than all gods, and that his power is unrivalled." ( ) we must remain in doubt whether moses thought that these beings who acted as god's vicegerents were created by him, for he has stated nothing, so far as we know, about their creation and origin. ( ) he further taught that this being had brought the visible world into order from chaos, and had given nature her germs, and therefore that he possesses supreme right and power over all things; further, that by reason of this supreme right and power he had chosen for himself alone the hebrew nation and a certain strip of territory, and had handed over to the care of other gods substituted by himself the rest of the nations and territories, and that therefore he was called the god of israel and the god of jerusalem, whereas the other gods were called the gods of the gentiles. ( ) for this reason the jews believed that the strip of territory which god had chosen for himself, demanded a divine worship quite apart and different from the worship which obtained elsewhere, and that the lord would not suffer the worship of other gods adapted to other countries. ( ) thus they thought that the people whom the king of assyria had brought into judaea were torn in pieces by lions because they knew not the worship of the national divinity ( kings xvii: ). ( ) jacob, according to aben ezra's opinion, therefore admonished his sons when he wished them to seek out a new country, that they should prepare themselves for a new worship, and lay aside the worship of strange, gods - that is, of the gods of the land where they were (gen. xxxv: , ). ( ) david, in telling saul that he was compelled by the king's persecution to live away from his country, said that he was driven out from the heritage of the lord, and sent to worship other gods ( sam. xxvi: ). ( ) lastly, he believed that this being or deity had his habitation in the heavens (deut. xxxiii: ), an opinion very common among the gentiles. ( ) if we now examine the revelations to moses, we shall find that they were accommodated to these opinions; as he believed that the divine nature was subject to the conditions of mercy, graciousness, &c., so god was revealed to him in accordance with his idea and under these attributes (see exodus xxxiv: , , and the second commandment). ( ) further it is related (ex. xxxiii: ) that moses asked of god that he might behold him, but as moses (as we have said) had formed no mental image of god, and god (as i have shown) only revealed himself to the prophets in accordance with the disposition of their imagination, he did not reveal himself in any form. ( ) this, i repeat, was because the imagination of moses was unsuitable, for other prophets bear witness that they saw the lord; for instance, isaiah, ezekiel, daniel, &c. ( ) for this reason god answered moses, "thou canst not see my face;" and inasmuch as moses believed that god can be looked upon - that is, that no contradiction of the divine nature is therein involved (for otherwise he would never have preferred his request) - it is added, "for no one shall look on me and live," thus giving a reason in accordance with moses' idea, for it is not stated that a contradiction of the divine nature would be involved, as was really the case, but that the thing would not come to pass because of human infirmity. ( ) when god would reveal to moses that the israelites, because they worshipped the calf, were to be placed in the same category as other nations, he said (ch. xxxiii: , ), that he would send an angel (that is, a being who should have charge of the israelites, instead of the supreme being), and that he himself would no longer remain among them; thus leaving moses no ground for supposing that the israelites were more beloved by god than the other nations whose guardianship he had entrusted to other beings or angels (vide verse ). ( ) lastly, as moses believed that god dwelt in the heavens, god was revealed to him as coming down from heaven on to a mountain, and in order to talk with the lord moses went up the mountain, which he certainly need not have done if he could have conceived of god as omnipresent. ( ) the israelites knew scarcely anything of god, although he was revealed to them; and this is abundantly evident from their transferring, a few days afterwards, the honour and worship due to him to a calf, which they believed to be the god who had brought them out of egypt. ( ) in truth, it is hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of egypt, uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound notions about the deity, or that moses should have taught them anything beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to be moral by legal authority. ( ) thus the rule of right living, the worship and love of god, was to them rather a bondage than the true liberty, the gift and grace of the deity. ( ) moses bid them love god and keep his law, because they had in the past received benefits from him (such as the deliverance from slavery in egypt), and further terrified them with threats if they transgressed his commands, holding out many promises of good if they should observe them; thus treating them as parents treat irrational children. it is, therefore, certain that they knew not the excellence of virtue and the true happiness. ( ) jonah thought that he was fleeing from the sight of god, which seems to show that he too held that god had entrusted the care of the nations outside judaea to other substituted powers. ( ) no one in the whole of the old testament speaks more rationally of god than solomon, who in fact surpassed all the men of his time in natural ability. ( ) yet he considered himself above the law (esteeming it only to have been given for men without reasonable and intellectual grounds for their actions), and made small account of the laws concerning kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sensual pleasure), and taught that all fortune's favours to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than folly. ( ) see proverbs xvi: , . ( ) but let us return to the prophets whose conflicting opinions we have undertaken to note. ( ) the expressed ideas of ezekiel seemed so diverse from those of moses to the rabbis who have left us the extant prophetic books (as is told in the treatise of sabbathus, i: , ), that they had serious thoughts of omitting his prophecy from the canon, and would doubtless have thus excluded it if a certain hananiah had not undertaken to explain it; a task which (as is there narrated) he with great zeal and labour accomplished. ( ) how he did so does not sufficiently appear, whether it was by writing a commentary which has now perished, or by altering ezekiel's words and audaciously - striking out phrases according to his fancy. ( ) however this may be, chapter xviii. certainly does not seem to agree with exodus xxxiv: , jeremiah xxxii: , &c. ( ) samuel believed that the lord never repented of anything he had decreed ( sam. xv: ), for when saul was sorry for his sin, and wished to worship god and ask for forgiveness, samuel said that the lord would not go back from his decree. ( ) to jeremiah, on the other hand, it was revealed that, "if that nation against whom i (the lord) have pronounced, turn from their evil, i will repent of the evil that i thought to do unto them. ( ) if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then i will repent of the good wherewith i said i would benefit them" (jer. xviii: - ). ( ) joel (ii: ) taught that the lord repented him only of evil. ( ) lastly, it is clear from gen iv: that a man can overcome the temptations of sin, and act righteously; for this doctrine is told to cain, though, as we learn from josephus and the scriptures, he never did so overcome them. ( ) and this agrees with the chapter of jeremiah just cited, for it is there said that the lord repents of the good or the evil pronounced, if the men in question change their ways and manner of life. ( ) but, on the other hand, paul (rom.ix: ) teaches as plainly as possible that men have no control over the temptations of the flesh save by the special vocation and grace of god. ( ) and when (rom. iii: and vi: ) he attributes righteousness to man, he corrects himself as speaking merely humanly and through the infirmity of the flesh. ( ) we have now more than sufficiently proved our point, that god adapted revelations to the understanding and opinions of the prophets, and that in matters of theory without bearing on charity or morality the prophets could be, and, in fact, were, ignorant, and held conflicting opinions. ( ) it therefore follows that we must by no means go to the prophets for knowledge, either of natural or of spiritual phenomena. ( ) we have determined, then, that we are only bound to believe in the prophetic writings, the object and substance of the revelation; with regard to the details, every one may believe or not, as he likes. ( ) for instance, the revelation to cain only teaches us that god admonished him to lead the true life, for such alone is the object and substance of the revelation, not doctrines concerning free will and philosophy. ( ) hence, though the freedom of the will is clearly implied in the words of the admonition, we are at liberty to hold a contrary opinion, since the words and reasons were adapted to the understanding of cain. ( ) so, too, the revelation to micaiah would only teach that god revealed to him the true issue of the battle between ahab and aram; and this is all we are bound to believe. ( ) whatever else is contained in the revelation concerning the true and the false spirit of god, the army of heaven standing on the right hand and on the left, and all the other details, does not affect us at all. ( ) everyone may believe as much of it as his reason allows. ( ) the reasonings by which the lord displayed his power to job (if they really were a revelation, and the author of the history is narrating, and not merely, as some suppose, rhetorically adorning his own conceptions), would come under the same category - that is, they were adapted to job's understanding, for the purpose of convincing him, and are not universal, or for the convincing of all men. ( ) we can come to no different conclusion with respect to the reasonings of christ, by which he convicted the pharisees of pride and ignorance, and exhorted his disciples to lead the true life. ( ) he adapted them to each man's opinions and principles. ( ) for instance, when he said to the pharisees (matt. xii: ), "and if satan cast out devils, his house is divided against itself, how then shall his kingdom stand? ( ) "he only wished to convince the pharisees according, to their own principles, not to teach that there are devils, or any kingdom of devils. ( ) so, too, when he said to his disciples (matt. viii: ), "see that ye despise not one of these little ones, for i say unto you that their angels," &c., he merely desired to warn them against pride and despising any of their fellows, not to insist on the actual reason given, which was simply adopted in order to persuade them more easily. ( ) lastly, we should say, exactly the same of the apostolic signs and reasonings, but there is no need to go further into the subject. ( ) if i were to enumerate all the passages of scripture addressed only to individuals, or to a particular man's understanding, and which cannot, without great danger to philosophy, be defended as divine doctrines, i should go far beyond the brevity at which i aim. ( ) let it suffice, then, to have indicated a few instances of general application, and let the curious reader consider others by himself. ( ) although the points we have just raised concerning prophets and prophecy are the only ones which have any direct bearing on the end in view, namely, the separation of philosophy from theology, still, as i have touched on the general question, i may here inquire whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to the hebrews, or whether it was common to all nations. ( ) i must then come to a conclusion about the vocation of the hebrews, all of which i shall do in the ensuing chapter. chapter iii. of the vocation of the hebrews, and whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to them. ( ) every man's true happiness and blessedness consist solely in the enjoyment of what is good, not in the pride that he alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of others. ( ) he who thinks himself the more blessed because he is enjoying benefits which others are not, or because he is more blessed or more fortunate than his fellows, is ignorant of true happiness and blessedness, and the joy which he feels is either childish or envious and malicious. ( ) for instance, a man's true happiness consists only in wisdom, and the knowledge of the truth, not at all in the fact that he is wiser than others, or that others lack such knowledge: such considerations do not increase his wisdom or true happiness. ( ) whoever, therefore, rejoices for such reasons, rejoices in another's misfortune, and is, so far, malicious and bad, knowing neither true happiness nor the peace of the true life. ( ) when scripture, therefore, in exhorting the hebrews to obey the law, says that the lord has chosen them for himself before other nations (deut. x: ); that he is near them, but not near others (deut. iv: ); that to them alone he has given just laws (deut. iv: ); and, lastly, that he has marked them out before others (deut. iv: ); it speaks only according to the understanding of its hearers, who, as we have shown in the last chapter, and as moses also testifies (deut. ix: , ), knew not true blessedness. ( ) for in good sooth they would have been no less blessed if god had called all men equally to salvation, nor would god have been less present to them for being equally present to others; their laws, would have been no less just if they had been ordained for all, and they themselves would have been no less wise. ( ) the miracles would have shown god's power no less by being wrought for other nations also; lastly, the hebrews would have been just as much bound to worship god if he had bestowed all these gifts equally on all men. ( ) when god tells solomon ( kings iii: ) that no one shall be as wise as he in time to come, it seems to be only a manner of expressing surpassing wisdom; it is little to be believed that god would have promised solomon, for his greater happiness, that he would never endow anyone with so much wisdom in time to come; this would in no wise have increased solomon's intellect, and the wise king would have given equal thanks to the lord if everyone had been gifted with the same faculties. ( ) still, though we assert that moses, in the passages of the pentateuch just cited, spoke only according to the understanding of the hebrews, we have no wish to deny that god ordained the mosaic law for them alone, nor that he spoke to them alone, nor that they witnessed marvels beyond those which happened to any other nation; but we wish to emphasize that moses desired to admonish the hebrews in such a manner, and with such reasonings as would appeal most forcibly to their childish understanding, and constrain them to worship the deity. ( ) further, we wished to show that the hebrews did not surpass other nations in knowledge, or in piety, but evidently in some attribute different from these; or (to speak like the scriptures, according to their understanding), that the hebrews were not chosen by god before others for the sake of the true life and sublime ideas, though they were often thereto admonished, but with some other object. ( ) what that object was, i will duly show. ( ) but before i begin, i wish in a few words to explain what i mean by the guidance of god, by the help of god, external and inward, and, lastly, what i understand by fortune. ( ) by the help of god, i mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature or the chain of natural events: for i have said before and shown elsewhere that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of god, which always involve eternal truth and necessity. ( ) so that to say that everything happens according to natural laws, and to say that everything is ordained by the decree and ordinance of god, is the same thing. ( ) now since the power in nature is identical with the power of god, by which alone all things happen and are determined, it follows that whatsoever man, as a part of nature, provides himself with to aid and preserve his existence, or whatsoever nature affords him without his help, is given to him solely by the divine power, acting either through human nature or through external circumstance. ( ) so whatever human nature can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve its existence, may be fitly called the inward aid of god, whereas whatever else accrues to man's profit from outward causes may be called the external aid of god. ( ) we can now easily understand what is meant by the election of god. ( ) for since no one can do anything save by the predetermined order of nature, that is by god's eternal ordinance and decree, it follows that no one can choose a plan of life for himself, or accomplish any work save by god's vocation choosing him for the work or the plan of life in question, rather than any other. ( ) lastly, by fortune, i mean the ordinance of god in so far as it directs human life through external and unexpected means. ( ) with these preliminaries i return to my purpose of discovering the reason why the hebrews were said to be elected by god before other nations, and with the demonstration i thus proceed. ( ) all objects of legitimate desire fall, generally speaking, under one of these three categories: . the knowledge of things through their primary causes. . the government of the passions, or the acquirement of the habit of virtue. . secure and healthy life. ( ) the means which most directly conduce towards the first two of these ends, and which may be considered their proximate and efficient causes are contained in human nature itself, so that their acquisition hinges only on our own power, and on the laws of human nature. ( ) it may be concluded that these gifts are not peculiar to any nation, but have always been shared by the whole human race, unless, indeed, we would indulge the dream that nature formerly created men of different kinds. ( ) but the means which conduce to security and health are chiefly in external circumstance, and are called the gifts of fortune because they depend chiefly on objective causes of which we are ignorant; for a fool may be almost as liable to happiness or unhappiness as a wise man. ( ) nevertheless, human management and watchfulness can greatly assist towards living in security and warding off the injuries of our fellow-men, and even of beasts. ( ) reason and experience show no more certain means of attaining this object than the formation of a society with fixed laws, the occupation of a strip of territory and the concentration of all forces, as it were, into one body, that is the social body. ( ) now for forming and preserving a society, no ordinary ability and care is required: that society will be most secure, most stable, and least liable to reverses, which is founded and directed by far-seeing and careful men; while, on the other hand, a society constituted by men without trained skill, depends in a great measure on fortune, and is less constant. ( ) if, in spite of all, such a society lasts a long time, it is owing to some other directing influence than its own; if it overcomes great perils and its affairs prosper, it will perforce marvel at and adore the guiding spirit of god (in so far, that is, as god works through hidden means, and not through the nature and mind of man), for everything happens to it unexpectedly and contrary to anticipation, it may even be said and thought to be by miracle. ( ) nations, then, are distinguished from one another in respect to the social organization and the laws under which they live and are governed; the hebrew nation was not chosen by god in respect to its wisdom nor its tranquillity of mind, but in respect to its social organization and the good fortune with which it obtained supremacy and kept it so many years. ( ) this is abundantly clear from scripture. even a cursory perusal will show us that the only respects in which the hebrews surpassed other nations, are in their successful conduct of matters relating to government, and in their surmounting great perils solely by god's external aid; in other ways they were on a par with their fellows, and god was equally gracious to all. ( ) for in respect to intellect (as we have shown in the last chapter) they held very ordinary ideas about god and nature, so that they cannot have been god's chosen in this respect; nor were they so chosen in respect of virtue and the true life, for here again they, with the exception of a very few elect, were on an equality with other nations: therefore their choice and vocation consisted only in the temporal happiness and advantages of independent rule. ( ) in fact, we do not see that god promised anything beyond this to the patriarchs [endnote ] or their successors; in the law no other reward is offered for obedience than the continual happiness of an independent commonwealth and other goods of this life; while, on the other hand, against contumacy and the breaking of the covenant is threatened the downfall of the commonwealth and great hardships. ( ) nor is this to be wondered at; for the ends of every social organization and commonwealth are (as appears from what we have said, and as we will explain more at length hereafter) security and comfort; a commonwealth can only exist by the laws being binding on all. ( ) if all the members of a state wish to disregard the law, by that very fact they dissolve the state and destroy the commonwealth. ( ) thus, the only reward which could be promised to the hebrews for continued obedience to the law was security [endnote ] and its attendant advantages, while no surer punishment could be threatened for disobedience, than the ruin of the state and the evils which generally follow therefrom, in addition to such further consequences as might accrue to the jews in particular from the ruin of their especial state. ( ) but there is no need here to go into this point at more length. ( ) i will only add that the laws of the old testament were revealed and ordained to the jews only, for as god chose them in respect to the special constitution of their society and government, they must, of course, have had special laws. ( ) whether god ordained special laws for other nations also, and revealed himself to their lawgivers prophetically, that is, under the attributes by which the latter were accustomed to imagine him, i cannot sufficiently determine. ( ) it is evident from scripture itself that other nations acquired supremacy and particular laws by the external aid of god; witness only the two following passages: ( ) in genesis xiv: , , , it is related that melchisedek was king of jerusalem and priest of the most high god, that in exercise of his priestly functions he blessed abraham, and that abraham the beloved of the lord gave to this priest of god a tithe of all his spoils. ( ) this sufficiently shows that before he founded the israelitish nation god constituted kings and priests in jerusalem, and ordained for them rites and laws. ( ) whether he did so prophetically is, as i have said, not sufficiently clear; but i am sure of this, that abraham, whilst he sojourned in the city, lived scrupulously according to these laws, for abraham had received no special rites from god; and yet it is stated (gen. xxvi: ), that he observed the worship, the precepts, the statutes, and the laws of god, which must be interpreted to mean the worship, the statutes, the precepts, and the laws of king melchisedek. ( ) malachi chides the jews as follows (i: - .): "who is there among you that will shut the doors? [of the temple]; neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. ( ) i have no pleasure in you, saith the lord of hosts. ( ) for from the rising of the sun, even until the going down of the same my name shall be great among the gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered in my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the heathen, saith the lord of hosts." ( ) these words, which, unless we do violence to them, could only refer to the current period, abundantly testify that the jews of that time were not more beloved by god than other nations, that god then favoured other nations with more miracles than he vouchsafed to the jews, who had then partly recovered their empire without miraculous aid; and, lastly, that the gentiles possessed rites and ceremonies acceptable to god. ( ) but i pass over these points lightly: it is enough for my purpose to have shown that the election of the jews had regard to nothing but temporal physical happiness and freedom, in other words, autonomous government, and to the manner and means by which they obtained it; consequently to the laws in so far as they were necessary to the preservation of that special government; and, lastly, to the manner in which they were revealed. in regard to other matters, wherein man's true happiness consists, they were on a par with the rest of the nations. ( ) when, therefore, it is said in scripture (deut. iv: ) that the lord is not so nigh to any other nation as he is to the jews, reference is only made to their government, and to the period when so many miracles happened to them, for in respect of intellect and virtue - that is, in respect of blessedness - god was, as we have said already, and are now demonstrating, equally gracious to all. ( ) scripture itself bears testimony to this fact, for the psalmist says (cxlv: ), "the lord is near unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth." ( ) so in the same psalm, verse , "the lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." in ps. xxxiii: , it is clearly stated that god has granted to all men the same intellect, in these words, he fashioneth their hearts alike." the heart was considered by the hebrews, as i suppose everyone knows, to be the seat of the soul and the intellect. ( ) lastly, from job xxxviii: , it is plain that god had ordained for the whole human race the law to reverence god, to keep from evil doing, or to do well, and that job, although a gentile, was of all men most acceptable to god, because he exceeded all in piety and religion. ( ) lastly, from jonah iv: , it is very evident that, not only to the jews but to all men, god was gracious, merciful, long- suffering, and of great goodness, and repented him of the evil, for jonah says: "therefore i determined to flee before unto tarshish, for i know that thou art a gracious god, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness," &c., and that, therefore, god would pardon the ninevites. ( ) we conclude, therefore (inasmuch as god is to all men equally gracious, and the hebrews were only, chosen by him in respect to their social organization and government), that the individual jew, taken apart from his social organization and government, possessed no gift of god above other men, and that there was no difference between jew and gentile. ( ) as it is a fact that god is equally gracious, merciful, and the rest, to all men; and as the function of the prophet was to teach men not so much the laws of their country, as true virtue, and to exhort them thereto, it is not to be doubted that all nations possessed prophets, and that the prophetic gift was not peculiar to the jews. ( ) indeed, history, both profane and sacred, bears witness to the fact. ( ) although, from the sacred histories of the old testament, it is not evident that the other nations had as many prophets as the hebrews, or that any gentile prophet was expressly sent by god to the nations, this does not affect the question, for the hebrews were careful to record their own affairs, not those of other nations. ( ) it suffices, then, that we find in the old testament gentiles, and uncircumcised, as noah, enoch, abimelech, balaam, &c., exercising prophetic gifts; further, that hebrew prophets were sent by god, not only to their own nation but to many others also. ( ) ezekiel prophesied to all the nations then known; obadiah to none, that we are aware of, save the idumeans; and jonah was chiefly the prophet to the ninevites. ( ) isaiah bewails and predicts the calamities, and hails the restoration not only of the jews but also of other nations, for he says (chap. xvi: ), "therefore i will bewail jazer with weeping;" and in chap. xix. he foretells first the calamities and then the restoration of the egyptians (see verses , , , ), saying that god shall send them a saviour to free them, that the lord shall be known in egypt, and, further, that the egyptians shall worship god with sacrifice and oblation; and, at last, he calls that nation the blessed egyptian people of god; all of which particulars are specially noteworthy. ( ) jeremiah is called, not the prophet of the hebrew nation, but simply the prophet of the nations (see jer:i. ). ( ) he also mournfully foretells the calamities of the nations, and predicts their restoration, for he says (xlviii: ) of the moabites, "therefore will i howl for moab, and i will cry out for all moab" (verse ), "and therefore mine heart shall sound for moab like pipes;" in the end he prophesies their restoration, as also the restoration of the egyptians, ammonites, and elamites. ( ) wherefore it is beyond doubt that other nations also, like the jews, had their prophets, who prophesied to them. ( ) although scripture only, makes mention of one man, balaam, to whom the future of the jews and the other nations was revealed, we must not suppose that balaam prophesied only once, for from the narrative itself it is abundantly clear that he had long previously been famous for prophesy and other divine gifts. ( ) for when balak bade him to come to him, he said (num. xxii: ), "for i know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed." ( ) thus we see that he possessed the gift which god had bestowed on abraham. further, as accustomed to prophesy, balaam bade the messengers wait for him till the will of the lord was revealed to him. ( ) when he prophesied, that is, when he interpreted the true mind of god, he was wont to say this of himself: "he hath said, which heard the words of god and knew the knowledge of the most high, which saw the vision of the almighty falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." ( ) further, after he had blessed the hebrews by the command of god, he began (as was his custom) to prophesy to other nations, and to predict their future; all of which abundantly shows that he had always been a prophet, or had often prophesied, and (as we may also remark here) possessed that which afforded the chief certainty to prophets of the truth of their prophecy, namely, a mind turned wholly to what is right and good, for he did not bless those whom he wished to bless, nor curse those whom he wished to curse, as balak supposed, but only those whom god wished to be blessed or cursed. ( ) thus he answered balak: "if balak should give me his house full of silver and gold, i cannot go beyond the commandment of the lord to do either good or bad of my own mind; but what the lord saith, that will i speak." ( ) as for god being angry with him in the way, the same happened to moses when he set out to egypt by the command of the lord; and as to his receiving money for prophesying, samuel did the same ( sam. ix: , ); if in anyway he sinned, "there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not," eccles. vii: . (vide epist. peter ii: , , and jude : .) ( ) his speeches must certainly have had much weight with god, and his power for cursing must assuredly have been very great from the number of times that we find stated in scripture, in proof of god's great mercy to the jews, that god would not hear balaam, and that he changed the cursing to blessing (see deut. xxiii: , josh. xxiv: , neh. xiii: ). ( ) wherefore he was without doubt most acceptable to god, for the speeches and cursings of the wicked move god not at all. ( ) as then he was a true prophet, and nevertheless joshua calls him a soothsayer or augur, it is certain that this title had an honourable signification, and that those whom the gentiles called augurs and soothsayers were true prophets, while those whom scripture often accuses and condemns were false soothsayers, who deceived the gentiles as false prophets deceived the jews; indeed, this is made evident from other passages in the bible, whence we conclude that the gift of prophecy was not peculiar to the jews, but common to all nations. ( ) the pharisees, however, vehemently contend that this divine gift was peculiar to their nation, and that the other nations foretold the future (what will superstition invent next?) by some unexplained diabolical faculty. ( ) the principal passage of scripture which they cite, by way of confirming their theory with its authority, is exodus xxxiii: , where moses says to god, "for wherein shall it be known here that i and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, i and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth." ( ) from this they would infer that moses asked of god that he should be present to the jews, and should reveal himself to them prophetically; further, that he should grant this favour to no other nation. ( ) it is surely absurd that moses should have been jealous of god's presence among the gentiles, or that he should have dared to ask any such thing. ( ) the act is, as moses knew that the disposition and spirit of his nation was rebellious, he clearly saw that they could not carry out what they had begun without very great miracles and special external aid from god; nay, that without such aid they must necessarily perish: as it was evident that god wished them to be preserved, he asked for this special external aid. ( ) thus he says (ex. xxxiv: ), "if now i have found grace in thy sight, lord, let my lord, i pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people." ( ) the reason, therefore, for his seeking special external aid from god was the stiffneckedness of the people, and it is made still more plain, that he asked for nothing beyond this special external aid by god's answer - for god answered at once (verse of the same chapter) - "behold, i make a covenant: before all thy people i will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation." ( ) therefore moses had in view nothing beyond the special election of the jews, as i have explained it, and made no other request to god. ( ) i confess that in paul's epistle to the romans, i find another text which carries more weight, namely, where paul seems to teach a different doctrine from that here set down, for he there says (rom. iii: ): "what advantage then hath the jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? ( ) much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of god." ( ) but if we look to the doctrine which paul especially desired to teach, we shall find nothing repugnant to our present contention; on the contrary, his doctrine is the same as ours, for he says (rom. iii: ) "that god is the god of the jews and of the gentiles, and" (ch. ii: , ) "but, if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. ( ) therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?" ( ) further, in chap. iv:verse , he says that all alike, jew and gentile, were under sin, and that without commandment and law there is no sin. ( ) wherefore it is most evident that to all men absolutely was revealed the law under which all lived - namely, the law which has regard only to true virtue, not the law established in respect to, and in the formation of a particular state and adapted to the disposition of a particular people. ( ) lastly, paul concludes that since god is the god of all nations, that is, is equally gracious to all, and since all men equally live under the law and under sin, so also to all nations did god send his christ, to free all men equally from the bondage of the law, that they should no more do right by the command of the law, but by the constant determination of their hearts. ( ) so that paul teaches exactly the same as ourselves. ( ) when, therefore, he says "to the jews only were entrusted the oracles of god," we must either understand that to them only were the laws entrusted in writing, while they were given to other nations merely in revelation and conception, or else (as none but jews would object to the doctrine he desired to advance) that paul was answering only in accordance with the understanding and current ideas of the jews, for in respect to teaching things which he had partly seen, partly heard, he was to the greeks a greek, and to the jews a jew. ( ) it now only remains to us to answer the arguments of those who would persuade themselves that the election of the jews was not temporal, and merely in respect of their commonwealth, but eternal; for, they say, we see the jews after the loss of their commonwealth, and after being scattered so many years and separated from all other nations, still surviving, which is without parallel among other peoples, and further the scriptures seem to teach that god has chosen for himself the jews for ever, so that though they have lost their commonwealth, they still nevertheless remain god's elect. ( ) the passages which they think teach most clearly this eternal election, are chiefly: ( .) jer. xxxi: , where the prophet testifies that the seed of israel shall for ever remain the nation of god, comparing them with the stability of the heavens and nature; ( .) ezek. xx: , where the prophet seems to intend that though the jews wanted after the help afforded them to turn their backs on the worship of the lord, that god would nevertheless gather them together again from all the lands in which they were dispersed, and lead them to the wilderness of the peoples - as he had led their fathers to the wilderness of the land of egypt - and would at length, after purging out from among them the rebels and transgressors, bring them thence to his holy mountain, where the whole house of israel should worship him. other passages are also cited, especially by the pharisees, but i think i shall satisfy everyone if i answer these two, and this i shall easily accomplish after showing from scripture itself that god chose not the hebrews for ever, but only on the condition under which he had formerly chosen the canaanites, for these last, as we have shown, had priests who religiously worshipped god, and whom god at length rejected because of their luxury, pride, and corrupt worship. ( ) moses (lev. xviii: ) warned the israelites that they be not polluted with whoredoms, lest the land spue them out as it had spued out the nations who had dwelt there before, and in deut. viii: , , in the plainest terms he threatens their total ruin, for he says, "i testify against you that ye shall surely perish. ( ) as the nations which the lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish." in like manner many other passages are found in the law which expressly show that god chose the hebrews neither absolutely nor for ever. ( ) if, then, the prophets foretold for them a new covenant of the knowledge of god, love, and grace, such a promise is easily proved to be only made to the elect, for ezekiel in the chapter which we have just quoted expressly says that god will separate from them the rebellious and transgressors, and zephaniah (iii: , ), says that "god will take away the proud from the midst of them, and leave the poor." ( ) now, inasmuch as their election has regard to true virtue, it is not to be thought that it was promised to the jews alone to the exclusion of others, but we must evidently believe that the true gentile prophets (and every nation, as we have shown, possessed such) promised the same to the faithful of their own people, who were thereby comforted. ( ) wherefore this eternal covenant of the knowledge of god and love is universal, as is clear, moreover, from zeph. iii: , : no difference in this respect can be admitted between jew and gentile, nor did the former enjoy any special election beyond that which we have pointed out. ( ) when the prophets, in speaking of this election which regards only true virtue, mixed up much concerning sacrifices and ceremonies, and the rebuilding of the temple and city, they wished by such figurative expressions, after the manner and nature of prophecy, to expound matters spiritual, so as at the same time to show to the jews, whose prophets they were, the true restoration of the state and of the temple to be expected about the time of cyrus. ( ) at the present time, therefore, there is absolutely nothing which the jews can arrogate to themselves beyond other people. ( ) as to their continuance so long after dispersion and the loss of empire, there is nothing marvellous in it, for they so separated themselves from every other nation as to draw down upon themselves universal hate, not only by their outward rites, rites conflicting with those of other nations, but also by the sign of circumcision which they most scrupulously observe. ( ) that they have been preserved in great measure by gentile hatred, experience demonstrates. ( ) when the king of spain formerly compelled the jews to embrace the state religion or to go into exile, a large number of jews accepted catholicism. ( ) now, as these renegades were admitted to all the native privileges of spaniards, and deemed worthy of filling all honourable offices, it came to pass that they straightway became so intermingled with the spaniards as to leave of themselves no relic or remembrance. ( ) but exactly the opposite happened to those whom the king of portugal compelled to become christians, for they always, though converted, lived apart, inasmuch as they were considered unworthy of any civic honours. ( ) the sign of circumcision is, as i think, so important, that i could persuade myself that it alone would preserve the nation for ever. ( ) nay, i would go so far as to believe that if the foundations of their religion have not emasculated their minds they may even, if occasion offers, so changeable are human affairs, raise up their empire afresh, and that god may a second time elect them. ( ) of such a possibility we have a very famous example in the chinese. ( ) they, too, have some distinctive mark on their heads which they most scrupulously observe, and by which they keep themselves apart from everyone else, and have thus kept themselves during so many thousand years that they far surpass all other nations in antiquity. ( ) they have not always retained empire, but they have recovered it when lost, and doubtless will do so again after the spirit of the tartars becomes relaxed through the luxury of riches and pride. ( ) lastly, if any one wishes to maintain that the jews, from this or from any other cause, have been chosen by god for ever, i will not gainsay him if he will admit that this choice, whether temporary or eternal, has no regard, in so far as it is peculiar to the jews, to aught but dominion and physical advantages (for by such alone can one nation be distinguished from another), whereas in regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and god has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another. chapter iv. - of the divine law. ( ) the word law, taken in the abstract, means that by which an individual, or all things, or as many things as belong to a particular species, act in one and the same fixed and definite manner, which manner depends either on natural necessity or on human decree. ( ) a law which depends on natural necessity is one which necessarily follows from the nature, or from the definition of the thing in question; a law which depends on human decree, and which is more correctly called an ordinance, is one which men have laid down for themselves and others in order to live more safely or conveniently, or from some similar reason. ( ) for example, the law that all bodies impinging on lesser bodies, lose as much of their own motion as they communicate to the latter is a universal law of all bodies, and depends on natural necessity. ( ) so, too, the law that a man in remembering one thing, straightway remembers another either like it, or which he had perceived simultaneously with it, is a law which necessarily follows from the nature of man. ( ) but the law that men must yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat of their natural right, and that they bind themselves to live in a certain way, depends on human decree. ( ) now, though i freely admit that all things are predetermined by universal natural laws to exist and operate in a given, fixed, and definite manner, i still assert that the laws i have just mentioned depend on human decree. ( .) ( ) because man, in so far as he is a part of nature, constitutes a part of the power of nature. ( ) whatever, therefore, follows necessarily from the necessity of human nature (that is, from nature herself, in so far as we conceive of her as acting through man) follows, even though it be necessarily, from human power. ( ) hence the sanction of such laws may very well be said to depend on man's decree, for it principally depends on the power of the human mind; so that the human mind in respect to its perception of things as true and false, can readily be conceived as without such laws, but not without necessary law as we have just defined it. ( .) ( ) i have stated that these laws depend on human decree because it is well to define and explain things by their proximate causes. ( ) the general consideration of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us very little in forming and arranging our ideas concerning particular questions. ( ) let us add that as to the actual coordination and concatenation of things, that is how things are ordained and linked together, we are obviously ignorant; therefore, it is more profitable for right living, nay, it is necessary for us to consider things as contingent. ( ) so much about law in the abstract. ( ) now the word law seems to be only applied to natural phenomena by analogy, and is commonly taken to signify a command which men can either obey or neglect, inasmuch as it restrains human nature within certain originally exceeded limits, and therefore lays down no rule beyond human strength. ( ) thus it is expedient to define law more particularly as a plan of life laid down by man for himself or others with a certain object. ( ) however, as the true object of legislation is only perceived by a few, and most men are almost incapable of grasping it, though they live under its conditions, legislators, with a view to exacting general obedience, have wisely put forward another object, very different from that which necessarily follows from the nature of law: they promise to the observers of the law that which the masses chiefly desire, and threaten its violators with that which they chiefly fear: thus endeavouring to restrain the masses, as far as may be, like a horse with a curb; whence it follows that the word law is chiefly applied to the modes of life enjoined on men by the sway of others; hence those who obey the law are said to live under it and to be under compulsion. ( ) in truth, a man who renders everyone their due because he fears the gallows, acts under the sway and compulsion of others, and cannot be called just. ( ) but a man who does the same from a knowledge of the true reason for laws and their necessity, acts from a firm purpose and of his own accord, and is therefore properly called just. ( ) this, i take it, is paul's meaning when he says, that those who live under the law cannot be justified through the law, for justice, as commonly defined, is the constant and perpetual will to render every man his due. ( ) thus solomon says (prov. xxi: ), "it is a joy to the just to do judgment," but the wicked fear. ( ) law, then, being a plan of living which men have for a certain object laid down for themselves or others, may, as it seems, be divided into human law and divine law. {but both are opposite sides of the same coin} ( ) by human law i mean a plan of living which serves only to render life and the state secure. ( ) by divine law i mean that which only regards the highest good, in other words, the true knowledge of god and love. ( ) i call this law divine because of the nature of the highest good, which i will here shortly explain as clearly as i can. ( ) inasmuch as the intellect is the best part of our being, it is evident that we should make every effort to perfect it as far as possible if we desire to search for what is really profitable to us. ( ) for in intellectual perfection the highest good should consist. ( ) now, since all our knowledge, and the certainty which removes every doubt, depend solely on the knowledge of god;- firstly, because without god nothing can exist or be conceived; secondly, because so long as we have no clear and distinct idea of god we may remain in universal doubt - it follows that our highest good and perfection also depend solely on the knowledge of god. ( ) further, since without god nothing can exist or be conceived, it is evident that all natural phenomena involve and express the conception of god as far as their essence and perfection extend, so that we have greater and more perfect knowledge of god in proportion to our knowledge of natural phenomena: conversely (since the knowledge of an effect through its cause is the same thing as the knowledge of a particular property of a cause) the greater our knowledge of natural phenomena, the more perfect is our knowledge of the essence of god (which is the cause of all things). ( ) so, then, our highest good not only depends on the knowledge of god, but wholly consists therein; and it further follows that man is perfect or the reverse in proportion to the nature and perfection of the object of his special desire; hence the most perfect and the chief sharer in the highest blessedness is he who prizes above all else, and takes especial delight in, the intellectual knowledge of god, the most perfect being. ( ) hither, then, our highest good and our highest blessedness aim - namely, to the knowledge and love of god; therefore the means demanded by this aim of all human actions, that is, by god in so far as the idea of him is in us, may be called the commands of god, because they proceed, as it were, from god himself, inasmuch as he exists in our minds, and the plan of life which has regard to this aim may be fitly called the law of god. ( ) the nature of the means, and the plan of life which this aim demands, how the foundations of the best states follow its lines, and how men's life is conducted, are questions pertaining to general ethics. ( ) here i only proceed to treat of the divine law in a particular application. ( ) as the love of god is man's highest happiness and blessedness, and the ultimate end and aim of all human actions, it follows that he alone lives by the divine law who loves god not from fear of punishment, or from love of any other object, such as sensual pleasure, fame, or the like; but solely because he has knowledge of god, or is convinced that the knowledge and love of god is the highest good. ( ) the sum and chief precept, then, of the divine law is to love god as the highest good, namely, as we have said, not from fear of any pains and penalties, or from the love of any other object in which we desire to take pleasure. ( ) the idea of god lays down the rule that god is our highest good - in other words, that the knowledge and love of god is the ultimate aim to which all our actions should be directed. ( ) the worldling cannot understand these things, they appear foolishness to him, because he has too meager a knowledge of god, and also because in this highest good he can discover nothing which he can handle or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites wherein he chiefly delights, for it consists solely in thought and the pure reason. ( ) they, on the other hand, who know that they possess no greater gift than intellect and sound reason, will doubtless accept what i have said without question. ( ) we have now explained that wherein the divine law chiefly consists, and what are human laws, namely, all those which have a different aim unless they have been ratified by revelation, for in this respect also things are referred to god (as we have shown above) and in this sense the law of moses, although it was not universal, but entirely adapted to the disposition and particular preservation of a single people, may yet be called a law of god or divine law, inasmuch as we believe that it was ratified by prophetic insight. ( ) if we consider the nature of natural divine law as we have just explained it, we shall see: ( ) i.- that it is universal or common to all men, for we have deduced it from universal human nature. ( ) ii. that it does not depend on the truth of any historical narrative whatsoever, for inasmuch as this natural divine law is comprehended solely by the consideration of human nature, it is plain that we can conceive it as existing as well in adam as in any other man, as well in a man living among his fellows, as in a man who lives by himself. ( ) the truth of a historical narrative, however assured, cannot give us the knowledge nor consequently the love of god, for love of god springs from knowledge of him, and knowledge of him should be derived from general ideas, in themselves certain and known, so that the truth of a historical narrative is very far from being a necessary requisite for our attaining our highest good. ( ) still, though the truth of histories cannot give us the knowledge and love of god, i do not deny that reading them is very useful with a view to life in the world, for the more we have observed and known of men's customs and circumstances, which are best revealed by their actions, the more warily we shall be able to order our lives among them, and so far as reason dictates to adapt our actions to their dispositions. ( ) iii. we see that this natural divine law does not demand the performance of ceremonies - that is, actions in themselves indifferent, which are called good from the fact of their institution, or actions symbolizing something profitable for salvation, or (if one prefers this definition) actions of which the meaning surpasses human understanding. ( ) the natural light of reason does not demand anything which it is itself unable to supply, but only such as it can very clearly show to be good, or a means to our blessedness. ( ) such things as are good simply because they have been commanded or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among actions that are the offsprings as it were, or fruit of a sound mind and of intellect. ( ) there is no need for me to go into this now in more detail. ( ) iv. lastly, we see that the highest reward of the divine law is the law itself, namely, to know god and to love him of our free choice, and with an undivided and fruitful spirit; while its penalty is the absence of these things, and being in bondage to the flesh - that is, having an inconstant and wavering spirit. ( ) these points being noted, i must now inquire: ( ) i. whether by the natural light of reason we can conceive of god as a law-giver or potentate ordaining laws for men? ( ) ii. what is the teaching of holy writ concerning this natural light of reason and natural law? ( ) iii. with what objects were ceremonies formerly instituted? ( ) iv. lastly, what is the good gained by knowing the sacred histories and believing them? ( ) of the first two i will treat in this chapter, of the remaining two in the following one. ( ) our conclusion about the first is easily deduced from the nature of god's will, which is only distinguished from his understanding in relation to our intellect - that is, the will and the understanding of god are in reality one and the same, and are only distinguished in relation to our thoughts which we form concerning god's understanding. ( ) for instance, if we are only looking to the fact that the nature of a triangle is from eternity contained in the divine nature as an eternal verity, we say that god possesses the idea of a triangle, or that he understands the nature of a triangle; but if afterwards we look to the fact that the nature of a triangle is thus contained in the divine nature, solely by the necessity of the divine nature, and not by the necessity of the nature and essence of a triangle - in fact, that the necessity of a triangle's essence and nature, in so far as they are conceived of as eternal verities, depends solely on the necessity of the divine nature and intellect, we then style god's will or decree, that which before we styled his intellect. ( ) wherefore we make one and the same affirmation concerning god when we say that he has from eternity decreed that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, as when we say that he has understood it. ( ) hence the affirmations and the negations of god always involve necessity or truth; so that, for example, if god said to adam that he did not wish him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have involved a contradiction that adam should have been able to eat of it, and would therefore have been impossible that he should have so eaten, for the divine command would have involved an eternal necessity and truth. ( ) but since scripture nevertheless narrates that god did give this command to adam, and yet that none the less adam ate of the tree, we must perforce say that god revealed to adam the evil which would surely follow if he should eat of the tree, but did not disclose that such evil would of necessity come to pass. ( ) thus it was that adam took the revelation to be not an eternal and necessary truth, but a law - that is, an ordinance followed by gain or loss, not depending necessarily on the nature of the act performed, but solely on the will and absolute power of some potentate, so that the revelation in question was solely in relation to adam, and solely through his lack of knowledge a law, and god was, as it were, a lawgiver and potentate. ( ) from the same cause, namely, from lack of knowledge, the decalogue in relation to the hebrews was a law, for since they knew not the existence of god as an eternal truth, they must have taken as a law that which was revealed to them in the decalogue, namely, that god exists, and that god only should be worshipped. ( ) but if god had spoken to them without the intervention of any bodily means, immediately they would have perceived it not as a law, but as an eternal truth. ( ) what we have said about the israelites and adam, applies also to all the prophets who wrote laws in god's name - they did not adequately conceive god's decrees as eternal truths. ( ) for instance, we must say of moses that from revelation, from the basis of what was revealed to him, he perceived the method by which the israelitish nation could best be united in a particular territory, and could form a body politic or state, and further that he perceived the method by which that nation could best be constrained to obedience; but he did not perceive, nor was it revealed to him, that this method was absolutely the best, nor that the obedience of the people in a certain strip of territory would necessarily imply the end he had in view. ( ) wherefore he perceived these things not as eternal truths, but as precepts and ordinances, and he ordained them as laws of god, and thus it came to be that he conceived god as a ruler, a legislator, a king, as merciful, just, &c., whereas such qualities are simply attributes of human nature, and utterly alien from the nature of the deity. ( )thus much we may affirm of the prophets who wrote laws in the name of god; but we must not affirm it of christ, for christ, although he too seems to have written laws in the name of god, must be taken to have had a clear and adequate perception, for christ was not so much a prophet as the mouthpiece of god. ( ) for god made revelations to mankind through christ as he had before done through angels - that is, a created voice, visions, &c. ( ) it would be as unreasonable to say that god had accommodated his revelations to the opinions of christ as that he had before accommodated them to the opinions of angels (that is, of a created voice or visions) as matters to be revealed to the prophets, a wholly absurd hypothesis. ( ) moreover, christ was sent to teach not only the jews but the whole human race, and therefore it was not enough that his mind should be accommodated to the opinions the jews alone, but also to the opinion and fundamental teaching common to the whole human race - in other words, to ideas universal and true. ( ) inasmuch as god revealed himself to christ, or to christ's mind immediately, and not as to the prophets through words and symbols, we must needs suppose that christ perceived truly what was revealed, in other words, he understood it, for a matter is understood when it is perceived simply by the mind without words or symbols. ( ) christ, then, perceived (truly and adequately) what was revealed, and if he ever proclaimed such revelations as laws, he did so because of the ignorance and obstinacy of the people, acting in this respect the part of god; inasmuch as he accommodated himself to the comprehension of the people, and though he spoke somewhat more clearly than the other prophets, yet he taught what was revealed obscurely, and generally through parables, especially when he was speaking to those to whom it was not yet given to understand the kingdom of heaven. (see matt. xiii: , &c.) ( ) to those to whom it was given to understand the mysteries of heaven, he doubtless taught his doctrines as eternal truths, and did not lay them down as laws, thus freeing the minds of his hearers from the bondage of that law which he further confirmed and established. ( ) paul apparently points to this more than once (e.g. rom. vii: , and iii: ), though he never himself seems to wish to speak openly, but, to quote his own words (rom. iii: , and vi: ), "merely humanly." ( ) this he expressly states when he calls god just, and it was doubtless in concession to human weakness that he attributes mercy, grace, anger, and similar qualities to god, adapting his language to the popular mind, or, as he puts it ( cor. iii: , ), to carnal men. ( ) in rom. ix: , he teaches undisguisedly that god's auger and mercy depend not on the actions of men, but on god's own nature or will; further, that no one is justified by the works of the law, but only by faith, which he seems to identify with the full assent of the soul; lastly, that no one is blessed unless he have in him the mind of christ (rom. viii: ), whereby he perceives the laws of god as eternal truths. ( ) we conclude, therefore, that god is described as a lawgiver or prince, and styled just, merciful, &c., merely in concession to popular understanding, and the imperfection of popular knowledge; that in reality god acts and directs all things simply by the necessity of his nature and perfection, and that his decrees and volitions are eternal truths, and always involve necessity. ( ) so much for the first point which i wished to explain and demonstrate. ( ) passing on to the second point, let us search the sacred pages for their teaching concerning the light of nature and this divine law. ( ) the first doctrine we find in the history of the first man, where it is narrated that god commanded adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; this seems to mean that god commanded adam to do and to seek after righteousness because it was good, not because the contrary was evil: that is, to seek the good for its own sake, not from fear of evil. ( ) we have seen that he who acts rightly from the true knowledge and love of right, acts with freedom and constancy, whereas he who acts from fear of evil, is under the constraint of evil, and acts in bondage under external control. ( ) so that this commandment of god to adam comprehends the whole divine natural law, and absolutely agrees with the dictates of the light of nature; nay, it would be easy to explain on this basis the whole history or allegory of the first man. ( ) but i prefer to pass over the subject in silence, because, in the first place, i cannot be absolutely certain that my explanation would be in accordance with the intention of the sacred writer; and, secondly, because many do not admit that this history is an allegory, maintaining it to be a simple narrative of facts. ( ) it will be better, therefore, to adduce other passages of scripture, especially such as were written by him, who speaks with all the strength of his natural understanding, in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, and whose sayings are accepted by the people as of equal weight with those of the prophets. ( ) i mean solomon, whose prudence and wisdom are commended in scripture rather than his piety and gift of prophecy. ( ) life being taken to mean the true life (as is evident from deut. xxx: ), the fruit of the understanding consists only in the true life, and its absence constitutes punishment. ( ) all this absolutely agrees with what was set out in our fourth point concerning natural law. ( ) moreover our position that it is the well-spring of life, and that the intellect alone lays down laws for the wise, is plainly taught by, the sage, for he says (prov. xiii: ): "the law of the wise is a fountain of life" - that is, as we gather from the preceding text, the understanding. ( ) in chap. iii: , he expressly teaches that the understanding renders man blessed and happy, and gives him true peace of mind. "happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding," for "wisdom gives length of days, and riches and honour; her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace" (xiiii: , ). ( ) according to solomon, therefore, it is only, the wise who live in peace and equanimity, not like the wicked whose minds drift hither and thither, and (as isaiah says, chap. lvii: ) "are like the troubled sea, for them there is no peace." ( ) lastly, we should especially note the passage in chap. ii. of solomon's proverbs which most clearly confirms our contention: "if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding . . . then shalt thou understand the fear of the lord, and find the knowledge of god; for the lord giveth wisdom; out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding." ( ) these words clearly enunciate ( ), that wisdom or intellect alone teaches us to fear god wisely - that is, to worship him truly; ( ), that wisdom and knowledge flow from god's mouth, and that god bestows on us this gift; this we have already shown in proving that our understanding and our knowledge depend on, spring from, and are perfected by the idea or knowledge of god, and nothing else. ( ) solomon goes on to say in so many words that this knowledge contains and involves the true principles of ethics and politics: "when wisdom entereth into thy heart, and knowledge is pleasant to thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee, then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity, yea every good path." ( ) all of which is in obvious agreement with natural knowledge: for after we have come to the understanding of things, and have tasted the excellence of knowledge, she teaches us ethics and true virtue. ( ) thus the happiness and the peace of him who cultivates his natural understanding lies, according to solomon also, not so much under the dominion of fortune (or god's external aid) as in inward personal virtue (or god's internal aid), for the latter can to a great extent be preserved by vigilance, right action, and thought. ( ) lastly, we must by no means pass over the passage in paul's epistle to the romans, i: , in which he says: "for the invisible things of god from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse, because, when they knew god, they glorified him not as god, neither were they thankful." ( ) these words clearly show that everyone can by the light of nature clearly understand the goodness and the eternal divinity of god, and can thence know and deduce what they should seek for and what avoid; wherefore the apostle says that they are without excuse and cannot plead ignorance, as they certainly might if it were a question of supernatural light and the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of christ. ( ) "wherefore," he goes on to say (ib. ), "god gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts;" and so on, through the rest of the chapter, he describes the vices of ignorance, and sets them forth as the punishment of ignorance. ( ) this obviously agrees with the verse of solomon, already quoted, "the instruction of fools is folly," so that it is easy to understand why paul says that the wicked are without excuse. ( ) as every man sows so shall he reap: out of evil, evils necessarily spring, unless they be wisely counteracted. ( ) thus we see that scripture literally approves of the light of natural reason and the natural divine law, and i have fulfilled the promises made at the beginning of this chapter. chapter v. - of the ceremonial law. ( ) in the foregoing chapter we have shown that the divine law, which renders men truly blessed, and teaches them the true life, is universal to all men; nay, we have so intimately deduced it from human nature that it must be esteemed innate, and, as it were, ingrained in the human mind. ( ) but with regard to the ceremonial observances which were ordained in the old testament for the hebrews only, and were so adapted to their state that they could for the most part only be observed by the society as a whole and not by each individual, it is evident that they formed no part of the divine law, and had nothing to do with blessedness and virtue, but had reference only to the election of the hebrews, that is (as i have shown in chap. ii.), to their temporal bodily happiness and the tranquillity of their kingdom, and that therefore they were only valid while that kingdom lasted. ( ) if in the old testament they are spoken of as the law of god, it is only because they were founded on revelation, or a basis of revelation. ( ) still as reason, however sound, has little weight with ordinary theologians, i will adduce the authority of scripture for what i here assert, and will further show, for the sake of greater clearness, why and how these ceremonials served to establish and preserve the jewish kingdom. ( ) isaiah teaches most plainly that the divine law in its strict sense signifies that universal law which consists in a true manner of life, and does not signify ceremonial observances. ( ) in chapter i: , the prophet calls on his countrymen to hearken to the divine law as he delivers it, and first excluding all kinds of sacrifices and all feasts, he at length sums up the law in these few words, "cease to do evil, learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed." ( ) not less striking testimony is given in psalm xl: - , where the psalmist addresses god: "sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened; burnt offering and sin-offering hast thou not required; i delight to do thy will, my god; yea, thy law is within my heart." ( ) here the psalmist reckons as the law of god only that which is inscribed in his heart, and excludes ceremonies therefrom, for the latter are good and inscribed on the heart only from the fact of their institution, and not because of their intrinsic value. ( ) other passages of scripture testify to the same truth, but these two will suffice. ( ) we may also learn from the bible that ceremonies are no aid to blessedness, but only have reference to the temporal prosperity of the kingdom; for the rewards promised for their observance are merely temporal advantages and delights, blessedness being reserved for the universal divine law. ( ) in all the five books commonly attributed to moses nothing is promised, as i have said, beyond temporal benefits, such as honours, fame, victories, riches, enjoyments, and health. ( ) though many moral precepts besides ceremonies are contained in these five books, they appear not as moral doctrines universal to all men, but as commands especially adapted to the understanding and character of the hebrew people, and as having reference only to the welfare of the kingdom. ( ) for instance, moses does not teach the jews as a prophet not to kill or to steal, but gives these commandments solely as a lawgiver and judge; he does not reason out the doctrine, but affixes for its non-observance a penalty which may and very properly does vary in different nations. ( ) so, too, the command not to commit adultery is given merely with reference to the welfare of the state; for if the moral doctrine had been intended, with reference not only to the welfare of the state, but also to the tranquillity and blessedness of the individual, moses would have condemned not merely the outward act, but also the mental acquiescence, as is done by christ, who taught only universal moral precepts, and for this cause promises a spiritual instead of a temporal reward. ( ) christ, as i have said, was sent into the world, not to preserve the state nor to lay down laws, but solely to teach the universal moral law, so we can easily understand that he wished in nowise to do away with the law of moses, inasmuch as he introduced no new laws of his own - his sole care was to teach moral doctrines, and distinguish them from the laws of the state; for the pharisees, in their ignorance, thought that the observance of the state law and the mosaic law was the sum total of morality; whereas such laws merely had reference to the public welfare, and aimed not so much at instructing the jews as at keeping them under constraint. ( ) but let us return to our subject, and cite other passages of scripture which set forth temporal benefits as rewards for observing the ceremonial law, and blessedness as reward for the universal law. ( ) none of the prophets puts the point more clearly than isaiah. ( .) after condemning hypocrisy he commends liberty and charity towards one's self and one's neighbours, and promises as a reward: "then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall spring forth speedily, thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the lord shall be thy reward" (chap. lviii: ). ( ) shortly afterwards he commends the sabbath, and for a due observance of it, promises: "then shalt thou delight thyself in the lord, and i will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of jacob thy father: for the mouth of the lord has spoken it." ( ) thus the prophet for liberty bestowed, and charitable works, promises a healthy mind in a healthy body, and the glory of the lord even after death; whereas, for ceremonial exactitude, he only promises security of rule, prosperity, and temporal happiness. ( ) in psalms xv. and xxiv. no mention is made of ceremonies, but only of moral doctrines, inasmuch as there is no question of anything but blessedness, and blessedness is symbolically promised: it is quite certain that the expressions, "the hill of god," and "his tents and the dwellers therein," refer to blessedness and security of soul, not to the actual mount of jerusalem and the tabernacle of moses, for these latter were not dwelt in by anyone, and only the sons of levi ministered there. ( ) further, all those sentences of solomon to which i referred in the last chapter, for the cultivation of the intellect and wisdom, promise true blessedness, for by wisdom is the fear of god at length understood, and the knowledge of god found. ( ) that the jews themselves were not bound to practise their ceremonial observances after the destruction of their kingdom is evident from jeremiah. ( ) for when the prophet saw and foretold that the desolation of the city was at hand, he said that god only delights in those who know and understand that he exercises loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, and that such persons only are worthy of praise. (jer. ix: .) ( ) as though god had said that, after the desolation of the city, he would require nothing special from the jews beyond the natural law by which all men are bound. ( ) the new testament also confirms this view, for only moral doctrines are therein taught, and the kingdom of heaven is promised as a reward, whereas ceremonial observances are not touched on by the apostles, after they began to preach the gospel to the gentiles. ( ) the pharisees certainly continued to practise these rites after the destruction of the kingdom, but more with a view of opposing the christians than of pleasing god: for after the first destruction of the city, when they were led captive to babylon, not being then, so far as i am aware, split up into sects, they straightway neglected their rites, bid farewell to the mosaic law, buried their national customs in oblivion as being plainly superfluous, and began to mingle with other nations, as we may abundantly learn from ezra and nehemiah. ( ) we cannot, therefore, doubt that they were no more bound by the law of moses, after the destruction of their kingdom, than they had been before it had been begun, while they were still living among other peoples before the exodus from egypt, and were subject to no special law beyond the natural law, and also, doubtless, the law of the state in which they were living, in so far as it was consonant with the divine natural law. ( ) as to the fact that the patriarchs offered sacrifices, i think they did so for the purpose of stimulating their piety, for their minds had been accustomed from childhood to the idea of sacrifice, which we know had been universal from the time of enoch; and thus they found in sacrifice their most powerful incentive. ( ) the patriarchs, then, did not sacrifice to god at the bidding of a divine right, or as taught by the basis of the divine law, but simply in accordance with the custom of the time; and, if in so doing they followed any ordinance, it was simply the ordinance of the country they were living in, by which (as we have seen before in the case of melchisedek) they were bound. ( ) i think that i have now given scriptural authority for my view: it remains to show why and how the ceremonial observances tended to preserve and confirm the hebrew kingdom; and this i can very briefly do on grounds universally accepted. ( ) the formation of society serves not only for defensive purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division of labour. ( ) if men did not render mutual assistance to each other, no one would have either the skill or the time to provide for his own sustenance and preservation: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and no one would be capable of preparing all that he individually stood in need of. ( ) strength and time, i repeat, would fail, if every one had in person to plough, to sow, to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch, and perform the other numerous functions required to keep life going; to say nothing of the arts and sciences which are also entirely necessary to the perfection and blessedness of human nature. ( ) we see that peoples living, in uncivilized barbarism lead a wretched and almost animal life, and even they would not be able to acquire their few rude necessaries without assisting one another to a certain extent. ( ) now if men were so constituted by nature that they desired nothing but what is designated by true reason, society would obviously have no need of laws: it would be sufficient to inculcate true moral doctrines; and men would freely, without hesitation, act in accordance with their true interests. ( ) but human nature is framed in a different fashion: every one, indeed, seeks his own interest, but does not do so in accordance with the dictates of sound reason, for most men's ideas of desirability and usefulness are guided by their fleshly instincts and emotions, which take no thought beyond the present and the immediate object. ( ) therefore, no society can exist without government, and force, and laws to restrain and repress men's desires and immoderate impulses. ( ) still human nature will not submit to absolute repression. ( ) violent governments, as seneca says, never last long; the moderate governments endure. ( ) so long as men act simply from fear they act contrary to their inclinations, taking no thought for the advantages or necessity of their actions, but simply endeavouring to escape punishment or loss of life. ( ) they must needs rejoice in any evil which befalls their ruler, even if it should involve themselves; and must long for and bring about such evil by every means in their power. ( ) again, men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by their equals. ( ) lastly, it is exceedingly difficult to revoke liberties once granted. ( ) from these considerations it follows, firstly, that authority should either be vested in the hands of the whole state in common, so that everyone should be bound to serve, and yet not be in subjection to his equals; or else, if power be in the hands of a few, or one man, that one man should be something above average humanity, or should strive to get himself accepted as such. ( ) secondly, laws should in every government be so arranged that people should be kept in bounds by the hope of some greatly desired good, rather than by fear, for then everyone will do his duty willingly. ( ) lastly, as obedience consists in acting at the bidding of external authority, it would have no place in a state where the government is vested in the whole people, and where laws are made by common consent. ( ) in such a society the people would remain free, whether the laws were added to or diminished, inasmuch as it would not be done on external authority, but their own free consent. ( ) the reverse happens when the sovereign power is vested in one man, for all act at his bidding; and, therefore, unless they had been trained from the first to depend on the words of their ruler, the latter would find it difficult, in case of need, to abrogate liberties once conceded, and impose new laws. ( ) from these universal considerations, let us pass on to the kingdom of the jews. ( ) the jews when they first came out of egypt were not bound by any national laws, and were therefore free to ratify any laws they liked, or to make new ones, and were at liberty to set up a government and occupy a territory wherever they chose. ( ) however, they, were entirely unfit to frame a wise code of laws and to keep the sovereign power vested in the community; they were all uncultivated and sunk in a wretched slavery, therefore the sovereignty was bound to remain vested in the hands of one man who would rule the rest and keep them under constraint, make laws and interpret them. ( ) this sovereignty was easily retained by moses, because he surpassed the rest in virtue and persuaded the people of the fact, proving it by many testimonies (see exod. chap. xiv., last verse, and chap. xix: ). ( ) he then, by the divine virtue he possessed, made laws and ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care that they should be obeyed willingly and not through fear, being specially induced to adopt this course by the obstinate nature of the jews, who would not have submitted to be ruled solely by constraint; and also by the imminence of war, for it is always better to inspire soldiers with a thirst for glory than to terrify them with threats; each man will then strive to distinguish himself by valour and courage, instead of merely trying to escape punishment. ( ) moses, therefore, by his virtue and the divine command, introduced a religion, so that the people might do their duty from devotion rather than fear. ( ) further, he bound them over by benefits, and prophesied many advantages in the future; nor were his laws very severe, as anyone may see for himself, especially if he remarks the number of circumstances necessary in order to procure the conviction of an accused person. ( ) lastly, in order that the people which could not govern itself should be entirely dependent on its ruler, he left nothing to the free choice of individuals (who had hitherto been slaves); the people could do nothing but remember the law, and follow the ordinances laid down at the good pleasure of their ruler; they were not allowed to plough, to sow, to reap, nor even to eat; to clothe themselves, to shave, to rejoice, or in fact to do anything whatever as they liked, but were bound to follow the directions given in the law; and not only this, but they were obliged to have marks on their door-posts, on their hands, and between their eyes to admonish them to perpetual obedience. ( ) this, then, was the object of the ceremonial law, that men should do nothing of their own free will, but should always act under external authority, and should continually confess by their actions and thoughts that they were not their own masters, but were entirely under the control of others. ( ) from all these considerations it is clearer than day that ceremonies have nothing to do with a state of blessedness, and that those mentioned in the old testament, i.e. the whole mosaic law, had reference merely to the government of the jews, and merely temporal advantages. ( ) as for the christian rites, such as baptism, the lord's supper, festivals, public prayers, and any other observances which are, and always have been, common to all christendom, if they were instituted by christ or his apostles (which is open to doubt), they were instituted as external signs of the universal church, and not as having anything to do with blessedness, or possessing any sanctity in themselves. ( ) therefore, though such ceremonies were not ordained for the sake of upholding a government, they were ordained for the preservation of a society, and accordingly he who lives alone is not bound by them: nay, those who live in a country where the christian religion is forbidden, are bound to abstain from such rites, and can none the less live in a state of blessedness. ( ) we have an example of this in japan, where the christian religion is forbidden, and the dutch who live there are enjoined by their east india company not to practise any outward rites of religion. ( ) i need not cite other examples, though it would be easy to prove my point from the fundamental principles of the new testament, and to adduce many confirmatory instances; but i pass on the more willingly, as i am anxious to proceed to my next proposition. ( ) i will now, therefore, pass on to what i proposed to treat of in the second part of this chapter, namely, what persons are bound to believe in the narratives contained in scripture, and how far they are so bound. ( ) examining this question by the aid of natural reason, i will proceed as follows. ( ) if anyone wishes to persuade his fellows for or against anything which is not self-evident, he must deduce his contention from their admissions, and convince them either by experience or by ratiocination; either by appealing to facts of natural experience, or to self-evident intellectual axioms. ( ) now unless the experience be of such a kind as to be clearly and distinctly understood, though it may convince a man, it will not have the same effect on his mind and disperse the clouds of his doubt so completely as when the doctrine taught is deduced entirely from intellectual axioms - that is, by the mere power of the understanding and logical order, and this is especially the case in spiritual matters which have nothing to do with the senses. ( ) but the deduction of conclusions from general truths a priori, usually requires a long chain of arguments, and, moreover, very great caution, acuteness, and self-restraint - qualities which are not often met with; therefore people prefer to be taught by experience rather than deduce their conclusion from a few axioms, and set them out in logical order. ( ) whence it follows, that if anyone wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole nation (not to speak of the whole human race), and to be understood by all men in every particular, he will seek to support his teaching with experience, and will endeavour to suit his reasonings and the definitions of his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding of the common people, who form the majority of mankind, and he will not set them forth in logical sequence nor adduce the definitions which serve to establish them. ( ) otherwise he writes only for the learned - that is, he will be understood by only a small proportion of the human race. ( ) all scripture was written primarily for an entire people, and secondarily for the whole human race; therefore its contents must necessarily be adapted as far as possible to the understanding of the masses, and proved only by examples drawn from experience. ( ) we will explain ourselves more clearly. ( ) the chief speculative doctrines taught in scripture are the existence of god, or a being who made all things, and who directs and sustains the world with consummate wisdom; furthermore, that god takes the greatest thought for men, or such of them as live piously and honourably, while he punishes, with various penalties, those who do evil, separating them from the good. ( ) all this is proved in scripture entirely through experience-that is, through the narratives there related. ( ) no definitions of doctrine are given, but all the sayings and reasonings are adapted to the understanding of the masses. ( ) although experience can give no clear knowledge of these things, nor explain the nature of god, nor how he directs and sustains all things, it can nevertheless teach and enlighten men sufficiently to impress obedience and devotion on their minds. ( ) it is now, i think, sufficiently clear what persons are bound to believe in the scripture narratives, and in what degree they are so bound, for it evidently follows from what has been said that the knowledge of and belief in them is particularly necessary to the masses whose intellect is not capable of perceiving things clearly and distinctly. ( ) further, he who denies them because he does not believe that god exists or takes thought for men and the world, may be accounted impious; but a man who is ignorant of them, and nevertheless knows by natural reason that god exists, as we have said, and has a true plan of life, is altogether blessed - yes, more blessed than the common herd of believers, because besides true opinions he possesses also a true and distinct conception. ( ) lastly, he who is ignorant of the scriptures and knows nothing by the light of reason, though he may not be impious or rebellious, is yet less than human and almost brutal, having none of god's gifts. ( ) we must here remark that when we say that the knowledge of the sacred narrative is particularly necessary to the masses, we do not mean the knowledge of absolutely all the narratives in the bible, but only of the principal ones, those which, taken by themselves, plainly display the doctrine we have just stated, and have most effect over men's minds. ( ) if all the narratives in scripture were necessary for the proof of this doctrine, and if no conclusion could be drawn without the general consideration of every one of the histories contained in the sacred writings, truly the conclusion and demonstration of such doctrine would overtask the understanding and strength not only of the masses, but of humanity; who is there who could give attention to all the narratives at once, and to all the circumstances, and all the scraps of doctrine to be elicited from such a host of diverse histories? ( ) i cannot believe that the men who have left us the bible as we have it were so abounding in talent that they attempted setting about such a method of demonstration, still less can i suppose that we cannot understand scriptural doctrine till we have given heed to the quarrels of isaac, the advice of achitophel to absalom, the civil war between jews and israelites, and other similar chronicles; nor can i think that it was more difficult to teach such doctrine by means of history to the jews of early times, the contemporaries of moses, than it was to the contemporaries of esdras. ( ) but more will be said on this point hereafter, we may now only note that the masses are only bound to know those histories which can most powerfully dispose their mind to obedience and devotion. ( ) however, the masses are not sufficiently skilled to draw conclusions from what they read, they take more delight in the actual stories, and in the strange and unlooked-for issues of events than in the doctrines implied; therefore, besides reading these narratives, they are always in need of pastors or church ministers to explain them to their feeble intelligence. ( ) but not to wander from our point, let us conclude with what has been our principal object - namely, that the truth of narratives, be they what they may, has nothing to do with the divine law, and serves for nothing except in respect of doctrine, the sole element which makes one history better than another. ( ) the narratives in the old and new testaments surpass profane history, and differ among themselves in merit simply by reason of the salutary doctrines which they inculcate. ( ) therefore, if a man were to read the scripture narratives believing the whole of them, but were to give no heed to the doctrines they contain, and make no amendment in his life, he might employ himself just as profitably in reading the koran or the poetic drama, or ordinary chronicles, with the attention usually given to such writings; on the other hand, if a man is absolutely ignorant of the scriptures, and none the less has right opinions and a true plan of life, he is absolutely blessed and truly possesses in himself the spirit of christ. ( ) the jews are of a directly contrary way of thinking, for they hold that true opinions and a true plan of life are of no service in attaining blessedness, if their possessors have arrived at them by the light of reason only, and not like the documents prophetically revealed to moses. ( ) maimonides ventures openly to make this assertion: "every man who takes to heart the seven precepts and diligently follows them, is counted with the pious among the nation, and an heir of the world to come; that is to say, if he takes to heart and follows them because god ordained them in the law, and revealed them to us by moses, because they were of aforetime precepts to the sons of noah: but he who follows them as led thereto by reason, is not counted as a dweller among the pious or among the wise of the nations." ( ) such are the words of maimonides, to which r. joseph, the son of shem job, adds in his book which he calls "kebod elohim, or god's glory," that although aristotle (whom he considers to have written the best ethics and to be above everyone else) has not omitted anything that concerns true ethics, and which he has adopted in his own book, carefully following the lines laid down, yet this was not able to suffice for his salvation, inasmuch as he embraced his doctrines in accordance with the dictates of reason and not as divine documents prophetically revealed. ( ) however, that these are mere figments, and are not supported by scriptural authority will, i think, be sufficiently evident to the attentive reader, so that an examination of the theory will be sufficient for its refutation. ( ) it is not my purpose here to refute the assertions of those who assert that the natural light of reason can teach nothing, of any value concerning the true way of salvation. ( ) people who lay no claims to reason for themselves, are not able to prove by reason this their assertion; and if they hawk about something superior to reason, it is a mere figment, and far below reason, as their general method of life sufficiently shows. ( ) but there is no need to dwell upon such persons. ( ) i will merely add that we can only judge of a man by his works. ( ) if a man abounds in the fruits of the spirit, charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, chastity, against which, as paul says (gal. v: ), there is no law, such an one, whether he be taught by reason only or by the scripture only, has been in very truth taught by god, and is altogether blessed. ( ) thus have i said all that i undertook to say concerning divine law. end of part author's endnotes to the theologico-political treatise chapters i to v chapter i endnote . ( ) the word naw-vee', strong: , is rightly interpreted by rabbi salomon jarchi, but the sense is hardly caught by aben ezra, who was not so good a hebraist. ( ) we must also remark that this hebrew word for prophecy has a universal meaning and embraces all kinds of prophecy. ( ) other terms are more special, and denote this or that sort of prophecy, as i believe is well known to the learned. endnote . ( ) "although, ordinary knowledge is divine, its professors cannot be called prophets." that is, interpreters of god. ( ) for he alone is an interpreter of god, who interprets the decrees which god has revealed to him, to others who have not received such revelation, and whose belief, therefore, rests merely on the prophet's authority and the confidence reposed in him. ( ) if it were otherwise, and all who listen to prophets became prophets themselves, as all who listen to philosophers become philosophers, a prophet would no longer be the interpreter of divine decrees, inasmuch as his hearers would know the truth, not on the authority of the prophet, but by means of actual divine revelation and inward testimony. ( ) thus the sovereign powers are the interpreters of their own rights of sway, because these are defended only by their authority and supported by their testimony. endnote . ( ) "prophets were endowed with a peculiar and extraordinary power." ( ) though some men enjoy gifts which nature has not bestowed on their fellows, they are not said to surpass the bounds of human nature, unless their special qualities are such as cannot be said to be deducible from the definition of human nature. ( ) for instance, a giant is a rarity, but still human. ( ) the gift of composing poetry extempore is given to very few, yet it is human. ( ) the same may, therefore, be said of the faculty possessed by some of imagining things as vividly as though they saw them before them, and this not while asleep, but while awake. ( ) but if anyone could be found who possessed other means and other foundations for knowledge, he might be said to transcend the limits of human nature. chapter iii. endnote . ( ) in gen. xv. it is written that god promised abraham to protect him, and to grant him ample rewards. ( ) abraham answered that he could expect nothing which could be of any value to him, as he was childless and well stricken in years. endnote . ( ) that a keeping of the commandments of the old testament is not sufficient for eternal life, appears from mark x: . end of endnotes to part i the writings of thomas paine by thomas paine collected and edited by moncure daniel conway volume iv. the age of reason ( ) contents editor's introduction part one chapter i - the author's profession of faith chapter ii - of missions and revelations chapter iii - concerning the character of jesus christ, and his history chapter iv - of the bases of christianity chapter v - examination in detail of the preceding bases chapter vi - of the true theology chapter vii - examination of the old testament chapter viii - of the new testament chapter ix - in what the true revelation consists chapter x - concerning god, and the lights cast on his existence and attributes by the bible chapter xi - of the theology of the christians; and the true theology chapter xii - the effects of christianism on education; proposed reforms chapter xiii - comparison of christianism with the religious ideas inspired by nature chapter xiv - system of the universe chapter xv - advantages of the existence of many worlds in each solar system chapter xvi - applications of the preceding to the system of the christians chapter xvii - of the means employed in all time, and almost universally, to deceive the peoples recapitulation part two preface chapter i - the old testament chapter ii - the new testament chapter iii - conclusion editor's introduction with some results of recent researches. in the opening year, , when revolutionary france had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the king of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. but eventualities had brought among them a great english and american heart--thomas paine. he had pleaded for louis caper--"kill the king but spare the man." now he pleaded,--"disbelieve in the king of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the father of mankind!" in paine's preface to the second part of "the age of reason" he describes himself as writing the first part near the close of the year . "i had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two committees of public safety and surety general, for putting me in arrestation." this was on the morning of december . but it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted--"in the state it has since appeared." for on august , , francois lanthenas, in an appeal for paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "i deliver to merlin de thionville a copy of the last work of t. payne [the age of reason], formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding foreigners from the national representation. this book was written by the author in the beginning of the year ' (old style). i undertook its translation before the revolution against priests, and it was published in french about the same time. couthon, to whom i sent it, seemed offended with me for having translated this work." under the frown of couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually suppressed that no copy bearing that date, , can be found in france or elsewhere. in paine's letter to samuel adams, printed in the present volume, he says that he had it translated into french, to stay the progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing atheism." the time indicated by lanthenas as that in which he submitted the work to couthon would appear to be the latter part of march, , the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees against them of march and . if the moral deformity of couthon, even greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved by the "mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given couthon by paine's book involved danger to him and his translator. on may , when the girondins were accused, the name of lanthenas was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day danton persuaded paine not to appear in the convention, as his life might be in danger. whether this was because of the "age of reason," with its fling at the "goddess nature" or not, the statements of author and translator are harmonized by the fact that paine prepared the manuscript, with considerable additions and changes, for publication in english, as he has stated in the preface to part ii. a comparison of the french and english versions, sentence by sentence, proved to me that the translation sent by lanthenas to merlin de thionville in is the same as that he sent to couthon in . this discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences of the original work. i have given as footnotes translations of such clauses and phrases of the french work as appeared to be important. those familiar with the translations of lanthenas need not be reminded that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. nor would lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation. this original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these i have restored, translating their headings into english. the "age of reason" is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original completeness. it should be remembered that paine could not have read the proof of his "age of reason" (part i.) which went through the press while he was in prison. to this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as abbreviated in the haste he has described. a notable instance is the dropping out of his estimate of jesus the words rendered by lanthenas "trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." the addition of these words to paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only recognition of the human character and life of jesus by any theological writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel. to the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded to, as one that lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have corrected. this is paine's repeated mention of six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of uranus. paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of herschel's discovery. the omission of any allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written before , when uranus was discovered. unfamiliar with french in , paine might not have discovered the erratum in lanthenas' translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for english readers. but he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. he states that soon after his publication of "common sense" ( ), he "saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one god and no more." he tells samuel adams that it had long been his intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to john adams in . like the quakers among whom he was reared paine could then readily use the phrase "word of god" for anything in the bible which approved itself to his "inner light," and as he had drawn from the first book of samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, john adams, a unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the old testament. paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. there is little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during the american war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable method (ten years before john fitch made his discovery) without publishing it. at any rate it appears to me certain that the part of "the age of reason" connected with paine's favorite science, astronomy, was written before , when uranus was discovered. paine's theism, however invested with biblical and christian phraseology, was a birthright. it appears clear from several allusions in "the age of reason" to the quakers that in his early life, or before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were substantially deists. an interesting confirmation of paine's statements concerning them appears as i write in an account sent by count leo tolstoi to the london 'times' of the russian sect called dukhobortsy (the times, october , ). this sect sprang up in the last century, and the narrative says: "the first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'dukhoborcheskaya' were sown by a foreigner, a quaker, who came to russia. the fundamental idea of his quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells god himself, and that he himself guides man by his inner word. god lives in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. to christ, as to an historical personage, the dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance... christ was god's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of god.' the purpose of christ's sufferings was no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. the quakers who, in , visited the dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about jesus christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'darkness!' from the old and new testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral teaching.... the moral ideas of the dukhobortsy are the following:--all men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. this idea of men's equality the dukhoborts have directed further, against the state authority.... amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical government, to be contrary to their ideas." here is an early hicksite quakerism carried to russia long before the birth of elias hicks, who recovered it from paine, to whom the american quakers refused burial among them. although paine arraigned the union of church and state, his ideal republic was religious; it was based on a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. this faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by a "chosen people," a priesthood, a monarch "by the grace of god," or an aristocracy. paine's "reason" is only an expansion of the quaker's "inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous republican and deistic writings made by his "rights of man" and "age of reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of george fox. paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive. that he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he believed was crumbling. the english engineer hall, who assisted paine in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in england, in : "my employer has common sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself." but five years later paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his temple: "with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the 'divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one, is accepted." ("rights of man." see my edition of paine's writings, ii., p. .) here we have a reappearance of george fox confuting the doctor in america who "denied the light and spirit of god to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the indians. whereupon i called an indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that reproved him for it?' he said, 'there was such a thing in him that did so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken wrong.' so we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people." (journal of george fox, september .) paine, who coined the phrase "religion of humanity" (the crisis, vii., ), did but logically defend it in "the age of reason," by denying a special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of church and state, mr. balfour, who, in his "foundations of belief," affirms that "inspiration" cannot be denied to the great oriental teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns. the centenary of the complete publication of "the age of reason," (october , ), was also celebrated at the church congress, norwich, on october , , when professor bonney, f.r.s., canon of manchester, read a paper in which he said: "i cannot deny that the increase of scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by our forefathers. the story of creation in the book of genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. the stories of the fall, of the flood, and of the tower of babel, are incredible in their present form. some historical element may underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." canon bonney proceeded to say of the new testament also, that "the gospels are not so far as we know, strictly contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition." the canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the age of reason fully upon us. reason alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i john v. ), and like it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. when men interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed. it will be seen by a note in part ii. of the work, that paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into the first american edition without indication of its being an editorial footnote. this footnote was: "the book of luke was carried by a majority of one only. vide moshelm's ecc. history." dr. priestley, then in america, answered paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the "age of reason" he made three alterations,--one of which changed "church mythologists" into "christian mythologists,"--and also raised the editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to mosheim. having done this, priestley writes: "as to the gospel of luke being carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of mr. paine's own invention, of no better authority whatever." and so on with further castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (priestley) was the unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of paine's publication. if this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man, and one not unfriendly to paine, if such a writer as priestley could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very wonderful when i state that in a modern popular edition of "the age of reason," including both parts, i have noted about five hundred deviations from the original. these were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to improve paine's grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale in london of a copy of part second surreptitiously made from the manuscript. these facts add significance to paine's footnote (itself altered in some editions!), in which he says: "if this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it an original, by matthew, mark, luke, or john." nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of their not having studied paine. professor huxley, for instance, speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says "there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophizing." [note: science and christian tradition, p. (lon. ed., ).] professor huxley does not name paine, evidently because he knows nothing about him. yet paine represents the turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the 'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the huxleyan school. he plagiarized by anticipation many things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from strauss and baur (being the first to expatiate on "christian mythology"), from renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human jesus), and notably from huxley, who has repeated paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives of christ's resurrection, and various other points. none can be more loyal to the memory of huxley than the present writer, and it is even because of my sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are contending. he says that butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth century type, but paine was of the nineteenth century type; and it was precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity than his deistical predecessors. he compelled the apologists to defend the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. the ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. a hundred years ago england was suppressing paine's works, and many an honest englishman has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "age of reason." the same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of learning, and even in the church congress; but the suppression of paine, begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of the representatives of our age of reason to their pioneer and founder. it is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. it is impossible to understand the religious history of england, and of america, without studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings of thomas paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such practical accompaniments as the foundation of the theophilanthropist church in paris and new york, and of the great rationalist wing of quakerism in america. whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of paine's time took the "age of reason" very seriously indeed. beginning with the learned dr. richard watson, bishop of llandaff, a large number of learned men replied to paine's work, and it became a signal for the commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have continued to our time; and indeed the so-called "broad church" is to some extent an outcome of "the age of reason." it would too much enlarge this introduction to cite here the replies made to paine (thirty-six are catalogued in the british museum), but it may be remarked that they were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in the pulpits. i must venture to quote one passage from his very learned antagonist, the rev. gilbert wakefield, b.a., "late fellow of jesus college, cambridge." wakefield, who had resided in london during all the paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders uttered against the author of "rights of man," indirectly brands them in answering paine's argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the jews, among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is an important evidence against them. the learned divine writes: "but the subject before us admits of further illustration from the example of mr. paine himself. in this country, where his opposition to the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of years, if such a wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? and will a true historian, such as the evangelists, be credited at that future period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and mighty accessions of collateral attestation? and how transcendently extraordinary, i had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the kingdom?" after the execution of louis xvi., for whose life paine pleaded so earnestly,--while in england he was denounced as an accomplice in the deed,--he devoted himself to the preparation of a constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and adding to them. this manuscript i suppose to have been prepared in what was variously known as white's hotel or philadelphia house, in paris, no. passage des petits peres. this compilation of early and fresh manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "the age of reason," and given for translation to francois lanthenas in march . it is entered, in qudrard (la france literaire) under the year , but with the title "l'age de la raison" instead of that which it bore in , "le siecle de la raison." the latter, printed "au burcau de l'imprimerie, rue du theatre-francais, no. ," is said to be by "thomas paine, citoyen et cultivateur de l'amerique septentrionale, secretaire du congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre d'amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: la sens commun et les droits de l'homme." when the revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, paine, unwilling to participate in the decrees of a convention whose sole legal function was to frame a constitution, retired to an old mansion and garden in the faubourg st. denis, no. . mr. j.g. alger, whose researches in personal details connected with the revolution are original and useful, recently showed me in the national archives at paris, some papers connected with the trial of georgeit, paine's landlord, by which it appears that the present no. is not, as i had supposed, the house in which paine resided. mr. alger accompanied me to the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. the arrest of georgeit is mentioned by paine in his essay on "forgetfulness" (writings, iii., ). when his trial came on one of the charges was that he had kept in his house "paine and other englishmen,"--paine being then in prison,--but he (georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry accusations brought against him by his section, the "faubourg du nord." this section took in the whole east side of the faubourg st. denis, whereas the present no. is on the west side. after georgeit (or georger) had been arrested, paine was left alone in the large mansion (said by rickman to have been once the hotel of madame de pompadour), and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution (october , ) of his friends the girondins, and political comrades, that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest to the world,--"the age of reason,"--in the state in which it has since appeared, as he is careful to say. there was every probability, during the months in which he wrote (november and december ) that he would be executed. his religious testament was prepared with the blade of the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written the book. in editing part i. of "the age of reason," i follow closely the first edition, which was printed by barrois in paris from the manuscript, no doubt under the superintendence of joel barlow, to whom paine, on his way to the luxembourg, had confided it. barlow was an american ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career french archives cast an unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were taken with paine's proofs. i may repeat here what i have stated in the outset of my editorial work on paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. and to that i will now add that in following paine's quotations from the bible i have adopted the plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse. paine was imprisoned in the luxembourg on december , , and released on november , . his liberation was secured by his old friend, james monroe (afterwards president), who had succeeded his (paine's) relentless enemy, gouverneur morris, as american minister in paris. he was found by monroe more dead than alive from semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the minister's own residence. it was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of mr. and mrs. monroe. it was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that paine wrote part second of "the age of reason." the work was published in london by h.d. symonds on october , , and claimed to be "from the author's manuscript." it is marked as "entered at stationers hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of "the bookseller to the public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both prejudice and partiality, and considering "both sides," need not be quoted. while his volume was going through the press in paris, paine heard of the publication in london, which drew from him the following hurried note to a london publisher, no doubt daniel isaacs eaton: "sir,--i have seen advertised in the london papers the second edition [part] of the age of reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the author's manuscript, and entered at stationers hall. i have never sent any manuscript to any person. it is therefore a forgery to say it is printed from the author's manuscript; and i suppose is done to give the publisher a pretence of copy right, which he has no title to. "i send you a printed copy, which is the only one i have sent to london. i wish you to make a cheap edition of it. i know not by what means any copy has got over to london. if any person has made a manuscript copy i have no doubt but it is full of errors. i wish you would talk to mr. ----- upon this subject as i wish to know by what means this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy. "t. paine. "paris, december , " eaton's cheap edition appeared january , , with the above letter on the reverse of the title. the blank in the note was probably "symonds" in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. eaton, already in trouble for printing one of paine's political pamphlets, fled to america, and an edition of the "age of reason" was issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by all the booksellers in great britain and ireland." it is also said to be "by thomas paine, author of several remarkable performances." i have never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my possession. it is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the prosecution of williams for selling a copy of it. a comparison with paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical and verbal errors in symonds, though few that affect the sense. the worst are in the preface, where, instead of " ," the misleading date " " is given as the year at whose close paine completed part first,--an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his calumnious american "biographer," cheetham, to prove his inconsistency. the editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in different ways, the following sentence of the preface in symonds: "the intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled revolutionary, supplied the place of the inquisition; and the guillotine of the state outdid the fire and faggot of the church." the rogue who copied this little knew the care with which paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution "religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "state," nor concede that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot. what paine wrote was: "the intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled revolutionary, supplied the place of an inquisition and the guillotine, of the stake." an original letter of paine, in the possession of joseph cowen, ex-m.p., which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original publication. although the name of the correspondent does not appear on the letter, it was certainly written to col. john fellows of new york, who copyrighted part i. of the "age of reason." he published the pamphlets of joel barlow, to whom paine confided his manuscript on his way to prison. fellows was afterwards paine's intimate friend in new york, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's writings, left in manuscript to madame bonneville while she was a freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after her return to catholicism. the letter which mr. cowen sends me, is dated at paris, january , . "sir,--your friend mr. caritat being on the point of his departure for america, i make it the opportunity of writing to you. i received two letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the age of reason: when i return to america we will settle for that matter. "as doctor franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with his grandson. i printed here (paris) about fifteen thousand of the second part of the age of reason, which i sent to mr. f[ranklin] bache. i gave him notice of it in september and the copy-right by my own direction was entered by him. the books did not arrive till april following, but he had advertised it long before. "i sent to him in august last a manuscript letter of about pages, from me to mr. washington to be printed in a pamphlet. mr. barnes of philadelphia carried the letter from me over to london to be forwarded to america. it went by the ship hope, cap: harley, who since his return from america told me that he put it into the post office at new york for bache. i have yet no certain account of its publication. i mention this that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published or has not arrived to mr. bache. barnes wrote to me, from london august informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling for the manuscript. the offer was refused because it was my intention it should not appear till it appeared in america, as that, and not england was the place for its operation. "you ask me by your letter to mr. caritat for a list of my several works, in order to publish a collection of them. this is an undertaking i have always reserved for myself. it not only belongs to me of right, but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. if he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. it is my intention to return to america in the course of the present year. i shall then [do] it by subscription, with historical notes. as this work will employ many persons in different parts of the union, i will confer with you upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to undertake, will be at your choice. i have sustained so much loss, by disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents, that i am obliged to look closer to my affairs than i have done. the printer (an englishman) whom i employed here to print the second part of 'the age of reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was printing it, which he sent to london and sold. it was by this means that an edition of it came out in london. "we are waiting here for news from america of the state of the federal elections. you will have heard long before this reaches you that the french government has refused to receive mr. pinckney as minister. while mr. monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with this government, for he was in good credit with them tho' they were in high indignation at the infidelity of the washington administration. it is time that mr. washington retire, for he has played off so much prudent hypocrisy between france and england that neither government believes anything he says. "your friend, etc., "thomas paine." it would appear that symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that sent by paine to franklin bache, for some of its errors continue in all modern american editions to the present day, as well as in those of england. for in england it was only the shilling edition--that revised by paine--which was suppressed. symonds, who ministered to the half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to paine, was left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new society for the suppression of vice and immorality fastened on one thomas williams, who sold pious tracts but was also convicted (june , ) of having sold one copy of the "age of reason." erskine, who had defended paine at his trial for the "rights of man," conducted the prosecution of williams. he gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to lincoln's inn. he felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears. she led him into the small book-shop of thomas williams, not yet called up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering with smallpox. he saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of the society which had retained him was summoned. there was a full meeting, the bishop of london (porteus) in the chair. erskine reminded them that williams was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed, and williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked permission to move for a nominal sentence. mercy, he urged, was a part of the christianity they were defending. not one of the society took his side,--not even "philanthropic" wilberforce--and erskine threw up his brief. this action of erskine led the judge to give williams only a year in prison instead of the three he said had been intended. while williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating erskine's speech on christianity, but also an anonymous sermon "on the existence and attributes of the deity," all of which was from paine's "age of reason," except a brief "address to the deity" appended. this picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of paine's "discourse to the theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names removed) under the title of "atheism refuted." both of these pamphlets are now before me, and beside them a london tract of one page just sent for my spiritual benefit. this is headed "a word of caution." it begins by mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of paine," the first being "that there is no god" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence taken from paine's works. it should be added that this one dingy page is the only "survival" of the ancient paine effigy in the tract form which i have been able to find in recent years, and to this no society or publisher's name is attached. the imprisonment of williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war for religious liberty in england, in the course of which occurred many notable events, such as eaton receiving homage in his pillory at choring cross, and the whole carlile family imprisoned,--its head imprisoned more than nine years for publishing the "age of reason." this last victory of persecution was suicidal. gentlemen of wealth, not adherents of paine, helped in setting carlile up in business in fleet street, where free-thinking publications have since been sold without interruption. but though liberty triumphed in one sense, the "age of reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention it especially merited. its original prosecution by a society for the suppression of vice (a device to, relieve the crown) amounted to a libel upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the "age of reason" was vulgar and illiterate. the theologians, as we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist, the collaborator of franklin, rittenhouse, and clymer, on whom the university of pennsylvania had conferred the degree of master of arts,--but the gentry confused paine with the class described by burke as "the swinish multitude." skepticism, or its free utterance, was temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the out-lawed vindicator of the "rights of man." but that long combat has now passed away. time has reduced the "age of reason" from a flag of popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as its negations are concerned. an old friend tells me that in his youth he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that "tom paine was so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer; and now paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!" this variant of the wandering jew myth may now be regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in holding clerical vestments together. but the careful reader will find in paine's "age of reason" something beyond negations, and in conclusion i will especially call attention to the new departure in theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a famous aphorism of kant, indicated by a note in part ii. the discovery already mentioned, that part i. was written at least fourteen years before part ii., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while the earlier work is an amplification of newtonian deism, based on the phenomena of planetary motion, the work of bases belief in god on "the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to do good ones." this exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion, and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been reached. chapter i - the author's profession of faith. it has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion; i am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. i intended it to be the last offering i should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work. the circumstance that has now taken place in france, of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true. as several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of france, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, i also will make mine; and i do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself. i believe in one god, and no more; and i hope for happiness beyond this life. i believe the equality of man, and i believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. but, lest it should be supposed that i believe many other things in addition to these, i shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things i do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. i do not believe in the creed professed by the jewish church, by the roman church, by the greek church, by the turkish church, by the protestant church, nor by any church that i know of. my own mind is my own church. all national institutions of churches, whether jewish, christian, or turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. i do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as i have to mine. but it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. it is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if i may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. when a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. he takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this? soon after i had published the pamphlet common sense, in america, i saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. the adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether jewish, christian, or turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. human inventions and priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one god, and no more. chapter ii - of missions and revelations. every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from god, communicated to certain individuals. the jews have their moses; the christians their jesus christ, their apostles and saints; and the turks their mahomet; as if the way to god was not open to every man alike. each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of god. the jews say that their word of god was given by god to moses face to face; the christians say, that their word of god came by divine inspiration; and the turks say, that their word of god (the koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, i disbelieve them all. as it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, i will, before i proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from god to man. no one will deny or dispute the power of the almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. but admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. when he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. it is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and i have only his word for it that it was made to him. when moses told the children of israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of god, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and i have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. they contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [note: it is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that god 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children'. this is contrary to every principle of moral justice.--author.] when i am told that the koran was written in heaven, and brought to mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. i did not see the angel myself, and therefore i have a right not to believe it. when also i am told that a woman, called the virgin mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, joseph, said that an angel told him so, i have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither joseph nor mary wrote any such matter themselves. it is only reported by others that they said so. it is hearsay upon hearsay, and i do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence. it is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of jesus christ being the son of god. he was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. it was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. their jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. the jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one god, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story. it is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the christian church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. a direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. the trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. the statue of mary succeeded the statue of diana of ephesus. the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. the mythologists had gods for everything; the christian mythologists had saints for everything. the church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and rome was the place of both. the christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud. chapter iii - concerning the character of jesus christ, and his history. nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of jesus christ. he was a virtuous and an amiable man. the morality that he preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been preached by confucius, and by some of the greek philosophers, many years before, by the quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any. jesus christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. not a line of what is called the new testament is of his writing. the history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. his historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. the wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds everything that went before it. the first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. they could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself. but the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. the resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all jerusalem at least. a thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. but it appears that thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. so neither will i; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for thomas. it is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. the story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear. the best surviving evidence we now have respecting this affair is the jews. they are regularly descended from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and ascension is said to have happened, and they say 'it is not true.' it has long appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the jews as a proof of the truth of the story. it is just the same as if a man were to say, i will prove the truth of what i have told you, by producing the people who say it is false. that such a person as jesus christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the limits of probability. he preached most excellent morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. the accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition and conspiracy against the roman government, to which the jews were then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the roman government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his doctrine as well as the jewish priests; neither is it improbable that jesus christ had in contemplation the delivery of the jewish nation from the bondage of the romans. between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life. [note: the french work has here: "however this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated, too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life."--editor. (conway)] chapter iv - of the bases of christianity. it is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case i am going to mention, that the christian mythologists, calling themselves the christian church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients. the ancient mythologists tell us that the race of giants made war against jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw; that jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterwards under mount etna; and that every time the giant turns himself, mount etna belches fire. it is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up with that circumstance. the christian mythologists tell that their satan made war against the almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a mountain, but in a pit. it is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of jupiter and the giants was told many hundred years before that of satan. thus far the ancient and the christian mythologists differ very little from each other. but the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther. they have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of jesus christ with the fable originating from mount etna; and, in order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the jews; for the christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the jewish traditions. the christian mythologists, after having confined satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. he is then introduced into the garden of eden in the shape of a snake, or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind. after giving satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women, and doing more mischief. but instead of this, they leave him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole. the secret of which is, that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making him, they bribed him to stay. they promised him all the jews, all the turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and mahomet into the bargain. after this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the christian mythology? having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded--put satan into the pit--let him out again--given him a triumph over the whole creation--damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. they represent this virtuous and amiable man, jesus christ, to be at once both god and man, and also the son of god, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that eve in her longing [note: the french work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite."--editor.] had eaten an apple. chapter v - examination in detail of the preceding bases. putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is. in order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call satan a power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the almighty. they have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterwards to infinity. before this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest. after his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. he exists everywhere, and at the same time. he occupies the whole immensity of space. not content with this deification of satan, they represent him as defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of the almighty. they represent him as having compelled the almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man. had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented the almighty as compelling satan to exhibit himself on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less contradictory. but, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph, and the almighty fall. that many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what i have no doubt of. in the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. there are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of god to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. the more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration. [note: the french work has "blind and" preceding dismal.--editor.] chapter vi - of the true theology. but if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born--a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the creator? i know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that account. the times and the subject demand it to be done. the suspicion that the theory of what is called the christian church is fabulous, is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. i therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the old and the new testament. chapter vii - examination of the old testament. these books, beginning with genesis and ending with revelations, (which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it) are, we are told, the word of god. it is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the report. the answer to this question is, that nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. the case, however, historically appears to be as follows: when the church mythologists established their system, they collected all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. it is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the old and the new testament, are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up. be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, should be the word of god, and which should not. they rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of god. had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves christians had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of. they call themselves by the general name of the church; and this is all we know of the matter. as we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these books to be the word of god, than what i have mentioned, which is no evidence or authority at all, i come, in the next place, to examine the internal evidence contained in the books themselves. in the former part of this essay, i have spoken of revelation. i now proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in question. revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom that thing is revealed, did not know before. for if i have done a thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me i have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it. revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal part of the bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of god. when samson ran off with the gate-posts of gaza, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? if they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. when we contemplate the immensity of that being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible whole, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of god. as to the account of the creation, with which the book of genesis opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the israelites had among them before they came into egypt; and after their departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know, how they came by it. the manner in which the account opens, shows it to be traditionary. it begins abruptly. it is nobody that speaks. it is nobody that hears. it is addressed to nobody. it has neither first, second, nor third person. it has every criterion of being a tradition. it has no voucher. moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "the lords spake unto moses, saying." why it has been called the mosaic account of the creation, i am at a loss to conceive. moses, i believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his name to that account. he had been educated among the egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.--the case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of the rest; and as moses was not an israelite, he might not chose to contradict the tradition. the account, however, is harmless; and this is more than can be said for many other parts of the bible. whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible [note: it must be borne in mind that by the "bible" paine always means the old testament alone.--editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of god. it is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, i sincerely detest it, as i detest everything that is cruel. we scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the bible. in the anonymous publications, the psalms, and the book of job, more particularly in the latter, we find a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power and benignity of the almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time as since. the proverbs which are said to be solomon's, though most probably a collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of ethics. they are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the spaniards, and not more wise and oeconomical than those of the american franklin. all the remaining parts of the bible, generally known by the name of the prophets, are the works of the jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together--and those works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation. [note: as there are many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that i add this note. poetry consists principally in two things--imagery and composition. the composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing long and short syllables together. take a long syllable out of a line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose its poetical harmony. it will have an effect upon the line like that of misplacing a note in a song. the imagery in those books called the prophets appertains altogether to poetry. it is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind of writing than poetry. to show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, i will take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. it will then be seen that the composition of those books is poetical measure. the instance i shall first produce is from isaiah:-- "hear, o ye heavens, and give ear, o earth 't is god himself that calls attention forth. another instance i shall quote is from the mournful jeremiah, to which i shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure, and showing the intention of the poet. "o, that mine head were waters and mine eyes were fountains flowing like the liquid skies; then would i give the mighty flood release and weep a deluge for the human race."--author.] there is not, throughout the whole book called the bible, any word that describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call poetry. the case is, that the word prophet, to which a later times have affixed a new idea, was the bible word for poet, and the word 'propesying' meant the art of making poetry. it also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music. we read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns--of prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music then in fashion. were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word. we are told of saul being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he prophesied. the case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets were a company of musicians and poets, and saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying. the account given of this affair in the book called samuel, is, that saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. but it appears afterwards, that saul prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part badly; for it is said that an "evil spirit from god [note: as thos; men who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling one another, i leave them to contest the meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an evil spirit of god. i keep to my text. i keep to the meaning of the word prophesy.--author.] came upon saul, and he prophesied." now, were there no other passage in the book called the bible, than this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to it the sense which later times have affixed to it. the manner in which it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a man might then be a prophet, or he might prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or the immorality of his character. the word was originally a term of science, promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject upon which poetry and music might be exercised. deborah and barak are called prophets, not because they predicted anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their name, in celebration of an act already done. david is ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the psalms. but abraham, isaac, and jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry. we are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. they might as well tell us of the greater and the lesser god; for there cannot be degrees in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. but there are degrees in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets. it is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. the axe goes at once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them, and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.--in many things, however, the writings of the jewish poets deserve a better fate than that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that accompanies them, under the abused name of the word of god. if we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the word of god; and therefore the word of god cannot exist in any written or human language. the continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of god.--the word of god exists in something else. did the book called the bible excel in purity of ideas and expression all the books now extant in the world, i would not take it for my rule of faith, as being the word of god; because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. but when i see throughout the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, i cannot dishonour my creator by calling it by his name. chapter viii - of the new testament. thus much for the bible; i now go on to the book called the new testament. the new testament! that is, the 'new' will, as if there could be two wills of the creator. had it been the object or the intention of jesus christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life time. but there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. all the books called the new testament were written after his death. he was a jew by birth and by profession; and he was the son of god in like manner that every other person is; for the creator is the father of all. the first four books, called matthew, mark, luke, and john, do not give a history of the life of jesus christ, but only detached anecdotes of him. it appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this short time that those men became acquainted with him. they make mention of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the jewish doctors, asking and answering them questions. as this was several years before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had this anecdote from his parents. from this time there is no account of him for about sixteen years. where he lived, or how he employed himself during this interval, is not known. most probably he was working at his father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. it does not appear that he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [note: one of the few errors traceable to paine's not having a bible at hand while writing part i. there is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse may in fact be inferred.--editor.] it is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the most universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. moses was a foundling; jesus christ was born in a stable; and mahomet was a mule driver. the first and the last of these men were founders of different systems of religion; but jesus christ founded no new system. he called men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one god. the great trait in his character is philanthropy. the manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much known, at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held with his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or suspended preaching publicly. judas could no otherways betray him than by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to the officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and paying judas to do this could arise only from the causes already mentioned, that of his not being much known, and living concealed. the idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified. the christian mythologists tell us that christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on purpose to die. would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else? the declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon adam, in case he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale surely die. the sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that christ was to suffer in the room of adam. a fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either. this sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon adam, must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the part of jesus christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things happening to adam and to us. that it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation, (including with it the natural death of jesus christ as a substitute for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently representing the creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word death. that manufacturer of, quibbles, st. paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon the word adam. he makes there to be two adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. a religion thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. they acquire the habit without being aware of the cause. if jesus christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have endured would have been 'to live.' his existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die.--in fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be. it is the reverse of truth, and i become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and absurdities, that i hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed to something better. how much, or what parts of the books called the new testament, were written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were originally written. the matters they now contain may be classed under two heads: anecdote, and epistolary correspondence. the four books already mentioned, matthew, mark, luke, and john, are altogether anecdotal. they relate events after they had taken place. they tell what jesus christ did and said, and what others did and said to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently. revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers, but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by the persons who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse or conversation by those who heard it. the book called the acts of the apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal part. all the other parts of the new testament, except the book of enigmas, called the revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are genuine or forged. one thing, however, is much less equivocal, which is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. it has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty. the invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom, by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that name or carrying that appearance. but the case nevertheless is, that those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion, and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him. the probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or doctrine of what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accomplished by the act of one person in the room of another) was originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books upon which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured and fabricated for that purpose. why are we to give this church credit, when she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more than we give her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the miracles she says she has performed? that she could fabricate writings is certain, because she could write; and the composition of the writings in question, is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more inconsistent with probability, than that she should tell us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles. since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time, be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication. for the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral justice. if i owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. but if i have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. to suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. it is then no longer justice. it is indiscriminate revenge. this single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so. let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. it is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. in the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. his prayers are reproaches. his humility is ingratitude. he calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. he despises the choicest gift of god to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself. yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. he finds fault with everything. his selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. he takes on himself to direct the almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. he prays dictatorially. when it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. he follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? it is as if he were to say--thou knowest not so well as i. chapter ix - in what the true revelation consists. but some perhaps will say--are we to have no word of god--no revelation? i answer yes. there is a word of god; there is a revelation. the word of god is the creation we behold: and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that god speaketh universally to man. human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. the idea that god sent jesus christ to publish, as they say, the glad tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man might walk to the end of it. but how was jesus christ to make anything known to all nations? he could speak but one language, which was hebrew; and there are in the world several hundred languages. scarcely any two nations speak the same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time christ lived. it is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. it is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. but it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth. the means it useth are always equal to the end: but human language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that god useth in manifesting himself universally to man. it is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of god can unite. the creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. it is an ever existing original, which every man can read. it cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. it does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. it preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of god reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of god. do we want to contemplate his power? we see it in the immensity of the creation. do we want to contemplate his wisdom? we see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. do we want to contemplate his munificence? we see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. do we want to contemplate his mercy? we see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. in fine, do we want to know what god is? search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the creation. chapter x - concerning god, and the lights cast on his existence and attributes by the bible. the only idea man can affix to the name of god, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. and, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. it is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. it is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. in like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. every man is an evidence to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls god. it is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover god. take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the bible to a horse as to a man. how then is it that those people pretend to reject reason? almost the only parts in the book called the bible, that convey to us any idea of god, are some chapters in job, and the th psalm; i recollect no other. those parts are true deistical compositions; for they treat of the deity through his works. they take the book of creation as the word of god; they refer to no other book; and all the inferences they make are drawn from that volume. i insert in this place the th psalm, as paraphrased into english verse by addison. i recollect not the prose, and where i write this i have not the opportunity of seeing it: the spacious firmament on high, with all the blue etherial sky, and spangled heavens, a shining frame, their great original proclaim. the unwearied sun, from day to day, does his creator's power display, and publishes to every land the work of an almighty hand. soon as the evening shades prevail, the moon takes up the wondrous tale, and nightly to the list'ning earth repeats the story of her birth; whilst all the stars that round her burn, and all the planets, in their turn, confirm the tidings as they roll, and spread the truth from pole to pole. what though in solemn silence all move round this dark terrestrial ball what though no real voice, nor sound, amidst their radiant orbs be found, in reason's ear they all rejoice, and utter forth a glorious voice, forever singing as they shine, the hand that made us is divine. what more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? let him believe this, with the force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course. the allusions in job have all of them the same tendency with this psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise unknown, from truths already known. i recollect not enough of the passages in job to insert them correctly; but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject i am speaking upon. "canst thou by searching find out god; canst thou find out the almighty to perfection?" i know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for i keep no bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct answers. first, canst thou by searching find out god? yes. because, in the first place, i know i did not make myself, and yet i have existence; and by searching into the nature of other things, i find that no other thing could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it is, that i know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is god. secondly, canst thou find out the almighty to perfection? no. not only because the power and wisdom he has manifested in the structure of the creation that i behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist. it is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that the second could follow. it would have been unnecessary, and even absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the first, if the first question had been answered negatively. the two questions have different objects; the first refers to the existence of god, the second to his attributes. reason can discover the one, but it falls infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other. i recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men called apostles, that conveys any idea of what god is. those writings are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the creation. the only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the works of god, by which only his power and wisdom can be known, is related to have been spoken by jesus christ, as a remedy against distrustful care. "behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin." this, however, is far inferior to the allusions in job and in the th psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is correspondent to the modesty of the man. chapter xi - of the theology of the christians; and the true theology. as to the christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of god. it professes to believe in a man rather than in god. it is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. it introduces between man and his maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. it has put the whole orbit of reason into shade. the effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside down, and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in theology. that which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of god, and of the power and wisdom of god in his works, and is the true theology. as to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning god. it is not the study of god himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition. the book of job and the th psalm, which even the church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology. the internal evidence of those orations proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the works of creation, and of the power and wisdom of god revealed and manifested in those works, made a great part of the religious devotion of the times in which they were written; and it was this devotional study and contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which what are now called sciences are established; and it is to the discovery of these principles that almost all the arts that contribute to the convenience of human life owe their existence. every principal art has some science for its parent, though the person who mechanically performs the work does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the connection. it is a fraud of the christian system to call the sciences 'human inventions;' it is only the application of them that is human. every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. man cannot make principles, he can only discover them. for example: every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to take place according to the account there given. this shows that man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. but it would be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to say that those laws are an human invention. it would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention. man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and are, of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heavenly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place. the scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by a rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction of plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called land-surveying. in fine, it is the soul of science. it is an eternal truth: it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses are unknown. it may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a triangle is an human invention. but the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind, of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. the triangle does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible. all the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man. man had no more to do in the formation of those properties or principles, than he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the other. in the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle, so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called a lever. but the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument, therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither can all the efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. that which, in all such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle itself rendered perceptible to the senses. since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from him as all the heavenly bodies are? from whence, i ask, could he gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology? it is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to man. that structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. the offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the principles of science applied practically. the man who proportions the several parts of a mill uses the same scientific principles as if he had the power of constructing an universe, but as he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by which all the component parts of the immense machine of the universe have influence upon each other, and act in motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and cogs. all the parts of man's microcosm must visibly touch. but could he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the word of god had been discovered. if man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when in motion, a triangle. the line it descends from, (one point of that line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the three sides of a triangle. the other arm of the lever describes also a triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles, calculated scientifically, or measured geometrically,--and also the sines, tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and geometrically measured,--have the same proportions to each other as the different weights have that will balance each other on the lever, leaving the weight of the lever out of the case. it may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. still the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. this principle is as unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same principle under a different appearance to the eye. the power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever i have described, suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the two circles generated by the motion of the compound lever. it is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have originated. the almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. it is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "i have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and i have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. he can now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my munificence to all, to be kind to each other." of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? or of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? what has man to do with the pleiades, with orion, with sirius, with the star he calls the north star, with the moving orbs he has named saturn, jupiter, mars, venus, and mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible? a less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering with shows. it is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of vision. but when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing. chapter xii - the effects of christianism on education; proposed reforms. as the christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. that which is now called learning, was not learning originally. learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names. the greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist in speaking greek, any more than in a roman's speaking latin, or a frenchman's speaking french, or an englishman's speaking english. from what we know of the greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better studies. the schools of the greeks were schools of science and philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists. almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the greeks, or the people who spoke the greek language. it therefore became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different language, that some among them should learn the greek language, in order that the learning the greeks had might be made known in those nations, by translating the greek books of science and philosophy into the mother tongue of each nation. the study, therefore, of the greek language (and in the same manner for the latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were the tools, employed to obtain the learning the greeks had. it made no part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make it exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied greek sufficiently to translate those works, such for instance as euclid's elements, did not understand any of the learning the works contained. as there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is wasted. so far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in general, a youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of it himself. the difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. it would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. the best greek linguist that now exists does not understand greek so well as a grecian plowman did, or a grecian milkmaid; and the same for the latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. it would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge. the apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not capable of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. but this is altogether erroneous. the human mind has a natural disposition to scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. the first and favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that of imitating the works of man. it builds bouses with cards or sticks; it navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a mill; and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that resembles affection. it afterwards goes to school, where its genius is killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is lost in the linguist. but the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be sought for elsewhere. in all researches of this kind, the best evidence that can be produced, is the internal evidence the thing carries with itself, and the evidence of circumstances that unites with it; both of which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered. putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage offered to the moral justice of god, by supposing him to make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man, in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed sentence upon adam; putting, i say, those things aside as matter of distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation--the strange story of eve, the snake, and the apple--the amphibious idea of a man-god--the corporeal idea of the death of a god--the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that god has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of god by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that god has made. the setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the christian system of faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of god, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages. they not only rejected the study of science out of the christian schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last two centuries that the study has been revived. so late as , galileo, a florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes, and by applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the heavenly bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true structure of the universe. instead of being esteemed for these discoveries, he was sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a damnable heresy. and prior to that time virgilius was condemned to be burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the earth was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the truth of this is now too well known even to be told. [note: i cannot discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author whose irish name feirghill was latinized into virgilius. the british museum possesses a copy of the work (decalogiunt) which was the pretext of the charge of heresy made by boniface, archbishop of mayence, against virgilius, abbot--bishop of salzburg, these were leaders of the rival "british" and "roman parties, and the british champion made a countercharge against boniface of irreligious practices." boniface had to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. the pope, zachary ii., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against god and his soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or sun and moon," should be acknowledged by virgilius, he should be excommunicated by a council and condemned with canonical sanctions. whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on virgilius. his accuser, boniface, was martyred, , and it is probable that virgilius harmonied his antipodes with orthodoxy. the gravamen of the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of the progeny of adam. virgilius was made bishop of salzburg in . he bore until his death, , the curious title, "geometer and solitary," or "lone wayfarer" (solivagus). a suspicion of heresy clung to his memory until , when he was raised by gregory ix, to sainthood beside his accuser, st. boniface.--editor. (conway)] if the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. there was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither was there any moral ill in believing that the creator made no other world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds. but when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. it is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. it is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. in this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. but this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. had newton or descartes lived three or four hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had franklin drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at the hazard of expiring for it in flames. later times have laid all the blame upon the goths and vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the christian system. there was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism. [note by paine: it is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which it ended. all the gods of that mythology, except saturn, were of modern invention. the supposed reign of saturn was prior to that which is called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that it admitted the belief of only one god. saturn is supposed to have abdicated the govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter, jupiter, pluto, neptune, and juno; after this, thousands of other gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts have increased since. all the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed religion.' the mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians do. they had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to receive and deliver the word of god verbally on almost all occasions. since then all corruptions down from moloch to modern predestinarianism, and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the christian sacrifice of the creator, have been produced by admitting of what is called revealed religion, the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation than that which is manifested in the book of creation., and to contemplate the creation as the only true and real word of god that ever did or ever will exist; and every thing else called the word of god is fable and imposition.--author.] it is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the respectable characters we call the ancients. had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. but the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long chasm, to the times of the ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills beyond. it is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that god had made. but the fact is too well established to be denied. the event that served more than any other to break the first link in this long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of the reformation by luther. from that time, though it does not appear to have made any part of the intention of luther, or of those who are called reformers, the sciences began to revive, and liberality, their natural associate, began to appear. this was the only public good the reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as well not have taken place. the mythology still continued the same; and a multiplicity of national popes grew out of the downfall of the pope of christendom. chapter xiii - comparison of christianism with the religious ideas inspired by nature. having thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the sciences, i proceed, in addition to the several observations already made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to confront, the evidence that the structure of the universe affords, with the christian system of religion. but as i cannot begin this part better than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early part of life, and which i doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost every other person at one time or other, i shall state what those ideas were, and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject, giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction. my father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning. though i went to the grammar school, i did not learn latin, not only because i had no inclination to learn languages, but because of the objection the quakers have against the books in which the language is taught. but this did not prevent me from being acquainted with the subjects of all the latin books used in the school. the natural bent of my mind was to science. i had some turn, and i believe some talent for poetry; but this i rather repressed than encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. as soon as i was able, i purchased a pair of globes, and attended the philosophical lectures of martin and ferguson, and became afterwards acquainted with dr. bevis, of the society called the royal society, then living in the temple, and an excellent astronomer. i had no disposition for what was called politics. it presented to my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. when, therefore, i turned my thoughts towards matters of government, i had to form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic principles in which i had been educated. i saw, or at least i thought i saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of america; and it appeared to me, that unless the americans changed the plan they were then pursuing, with respect to the government of england, and declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their means. it was from these motives that i published the work known by the name of common sense, which is the first work i ever did publish, and so far as i can judge of myself, i believe i should never have been known in the world as an author on any subject whatever, had it not been for the affairs of america. i wrote common sense the latter end of the year , and published it the first of january, . independence was declared the fourth of july following. [note: the pamphlet common sense was first advertised, as "just published," on january , . his plea for the officers of excise, written before leaving england, was printed, but not published until . despite his reiterated assertion that common sense was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius" still finds some believers. an indirect comment on our paine-junians may be found in part of this work where paine says a man capable of writing homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another." it is probable that paine ascribed the letters of junius to thomas hollis. his friend f. lanthenas, in his translation of the age of reason ( ) advertises his translation of the letters of junius from the english "(thomas hollis)." this he could hardly have done without consultation with paine. unfortunately this translation of junius cannot be found either in the bibliotheque nationale or the british museum, and it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification of junius--editor.] any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the human mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts; those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. i have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as well as i was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it is from them i have acquired almost all the knowledge that i have. as to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards. every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception. thus much for the introductory part. from the time i was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it by reflection, i either doubted the truth of the christian system, or thought it to be a strange affair; i scarcely knew which it was: but i well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the son of god. after the sermon was ended, i went into the garden, and as i was going down the garden steps (for i perfectly recollect the spot) i revolted at the recollection of what i had heard, and thought to myself that it was making god almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as i was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, i could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. this was not one of those kind of thoughts that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea i had that god was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. i believe in the same manner to this moment; and i moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system. it seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell their children any thing about the principles of their religion. they sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call providence; for the christian mythology has five deities: there is god the father, god the son, god the holy ghost, the god providence, and the goddess nature. but the christian story of god the father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it. how different is this to the pure and simple profession of deism! the true deist has but one deity; and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the deity in his works, and in endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and mechanical. the religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of god out of their system. though i reverence their philanthropy, i can not help smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could have been consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it would have been! not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing. quitting these reflections, i proceed to other matters. after i had made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [note by paine: as this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know what an orrery is, it is for their information i add this note, as the name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. the orrery has its name from the person who invented it. it is a machinery of clock-work, representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system, their relative distances from each other, and their different magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the heavens.--author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, i began to compare, or, as i have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things afford with the christian system of faith. though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the mosaic account of the creation, the story of eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the son of god, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that god created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. the two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either. though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent and dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. several vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. the circular dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and twenty english miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three years. [note by paine: allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to follow the course of the ocean.--author.] a world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed. it is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a progression of ideas. when we think of the size or dimensions of, a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop. but when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what beyond the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination returns and says, there is no end. certainly, then, the creator was not pent for room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have to seek the reason in something else. if we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally invisible without the assistance of the microscope. every tree, every plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for thousands. since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal waste? there is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other. having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good reason for our happiness, why the creator, instead of making one immense world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. but before i explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the system of the universe is. chapter xiv - system of the universe. that part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which sol, or in english language, the sun, is the center) consists, besides the sun, of six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies, called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends her in her annual revolution round the sun, in like manner as the other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which they severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope. the sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other. each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the sun, and continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground, and leans a little sideways. it is this leaning of the earth ( / degrees) that occasions summer and winter, and the different length of days and nights. if the earth turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level of the circle it moves in round the sun, as a top turns round when it stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be always of the same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the season would be uniformly the same throughout the year. every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round the sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the sun. the names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are still called by the same names, are mercury, venus, this world that we call ours, mars, jupiter, and saturn. they appear larger to the eye than the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than any of the stars are. the planet venus is that which is called the evening star, and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after, or rise before the sun, which in either case is never more than three hours. the sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest the sun is mercury; his distance from the sun is thirty-four million miles, and he moves round in a circle always at that distance from the sun, as a top may be supposed to spin round in the tract in which a horse goes in a mill. the second world is venus; she is fifty-seven million miles distant from the sun, and consequently moves round in a circle much greater than that of mercury. the third world is this that we inhabit, and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the sun, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of venus. the fourth world is mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred and thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of our earth. the fifth is jupiter; he is distant from the sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of mars. the sixth world is saturn; he is distant from the sun seven hundred and sixty-three million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle that surrounds the circles or orbits of all the other worlds or planets. the space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their revolutions in round the sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which saturn moves round the sun, which being double his distance from the sun, is fifteen hundred and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five thousand million; and its globical content is almost three thousand five hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square miles. [note by paine: if it should be asked, how can man know these things? i have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the planet venus, in making her revolutions round the sun, will come in a strait line between our earth and the sun, and will appear to us about the size of a large pea passing across the face of the sun. this happens but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were foreknown by calculation. it can also be known when they will happen again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time. as therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an eclipse, or a transit of venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense distances.--author.] but this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. beyond this, at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are the stars called the fixed stars. they are called fixed, because they have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that i have been describing. those fixed stars continue always at the same distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the sun does in the center of our system. the probability, therefore, is that each of those fixed stars is also a sun, round which another system of worlds or planets, though too remote for us to discover, performs its revolutions, as our system of worlds does round our central sun. by this easy progression of ideas, the immensity of space will appear to us to be filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space lies at waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is left unoccupied. having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some idea of the structure of the universe, i return to explain what i before alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in consequence of the creator having made a plurality of worlds, such as our system is, consisting of a central sun and six worlds, besides satellites, in preference to that of creating one world only of a vast extent. chapter xv - advantages of the existence of many worlds in each solar system. it is an idea i have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from thence to our understanding) which those several planets or worlds of which our system is composed make in their circuit round the sun. had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a sufficiency of it to give us the ideas and the knowledge of science we now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechanical arts that contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are derived. as therefore the creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the most advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration. but it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. the inhabitants of each of the worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same opportunities of knowledge as we do. they behold the revolutionary motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. all the planets revolve in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same universal school of science presents itself to all. neither does the knowledge stop here. the system of worlds next to us exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science, to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in like manner throughout the immensity of space. our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the creator, but of his wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. the solitary idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction to man. we see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded. chapter xvi - application of the preceding to the system of the christians. but, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than twenty-five thousand miles. an extent which a man, walking at the rate of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years. alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power of the creator! from whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! and, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? in this case, the person who is irreverently called the son of god, and sometimes god himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life. it has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of god in the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion, have been fabricated and set up. there may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be but one that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of god that we behold in his works. but such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd. it is possible to believe, and i always feel pleasure in encouraging myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who persuaded themselves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. but the fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on. the persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in some measure combined with it the morality preached by jesus christ, might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology that then prevailed. from the first preachers the fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by preaching it. but though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. chapter xvii - of the means employed in all time, and almost universally, to deceive the peoples. having thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real word of god existing in the universe, and that which is called the word of god, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, i proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind. those three means are mystery, miracle, and prophecy, the first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected. with respect to mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a mystery to us. our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable world is a mystery. we cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. we know not how it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to us such an abundant interest for so small a capital. the fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. we know, therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of the operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not perform, the creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. we are, therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left to do it for ourselves. but though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. the god in whom we believe is a god of moral truth, and not a god of mystery or obscurity. mystery is the antagonist of truth. it is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. truth never envelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself. religion, therefore, being the belief of a god, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. the belief of a god, so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity. and the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of god, is no other than our acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all. we cannot serve god in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving god, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that god has made. this cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion. the very nature and design of religion, if i may so express it, prove even to demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery, and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all. man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade. he learns the theory of religion by reflection. it arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto. when men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of god in the creation, and not only above but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all questions, inquiries and speculations. the word mystery answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries. as mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. the former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. the one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain. but before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire what is to be understood by a miracle. in the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is a greater miracle than another. the elephant, though larger, is not a greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an atom. to an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to make one. every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst, in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. it is a miracle when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. it is not a miracle compared to the power that performs it. but as nothing in this description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is necessary to carry the inquiry further. mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. but unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting. the ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. in like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from the human body, as visibly as from a steel struck with a flint, and causing iron or steel to move without any visible agent, would also give the idea of a miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and magnetism; so also would many other experiments in natural philosophy, to those who are not acquainted with the subject. the restoring persons to life who are to appearance dead as is practised upon drowned persons, would also be a miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being suspended without being extinct. besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known, are thought nothing of. and, besides these, there are mechanical and optical deceptions. there is now an exhibition in paris of ghosts or spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the spectators as a fact, has an astonishing appearance. as, therefore, we know not the extent to which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to determine what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be continually imposed upon. since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more inconsistent than to suppose that the almighty would make use of means, such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention. of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent. for, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. and, in the second place, it is degrading the almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder. it is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie. suppose i were to say, that when i sat down to write this book, a hand presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that is herein written; would any body believe me? certainly they would not. would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact? certainly they would not. since then a real miracle, were it to happen, would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency becomes the greater of supposing the almighty would make use of means that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if they were real. if we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is,--is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? we have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. the story of the whale swallowing jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if jonah had swallowed the whale. in this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter would decide itself as before stated, namely, is it more probable that a man should have, swallowed a whale, or told a lie? but suppose that jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with it in his belly to nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale, would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a prophet? or if the whale had carried jonah to nineveh, and cast him up in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to have been the devil, and jonah one of his imps? the most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the new testament, is that of the devil flying away with jesus christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. how happened it that he did not discover america? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest. i have too much respect for the moral character of christ to believe that he told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised upon the connoisseurs of queen anne's farthings, and collectors of relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous, by outdoing miracle, as don quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of god or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. it requires, however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe this miracle. in every point of view in which those things called miracles can be placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their existence unnecessary. they would not, as before observed, answer any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without any miracle. moral principle speaks universally for itself. miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it requires a transfer of faith from god to man to believe a miracle upon man's report. instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. it is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects. thus much for mystery and miracle. as mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present, prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. it was not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done. the supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of jonah and nineveh, that god had repented himself and changed his mind. what a fool do fabulous systems make of man! it has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of the words, that the flights and metaphors of the jewish poets, and phrases and expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. a blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type. if by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the almighty communicated some event that would take place in future, either there were such men, or there were not. if there were, it is consistent to believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. it is conceiving very irreverently of the almighty, to suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called prophecies in the book called the bible come under this description. but it is with prophecy as it is with miracle. it could not answer the purpose even if it were real. those to whom a prophecy should be told could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. a prophet, therefore, is a character useless and unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations. upon the whole, mystery, miracle, and prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. they are the means by which so many lo heres! and lo theres! have been spread about the world, and religion been made into a trade. the success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse. recapitulation. having now extended the subject to a greater length than i first intended, i shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole. first, that the idea or belief of a word of god existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already assigned. these reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations are subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world. secondly, that the creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of god, in which we cannot be deceived. it proclaimeth his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence. thirdly, that the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of god manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. that seeing as we daily do the goodness of god to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty. i trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. i content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that i shall continue to exist hereafter than that i should have had existence, as i now have, before that existence began. it is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. all believe in a god. the things in which they disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first. ["in the childhood of the world," according to the first (french) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is: "deism was the religion of adam, supposing him not an imaginary being; but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their right, the religion and worship they prefer."--editor.] adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a deist; but in the mean time, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers. end of part i the age of reason - part ii contents * preface * chapter i - the old testament * chapter ii - the new testament * chapter iii - conclusion preface i have mentioned in the former part of the age of reason that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon religion; but that i had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last work i should undertake. the circumstances, however, which existed in france in the latter end of the year , determined me to delay it no longer. the just and humane principles of the revolution which philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. the idea, always dangerous to society as it is derogatory to the almighty,--that priests could forgive sins,--though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes. the intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled revolutionary, supplied the place of an inquisition; and the guillotine of the stake. i saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others daily carried to prison; and i had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself. under these disadvantages, i began the former part of the age of reason; i had, besides, neither bible nor testament [it must be borne in mind that throughout this work paine generally means by "bible" only the old testament, and speaks of the new as the "testament."--editor.] to refer to, though i was writing against both; nor could i procure any; notwithstanding which i have produced a work that no bible believer, though writing at his ease and with a library of church books about him, can refute. towards the latter end of december of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the convention. there were but two, anacharsis cloots and myself; and i saw i was particularly pointed at by bourdon de l'oise, in his speech on that motion. conceiving, after this, that i had but a few days of liberty, i sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and i had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared, [this is an allusion to the essay which paine wrote at an earlier part of . see introduction.--editor.] before a guard came there, about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two committees of public safety and surety general, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the luxembourg. i contrived, in my way there, to call on joel barlow, and i put the manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in france either of the writer or the work, i addressed it to the protection of the citizens of the united states. it is justice that i say, that the guard who executed this order, and the interpreter to the committee of general surety, who accompanied them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with respect. the keeper of the 'luxembourg, benoit, a man of good heart, shewed to me every friendship in his power, as did also all his family, while he continued in that station. he was removed from it, put into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal upon a malignant accusation, but acquitted. after i had been in luxembourg about three weeks, the americans then in paris went in a body to the convention to reclaim me as their countryman and friend; but were answered by the president, vadier, who was also president of the committee of surety general, and had signed the order for my arrestation, that i was born in england. [these excited americans do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not made through or sanctioned by gouverneur morris, american minister. for the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.--editor.] i heard no more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the prison, till the fall of robespierre, on the th of thermidor--july , . about two months before this event, i was seized with a fever that in its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which i am not recovered. it was then that i remembered with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of the age of reason. i had then but little expectation of surviving, and those about me had less. i know therefore by experience the conscientious trial of my own principles. i was then with three chamber comrades: joseph vanheule of bruges, charles bastfni, and michael robyns of louvain. the unceasing and anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and day, i remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure. it happened that a physician (dr. graham) and a surgeon, (mr. bond,) part of the suite of general o'hara, [the officer who at yorktown, virginia, carried out the sword of cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to rochambeau instead of washington. paine loaned him pounds when he (o'hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his cell-door.--editor.] were then in the luxembourg: i ask not myself whether it be convenient to them, as men under the english government, that i express to them my thanks; but i should reproach myself if i did not; and also to the physician of the luxembourg, dr. markoski. i have some reason to believe, because i cannot discover any other, that this illness preserved me in existence. among the papers of robespierre that were examined and reported upon to the convention by a committee of deputies, is a note in the hand writing of robespierre, in the following words: "demander que thomas paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour l'interet de l'amerique autant que de la france." [demand that thomas paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of america, as well as of france.] from what cause it was that the intention was not put in execution, i know not, and cannot inform myself; and therefore i ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that illness. the convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice i had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the convention, and which i accepted, to shew i could bear an injury without permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. it is not because right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned. i have seen, since i have been at liberty, several publications written, some in america, and some in england, as answers to the former part of "the age of reason." if the authors of these can amuse themselves by so doing, i shall not interrupt them, they may write against the work, and against me, as much as they please; they do me more service than they intend, and i can have no objection that they write on. they will find, however, by this second part, without its being written as an answer to them, that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over again. the first is brushed away by accident. they will now find that i have furnished myself with a bible and testament; and i can say also that i have found them to be much worse books than i had conceived. if i have erred in any thing, in the former part of the age of reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved. i observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call scripture evidence and bible authority, to help them out. they are so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; i will, however, put them right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may know how to begin. thomas paine. october, . chapter i - the old testament it has often been said that any thing may be proved from the bible; but before any thing can be admitted as proved by bible, the bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of any thing. it has been the practice of all christian commentators on the bible, and of all christian priests and preachers, to impose the bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of god; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the bible. it has happened, that all the answers that i have seen to the former part of 'the age of reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that thomas paine understands it not. now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the bible, these men ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them, that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient authority for believing the bible to be the word of god, or whether there is not? there are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of god, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by robespierre, by carrier, by joseph le bon, in france, by the english government in the east indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. when we read in the books ascribed to moses, joshua, etc., that they (the israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the creator of man commissioned those things to be done? are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority? it is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable. the origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the jews is as much to be suspected as any other. to charger the commission of things upon the almighty, which in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. the bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of god. to believe therefore the bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of god; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? and to read the bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. speaking for myself, if i had no other evidence that the bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice i must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice. but in addition to all the moral evidence against the bible, i will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of god. but, before i proceed to this examination, i will show wherein the bible differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the bible, in their answers to the former part of 'the age of reason,' undertake to say, and they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the bible is as well established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of the one could become any rule for our belief of the other. i know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is euclid's elements of geometry; [euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before christ, and about one hundred before archimedes; he was of the city of alexandria, in egypt.--author.] and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance. the matters contained in that book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the matters contained in the book. but it is quite otherwise with respect to the books ascribed to moses, to joshua, to samuel, etc.: those are books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible; and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were written by moses, joshua, and samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give to their testimony. we may believe the first, that is, may believe the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. but if it should be found that the books ascribed to moses, joshua, and samuel, were not written by moses, joshua, and samuel, every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such as that of talking with god face to face, or that of the sun and moon standing still at the command of a man. the greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of which kind are those ascribed to homer, to plato, to aristotle, to demosthenes, to cicero, etc. here again the author is not an essential in the credit we give to any of those works; for as works of genius they would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. nobody believes the trojan story, as related by homer, to be true; for it is the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain, though the story be fabulous. but if we disbelieve the matters related by the bible authors (moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things related by homer, there remains nothing of moses in our estimation, but an imposter. as to the ancient historians, from herodotus to tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which tacitus relates were performed by vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of jesus christ by his historians. we must also believe the miracles cited by josephus, that of the sea of pamphilia opening to let alexander and his army pass, as is related of the red sea in exodus. these miracles are quite as well authenticated as the bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the bible have no claim to our belief of the bible because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self-evident, like euclid; or admire them because they are elegant, like homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like plato; or judicious, like aristotle. having premised these things, i proceed to examine the authenticity of the bible; and i begin with what are called the five books of moses, genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, and deuteronomy. my intention is to shew that those books are spurious, and that moses is not the author of them; and still further, that they were not written in the time of moses nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than an attempted history of the life of moses, and of the times in which he is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred years after the death of moses; as men now write histories of things that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or several thousand years ago. the evidence that i shall produce in this case is from the books themselves; and i will confine myself to this evidence only. were i to refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of the bible call prophane authors, they would controvert that authority, as i controvert theirs: i will therefore meet them on their own ground, and oppose them with their own weapon, the bible. in the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that moses is the author of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. the style and manner in which those books are written give no room to believe, or even to suppose, they were written by moses; for it is altogether the style and manner of another person speaking of moses. in exodus, leviticus and numbers, (for every thing in genesis is prior to the times of moses and not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the whole, i say, of these books is in the third person; it is always, the lord said unto moses, or moses said unto the lord; or moses said unto the people, or the people said unto moses; and this is the style and manner that historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they are writing. it may be said, that a man may speak of himself in the third person, and, therefore, it may be supposed that moses did; but supposition proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that moses wrote those books himself have nothing better to advance than supposition, they may as well be silent. but granting the grammatical right, that moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is moses who speaks, without rendering moses truly ridiculous and absurd:--for example, numbers xii. : "now the man moses was very meek, above all the men which were on the face of the earth." if moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them: if moses was not the author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment. in deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently than in the former books that moses is not the writer. the manner here used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory discourse, and then introduces moses as in the act of speaking, and when he has made moses finish his harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own part, and speaks till he brings moses forward again, and at last closes the scene with an account of the death, funeral, and character of moses. this interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the first verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is the writer who speaks; he then introduces moses as in the act of making his harrangue, and this continues to the end of the th verse of the fourth chapter; here the writer drops moses, and speaks historically of what was done in consequence of what moses, when living, is supposed to have said, and which the writer has dramatically rehearsed. the writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth chapter, though it is only by saying that moses called the people of israel together; he then introduces moses as before, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the th chapter. he does the same thing at the beginning of the th chapter; and continues moses as in the act of speaking, to the end of the th chapter. at the th chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of the first verse, and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces moses for the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end of the d chapter. the writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of moses, comes forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter: he begins by telling the reader, that moses went up to the top of pisgah, that he saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been promised to abraham, isaac, and jacob; that he, moses, died there in the land of moab, that he buried him in a valley in the land of moab, but that no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in which the writer lived who wrote the book of deuteronomy. the writer then tells us, that moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he died--that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in israel like unto moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the lord knew face to face. having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, that moses was not the writer of those books, i will, after making a few observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from the historical and chronological evidence contained in those books, that moses was not, because he could not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that there is no authority for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say they were, at the command of god. it is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates the moral justice of god against the calumnies of the bible. the writer of the book of deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory with himself in the account he has given of moses. after telling that moses went to the top of pisgah (and it does not appear from any account that he ever came down again) he tells us, that moses died there in the land of moab, and that he buried him in a valley in the land of moab; but as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he, there is no knowing who he was, that did bury him. if the writer meant that he (god) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why should we (the readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer was that tells us so, for certainly moses could not himself tell where he was buried. the writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer lived; how then should he know that moses was buried in a valley in the land of moab? for as the writer lived long after the time of moses, as is evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great length of time after the death of moses, he certainly was not at his funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that moses himself could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day. to make moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can find moses. this writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he has put into the mouth of moses to speak, and therefore we have a right to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from oral tradition. one or other of these is the more probable, since he has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of commandments, in which that called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment in the twentieth chapter of exodus. in that of exodus, the reason given for keeping the seventh day is, because (says the commandment) god made the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in that of deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which the children of israel came out of egypt, and therefore, says this commandment, the lord thy god commanded thee to kee the sabbath-day this makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of egypt. there are also many things given as laws of moses in this book, that are not to be found in any of the other books; among which is that inhuman and brutal law, xxi. , , , , which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.--but priests have always been fond of preaching up deuteronomy, for deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. , they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn:" and that this might not escape observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. o priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake of tythes. [an elegant pocket edition of paine's theological works (london. r. carlile, ) has in its title a picture of paine, as a moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his "age of reason" to a farmer from whom the bishop of llandaff (who replied to this work) has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill.--editor.]--though it is impossible for us to know identically who the writer of deuteronomy was, it is not difficult to discover him professionally, that he was some jewish priest, who lived, as i shall shew in the course of this work, at least three hundred and fifty years after the time of moses. i come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. the chronology that i shall use is the bible chronology; for i mean not to go out of the bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the bible itself prove historically and chronologically that moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him. it is therefore proper that i inform the readers (such an one at least as may not have the opportunity of knowing it) that in the larger bibles, and also in some smaller ones, there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of every page for the purpose of showing how long the historical matters stated in each page happened, or are supposed to have happened, before christ, and consequently the distance of time between one historical circumstance and another. i begin with the book of genesis.--in genesis xiv., the writer gives an account of lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings against five, and carried off; and that when the account of lot being taken came to abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to rescue lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto dan. (ver. .) to shew in what manner this expression of pursuing them unto dan applies to the case in question, i will refer to two circumstances, the one in america, the other in france. the city now called new york, in america, was originally new amsterdam; and the town in france, lately called havre marat, was before called havre-de-grace. new amsterdam was changed to new york in the year ; havre-de-grace to havre marat in the year . should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date, in which the name of new-york should be mentioned, it would be certain evidence that such a writing could not have been written before, and must have been written after new amsterdam was changed to new york, and consequently not till after the year , or at least during the course of that year. and in like manner, any dateless writing, with the name of havre marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have been written after havre-de-grace became havre marat, and consequently not till after the year , or at least during the course of that year. i now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there was no such place as dan till many years after the death of moses; and consequently, that moses could not be the writer of the book of genesis, where this account of pursuing them unto dan is given. the place that is called dan in the bible was originally a town of the gentiles, called laish; and when the tribe of dan seized upon this town, they changed its name to dan, in commemoration of dan, who was the father of that tribe, and the great grandson of abraham. to establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from genesis to chapter xviii. of the book called the book of judges. it is there said (ver. ) that "they (the danites) came unto laish to a people that were quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the bible is filled with murder] and burned the city with fire; and they built a city, (ver. ,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. ,] they called the name of the city dan, after the name of dan, their father; howbeit the name of the city was laish at the first." this account of the danites taking possession of laish and changing it to dan, is placed in the book of judges immediately after the death of samson. the death of samson is said to have happened b.c. and that of moses b.c. ; and, therefore, according to the historical arrangement, the place was not called dan till years after the death of moses. there is a striking confusion between the historical and the chronological arrangement in the book of judges. the last five chapters, as they stand in the book, , , , , , are put chronologically before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be years before the th chapter, before the th, before the th, before the th, go before the th, and years before the st chapter. this shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the bible. according to the chronological arrangement, the taking of laish, and giving it the name of dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of joshua, who was the successor of moses; and by the historical order, as it stands in the book, it is made to be years after the death of joshua, and after that of moses; but they both exclude moses from being the writer of genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a place as dan existed in the time of moses; and therefore the writer of genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of laish had the name of dan; and who that person was nobody knows, and consequently the book of genesis is anonymous, and without authority. i come now to state another point of historical and chronological evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that moses is not the author of the book of genesis. in genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants of esau, who are called edomites, and also a list by name of the kings of edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse , "and these are the kings that reigned in edom, before there reigned any king over the children of israel." now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any past events, the writer should say, these things happened before there was any congress in america, or before there was any convention in france, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been written before, and could only be written after there was a congress in america or a convention in france, as the case might be; and, consequently, that it could not be written by any person who died before there was a congress in the one country, or a convention in the other. nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do, because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly, because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. when a person in speaking upon any matter, says, it was before i was married, or before my son was born, or before i went to america, or before i went to france, it is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood, that he has been married, that he has had a son, that he has been in america, or been in france. language does not admit of using this mode of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an expression is found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in which only it could have been used. the passage, therefore, that i have quoted--that "these are the kings that reigned in edom, before there reigned any king over the children of israel," could only have been written after the first king began to reign over them; and consequently that the book of genesis, so far from having been written by moses, could not have been written till the time of saul at least. this is the positive sense of the passage; but the expression, any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies two, and this will carry it to the time of david; and, if taken in a general sense, it carries itself through all times of the jewish monarchy. had we met with this verse in any part of the bible that professed to have been written after kings began to reign in israel, it would have been impossible not to have seen the application of it. it happens then that this is the case; the two books of chronicles, which give a history of all the kings of israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written after the jewish monarchy began; and this verse that i have quoted, and all the remaining verses of genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, in chronicles i., beginning at the d verse. it was with consistency that the writer of the chronicles could say as he has said, chron. i. , "these are the kings that reigned in edom, before there reigned any king ever the children of israel," because he was going to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned in israel; but as it is impossible that the same expression could have been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be proved from historical language, that this part of genesis is taken from chronicles, and that genesis is not so old as chronicles, and probably not so old as the book of homer, or as aesop's fables; admitting homer to have been, as the tables of chronology state, contemporary with david or solomon, and aesop to have lived about the end of the jewish monarchy. take away from genesis the belief that moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of god has stood, and there remains nothing of genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. the story of eve and the serpent, and of noah and his ark, drops to a level with the arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the mythology. besides, the character of moses, as stated in the bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. if those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. of which i will state only one instance: when the jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (numbers xxxi. ): "and moses, and eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and moses said unto them, 'have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of israel, through the counsel of balaam, to commit trespass against the lord in the matter of peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the lord. now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.'" among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than moses, if this account be true. here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? it is in vain that we attempt to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion that tortures all her social ties is a false religion. after this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken, and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. verse , "and the lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen; and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the lord's tribute was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which the lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen thousand, of which the lord's tribute was thirty and two." in short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of moses was thirty-two thousand. people in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of god. brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the almighty! but to return to my subject, that of showing that moses is not the author of the books ascribed to him, and that the bible is spurious. the two instances i have already given would be sufficient, without any additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. the expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could prophecy in the preter tense. but there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that unite in the same point of evidence. it is said in exodus, (another of the books ascribed to moses,) xvi. : "and the children of israel did eat manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of canaan." whether the children of israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes no part of my argument; all that i mean to show is, that it is not moses that could write this account, because the account extends itself beyond the life time of moses. moses, according to the bible, (but it is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came upon the borders of 'the land of canaan; and consequently, it could not be he that said what the children of israel did, or what they ate when they came there. this account of eating manna, which they tell us was written by moses, extends itself to the time of joshua, the successor of moses, as appears by the account given in the book of joshua, after the children of israel had passed the river jordan, and came into the borders of the land of canaan. joshua, v. : "and the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of canaan that year." but a more remarkable instance than this occurs in deuteronomy; which, while it shows that moses could not be the writer of that book, shows also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants' in deuteronomy iii. , among the conquests said to be made by moses, is an account of the taking of og, king of bashan: "for only og, king of bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in rabbath of the children of ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." a cubit is foot / inches; the length therefore of the bed was feet inches, and the breadth feet inches: thus much for this giant's bed. now for the historical part, which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the former cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side. the writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in rabbath (or rabbah) of the children of ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the bible method of affirming a thing. but it could not be moses that said this, because moses could know nothing about rabbah, nor of what was in it. rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one of the cities that moses took. the knowledge therefore that this bed was at rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to the time when rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred years after the death of moses; for which, see sam. xii. : "and joab [david's general] fought against rabbah of the children of ammon, and took the royal city," etc. as i am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time, place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to moses, and which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by moses, nor in the time of moses, i proceed to the book of joshua, and to shew that joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous and without authority. the evidence i shall produce is contained in the book itself: i will not go out of the bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the bible. false testimony is always good against itself. joshua, according to joshua i., was the immediate successor of moses; he was, moreover, a military man, which moses was not; and he continued as chief of the people of israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time that moses died, which, according to the bible chronology, was b.c. , until b.c. , when, according to the same chronology, joshua died. if, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written by joshua, references to facts done after the death of joshua, it is evidence that joshua could not be the author; and also that the book could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact which it records. as to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, moses; and the blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to the orders of the almighty. in the first place, the book of joshua, as is the case in the preceding books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of joshua that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that joshua should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the country."--i now come more immediately to the proof. in joshua xxiv. , it is said "and israel served the lord all the days of joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived joshua." now, in the name of common sense, can it be joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? this account must not only have been written by some historian that lived after joshua, but that lived also after the elders that out-lived joshua. there are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time, scattered throughout the book of joshua, that carries the time in which the book was written to a distance from the time of joshua, but without marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above quoted. in that passage, the time that intervened between the death of joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have been written till after the death of the last. but though the passages to which i allude, and which i am going to quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a time far more distant from the days of joshua than is contained between the death of joshua and the death of the elders. such is the passage, x. , where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon gibeon, and the moon in the valley of ajalon, at the command of joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children) [note: this tale of the sun standing still upon motint gibeon, and the moon in the valley of ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. one half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. but why must the moon stand still? what occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? as a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of deborah and barak, the stars in their courses fought against sisera; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, wert thou, said he, to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career. for joshua to have exceeded mahomet, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as guy faux carried his dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. the sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. one step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still.--author.] the passage says: "and there was no day like that, before it, nor after it, that the lord hearkened to the voice of a man." the time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day, being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must, in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a great length of time:--for example, it would have been ridiculous to have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with the wonder it relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean centuries of years; less however than one would be trifling, and less than two would be barely admissible. a distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where, after giving an account of the taking the city of ai, it is said, ver. th, "and joshua burned ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation unto this day;" and again, ver. , where speaking of the king of ai, whom joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is said, "and he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth unto this day," that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the book of joshua lived. and again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of the five kings whom joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in a cave, it is said, "and he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which remain unto this very day." in enumerating the several exploits of joshua, and of the tribes, and of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. , "as for the jebusites, the inhabitants of jerusalem, the children of judah could not drive them out; but the jebusites dwell with the children of judah at jerusalem unto this day." the question upon this passage is, at what time did the jebusites and the children of judah dwell together at jerusalem? as this matter occurs again in judges i. i shall reserve my observations till i come to that part. having thus shewn from the book of joshua itself, without any auxiliary evidence whatever, that joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, i proceed, as before-mentioned, to the book of judges. the book of judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even the pretence is wanting to call it the word of god; it has not so much as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless. this book begins with the same expression as the book of joshua. that of joshua begins, chap i. , now after the death of moses, etc., and this of the judges begins, now after the death of joshua, etc. this, and the similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they are the work of the same author; but who he was, is altogether unknown; the only point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time of joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately after his death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book, which, according to the bible chronology, extends its history through a space of years; that is, from the death of joshua, b.c. to the death of samson, b.c. , and only years before saul went to seek his father's asses, and was made king. but there is good reason to believe, that it was not written till the time of david, at least, and that the book of joshua was not written before the same time. in judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of joshua, proceeds to tell what happened between the children of judah and the native inhabitants of the land of canaan. in this statement the writer, having abruptly mentioned jerusalem in the th verse, says immediately after, in the th verse, by way of explanation, "now the children of judah had fought against jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book could not have been written before jerusalem had been taken. the reader will recollect the quotation i have just before made from joshua xv. , where it said that the jebusites dwell with the children of judah at jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of joshua was written. the evidence i have already produced to prove that the books i have hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever lived, is already so abundant, that i can afford to admit this passage with less weight than i am entitled to draw from it. for the case is, that so far as the bible can be credited as an history, the city of jerusalem was not taken till the time of david; and consequently, that the book of joshua, and of judges, were not written till after the commencement of the reign of david, which was years after the death of joshua. the name of the city that was afterward called jerusalem was originally jebus, or jebusi, and was the capital of the jebusites. the account of david's taking this city is given in samuel, v. , etc.; also in chron. xiv. , etc. there is no mention in any part of the bible that it was ever taken before, nor any account that favours such an opinion. it is not said, either in samuel or in chronicles, that they "utterly destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to breathe," as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here observed implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place after it was taken. the account therefore, given in joshua, that "the jebusites dwell with the children of judah" at jerusalem at this day, corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by david. having now shown that every book in the bible, from genesis to judges, is without authenticity, i come to the book of ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin boaz. [the text of ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense paine's words are likely to convey.--editor.] pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of god. it is, however, one of the best books in the bible, for it is free from murder and rapine. i come next to the two books of samuel, and to shew that those books were not written by samuel, nor till a great length of time after the death of samuel; and that they are, like all the former books, anonymous, and without authority. to be convinced that these books have been written much later than the time of samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary to read the account which the writer gives of saul going to seek his father's asses, and of his interview with samuel, of whom saul went to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a conjuror to enquire after lost things. the writer, in relating this story of saul, samuel, and the asses, does not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or terms used at the time that samuel lived, which obliges the writer to explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer lived. samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap. ix. called the seer; and it is by this term that saul enquires after him, ver. , "and as they [saul and his servant] went up the hill to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they said unto them, is the seer here?" saul then went according to the direction of these maidens, and met samuel without knowing him, and said unto him, ver. , "tell me, i pray thee, where the seer's house is? and samuel answered saul, and said, i am the seer." as the writer of the book of samuel relates these questions and answers, in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and answers are spoken; and he does this in the th verse, where he says, "before-time in israel, when a man went to enquire of god, thus he spake, come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet, was before-time called a seer." this proves, as i have before said, that this story of saul, samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the time the book of samuel was written, and consequently that samuel did not write it, and that the book is without authenticity. but if we go further into those books the evidence is still more positive that samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things that did not happen till several years after the death of samuel. samuel died before saul; for i samuel, xxviii. tells, that saul and the witch of endor conjured samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part of saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of david, who succeeded saul. the account of the death and burial of samuel (a thing which he could not write himself) is related in i samuel xxv.; and the chronology affixed to this chapter makes this to be b.c. ; yet the history of this first book is brought down to b.c. , that is, to the death of saul, which was not till four years after the death of samuel. the second book of samuel begins with an account of things that did not happen till four years after samuel was dead; for it begins with the reign of david, who succeeded saul, and it goes on to the end of david's reign, which was forty-three years after the death of samuel; and, therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were not written by samuel. i have now gone through all the books in the first part of the bible, to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those books, and which the church, styling itself the christian church, have imposed upon the world as the writings of moses, joshua and samuel; and i have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.--and now ye priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the former part of the 'age of reason,' what have ye to say? will ye with all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face, still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired penmen and the word of god? when it is as evident as demonstration can make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. what shadow of pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud? what have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended revelation? had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. it is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the bible, or hear them with callous indifference. the evidence i have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the almighty which priestcraft and the bible had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence. i come now to the two books of kings, and the two books of chronicles.--those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly confined to the lives and actions of the jewish kings, who in general were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no more concern than we have with the roman emperors, or homer's account of the trojan war. besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein. like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting. the chief use i shall make of those books will be that of comparing them with each other, and with other parts of the bible, to show the confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of god. the first book of kings begins with the reign of solomon, which, according to the bible chronology, was b.c. ; and the second book ends b.c. , being a little after the reign of zedekiah, whom nebuchadnezzar, after taking jerusalem and conquering the jews, carried captive to babylon. the two books include a space of years. the two books of chronicles are an history of the same times, and in general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. the first book of chronicles (after giving the genealogy from adam to saul, which takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of david; and the last book ends, as in the last book of kings, soon, after the reign of zedekiah, about b.c. . the last two verses of the last chapter bring the history years more forward, that is, to . but these verses do not belong to the book, as i shall show when i come to speak of the book of ezra. the two books of kings, besides the history of saul, david, and solomon, who reigned over all israel, contain an abstract of the lives of seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of judah; and of nineteen, who are stiled kings of israel; for the jewish nation, immediately on the death of solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other. these two books are little more than a history of assassinations, treachery, and wars. the cruelties that the jews had accustomed themselves to practise on the canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from god, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other. scarcely half their kings died a natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. in kings x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the children of ahab, and were murdered by the orders of jehu, whom elisha, the pretended man of god, had anointed to be king over israel, on purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. and in the account of the reign of menahem, one of the kings of israel who had murdered shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, kings xv. , that menahem smote the city of tiphsah, because they opened not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up. could we permit ourselves to suppose that the almighty would distinguish any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient jews were,--a people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as moses and aaron, joshua, samuel, and david, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. if we will not stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other than a lie which the priests and leaders of the jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters; and which christian priests sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe. the two books of chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the reign of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of kings, there is such a frequent transition from kings of judah to kings of israel, and from kings of israel to kings of judah, that the narrative is obscure in the reading. in the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in kings, i. , we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of ahaziah, king of israel, jehoram, or joram, (who was of the house of ahab), reigned in his stead in the second year of jehoram, or joram, son of jehoshaphat, king of judah; and in viii. , of the same book, it is said, "and in the fifth year of joram, the son of ahab, king of israel, jehoshaphat being then king of judah, jehoram, the son of jehoshaphat king of judah, began to reign." that is, one chapter says joram of judah began to reign in the second year of joram of israel; and the other chapter says, that joram of israel began to reign in the fifth year of joram of judah. several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for example, the two first rival kings, after the death of solomon, were rehoboam and jeroboam; and in i kings xii. and xiii. an account is given of jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who is there called a man of god, cried out against the altar (xiii. ): "o altar, altar! thus saith the lord: behold, a child shall be born unto the house of david, josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burned upon thee." verse : "and it came to pass, when king jeroboam heard the saying of the man of god, which had cried against the altar in bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, lay hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so that he could not pull it again to him." one would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties, and that at the first moment of the separation of the israelites into two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both histories. but though men, in later times, have believed all that the prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well. a long account also is given in kings about elijah. it runs through several chapters, and concludes with telling, kings ii. , "and it came to pass, as they (elijah and elisha) still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder, and elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." hum! this the author of chronicles, miraculous as the story is, makes no mention of, though he mentions elijah by name; neither does he say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book of kings, of a parcel of children calling elisha bald head; and that this man of god (ver. ) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed them in the name of the lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." he also passes over in silence the story told, kings xiii., that when they were burying a man in the sepulchre where elisha had been buried, it happened that the dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. ) "touched the bones of elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." the story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. upon all these stories the writer of the chronicles is as silent as any writer of the present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of romancing, would be about stories of the same kind. but, however these two historians may differ from each other with respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter part of the bible. isaiah, who lived in the time of hezekiab, is mentioned in kings, and again in chronicles, when these histories are speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even their existence hinted at; though, according to the bible chronology, they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of them long before. if those prophets, as they are called, were men of such importance in their day, as the compilers of the bible, and priests and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about them? the history in the books of kings and of chronicles is brought forward, as i have already said, to the year b.c. ; it will, therefore, be proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period. here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they lived before christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of years they lived before the books of kings and chronicles were written: table of the prophets, with the time in which they lived before christ, and also before the books of kings and chronicles were written: years years before names. before kings and observations. christ. chronicles. isaiah............... mentioned. (mentioned only in jeremiah............. the last [two] chapters of chronicles. ezekiel.............. not mentioned. daniel............... not mentioned. hosea................ not mentioned. joel................. not mentioned. amos................. not mentioned. obadiah.............. not mentioned. jonah................ see the note. micah................ not mentioned. nahum................ not mentioned. habakkuk............. not mentioned. zepbaniah............ not mentioned. haggai zechariah all three after the year medachi [note in kings xiv. , the name of jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of jonah, nor to his expedition to nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.--author.] this table is either not very honourable for the bible historians, or not very honourable for the bible prophets; and i leave to priests and commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of kings and of chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the former part of the 'age of reason,' i have considered as poets, with as much degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat peter pindar. i have one more observation to make on the book of chronicles; after which i shall pass on to review the remaining books of the bible. in my observations on the book of genesis, i have quoted a passage from xxxvi. , which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to reign over the children of israel; and i have shown that as this verse is verbatim the same as in chronicles i. , where it stands consistently with the order of history, which in genesis it does not, that the verse in genesis, and a great part of the th chapter, have been taken from chronicles; and that the book of genesis, though it is placed first in the bible, and ascribed to moses, has been manufactured by some unknown person, after the book of chronicles was written, which was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of moses. the evidence i proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in it but two stages. first, as i have already stated, that the passage in genesis refers itself for time to chronicles; secondly, that the book of chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of moses. to prove this, we have only to look into chronicles iii. , where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of david, mentions zedekiah; and it was in the time of zedekiah that nebuchadnezzar conquered jerusalem, b.c. , and consequently more than years after moses. those who have superstitiously boasted of the antiquity of the bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to moses, have done it without examination, and without any other authority than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in the bible is not so ancient as the book of homer, by more than three hundred years, and is about the same age with aesop's fables. i am not contending for the morality of homer; on the contrary, i think it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to aesop, though the moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment. having now dismissed kings and chronicles, i come to the next in course, the book of ezra. as one proof, among others i shall produce to shew the disorder in which this pretended word of god, the bible, has been put together, and the uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first three verses in ezra, and the last two in chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in ezra should be the last two verses in chronicles, or that the last two in chronicles should be the first three in ezra? either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors. last two verses of chronicles. ver. . now in the first year of cyrus, king of persia, that the word of the lord, spoken by the mouth of jeremiah, might be accomplished, the lord stirred up the spirit of cyrus, king of persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying. earth hath the lord god of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in jerusalem which is in judah. who is there among you of all his people? the lord his god be with him, and let him go up. *** first three verses of ezra. ver. . now in the first year of cyrus, king of persia, that the word of the lord, by the mouth of jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the lord stirred up the spirit of cyrus, king of persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying. . thus saith cyrus, king of persia, the lord god of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at jerusalem, which is in judah. . who is there among you of all his people? his god be with him, and let him go up to jerusalem, which is in judah, and build the house of the lord god of israel (he is the god) which is in jerusalem. *** the last verse in chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying to what place. this abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books, show as i have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the bible has been put together, and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done. [note i observed, as i passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, samuel xiii. , where it is said, "saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over israel, saul chose him three thousand men," &c. the first part of the verse, that saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one. another instance occurs in joshua v. where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion. the story is as follows:--ver. . "and it came to pass, when joshua was by jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and joshua went unto him and said unto him, art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" verse , "and he said, nay; but as captain of the host of the lord am i now come. and joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, what saith my lord unto his servant?" verse , "and the captain of the lord's host said unto joshua, loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. and joshua did so."--and what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too. either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some jewish humourist in ridicule of joshua's pretended mission from god, and the compilers of the bible, not perceiving the design of the story, have told it as a serious matter. as a story of humour and ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before whom joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important embassy from heaven ends in telling joshua to pull off his shoe. it might as well have told him to pull up his breeches. it is certain, however, that the jews did not credit every thing their leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they speak of moses, when he was gone into the mount. as for this moses, say they, we wot not what is become of him. exod. xxxii. .--author. the only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of ezra is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after the return of the jews from the babylonian captivity, about b.c. . ezra (who, according to the jewish commentators, is the same person as is called esdras in the apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned, and who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. nebemiah, whose book follows next to ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who, it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in the book that bears his name. but those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any other person, unless it be to the jews, as a part of the history of their nation; and there is just as much of the word of god in those books as there is in any of the histories of france, or rapin's history of england, or the history of any other country. but even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are to be depended upon. in ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned from babylon to jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing the book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the undertaking. the writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. ): "the children of parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." ver. , "the children of shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two." and in this manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the th verse, he makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore. but whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars, will find that the total is but , ; so that the error is , . what certainty then can there be in the bible for any thing? [here mr. paine includes the long list of numbers from the bible of all the children listed and the total thereof. this can be had directly from the bible.] nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and of the number of each family. he begins as in ezra, by saying (vii. ): "the children of parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;" and so on through all the families. (the list differs in several of the particulars from that of ezra.) in ver. , nehemiah makes a total, and says, as ezra had said, "the whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore." but the particulars of this list make a total but of , , so that the error here is , . these writers may do well enough for bible-makers, but not for any thing where truth and exactness is necessary. the next book in course is the book of esther. if madam esther thought it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to ahasuerus, or as a rival to queen vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account says, they had been drinking seven days, and were merry,) let esther and mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is none of mine; besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance of being fabulous, and is also anonymous. i pass on to the book of job. the book of job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto passed over. treachery and murder make no part of this book; it is the meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling against the pressure. it is a highly wrought composition, between willing submission and involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed to be resigned than he is capable of being. patience has but a small share in the character of the person of whom the book treats; on the contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment. i have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of job in the former part of the 'age of reason,' but without knowing at that time what i have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be collected, the book of job does not belong to the bible. i have seen the opinion of two hebrew commentators, abenezra and spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of job carries no internal evidence of being an hebrew book; that the genius of the composition, and the drama of the piece, are not hebrew; that it has been translated from another language into hebrew, and that the author of the book was a gentile; that the character represented under the name of satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in the bible) [in a later work paine notes that in "the bible" (by which he always means the old testament alone) the word satan occurs also in chron. xxi. , and remarks that the action there ascribed to satan is in sam. xxiv. , attributed to jehovah ("essay on dreams"). in these places, however, and in ps. cix. , satan means "adversary," and is so translated (a.s. version) in sam. xix. , and kings v. , xi. . as a proper name, with the article, satan appears in the old testament only in job and in zech. iii. , . but the authenticity of the passage in zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the proper name of satan in job alone, paine was following some opinion met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his paragraph.--editor.] does not correspond to any hebrew idea; and that the two convocations which the deity is supposed to have made of those whom the poem calls sons of god, and the familiarity which this supposed satan is stated to have with the deity, are in the same case. it may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production of a mind cultivated in science, which the jews, so far from being famous for, were very ignorant of. the allusions to objects of natural philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast to any thing in the books known to be hebrew. the astronomical names, pleiades, orion, and arcturus, are greek and not hebrew names, and it does not appear from any thing that is to be found in the bible that the jews knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had no translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the names as they found them in the poem. [paine's jewish critic, david levi, fastened on this slip ("defence of the old testament," , p. ). in the original the names are ash (arcturus), kesil' (orion), kimah' (pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in the a.s.v. have been questioned.--editor.] that the jews did translate the literary productions of the gentile nations into the hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a matter of doubt; proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there said, the word of king lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him. this verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow, and which are not the proverbs of solomon, but of lemuel; and this lemuel was not one of the kings of israel, nor of judah, but of some other country, and consequently a gentile. the jews however have adopted his proverbs; and as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of job was, nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other book and chapter in the bible before it and after it, it has all the circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the gentiles. [the prayer known by the name of agur's prayer, in proverbs xxx.,--immediately preceding the proverbs of lemuel,--and which is the only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the bible, has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the gentiles. the name of agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same manner, and nearly in the same words, that lemuel and his proverbs are introduced in the chapter that follows. the first verse says, "the words of agur, the son of jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. the prayer of agur is in the th and th verses, "remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me; lest i be full and deny thee and say, who is the lord? or lest i be poor and steal, and take the name of my god in vain." this has not any of the marks of being a jewish prayer, for the jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches.--author. (prov. xxx. , and xxxi. ) the word "prophecy" in these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised version.--the prayer of agur was quoted by paine in his plea for the officers of excise, .--editor.] the bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the bible chronologists, appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of the book of job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor allusion to any, that might serve to determine its place in the bible. but it would not have answered the purpose of these men to have informed the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they have affixed it to the aera of b.c. , which is during the time the israelites were in egypt, and for which they have just as much authority and no more than i should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period. the probability however is, that it is older than any book in the bible; and it is the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust. we know nothing of what the ancient gentile world (as it is called) was before the time of the jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the jewish accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. but, as far as we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not addicted, like the jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession of faith we are unacquainted. it appears to have been their custom to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is done now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from this that they worshipped them any more than we do.--i pass on to the book of, psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. some of them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part relates to certain local circumstances of the jewish nation at the time they were written, with which we have nothing to do. it is, however, an error or an imposition to call them the psalms of david; they are a collection, as song-books are now-a-days, from different song-writers, who lived at different times. the th psalm could not have been written till more than years after the time of david, because it is written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the jews in babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. "by the rivers of babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered zion. we hanged our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one of the songs of zion." as a man would say to an american, or to a frenchman, or to an englishman, sing us one of your american songs, or your french songs, or your english songs. this remark, with respect to the time this psalm was written, is of no other use than to show (among others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been under with respect to the authors of the bible. no regard has been paid to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of persons have been affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral. the book of proverbs. these, like the psalms, are a collection, and that from authors belonging to other nations than those of the jewish nation, as i have shewn in the observations upon the book of job; besides which, some of the proverbs ascribed to solomon did not appear till two hundred and fifty years after the death of solomon; for it is said in xxv. i, "these are also proverbs of solomon which the men of hezekiah, king of judah, copied out." it was two hundred and fifty years from the time of solomon to the time of hezekiah. when a man is famous and his name is abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or did; and this, most probably, has been the case with solomon. it appears to have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it is now to make jest-books, and father them upon those who never saw them. [a "tom paine's jest book" had appeared in london with little or nothing of paine in it.--editor.] the book of ecclesiastes, or the preacher, is also ascribed to solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. it is written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out all is vanity! a great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in the original. [those that look out of the window shall be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of sight.--author.] from what is transmitted to us of the character of solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy. he lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight years. seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. this was the case with solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom, discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he afterwards endured. in this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary, because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the cause. seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have stood in place of the whole book. it was needless after this to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness. to be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. the mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin. those who knew benjamin franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress. he was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death. solomon's songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled fanaticism has called divine.--the compilers of the bible have placed these songs after the book of ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have affixed to them the aera of b.c. , at which time solomon, according to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. the bible-makers and the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better, and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for solomon was then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries. it should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did write, the book of ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included those songs in that description. this is the more probable, because he says, or somebody for him, ecclesiastes ii. , i got me men-singers, and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical instruments of all sorts; and behold (ver. ii), "all was vanity and vexation of spirit." the compilers however have done their work but by halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us the tunes, that we might sing them. the books called the books of the prophets fill up all the remaining part of the bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with isaiah and ending with malachi, of which i have given a list in the observations upon chronicles. of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the last three lived within the time the books of kings and chronicles were written, two only, isaiah and jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of those books. i shall begin with those two, reserving, what i have to say on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of the work. whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad. the historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the end of chapter xxxix. it relates some matters that are said to have passed during the reign of hezekiah, king of judah, at which time isaiah lived. this fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with that which follows it, nor with any other in the book. it is probable that isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an actor in the circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are scarcely two chapters that have any connection with each other. one is entitled, at the beginning of the first verse, the burden of babylon; another, the burden of moab; another, the burden of damascus; another, the burden of egypt; another, the burden of the desert of the sea; another, the burden of the valley of vision: as you would say the story of the knight of the burning mountain, the story of cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the story of the sleeping beauty in the wood, etc., etc. i have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of chronicles, and the first three in ezra, that the compilers of the bible mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other; which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than presumptive evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. a very glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to isaiah: the latter part of the th chapter, and the beginning of the th, so far from having been written by isaiah, could only have been written by some person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years after isaiah was dead. these chapters are a compliment to cyrus, who permitted the jews to return to jerusalem from the babylonian captivity, to rebuild jerusalem and the temple, as is stated in ezra. the last verse of the th chapter, and the beginning of the th [isaiah] are in the following words: "that saith of cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the lord to his enointed, to cyrus, whose right hand i have holden to subdue nations before him, and i will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; i will go before thee," etc. what audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book upon the world as the writing of isaiah, when isaiah, according to their own chronology, died soon after the death of hezekiah, which was b.c. ; and the decree of cyrus, in favour of the jews returning to jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, b.c. ; which is a distance of time between the two of years. i do not suppose that the compilers of the bible made these books, but rather that they picked up some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names of such authors as best suited their purpose. they have encouraged the imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but they must have observed it. when we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the monstrous idea of a son of god, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have. the head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are blazoned with the names of christ and the church, that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to read. behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (isa. vii. i ), has been interpreted to mean the person called jesus christ, and his mother mary, and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years; and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in consequence of it. though it is not my intention to enter into controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show that the bible is spurious,--and thus, by taking away the foundation, to overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon,--i will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this passage. whether isaiah was playing a trick with ahaz, king of judah, to whom this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; i mean only to show the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference to christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. the story is simply this: the king of syria and the king of israel (i have already mentioned that the jews were split into two nations, one of which was called judah, the capital of which was jerusalem, and the other israel) made war jointly against ahaz, king of judah, and marched their armies towards jerusalem. ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (is. vii. ), their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. in this situation of things, isaiah addresses himself to ahaz, and assures him in the name of the lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. this, the account says, ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he would not tempt the lord; upon which isaiah, who is the speaker, says, ver. , "therefore the lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the th verse says, "and before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning syria and the kingdom of israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings." here then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise; namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good. isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him, in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. it certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps isaiah knew of one beforehand; for i do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it may, he says in the next chapter, ver. , "and i took unto me faithful witnesses to record, uriah the priest, and zechariah the son of jeberechiah, and i went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare a son." here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call jesus christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, i hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and as false as god is true. [in is. vii. , it is said that the child should be called immanuel; but this name was not given to either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word signifies. that of the prophetess was called maher-shalalhash-baz, and that of mary was called jesus.--author.] but to show the imposition and falsehood of isaiah we have only to attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in silence in the book of isaiah, is related in chronicles, xxviii; and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt against ahaz, king of judah, as isaiah had pretended to foretel in the name of the lord, they succeeded: ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; jerusalem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters carried into captivity. thus much for this lying prophet and imposter isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. i pass on to the book of jeremiah. this prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that nebuchadnezzar besieged jerusalem, in the reign of zedekiah, the last king of judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was a traitor in the interest of nebuchadnezzar. every thing relating to jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he had predicted. in the th and th verses he makes the almighty to say, "at what instant i shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation, against whom i have pronounced, turn from their evil, i will repent me of the evil that i thought to do unto them." here was a proviso against one side of the case: now for the other side. verses and , "at what instant i shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then i will repent me of the good wherewith i said i would benefit them." here is a proviso against the other side; and, according to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however mistaken the almighty might be. this sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the bible. as to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein may have been spoken by jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. the historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most confused condition; the same events are several times repeated, and that in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each other; and this disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the history, upon which the greater part of the book has been employed, begins anew, and ends abruptly. the book has all the appearance of being a medley of unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time, collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers, respecting persons and things of the present day, were put together without date, order, or explanation. i will give two or three examples of this kind. it appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the chaldeans, had besieged jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of pharaoh of egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for a time. it may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this confused history, that nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken jerusalem during the reign of jehoakim, the redecessor of zedekiah; and that it was nebuchadnezzar who had make zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and that this second siege, of which the book of jeremiah treats, was in consequence of the revolt of zedekiah against nebuchadnezzar. this will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes itself to jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of nebuchadnezzar,--whom jeremiah calls, xliii. , the servant of god. chapter xxxvii. - , says, "and it came to pass, that, when the army of the chaldeans was broken up from jerusalem, for fear of pharaoh's army, that jeremiah went forth out of jerusalem, to go (as this account states) into the land of benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people; and when he was in the gate of benjamin a captain of the ward was there, whose name was irijah... and he took jeremiah the prophet, saying, thou fallest away to the chaldeans; then jeremiah said, it is false; i fall not away to the chaldeans." jeremiah being thus stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the last verse of this chapter. but the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of jeremiah, which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter xxi. it is there stated, ver. , that zedekiah sent pashur the son of malchiah, and zephaniah the son of maaseiah the priest, to jeremiah, to enquire of him concerning nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before jerusalem; and jeremiah said to them, ver. , "thus saith the lord, behold i set before you the way of life, and the way of death; he that abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey." this interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the th verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to come at the continuation and event of this conference; and this brings us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as i have just mentioned. the chapter opens with saying, "then shaphatiah, the son of mattan, gedaliah the son of pashur, and jucal the son of shelemiah, and pashur the son of malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard the words that jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, thus saith the lord, he that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the chaldeans shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live"; [which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to zedekiah,) "we beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:" and at the th verse it is said, "then they took jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon of malchiah." these two accounts are different and contradictory. the one ascribes his imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before zedekiah by the conferees. [i observed two chapters in i samuel (xvi. and xvii.) that contradict each other with respect to david, and the manner he became acquainted with saul; as jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict each other with respect to the cause of jeremiah's imprisonment. in samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of god troubled saul, and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to seek out a man who was a cunning player upon the harp." and saul said, ver. , "provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. then answered one of his servants, and said, behold, i have seen a son of jesse, the bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the lord is with him; wherefore saul sent messengers unto jesse, and said, send me david, thy son. and (verse ) david came to saul, and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the evil spirit from god was upon saul, (verse ) david took his harp, and played with his hand, and saul was refreshed, and was well." but the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of the manner that saul and david became acquainted. here it is ascribed to david's encounter with goliah, when david was sent by his father to carry provision to his brethren in the camp. in the th verse of this chapter it is said, "and when saul saw david go forth against the philistine (goliah) he said to abner, the captain of the host, abner, whose son is this youth? and abner said, as thy soul liveth, king, i cannot tell. and the king said, enquire thou whose son the stripling is. and as david returned from the slaughter of the philistine, abner took him and brought him before saul, with the head of the philistine in his hand; and saul said unto him, whose son art thou, thou young man? and david answered, i am the son of thy servant, jesse, the betblehemite," these two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes saul and david not to have known each other before. this book, the bible, is too ridiculous for criticism.--author.] in the next chapter (jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the city by nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins with saying, ver. , "in the ninth year of zedekiah king of judah, in the tenth month, came nebuchadnezzar king of babylon, and all his army, against jerusalem, and besieged it," etc. but the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying, ver. i, "zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in jerusalem, and his mother's name was hamutal, the daughter of jeremiah of libnah." (ver. ,) "and it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that nebuchadnezzar king of babylon came, he and all his army, against jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc. it is not possible that any one man, and more particularly jeremiah, could have been the writer of this book. the errors are such as could not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work. were i, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the writer was in a state of insanity. the only way, therefore, to account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under the name of jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the circumstances of the times he lived in. of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of jeremiah, i shall mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the bible. it appears from chapter xxxviii. that when jeremiah was in prison, zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was private, jeremiah pressed it strongly on zedekiah to surrender himself to the enemy. "if," says he, (ver. ,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc. zedekiah was apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and he said to jeremiah, (ver. ,) "if the princes [meaning those of judah] hear that i have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto thee, declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, i presented my supplication before the king that he would not cause me to return to jonathan's house, to die there. then came all the princes unto jeremiah, and asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had commanded." thus, this man of god, as he is called, could tell a lie, or very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose; for certainly he did not go to zedekiah to make this supplication, neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he employed that opportunity to advise zedekiah to surrender himself to nebuchadnezzar. in chapter xxxiv. - , is a prophecy of jeremiah to zedekiah in these words: "thus saith the lord, behold i will give this city into the hand of the king of babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to babylon. yet hear the word of the lord; o zedekiah, king, of judah, thus saith the lord, thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt die in peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and they will lament thee, saying, ah, lord! for i have pronounced the word, saith the lord." now, instead of zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of babylon, and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as jeremiah had declared the lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to chapter iii., , was the case; it is there said, that the king of babylon slew the sons of zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the eyes of zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death. what then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and liars? as for jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. he was taken into favour by nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the guard (xxxix, ), "take him (said he) and look well to him, and do him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." jeremiah joined himself afterwards to nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying for him against the egyptians, who had marched to the relief of jerusalem while it was besieged. thus much for another of the lying prophets, and the book that bears his name. i have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to isaiah and jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of kings and chronicles, which the others are not. the remainder of the books ascribed to the men called prophets i shall not trouble myself much about; but take them collectively into the observations i shall offer on the character of the men styled prophets. in the former part of the 'age of reason,' i have said that the word prophet was the bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors of jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called prophecies. i am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical language, but because there is no word in the bible, except it be the word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. i have also said, that the word signified a performer upon musical instruments, of which i have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets, prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc., and that saul prophesied with them, sam. x., . it appears from this passage, and from other parts in the book of samuel, that the word prophet was confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things, was not a prophet but a seer, [i know not what is the hebrew word that corresponds to the word seer in english; but i observe it is translated into french by le voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who sees, or the seer.--author.] [the hebrew word for seer, in samuel ix., transliterated, is chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in is. xlvii. , "the stargazers."--editor.] (i sam, ix. ;) and it was not till after the word seer went out of use (which most probably was when saul banished those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet. according to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies of the old testament, to the times of the new. but according to the old testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet, so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of prophet, had reference only to things of the time then passing, or very closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going to engage in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves (as in the case already mentioned of ahaz and isaiah with respect to the expression, behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,) and not to any distant future time. it was that kind of prophesying that corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting nativities, predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the christian church, not that of the jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring, dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank they have since had. but, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also a particular character. they were in parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other. after the jews were divided into two nations, that of judah and that of israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc. the prophets of the party of judah prophesied against the prophets of the party of israel; and those of the party of israel against those of judah. this party prophesying showed itself immediately on the separation under the first two rival kings, rehoboam and jeroboam. the prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the altar that jeroboam had built in bethel, was of the party of judah, where rehoboam was king; and he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of israel, who said unto him (i kings xiii.) "art thou the man of god that came from judah? and he said, i am." then the prophet of the party of israel said to him "i am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of judah,] and an angel spake unto me by the word of the lord, saying, bring him back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water; but (says the th verse) he lied unto him." the event, however, according to the story, is, that the prophet of judah never got back to judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the prophet of israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own party, and the prophet of judah a lying prophet. in kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. jehoshaphat king of judah, and joram king of israel, had for a while ceased their party animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together with the king of edom, engaged in a war against the king of moab. after uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great distress for water, upon which jehoshaphat said, "is there not here a prophet of the lord, that we may enquire of the lord by him? and one of the servants of the king of israel said here is elisha. [elisha was of the party of judah.] and jehoshaphat the king of judah said, the word of the lord is with him." the story then says, that these three kings went down to elisha; and when elisha [who, as i have said, was a judahmite prophet] saw the king of israel, he said unto him, "what have i to do with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of thy mother. nay but, said the king of israel, the lord hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon which elisha said, "as the lord of hosts liveth before whom i stand, surely, were it not that i regard the presence of jehoshaphat, king of judah, i would not look towards thee nor see thee." here is all the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. we are now to see the performance, or manner of prophesying. ver. . "'bring me,' (said elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the lord came upon him." here is the farce of the conjurer. now for the prophecy: "and elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing], thus saith the lord, make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce, that the way to get water was to dig for it. but as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those i have spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing. elisha, whom i have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name of the lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. we are to suppose that those children were of the party of israel; but as those who will curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story of elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the dragon of wantley, of whom it is said: poor children three devoured be, that could not with him grapple; and at one sup he eat them up, as a man would eat an apple. there was another description of men called prophets, that amused themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day we know not. these, if they were not quite harmless, were but little mischievous. of this class are, ezekiel and daniel; and the first question upon these books, as upon all the others, is, are they genuine? that is, were they written by ezekiel and daniel? of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, i am more inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. my reasons for this opinion are as follows: first, because those books do not contain internal evidence to prove they were not written by ezekiel and daniel, as the books ascribed to moses, joshua, samuel, etc., prove they were not written by moses, joshua, samuel, etc. secondly, because they were not written till after the babylonish captivity began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable, from the books themselves, as i have already shown, that they were not written till after the commencement of the jewish monarchy. thirdly, because the manner in which the books ascribed to ezekiel and daniel are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the time of writing them. had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books, been carred into captivity, as ezekiel and daniel were, it would greatly have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention, as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write, respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done. these two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even the most trifling information to each other, and all their political projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. they pretend to have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to speak facts or plain language. we ought, however, to suppose, that the persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it was not intended anybody else should. but these busy commentators and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do. ezekiel and daniel were carried prisoners to babylon, under the first captivity, in the time of jehoiakim, nine years before the second captivity in the time of zedekiah. the jews were then still numerous, and had considerable force at jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose that men in the situation of ezekiel and daniel would be meditating the recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret alphabet. if they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense; or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former. ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river chebar, in the land of his captivity. is it not reasonable to suppose that by the cherubims he meant the temple at jerusalem, where they had figures of cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which as a figure has always been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means of recovering jerusalem? in the latter part of his book he supposes himself transported to jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers back to the vision on the river chebar, and says, (xliii- ,) that this last vision was like the vision on the river chebar; which indicates that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the recovery of jerusalem, and nothing further. as to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly to which credulity or priestcraft can go. scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated as ezekiel and daniel were, whose country was over-run, and in the possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of it; scarcely any thing, i say, can be more absurd than to suppose that such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and their thoughts about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or two thousand years after they were dead; at the same time nothing more natural than that they should meditate the recovery of jerusalem, and their own deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all the obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in those books. in this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but, if we are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. in ezekiel xxix. ., speaking of egypt, it is said, "no foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for forty years." this is what never came to pass, and consequently it is false, as all the books i have already reviewed are.--i here close this part of the subject. in the former part of 'the age of reason' i have spoken of jonah, and of the story of him and the whale.--a fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow jonah and the whale it could swallow anything. but, as is already shown in the observations on the book of job and of proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the bible are originally hebrew, or only translations from the books of the gentiles into hebrew; and, as the book of jonah, so far from treating of the affairs of the jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats altogether of the gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of the gentiles than of the jews, [i have read in an ancient persian poem (saadi, i believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: "and now the whale swallowed jonah: the sun set."--editor.] and that it has been written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and malignant character, of a bible-prophet, or a predicting priest. jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the gentiles, bound from joppa to tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry contrivance, he could hide himself where god could not find him. the vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea; and the mariners, all of whom are gentiles, believing it to be a judgement on account of some one on board who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender; and the lot fell upon jonah. but before this they had cast all their wares and merchandise over-board to lighten the vessel, while jonah, like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold. after the lot had designated jonah to be the offender, they questioned him to know who and what he was? and he told them he was an hebrew; and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. but these gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a company of bible-prophets or priests would have done by a gentile in the same case, and as it is related samuel had done by agag, and moses by the women and children, they endeavoured to save him, though at the risk of their own lives: for the account says, "nevertheless [that is, though jonah was a jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes, and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard to bring the boat to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous against them." still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the lord, saying, "we beseech thee, o lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, o lord, hast done as it pleased thee." meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge jonah guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that they considered the lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of god, or as it pleased god. the address of this prayer shows that the gentiles worshipped one supreme being, and that they were not idolaters as the jews represented them to be. but the storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing, they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast jonah in the sea; where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and alive! we have now to consider jonah securely housed from the storm in the fish's belly. here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is a made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the psalms, without connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all to the condition that jonah was in. it is such a prayer as a gentile, who might know something of the psalms, could copy out for him. this circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to indicate that the whole is a made-up story. the prayer, however, is supposed to have answered the purpose, and the story goes on, (taking-off at the same time the cant language of a bible-prophet,) saying, "the lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out jonah upon dry land." jonah then received a second mission to nineveh, with which he sets out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. the distress he is represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had, were sufficient, one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this, he enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth, crying, "yet forty days, and nineveh shall be overthrown." we have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a bible-prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that men ascribe to the being they call the devil. having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the east side of the city.--but for what? not to contemplate in retirement the mercy of his creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with malignant impatience, the destruction of nineveh. it came to pass, however, as the story relates, that the ninevites reformed, and that god, according to the bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said he would do unto them, and did it not. this, saith the first verse of the last chapter, displeased jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. his obdurate heart would rather that all nineveh should be destroyed, and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his prediction should not be fulfilled. to expose the character of a prophet still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he is retired; and the next morning it dies. here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to destroy himself. "it is better, said he, for me to die than to live." this brings on a supposed expostulation between the almighty and the prophet; in which the former says, "doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? and jonah said, i do well to be angry even unto death. then said the lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not i spare nineveh, that great city, in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?" here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable. as a satire, it strikes against the character of all the bible-prophets, and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and children, with which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of sodom and gomorrah, the extirpation of the canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. it satirizes also the supposed partiality of the creator for one nation more than for another. as a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. the pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.--this book ends with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets, prophecies and indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that benjamin franklin made for the bible, about abraham and the stranger, ends against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions--thus much for the book jonah. [the story of abraham and the fire-worshipper, ascribed to franklin, is from saadi. (see my "sacred anthology," p. .) paine has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among the first to treat with dignity the book of jonah, so especially liable to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest conception of deity known to the old testament.--editor.] of the poetical parts of the bible, that are called prophecies, i have spoken in the former part of 'the age of reason,' and already in this, where i have said that the word for prophet is the bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to purposes the writers never thought of. when a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer. the whore of babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations. there now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as i have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together. i have now gone through the bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. they may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.--i pass on to the books of the new testament. chapter ii - the new testament the new testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation. as it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed, even unjustly, i see no reason for not believing that such a woman as mary, and such a man as joseph, and jesus, existed; their mere existence is a matter of indifference, about which there is no ground either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common head of, it may be so, and what then? the probability however is that there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of robinson crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of alexander selkirk. it is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that i trouble myself about; it is the fable of jesus christ, as told in the new testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which i contend. the story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. it gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (luke i. ,) that "the holy ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee." notwithstanding which, joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. this is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it. [mary, the supposed virgin, mother of jesus, had several other children, sons and daughters. see matt. xiii. , .--author.] obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in god, that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. this story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of jupiter and leda, or jupiter and europa, or any of the amorous adventures of jupiter; and shews, as is already stated in the former part of 'the age of reason,' that the christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology. as the historical parts of the new testament, so far as concerns jesus christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy of the books of the old testament, and proves them to be impositions, cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. the new testament compared with the old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. there are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of jesus christ to be false. i lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false; secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. the agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement proves falsehood positively. the history of jesus christ is contained in the four books ascribed to matthew, mark, luke, and john.--the first chapter of matthew begins with giving a genealogy of jesus christ; and in the third chapter of luke there is also given a genealogy of jesus christ. did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. if matthew speaks truth, luke speaks falsehood; and if luke speaks truth, matthew speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. truth is an uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. either then the men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in the old testament. the book of matthew gives (i. ), a genealogy by name from david, up, through joseph, the husband of mary, to christ; and makes there to be twent eight generations. the book of luke gives also a genealogy by name from christ, through joseph the husband of mary, down to david, and makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there is only the two names of david and joseph that are alike in the two lists.--i here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that is, from joseph down to david. genealogy, according to genealogy, according to matthew. luke. christ christ joseph joseph jacob heli matthan matthat eleazer levi eliud melchl achim janna sadoc joseph azor mattathias eliakim amos abiud naum zorobabel esli salathiel nagge jechonias maath josias mattathias amon semei manasses joseph ezekias juda achaz joanna joatham rhesa ozias zorobabel joram salathiel josaphat neri asa melchi abia addi roboam cosam solomon elmodam david * er jose eliezer jorim matthat levi simeon juda joseph jonan eliakim melea menan mattatha nathan david [note: * from the birth of david to the birth of christ is upwards of years; and as the life-time of christ is not included, there are but full generations. to find therefore the average age of each person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it is only necessary to divide by , which gives years for each person. as the life-time of man was then but of the same extent it is now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that following generations should all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are told that solomon, the next in succession to david, had a house full of wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. so far from this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie. the list of luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and this is too much.--author.] now, if these men, matthew and luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of jesus christ, and of who, and of what he was, what authority (as i have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards? if they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of god, begotten by a ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? if they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? if his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood? is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain, pure, and unmixed belief of one god, which is deism, than that we commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and contradictory tales? the first question, however, upon the books of the new testament, as upon those of the old, is, are they genuine? were they written by the persons to whom they are ascribed? for it is upon this ground only that the strange things related therein have been credited. upon this point, there is no direct proof for or against; and all that this state of a case proves is doubtfulness; and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief. the state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves as far as this kind of proof can go. but, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the evangelists, and ascribed to matthew, mark, luke, and john, were not written by matthew, mark, luke, and john; and that they are impositions. the disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them, implies that they are the productions of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of the old testament have been, by other persons than those whose names they bear. the story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to mark, and john; and is differently related in matthew and luke. the former says the angel, appeared to joseph; the latter says, it was to mary; but either joseph or mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? certainly she would not. why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? how strange and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture. the story of herod destroying all the children under two years old, belongs altogether to the book of matthew; not one of the rest mentions anything about it. had such a circumstance been true, the universality of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would have been too striking to have been omitted by any. this writer tell us, that jesus escaped this slaughter, because joseph and mary were warned by an angel to flee with him into egypt; but he forgot to make provision for john [the baptist], who was then under two years of age. john, however, who staid behind, fared as well as jesus, who fled; and therefore the story circumstantially belies itself. not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was put over christ when he was crucified; and besides this, mark says, he was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning;) and john says it was the sixth hour, (twelve at noon.) [according to john, (xix. ) the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but mark (xv. ) says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning,)--author.] the inscription is thus stated in those books: matthew--this is jesus the king of the jews. mark--the king of the jews. luke--this is the king of the jews. john--jesus of nazareth the king of the jews. we may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the scene. the only one of the men called apostles who appears to have been near to the spot was peter, and when he was accused of being one of jesus's followers, it is said, (matthew xxvi. ,) "then peter began to curse and to swear, saying, i know not the man:" yet we are now called to believe the same peter, convicted, by their own account, of perjury. for what reason, or on what authority, should we do this? the accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us attended the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books. the book ascribed to matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour--that the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom--that there was an earthquake--that the rocks rent--that the graves opened, that the bodies of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many.' such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the other books. the writer of the book ascribed to mark, in detailing the circumstances of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. the writer of the book of luke is silent also upon the same points. and as to the writer of the book of john, though he details all the circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of christ, he says nothing about either the darkness--the veil of the temple--the earthquake--the rocks--the graves--nor the dead men. now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the writers of these books had lived at the time they did happen, and had been the persons they are said to be--namely, the four men called apostles, matthew, mark, luke, and john,--it was not possible for them, as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have recorded them. the things, supposing them to have been facts, were of too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance not to have been told. all these supposed apostles must have been witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not possible for them to have been absent from it: the opening of the graves and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is of still greater importance than the earthquake. an earthquake is always possible, and natural, and proves nothing; but this opening of the graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their cause, and their apostleship. had it been true, it would have filled up whole chapters of those books, and been the chosen theme and general chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial things, and mere prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all, had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by the rest. it is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the lie after it is told. the writer of the book of matthew should have told us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city, and what became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he is not hardy enough to say that he saw them himself;--whether they came out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints, or whether they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive, and buried themselves. strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing to tell us! had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say. they could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better at least than we have now. had it been moses, and aaron, and joshua, and samuel, and david, not an unconverted jew had remained in all jerusalem. had it been john the baptist, and the saints of the times then present, everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and out-famed all the other apostles. but, instead of this, these saints are made to pop up, like jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all but to wither in the morning.--thus much for this part of the story. the tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so much as to make it evident that none of them were there. the book of matthew states, that when christ was put in the sepulchre the jews applied to pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed over the septilchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that in consequence of this request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the stone that covered the mouth, and setting a watch. but the other books say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the guard, nor the watch; and according to their accounts, there were none. matthew, however, follows up this part of the story of the guard or the watch with a second part, that i shall notice in the conclusion, as it serves to detect the fallacy of those books. the book of matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. ,) that at the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week, came mary magdalene and the other mary, to see the sepulchre. mark says it was sun-rising, and john says it was dark. luke says it was mary magdalene and joanna, and mary the mother of james, and other women, that came to the sepulchre; and john states that mary magdalene came alone. so well do they agree about their first evidence! they all, however, appear to have known most about mary magdalene; she was a woman of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be upon the stroll. [the bishop of llandaff, in his famous "apology," censured paine severely for this insinuation against mary magdalene, but the censure really falls on our english version, which, by a chapter-heading (luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the sinful woman who anointed jesus, and irrevocably branded her.--editor.] the book of matthew goes on to say (ver. ): "and behold there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" but the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it and, according to their account, there was no angel sitting there. mark says the angel [mark says "a young man," and luke "two men."--editor.] was within the sepulchre, sitting on the right side. luke says there were two, and they were both standing up; and john says they were both sitting down, one at the head and the other at the feet. matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the outside of the sepulchre told the two marys that christ was risen, and that the women went away quickly. mark says, that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side, that told them so. luke says, it was the two angels that were standing up; and john says, it was jesus christ himself that told it to mary magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped down and looked in. now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of god. the writer of the book of matthew, after giving this account, relates a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and which is the same i have just before alluded to. "now," says he, [that is, after the conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the stone,] "behold some of the watch [meaning the watch that he had said had been placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shawed unto the chief priests all the things that were done; and when they were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, say ye, that his disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. so they took the money, and did as they were taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is commonly reported among the jews until this day." the expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed to matthew was not written by matthew, and that it has been manufactured long after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for the expression implies a great length of intervening time. it would be inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of any thing happening in our own time. to give, therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression, we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for this manner of speaking carries the mind back to ancient time. the absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the writer of the book of matthew to have been an exceeding weak and foolish man. he tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility; for though the guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the body was taken away while they were asleep, and to give that as a reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have prevented their knowing how, and by whom, it was done; and yet they are made to say that it was the disciples who did it. were a man to tender his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the manner of doing it, and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received: it will do well enough for testament evidence, but not for any thing where truth is concerned. i come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects the pretended appearance of christ after this pretended resurrection. the writer of the book of matthew relates, that the angel that was sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two marys (xxviii. ), "behold christ is gone before you into galilee, there ye shall see him; lo, i have told you." and the same writer at the next two verses ( , ,) makes christ himself to speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to the disciples; and it is said (ver. ), "then the eleven disciples went away into galilee, into a mountain where jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him." but the writer of the book of john tells us a story very different to this; for he says (xx. ) "then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, [that is, the same day that christ is said to have risen,] when the doors were shut, where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the jews, came jesus and stood in the midst of them." according to matthew the eleven were marching to galilee, to meet jesus in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when, according to john, they were assembled in another place, and that not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the jews. the writer of the book of luke xxiv. , - , contradicts that of matthew more pointedly than john does; for he says expressly, that the meeting was in jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (christ) rose, and that the eleven were there. now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the right of wilful lying, that the writers of these books could be any of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to matthew, the eleven went into galilee to meet jesus in a mountain by his own appointment, on the same day that he is said to have risen, luke and john must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of luke says expressly, and john implies as much, that the meeting was that same day, in a house in jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to luke and john, the eleven were assembled in a house in jerusalem, matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books destroy each other. the writer of the book of mark says nothing about any meeting in galilee; but he says (xvi. ) that christ, after his resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would not believe them. [this belongs to the late addition to mark, which originally ended with xvi. .--editor.] luke also tells a story, in which he keeps christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going to the mountain in galilee. he says, that two of them, without saying which two, went that same day to a village called emmaus, three score furlongs (seven miles and a half) from jerusalem, and that christ in disguise went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in jerusalem. this is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended reappearance of christ is stated: the only point in which the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it was in the recess of a mountain in galilee, or in a shut-up house in jerusalem, it was still skulking. to what cause then are we to assign this skulking? on the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed or pretended end, that of convincing the world that christ was risen; and, on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to public detection; and, therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair. as to the account of christ being seen by more than five hundred at once, it is paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it for themselves. it is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that too of a man, who did not, according to the same account, believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened. his evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of corinthians xv., where this account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was false. a man may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact. i now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.--here all fear of the jews, and of every thing else, must necessarily have been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the whole; and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples was to rest for proof. words, whether declarations or promises, that passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in galilee, or in a shut-up house in jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken, could not be evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute; and that it should be, as i have stated in the former part of 'the age of reason,' as public and as visible as the sun at noon-day; at least it ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have been.--but to come to the point. in the first place, the writer of the book of matthew does not say a syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of john. this being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this, had it been true? the writer of the book of mark passes it off in a careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. so also does the writer of luke. and even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement, as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. [the last nine verses of mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension rests exclusively on the words in luke xxiv. , "was carried up into heaven,"--words omitted by several ancient authorities.--editor.] the book of mark says that christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at jerusalem: he then states the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story,) "so then, after the lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of god." but the writer of luke says, that the ascension was from bethany; that he (christ) led them out as far as bethany, and was parted from them there, and was carried up into heaven. so also was mahomet: and, as to moses, the apostle jude says, ver. . that 'michael and the devil disputed about his body.' while we believe such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the almighty. i have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to matthew, mark, luke and john; and when it is considered that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are reported to have happened nearly about the same spot, jerusalem, it is, i believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in those books. they are more numerous and striking than i had any expectation of finding, when i began this examination, and far more so than i had any idea of when i wrote the former part of 'the age of reason.' i had then neither bible nor testament to refer to, nor could i procure any. my own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every day more precarious; and as i was willing to leave something behind me upon the subject, i was obliged to be quick and concise. the quotations i then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the opinions i have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction,--that the bible and the testament are impositions upon the world;--that the fall of man, the account of jesus christ being the son of god, and of his dying to appease the wrath of god, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the almighty;--that the only true religion is deism, by which i then meant and now mean the belief of one god, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues;--and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that i rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. so say i now--and so help me god. but to retum to the subject.--though it is impossible, at this distance of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four books (and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. the contradictions in those books demonstrate two things: first, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been witnesses of this kind. secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for himself, and without the knowledge of the other. the same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. as to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction. if four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will without any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and where that scene happened. their individual knowledge of the thing, each one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other that it was dark. for in whatever place it was and whatever time it was, they know it equally alike. and on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other to support the whole. that concert supplies the want of fact in the one case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the necessity of a concert. the same contradictions, therefore, that prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no knowledge of the fact, (or rather of that which they relate as a fact,) and detect also the falsehood of their reports. those books, therefore, have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters in concert.--how then have they been written? i am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that which is called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of men setting up to be prophets, as in the old testament; for prophesying is lying professionally. in almost all other cases it is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one. the story of jesus christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of julius caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent persons. in cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and benevolently stretches the story. it goes on a little and a little farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. once start a ghost, and credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about jesus christ in these four books. the story of the appearance of jesus christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. he is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. but as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended; whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. in the case of elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamander's wool. those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that the book called the new testament has existed ever since the time of jesus christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed to moses have existed ever since the time of moses. but the fact is historically otherwise; there was no such book as the new testament till more than three hundred years after the time that christ is said to have lived. at what time the books ascribed to matthew, mark, luke and john, began to appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. there is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now called. the originals are not in the possession of any christian church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of god, upon mount sinai, and given to moses, are in the possession of the jews. and even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. at the time those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the almighty to commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? we cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of god as easily as words of man. [the former part of the 'age of reason' has not been published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is not mine. the expression is: the book of luke was carried by a majority of one voice only. it may be true, but it is not i that have said it. some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in england or in america; and the printers, after that, have erected it into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. if this has happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and call it an original by matthew, mark, luke, or john?--author.] [the spurious addition to paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on him a severe criticism from dr. priestley ("letters to a philosophical unbeliever," p. ), yet it seems to have been priestley himself who, in his quotation, first incorporated into paine's text the footnote added by the editor of the american edition ( ). the american added: "vide moshiem's (sic) ecc. history," which priestley omits. in a modern american edition i notice four verbal alterations introduced into the above footnote.--editor.] about three hundred and fifty years after the time that christ is said to have lived, several writings of the kind i am speaking of were scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as we now see them, called 'the new testament.' they decided by vote, as i have before said in the former part of the age of reason, which of those writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of god, and which should not. the robbins of the jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the bible before. as the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of being voted. and as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in the place of it; for it can be traced no higher. disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the books. in the contest between the person called st. augustine, and fauste, about the year , the latter says, "the books called the evangelists have been composed long after the times of the apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection between them." and in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books, as being the word of god, he says, "it is thus that your predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our lord many things which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." this is not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put together by i know not what half-jews, with but little agreement between them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the apostles of our lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors and their lies. [i have taken these two extracts from boulanger's life of paul, written in french; boulanger has quoted them from the writings of augustine against fauste, to which he refers.--author.] this bishop faustus is usually styled "the manichaeum," augustine having entitled his book, contra frustum manichaeum libri xxxiii., in which nearly the whole of faustus' very able work is quoted.--editor.] the reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the books of the new testament was denied, and the books treated as tales, forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of god. but the interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. miracles followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to say they believed whether they believed or not. but (by way of throwing in a thought) the french revolution has excommunicated the church from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are tricks and lies. [boulanger in his life of paul, has collected from the ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the different sects of christians, at the time the testament, as we now see it, was voted to be the word of god. the following extracts are from the second chapter of that work: [the marcionists (a christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were filled with falsities. the manichaeans, who formed a very numerous sect at the commencement of christianity, rejected as false all the new testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for authentic. the corinthians, like the marcionists, admitted not the acts of the apostles. the encratites and the sevenians adopted neither the acts, nor the epistles of paul. chrysostom, in a homily which he made upon the acts of the apostles, says that in his time, about the year , many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. st. irene, who lived before that time, reports that the valentinians, like several other sects of the christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. the ebionites, or nazarenes, who were the first christians, rejected all the epistles of paul, and regarded him as an impostor. they report, among other things, that he was originally a pagan; that he came to jerusalem, where he lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to obtain her, he quarrelled with the jews and wrote against circumcision, and against the observation of the sabbath, and against all the legal ordinances.--author.] [much abridged from the exam. crit. de la vie de st. paul, by n.a. boulanger, .--editor.] when we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening between the time that christ is said to have lived and the time the new testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is of its authenticity. the authenticity of the book of homer, so far as regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the new testament, though homer is a thousand years the most ancient. it was only an exceeding good poet that could have written the book of homer, and, therefore, few men only could have attempted it; and a man capable of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to another. in like manner, there were but few that could have composed euclid's elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could have been the author of that work. but with respect to the books of the new testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of christ, any person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told. the chance, therefore, of forgery in the testament is millions to one greater than in the case of homer or euclid. of the numerous priests or parsons of the present day, bishops and all, every one of them can make a sermon, or translate a scrap of latin, especially if it has been translated a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write poetry like homer, or science like euclid? the sum total of a parson's learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec, hoc; and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and this is more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time, to have written all the books of the new testament. as the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the inducement. a man could gain no advantage by writing under the name of homer or euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed. pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter. but with respect to such books as compose the new testament, all the inducements were on the side of forgery. the best imagined history that could have been made, at the distance of two or three hundred years after the time, could not have passed for an original under the name of the real writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery; for the church wanted pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of the question. but as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their getting into people's insides, and shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their being cast out again as if by an emetic--(mary magdalene, the book of mark tells us had brought up, or been brought to bed of seven devils;) it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get abroad of the person called jesus christ, and become afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to matthew, mark, luke, and john. each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as the eye-witness. it is only upon this ground that the contradictions in those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are downright impositions, lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of credulity. that they have been written by a sort of half jews, as the foregoing quotations mention, is discernible enough. the frequent references made to that chief assassin and impostor moses, and to the men called prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church has complimented the fraud, by admitting the bible and the testament to reply to each other. between the christian-jew and the christian-gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the thing prophesied of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing signified, have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old locks and pick-lock keys. the story foolishly enough told of eve and the serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents (for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach higher, and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the most effectual way to prevent its biting;) ["it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." gen. iii. .--author.] this foolish story, i say, has been made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to begin with; and the lying imposition of isaiah to ahaz, 'that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' as a sign that ahaz should conquer, when the event was that he was defeated (as already noticed in the observations on the book of isaiah), has been perverted, and made to serve as a winder up. jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. jonah is jesus, and the whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have made christ to say it of himself, matt. xii. ), "for as jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." but it happens, awkwardly enough, that christ, according to their own account, was but one day and two nights in the grave; about hours instead of ; that is, the friday night, the saturday, and the saturday night; for they say he was up on the sunday morning by sunrise, or before. but as this fits quite as well as the bite and the kick in genesis, or the virgin and her son in isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things.--thus much for the historical part of the testament and its evidences. epistles of paul--the epistles ascribed to paul, being fourteen in number, almost fill up the remaining part of the testament. whether those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is a matter of no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he was, attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. he does not pretend to have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them. the story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more than is common in such conditions. his companions that were with him appear not to have suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the remainder of the journey; neither did they pretend to have seen any vision. the character of the person called paul, according to the accounts given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his constitution; and either as a jew or a christian he was the same zealot. such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach. they are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief. the doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality. but so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if i have already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which i have died, it is presumptive evidence that i shall die again. that resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. to believe therefore in immortality, i must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the gloomy doctrine of the resurrection. besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, i had rather have a better body and a more convenient form than the present. every animal in the creation excels us in something. the winged insects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. the glide of the smallest fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost beyond comparison, and without weariness. even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that ability, would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful amusement. the personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of paul to be true. it is too little for the magnitude of the scene, too mean for the sublimity of the subject. but all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance of that consciousness is immortality. the consciousness of existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life. we have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter, that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of being the same persons. even legs and arms, which make up almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of existence. these may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of existence. in short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the kernel. who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought when produced, as i now produce the thought i am writing, is capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity. statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. but print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. it has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know of, or can conceive. if then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in. the one idea is not more difficult to believe than the other; and we can see that one is true. that the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. a very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than paul, the belief of a life hereafter. their little life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future state; and comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature. the most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged insects, and they are not so originally. they acquire that form and that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. the slow and creeping caterpillar worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. no resemblance of the former creature remains; every thing is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. we cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before; why then must i believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter? in the former part of 'the agee of reason.' i have called the creation the true and only real word of god; and this instance, or this text, in the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so, but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is not more difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact. as to the doubtful jargon ascribed to paul in corinthians xv., which makes part of the burial service of some christian sectaries, it is as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it explains nothing to the understanding, it illustrates nothing to the imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he can. "all flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. there is one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." and what then? nothing. a cook could have said as much. "there are also," says he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is the other." and what then? nothing. and what is the difference? nothing that he has told. "there is," says he, "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars." and what then? nothing; except that he says that one star differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance; and he might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright as the sun. all this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. priests and conjurors are of the same trade. sometimes paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "thou fool" says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." to which one might reply in his own language, and say, thou fool, paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. it is only the living grains that produce the next crop. but the metaphor, in any point of view, is no simile. it is succession, and [not] resurrection. the progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not, and shows paul to have been what he says of others, a fool. whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to paul were written by him or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. and the same may be said for the remaining parts of the testament. it is not upon the epistles, but upon what is called the gospel, contained in the four books ascribed to matthew, mark, luke, and john, and upon the pretended prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself the christian church, is founded. the epistles are dependant upon those, and must follow their fate; for if the story of jesus christ be fabulous, all reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it. we know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church, athanasius, lived at the time the new testament was formed; [athanasius died, according to the church chronology, in the year --author.] and we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of a creed, the character of the men who formed the new testament; and we know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of which it is composed was denied at the time. it was upon the vote of such as athanasius that the testament was decreed to be the word of god; and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing the word of god by vote. those who rest their faith upon such authority put man in the place of god, and have no true foundation for future happiness. credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. it is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. we should never force belief upon ourselves in any thing. i here close the subject on the old testament and the new. the evidence i have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. if the evidence be denied, the authenticity of the scriptures is denied with it, for it is scripture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity of the books is disproved. the contradictory impossibilities, contained in the old testament and the new, put them in the case of a man who swears for and against. either evidence convicts him of perjury, and equally destroys reputation. should the bible and the testament hereafter fall, it is not that i have done it. i have done no more than extracted the evidence from the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended; and, having done this, i leave the reader to judge for himself, as i have judged for myself. chapter iii - conclusion in the former part of 'the age of reason' i have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as i have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what i have there said upon those subjects, i shall not encumber this second part with additions that are not necessary. i have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of the old testament and the new; for certainly revelation is out of the question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the witness. that which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell him he has done it, or seen it--for he knows it already--nor to enable him to tell it or to write it. it is ignorance, or imposition, to apply the term revelation in such cases; yet the bible and testament are classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation. revelation then, so far as the term has relation between god and man, can only be applied to something which god reveals of his will to man; but though the power of the almighty to make such a communication is necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible, yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing ever was revealed, and which, by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only to whom it is made. his account of it to another is not revelation; and whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. there is no possible criterion whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality of it would be no proof of revelation. in all such cases, the proper answer should be, "when it is revealed to me, i will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that i should take the word of man as the word of god, and put man in the place of god." this is the manner in which i have spoken of revelation in the former part of the age of reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the almighty all things are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation. but though, speaking for myself, i thus admit the possibility of revelation, i totally disbelieve that the almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones. [a fair parallel of the then unknown aphorism of kant: "two things fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as i meditate more closely upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." (kritik derpraktischen vernunfe, ). kant's religious utterances at the beginning of the french revolution brought on him a royal mandate of silence, because he had worked out from "the moral law within" a principle of human equality precisely similar to that which paine had derived from his quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man. about the same time paine's writings were suppressed in england. paine did not understand german, but kant, though always independent in the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the literature of the revolution, in america, england, and france.--editor.] the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. it has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. it is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as moses, joshua, samuel, and the bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of god in his mouth, and have credit among us. whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that god has spoken to man? the lies of the bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the testament [of] the other. some christians pretend that christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? it was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and mahomet could not do it sooner. by the same spirit that peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. besides this, christianity grounds itself originally upon the [hebrew] bible, and the bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it--not to terrify, but to extirpate. the jews made no converts: they butchered all. the bible is the sire of the [new] testament, and both are called the word of god. the christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called christianity is made up of both. it is then false to say that christianity was not established by the sword. the only sect that has not persecuted are the quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather deists than christians. they do not believe much about jesus christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter. [this is an interesting and correct testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier quakers, one of whom was paine's father.--editor.] had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth. it is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. what is it that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his maker. what is it the bible teaches us?--repine, cruelty, and murder. what is it the testament teaches us?--to believe that the almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith. as to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. they are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. the testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. the doctrine of not retaliating injuries is much better expressed in proverbs, which is a collection as well from the gentiles as the jews, than it is in the testament. it is there said, (xxv. i) "if thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:" [according to what is called christ's sermon on the mount, in the book of matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not any part of the doctrine of the jews; but as this doctrine is found in "proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from the gentiles, from whom christ had learned it. those men whom jewish and christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the old testament, so far as it is jewish, or in the new. the answer of solon on the question, "which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, "that," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution." solon lived about years before christ.--author.] but when it is said, as in the testament, "if a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel. loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. it is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. if a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. but even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible. morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. the maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity. those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. for my own part, i disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say i have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the american revolution, or in the french revolution; or that i have, in any case, returned evil for evil. but it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. it is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a revealed religion. we imitate the moral character of the creator by forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as he was bad. if we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. what is it we want to know? does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole? and is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any imposter might make and call the word of god? as for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience. here we are. the existence of an almighty power is sufficiently demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we should, the nature and manner of its existence. we cannot conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here. we must know also, that the power that called us into being, can if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know beforehand that he can. the probability or even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue. deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. the creation is the bible of the deist. he there reads, in the hand-writing of the creator himself, the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and all other bibles and testaments are to him forgeries. the probability that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds, have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact. as this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no god. but the belief of a god is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all. but the belief of a god is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. the notion of a trinity of gods has enfeebled the belief of one god. a multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened. religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a god; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise jesus christ for being executed, and condemn the jews for doing it. a man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the god of the creation with the imagined god of the christians, and lives as if there were none. of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called christianity. too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. as an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter. the only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. it must have been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. but pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. they cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system. it is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic. were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a god, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of god, and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. to give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. this is deism. but when, according to the christian trinitarian scheme, one part of god is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the holy ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. [the book called the book of matthew, says, (iii. ,) that the holy ghost descended in the shape of a dove. it might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. acts, ii. , , says, that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues: perhaps it was cloven feet. such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of witches and wizards.--author.] it has been the scheme of the christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. the systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. the study of theology as it stands in christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing. instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the bible and testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted, and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the bible of the creation. the principles we discover there are eternal, and of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be the foundation of theology. we can know god only through his works. we cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. we have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. we can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. the principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the creator of man is the creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see god, as it were, face to face. could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of the universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve, even to the remotest comet, their connection and dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws established by the creator, that governs and regulates the whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the creator. he would then see that all the knowledge man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source: his mind, exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,--as everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has,--would teach him more of god, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological christian sermon he now hears. great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the bible and the testament are fit only to excite contempt. though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene i have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed. we know that the greatest works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be represented by the same means. the same principles by which we measure an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. a circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the universe. the same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though those bodies are millions of miles distant from us. this knowledge is of divine origin; and it is from the bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the stupid bible of the church, that teaches man nothing. [the bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter of genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. they make there to have been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night--and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening. besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the almighty to say, "let there be light." it is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, presto, be gone--and most probably has been taken from it, as moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. longinus calls this expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime too; for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the same. when authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous. the sublime of the critics, like some parts of edmund burke's sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.--author.] all the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. the constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. it is not moses and the prophets, nor jesus christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. the almighty is the great mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of all science. let us then learn to reverence our master, and not forget the labours of our ancestors. had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible that man could have a view, as i have before described, of the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice. or could a model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. such an object and such a subject would, whilst it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in the creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the bible and the testament, from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached. if man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from the texts that are known to be true. the bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy--for gratitude, as for human improvement. it will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. most certainly, and every house of devotion a school of science. it has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed of the almighty. the jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the jews. the christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the jewish religion. and to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement. the philosopher knows that the laws of the creator have never changed, with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man? i here close the subject. i have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the bible and testament are impositions and forgeries; and i leave the evidence i have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and i leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as i am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail. end of part ii version by al haines. on the improvement of the understanding (treatise on the emendation of the intellect) by baruch spinoza [benedict de spinoza] translated by r. h. m. elwes table of contents: on the improvement of the understanding of the ordinary objects of men's desires of the true and final good certain rules of life of the four modes of perception of the best mode of perception of the instruments of the intellect, or true ideas answers to objections first part of method: distinction of true ideas from fictitious ideas and from false ideas of doubt of memory and forgetfulness mental hindrances from words--and from the popular confusion of ready imagination with distinct understanding. second part of method: its object, the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas its means, good definitions conditions of definition how to define understanding ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [notice to the reader.] (this notice to the reader was written by the editors of the opera postuma in . taken from curley, note , at end) *this treatise on the emendation of the intellect etc., which we give you here, kind reader, in its unfinished [that is, defective] state, was written by the author many years ago now. he always intended to finish it. but hindered by other occupations, and finally snatched away by death, he was unable to bring it to the desired conclusion. but since it contains many excellent and useful things, which--we have no doubt--will be of great benefit to anyone sincerely seeking the truth, we did not wish to deprive you of them. and so that you would be aware of, and find less difficult to excuse, the many things that are still obscure, rough, and unpolished, we wished to warn you of them. farewell.* [ ] ( ) after experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, i finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. [ ] ( ) i say "i finally resolved," for at first sight it seemed unwise willingly to lose hold on what was sure for the sake of something then uncertain. ( ) i could see the benefits which are acquired through fame and riches, and that i should be obliged to abandon the quest of such objects, if i seriously devoted myself to the search for something different and new. ( ) i perceived that if true happiness chanced to be placed in the former i should necessarily miss it; while if, on the other hand, it were not so placed, and i gave them my whole attention, i should equally fail. [ ] ( ) i therefore debated whether it would not be possible to arrive at the new principle, or at any rate at a certainty concerning its existence, without changing the conduct and usual plan of my life; with this end in view i made many efforts, in vain. ( ) for the ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads--riches, fame, and the pleasures of sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good. [ ] ( ) by sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled. ( ) the pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects be sought simply for their own sake, [a] inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the highest good. [ ] ( ) in the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are directed. ( ) further, the attainment of riches and fame is not followed as in the case of sensual pleasures by repentance, but, the more we acquire, the greater is our delight, and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the other; on the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are plunged into the deepest sadness. ( ) fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives according to the opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and seeking what they usually seek. [ ] ( ) when i saw that all these ordinary objects of desire would be obstacles in the way of a search for something different and new--nay, that they were so opposed thereto, that either they or it would have to be abandoned, i was forced to inquire which would prove the most useful to me: for, as i say, i seemed to be willingly losing hold on a sure good for the sake of something uncertain. ( : ) however, after i had reflected on the matter, i came in the first place to the conclusion that by abandoning the ordinary objects of pursuit, and betaking myself to a new quest, i should be leaving a good, uncertain by reason of its own nature, as may be gathered from what has been said, for the sake of a good not uncertain in its nature (for i sought for a fixed good), but only in the possibility of its attainment. [ ] ( ) further reflection convinced me that if i could really get to the root of the matter i should be leaving certain evils for a certain good. ( ) i thus perceived that i was in a state of great peril, and i compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. ( : ) all the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hindrances, causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, [b] and always of those who are possessed by them. [ ] ( ) there are many examples of men who have suffered persecution even to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in pursuit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers, that they have paid away their life as a penalty for their folly. ( ) examples are no less numerous of men, who have endured the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving their reputation. ( ) lastly, are innumerable cases of men, who have hastened their death through over-indulgence in sensual pleasure. [ ] ( ) all these evils seem to have arisen from the fact, that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly dependent on the quality of the object which we love. ( ) when a thing is not loved, no quarrels will arise concerning it--no sadness will be felt if it perishes--no envy if it is possessed by another--no fear, no hatred, in short no disturbances of the mind. ( ) all these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the objects already mentioned. [ ] ( ) but love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength. ( ) yet it was not at random that i used the words, "if i could go to the root of the matter," for, though what i have urged was perfectly clear to my mind, i could not forthwith lay aside all love of riches, sensual enjoyment, and fame. [ ] ( ) one thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire, and seriously considered the search for a new principle; this state of things was a great comfort to me, for i perceived that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies. ( : ) although these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet afterwards, as the true good became more and more discernible to me, they became more frequent and more lasting; especially after i had recognized that the acquisition of wealth, sensual pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as means; if they be sought as means, they will be under restraint, and, far from being hindrances, will further not a little the end for which they are sought, as i will show in due time. [ ] ( ) i will here only briefly state what i mean by true good, and also what is the nature of the highest good. ( ) in order that this may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that the terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be called both good and bad according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. ( ) nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. [ ] ( ) however, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character. ( ) thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve as such means a true good. ( : ) the chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character. ( ) what that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing being the mind and the whole of nature. [c] [ ] ( ) this, then, is the end for which i strive, to attain to such a character myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me. ( ) in other words, it is part of my happiness to lend a helping hand, that many others may understand even as i do, so that their understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own. ( ) in order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much of nature as will enable us to attain to the aforesaid character, and also to form a social order such as is most conducive to the attainment of this character by the greatest number with the least difficulty and danger. [ ] ( ) we must seek the assistance of moral philosophy [d] and the theory of education; further, as health is no insignificant means for attaining our end, we must also include the whole science of medicine, and, as many difficult things are by contrivance rendered easy, and we can in this way gain much time and convenience, the science of mechanics must in no way be despised. [ ] ( ) but before all things, a means must be devised for improving the understanding and purifying it, as far as may be at the outset, so that it may apprehend things without error, and in the best possible way. ( ) thus it is apparent to everyone that i wish to direct all science to one end [e] and aim, so that we may attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, therefore, whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote our object will have to be rejected as useless. ( ) to sum up the matter in a word, all our actions and thoughts must be directed to this one end. [ ] ( ) yet, as it is necessary that while we are endeavoring to attain our purpose, and bring the understanding into the right path we should carry on our life, we are compelled first of all to lay down certain rules of life as provisionally good, to wit the following:-- i. ( ) to speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude, and to comply with every general custom that does not hinder the attainment of our purpose. ( ) for we can gain from the multitude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate ourselves to its understanding as far as possible: moreover, we shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of the truth. ii. ( : ) to indulge ourselves with pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for preserving health. iii. ( ) lastly, to endeavor to obtain only sufficient money or other commodities to enable us to preserve our life and health, and to follow such general customs as are consistent with our purpose. [ ] ( ) having laid down these preliminary rules, i will betake myself to the first and most important task, namely, the amendment of the understanding, and the rendering it capable of understanding things in the manner necessary for attaining our end. ( ) in order to bring this about, the natural order demands that i should here recapitulate all the modes of perception, which i have hitherto employed for affirming or denying anything with certainty, so that i may choose the best, and at the same time begin to know my own powers and the nature which i wish to perfect. [ ] ( ) reflection shows that all modes of perception or knowledge may be reduced to four:-- i. ( ) perception arising from hearsay or from some sign which everyone may name as he please. ii. ( ) perception arising from mere experience--that is, form experience not yet classified by the intellect, and only so called because the given event has happened to take place, and we have no contradictory fact to set against it, so that it therefore remains unassailed in our minds. iii. ( : ) perception arising when the essence of one thing is inferred from another thing, but not adequately; this comes when [f] from some effect we gather its cause, or when it is inferred from some general proposition that some property is always present. iv. ( ) lastly, there is the perception arising when a thing is perceived solely through its essence, or through the knowledge of its proximate cause. [ ] ( ) all these kinds of perception i will illustrate by examples. ( ) by hearsay i know the day of my birth, my parentage, and other matters about which i have never felt any doubt. ( ) by mere experience i know that i shall die, for this i can affirm from having seen that others like myself have died, though all did not live for the same period, or die by the same disease. ( ) i know by mere experience that oil has the property of feeding fire, and water of extinguishing it. ( ) in the same way i know that a dog is a barking animal, man a rational animal, and in fact nearly all the practical knowledge of life. [ ] ( ) we deduce one thing from another as follows: when we clearly perceive that we feel a certain body and no other, we thence clearly infer that the mind is united [g] to the body, and that their union is the cause of the given sensation; but we cannot thence absolutely understand [h] the nature of the sensation and the union. ( ) or, after i have become acquainted with the nature of vision, and know that it has the property of making one and the same thing appear smaller when far off than when near, i can infer that the sun is larger than it appears, and can draw other conclusions of the same kind. [ ] ( ) lastly, a thing may be perceived solely through its essence; when, from the fact of knowing something, i know what it is to know that thing, or when, from knowing the essence of the mind, i know that it is united to the body. ( ) by the same kind of knowledge we know that two and three make five, or that two lines each parallel to a third, are parallel to one another, &c. ( ) the things which i have been able to know by this kind of knowledge are as yet very few. [ ] ( ) in order that the whole matter may be put in a clearer light, i will make use of a single illustration as follows. ( ) three numbers are given--it is required to find a fourth, which shall be to the third as the second is to the first. ( : ) tradesmen will at once tell us that they know what is required to find the fourth number, for they have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters; others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-evident, as in the case of , , , ; here it is evident that if the second number be multiplied by the third, and the product divided by the first, the quotient is ; when they see that by this process the number is produced which they knew beforehand to be the proportional, they infer that the process always holds good for finding a fourth number proportional. [ ] ( ) mathematicians, however, know by the proof of the nineteenth proposition of the seventh book of euclid, what numbers are proportionals, namely, from the nature and property of proportion it follows that the product of the first and fourth will be equal to the product of the second and third: still they do not see the adequate proportionality of the given numbers, or, if they do see it, they see it not by virtue of euclid's proposition, but intuitively, without going through any process. [ ] ( ) in order that from these modes of perception the best may be selected, it is well that we should briefly enumerate the means necessary for attaining our end. i. ( ) to have an exact knowledge of our nature which we desire to perfect, and to know as much as is needful of nature in general. ii. to collect in this way the differences, the agreements, and the oppositions of things. iii. to learn thus exactly how far they can or cannot be modified. iv. to compare this result with the nature and power of man. ( ) we shall thus discern the highest degree of perfection to which man is capable of attaining. [ ] ( ) we shall then be in a position to see which mode of perception we ought to choose. ( ) as to the first mode, it is evident that from hearsay our knowledge must always be uncertain, and, moreover, can give us no insight into the essence of a thing, as is manifest in our illustration; now one can only arrive at knowledge of a thing through knowledge of its essence, as will hereafter appear. ( ) we may, therefore clearly conclude that the certainty arising from hearsay cannot be scientific in its character. ( ) for simple hearsay cannot affect anyone whose understanding does not, so to speak, meet it half way. [ ] ( ) the second mode of perception [i] cannot be said to give us the idea of the proportion of which we are in search. ( ) moreover its results are very uncertain and indefinite, for we shall never discover anything in natural phenomena by its means, except accidental properties, which are never clearly understood, unless the essence of the things in question be known first. ( ) wherefore this mode also must be rejected. [ ] ( ) of the third mode of perception we may say in a manner that it gives us the idea of the thing sought, and that it us to draw conclusions without risk of error; yet it is not by itself sufficient to put us in possession of the perfection we aim at. [ ] ( ) the fourth mode alone apprehends the adequate essence of a thing without danger of error. ( ) this mode, therefore, must be the one which we chiefly employ. ( ) how, then, should we avail ourselves of it so as to gain the fourth kind of knowledge with the least delay concerning things previously unknown? ( ) i will proceed to explain. [ ] ( ) now that we know what kind of knowledge is necessary for us, we must indicate the way and the method whereby we may gain the said knowledge concerning the things needful to be known. ( ) in order to accomplish this, we must first take care not to commit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity--that is, in order to discover the best method of finding truth, there is no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. ( ) by such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all. ( : ) the matter stands on the same footing as the making of material tools, which might be argued about in a similar way. ( ) for, in order to work iron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been made; but, in order to make it, there was need of another hammer and other tools, and so on to infinity. ( ) we might thus vainly endeavor to prove that men have no power of working iron. [ ] ( ) but as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labour and greater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, complicated mechanisms which they now possess. ( : ) so, in like manner, the intellect, by its native strength, [k], makes for itself intellectual instruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing other intellectual operations, [l], and from these operations again fresh instruments, or the power of pushing its investigations further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the summit of wisdom. [ ] ( ) that this is the path pursued by the understanding may be readily seen, when we understand the nature of the method for finding out the truth, and of the natural instruments so necessary complex instruments, and for the progress of investigation. i thus proceed with my demonstration. [ ] ( ) a true idea, [m], (for we possess a true idea) is something different from its correlate (ideatum); thus a circle is different from the idea of a circle. ( ) the idea of a circle is not something having a circumference and a center, as a circle has; nor is the idea of a body that body itself. ( ) now, as it is something different from its correlate, it is capable of being understood through itself; in other words, the idea, in so far as its actual essence (essentia formalis) is concerned, may be the subject of another subjective essence (essentia objectiva). [ note ] ( ) and, again, this second subjective essence will, regarded in itself, be something real, capable of being understood; and so on, indefinitely. [ ] ( ) for instance, the man peter is something real; the true idea of peter is the reality of peter represented subjectively, and is in itself something real, and quite distinct from the actual peter. ( ) now, as this true idea of peter is in itself something real, and has its own individual existence, it will also be capable of being understood--that is, of being the subject of another idea, which will contain by representation (objective) all that the idea of peter contains actually (formaliter). ( ) and, again, this idea of the idea of peter has its own individuality, which may become the subject of yet another idea; and so on, indefinitely. ( ) this everyone may make trial of for himself, by reflecting that he knows what peter is, and also knows that he knows, and further knows that he knows that he knows, &c. ( : ) hence it is plain that, in order to understand the actual peter, it is not necessary first to understand the idea of peter, and still less the idea of the idea of peter. ( ) this is the same as saying that, in order to know, there is no need to know that we know, much less to know that we know that we know. ( ) this is no more necessary than to know the nature of a circle before knowing the nature of a triangle. [n]. ( ) but, with these ideas, the contrary is the case: for, in order to know that i know, i must first know. [ ] ( ) hence it is clear that certainty is nothing else than the subjective essence of a thing: in other words, the mode in which we perceive an actual reality is certainty. ( ) further, it is also evident that, for the certitude of truth, no further sign is necessary beyond the possession of a true idea: for, as i have shown, it is not necessary to know that we know that we know. ( ) hence, again, it is clear that no one can know the nature of the highest certainty, unless he possesses an adequate idea, or the subjective essence of a thing: certainty is identical with such subjective essence. [ ] ( ) thus, as the truth needs no sign--it being to possess the subjective essence of things, or, in other words, the ideas of them, in order that all doubts may be removed--it follows that the true method does not consist in seeking for the signs of truth after the acquisition of the idea, but that the true method teaches us the order in which we should seek for truth itself, [o] or the subjective essences of things, or ideas, for all these expressions are synonymous. [ ] ( ) again, method must necessarily be concerned with reasoning or understanding--i mean, method is not identical with reasoning in the search for causes, still less is it the comprehension of the causes of things: it is the discernment of a true idea, by distinguishing it from other perceptions, and by investigating its nature, in order that we may so train our mind that it may, by a given standard, comprehend whatsoever is intelligible, by laying down certain rules as aids, and by avoiding useless mental exertion. [ ] ( ) whence we may gather that method is nothing else than reflective knowledge, or the idea of an idea; and that as there can be no idea of an idea--unless an idea exists previously,--there can be no method without a pre-existent idea. ( ) therefore, that will be a good method which shows us how the mind should be directed, according to the standard of the given true idea. ( : ) again, seeing that the ratio existing between two ideas the same as the ratio between the actual realities corresponding to those ideas, it follows that the reflective knowledge which has for its object the most perfect being is more excellent than reflective knowledge concerning other objects--in other words, that method will be most perfect which affords the standard of the given idea of the most perfect being whereby we may direct our mind. [ ] ( ) we thus easily understand how, in proportion as it acquires new ideas, the mind simultaneously acquires fresh instruments for pursuing its inquiries further. ( ) for we may gather from what has been said, that a true idea must necessarily first of all exist in us as a natural instrument; and that when this idea is apprehended by the mind, it enables us to understand the difference existing between itself and all other perceptions. ( ) in this, one part of the method consists. ( : ) now it is clear that the mind apprehends itself better in proportion as it understands a greater number of natural objects; it follows, therefore, that this portion of the method will be more perfect in proportion as the mind attains to the comprehension of a greater number of objects, and that it will be absolutely perfect when the mind gains a knowledge of the absolutely perfect being, or becomes conscious thereof. [ ] ( ) again, the more things the mind knows, the better does it understand its own strength and the order of nature; by increased self-knowledge, it can direct itself more easily, and lay down rules for its own guidance; and, by increased knowledge of nature, it can more easily avoid what is useless. ( ) and this is the sum total of method, as we have already stated. [ ] ( ) we may add that the idea in the world of thought is in the same case as its correlate in the world of reality. ( ) if, therefore, there be anything in nature which is without connection with any other thing, and if we assign to it a subjective essence, which would in every way correspond to the objective reality, the subjective essence would have no connection, [p] with any other ideas--in other words, we could not draw any conclusions with regard to it. ( : ) on the other hand, those things which are connected with others--as all things that exist in nature--will be understood by the mind, and their subjective essences will maintain the same mutual relations as their objective realities--that is to say, we shall infer from these ideas other ideas, which will in turn be connected with others, and thus our instruments for proceeding with our investigation will increase. ( ) this is what we were endeavoring to prove. [ ] ( ) further, from what has just been said--namely, that an idea must, in all respects, correspond to its correlate in the world of reality,--it is evident that, in order to reproduce in every respect the faithful image of nature, our mind must deduce all its ideas from the idea which represents the origin and source of the whole of nature, so that it may itself become the source of other ideas. [ ] ( ) it may, perhaps, provoke astonishment that, after having said that the good method is that which teaches us to direct our mind according to the standard of the given true idea, we should prove our point by reasoning, which would seem to indicate that it is not self-evident. ( ) we may, therefore, be questioned as to the validity of our reasoning. ( ) if our reasoning be sound, we must take as a starting-point a true idea. ( ) now, to be certain that our starting-point is really a true idea, we need proof. ( ) this first course of reasoning must be supported by a second, the second by a third, and so on to infinity. [ ] ( ) to this i make answer that, if by some happy chance anyone had adopted this method in his investigations of nature--that is, if he had acquired new ideas in the proper order, according to the standard of the original true idea, he would never have doubted [q] of the truth of his knowledge, inasmuch as truth, as we have shown, makes itself manifest, and all things would flow, as it were, spontaneously towards him. ( : ) but as this never, or rarely, happens, i have been forced so to arrange my proceedings, that we may acquire by reflection and forethought what we cannot acquire by chance, and that it may at the same time appear that, for proving the truth, and for valid reasoning, we need no other means than the truth and valid reasoning themselves: for by valid reasoning i have established valid reasoning, and, in like measure, i seek still to establish it. [ ] ( ) moreover, this is the order of thinking adopted by men in their inward meditations. ( ) the reasons for its rare employment in investigations of nature are to be found in current misconceptions, whereof we shall examine the causes hereafter in our philosophy. ( ) moreover, it demands, as we shall show, a keen and accurate discernment. ( ) lastly, it is hindered by the conditions of human life, which are, as we have already pointed out, extremely changeable. ( ) there are also other obstacles, which we will not here inquire into. [ ] ( ) if anyone asks why i have not at the starting-point set forth all the truths of nature in their due order, inasmuch as truth is self-evident, i reply by warning him not to reject as false any paradoxes he may find here, but to take the trouble to reflect on the chain of reasoning by which they are supported; he will then be no longer in doubt that we have attained to the truth. ( ) this is why i have as above. [ ] ( ) if there yet remains some sceptic, who doubts of our primary truth, and of all deductions we make, taking such truth as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness either innate or due to misconceptions--that is, to some external influence. ( ) such persons are not conscious of themselves. ( ) if they affirm or doubt anything, they know not that they affirm or doubt: they say that they know nothing, and they say that they are ignorant of the very fact of their knowing nothing. ( ) even this they do not affirm absolutely, they are afraid of confessing that they exist, so long as they know nothing; in fact, they ought to remain dumb, for fear of haply supposing which should smack of truth. [ ] ( ) lastly, with such persons, one should not speak of sciences: for, in what relates to life and conduct, they are compelled by necessity to suppose that they exist, and seek their own advantage, and often affirm and deny, even with an oath. ( ) if they deny, grant, or gainsay, they know not that they deny, grant, or gainsay, so that they ought to be regarded as automata, utterly devoid of intelligence. [ ] ( ) let us now return to our proposition. ( ) up to the present, we have, first, defined the end to which we desire to direct all our thoughts; secondly, we have determined the mode of perception best adapted to aid us in attaining our perfection; thirdly, we have discovered the way which our mind should take, in order to make a good beginning--namely, that it should use every true idea as a standard in pursuing its inquiries according to fixed rules. ( : ) now, in order that it may thus proceed, our method must furnish us, first, with a means of distinguishing a true idea from all other perceptions, and enabling the mind to avoid the latter; secondly, with rules for perceiving unknown things according to the standard of the true idea; thirdly, with an order which enables us to avoid useless labor. ( : ) when we became acquainted with this method, we saw that, fourthly, it would be perfect when we had attained to the idea of the absolutely perfect being. ( ) this is an observation which should be made at the outset, in order that we may arrive at the knowledge of such a being more quickly. [ ] ( ) let us then make a beginning with the first part of the method, which is, as we have said, to distinguish and separate the true idea from other perceptions, and to keep the mind from confusing with true ideas those which are false, fictitious, and doubtful. ( ) i intend to dwell on this point at length, partly to keep a distinction so necessary before the reader's mind, and also because there are some who doubt of true ideas, through not having attended to the distinction between a true perception and all others. ( ) such persons are like men who, while they are awake, doubt not that they are awake, but afterwards in a dream, as often happens, thinking that they are surely awake, and then finding that they were in error, become doubtful even of being awake. ( ) this state of mind arises through neglect of the distinction between sleeping and waking. [ ] ( ) meanwhile, i give warning that i shall not here give essence of every perception, and explain it through its proximate cause. ( ) such work lies in the province of philosophy. ( ) i shall confine myself to what concerns method--that is, to the character of fictitious, false and doubtful perceptions, and the means of freeing ourselves therefrom. ( ) let us then first inquire into the nature of a fictitious idea. [ ] ( ) every perception has for its object either a thing considered as existing, or solely the essence of a thing. ( ) now "fiction" is chiefly occupied with things considered as existing. ( ) i will, therefore, consider these first--i mean cases where only the existence of an object is feigned, and the thing thus feigned is understood, or assumed to be understood. ( ) for instance, i feign that peter, whom i know to have gone home, is gone to see me, [r] or something of that kind. ( ) with what is such an idea concerned? ( ) it is concerned with things possible, and not with things necessary or impossible. [ ] ( ) i call a thing impossible when its existence would imply a contradiction; necessary, when its non-existence would imply a contradiction; possible, when neither its existence nor its non-existence imply a contradiction, but when the necessity or impossibility of its nature depends on causes unknown to us, while we feign that it exists. ( ) if the necessity or impossibility of its existence depending on external causes were known to us, we could not form any fictitious hypotheses about it; [ ] ( ) whence it follows that if there be a god, or omniscient being, such an one cannot form fictitious hypotheses. ( ) for, as regards ourselves, when i know that i exist, [s] i cannot hypothesize that i exist or do not exist, any more than i can hypothesize an elephant that can go through the eye of a needle; nor when i know the nature of god, can i hypothesize that he or does not exist. [t] ( : ) the same thing must be said of the chimaera, whereof the nature implies a contradiction. ( ) from these considerations, it is plain, as i have already stated, that fiction cannot be concerned with eternal truths. [u] [ ] ( ) but before proceeding further, i must remark, in passing, that the difference between the essence of one thing and the essence of another thing is the same as that which exists between the reality or existence of one thing and the reality or existence of another; therefore, if we wished to conceive the existence, for example, of adam, simply by means of existence in general, it would be the same as if, in order to conceive his existence, we went back to the nature of being, so as to define adam as a being. ( ) thus, the more existence is conceived generally, the more is it conceived confusedly and the more easily can it be ascribed to a given object. ( : ) contrariwise, the more it is conceived particularly, the more is it understood clearly, and the less liable is it to be ascribed, through negligence of nature's order, to anything save its proper object. ( ) this is worthy of remark. [ ] ( ) we now proceed to consider those cases which are commonly called fictions, though we clearly understood that the thing is not as we imagine it. ( ) for instance, i know that the earth is round, but nothing prevents my telling people that it is a hemisphere, and that it is like a half apple carved in relief on a dish; or, that the sun moves round the earth, and so on. ( : ) however, examination will show us that there is nothing here inconsistent with what has been said, provided we first admit that we may have made mistakes, and be now conscious of them; and, further, that we can hypothesize, or at least suppose, that others are under the same mistake as ourselves, or can, like us, fall under it. ( ) we can, i repeat, thus hypothesize so long as we see no impossibility. ( : ) thus, when i tell anyone that the earth is not round, &c., i merely recall the error which i perhaps made myself, or which i might have fallen into, and afterwards i hypothesize that the person to whom i tell it, is still, or may still fall under the same mistake. ( ) this i say, i can feign so long as i do not perceive any impossibility or necessity; if i truly understood either one or the other i should not be able to feign, and i should be reduced to saying that i had made the attempt. [ ] ( ) it remains for us to consider hypotheses made in problems, which sometimes involve impossibilities. ( ) for instance, when we say--let us assume that this burning candle is not burning, or, let us assume that it burns in some imaginary space, or where there are no physical objects. ( ) such assumptions are freely made, though the last is clearly seen to be impossible. ( ) but, though this be so, there is no fiction in the case. ( : ) for, in the first case, i have merely recalled to memory, [x] another candle not burning, or conceived the candle before me as without a flame, and then i understand as applying to the latter, leaving its flame out of the question, all that i think of the former. ( ) in the second case, i have merely to abstract my thoughts from the objects surrounding the candle, for the mind to devote itself to the contemplation of the candle singly looked at in itself only; i can then draw the conclusion that the candle contains in itself no causes for its own destruction, so that if there were no physical objects the candle, and even the flame, would remain unchangeable, and so on. ( ) thus there is here no fiction, but, [y] true and bare assertions. [ ] ( ) let us now pass on to the fictions concerned with essences only, or with some reality or existence simultaneously. ( ) of these we must specially observe that in proportion as the mind's understanding is smaller, and its experience multiplex, so will its power of coining fictions be larger, whereas as its understanding increases, its capacity for entertaining fictitious ideas becomes less. ( : ) for instance, in the same way as we are unable, while we are thinking, to feign that we are thinking or not thinking, so, also, when we know the nature of body we cannot imagine an infinite fly; or, when we know the nature of the soul, [z] we cannot imagine it as square, though anything may be expressed verbally. ( ) but, as we said above, the less men know of nature the more easily can they coin fictitious ideas, such as trees speaking, men instantly changed into stones, or into fountains, ghosts appearing in mirrors, something issuing from nothing, even gods changed into beasts and men and infinite other absurdities of the same kind. [ ] ( ) some persons think, perhaps, that fiction is limited by fiction, and not by understanding; in other words, after i have formed some fictitious idea, and have affirmed of my own free will that it exists under a certain form in nature, i am thereby precluded from thinking of it under any other form. ( ) for instance, when i have feigned (to repeat their argument) that the nature of body is of a certain kind, and have of my own free will desired to convince myself that it actually exists under this form, i am no longer able to hypothesize that a fly, for example, is infinite; so, when i have hypothesized the essence of the soul, i am not able to think of it as square, &c. [ ] ( ) but these arguments demand further inquiry. ( ) first, their upholders must either grant or deny that we can understand anything. if they grant it, then necessarily the same must be said of understanding, as is said of fiction. ( ) if they deny it, let us, who know that we do know something, see what they mean. ( ) they assert that the soul can be conscious of, and perceive in a variety of ways, not itself nor things which exist, but only things which are neither in itself nor anywhere else, in other words, that the soul can, by its unaided power, create sensations or ideas unconnected with things. ( ) in fact, they regard the soul as a sort of god. ( : ) further, they assert that we or our soul have such freedom that we can constrain ourselves, or our soul, or even our soul's freedom. ( ) for, after it has formed a fictitious idea, and has given its assent thereto, it cannot think or feign it in any other manner, but is constrained by the first fictitious idea to keep all its other thoughts in harmony therewith. ( ) our opponents are thus driven to admit, in support of their fiction, the absurdities which i have just enumerated; and which are not worthy of rational refutation. [ ] ( ) while leaving such persons in their error, we will take care to derive from our argument with them a truth serviceable for our purpose, namely, [ a] that the mind, in paying attention to a thing hypothetical or false, so as to meditate upon it and understand it, and derive the proper conclusions in due order therefrom, will readily discover its falsity; and if the thing hypothetical be in its nature true, and the mind pays attention to it, so as to understand it, and deduce the truths which are derivable from it, the mind will proceed with an uninterrupted series of apt conclusions; in the same way as it would at once discover (as we showed just now) the absurdity of a false hypothesis, and of the conclusions drawn from it. [ ] ( ) we need, therefore, be in no fear of forming hypotheses, so long as we have a clear and distinct perception of what is involved. ( ) for, if we were to assert, haply, that men are suddenly turned into beasts, the statement would be extremely general, so general that there would be no conception, that is, no idea or connection of subject and predicate, in our mind. ( ) if there were such a conception we should at the same time be aware of the means and the causes whereby the event took place. ( ) moreover, we pay no attention to the nature of the subject and the predicate. [ ] ( ) now, if the first idea be not fictitious, and if all the other ideas be deduced therefrom, our hurry to form fictitious ideas will gradually subside. ( ) further, as a fictitious idea cannot be clear and distinct, but is necessarily confused, and as all confusion arises from the fact that the mind has only partial knowledge of a thing either simple or complex, and does not distinguish between the known and the unknown, and, again, that it directs its attention promiscuously to all parts of an object at once without making distinctions, it follows, first, that if the idea be of something very simple, it must necessarily be clear and distinct. ( ) for a very simple object cannot be known in part, it must either be known altogether or not at all. [ ] ( ) secondly, it follows that if a complex object be divided by thought into a number of simple component parts, and if each be regarded separately, all confusion will disappear. ( ) thirdly, it follows that fiction cannot be simple, but is made up of the blending of several confused ideas of diverse objects or actions existent in nature, or rather is composed of attention directed to all such ideas at once, [ b] and unaccompanied by any mental assent. ( : ) now a fiction that was simple would be clear and distinct, and therefore true, also a fiction composed only of distinct ideas would be clear and distinct, and therefore true. ( ) for instance, when we know the nature of the circle and the square, it is impossible for us to blend together these two figures, and to hypothesize a square circle, any more than a square soul, or things of that kind. [ ] ( ) let us shortly come to our conclusion, and again repeat that we need have no fear of confusing with true ideas that which is only a fiction. ( ) as for the first sort of fiction of which we have already spoken, when a thing is clearly conceived, we saw that if the existence of a that thing is in itself an eternal truth fiction can have no part in it; but if the existence of the conceived be not an eternal truth, we have only to be careful such existence be compared to the thing's essence, and to consider the order of nature. ( : ) as for the second sort of fiction, which we stated to be the result of simultaneously directing the attention, without the assent of the intellect, to different confused ideas representing different things and actions existing in nature, we have seen that an absolutely simple thing cannot be feigned, but must be understood, and that a complex thing is in the same case if we regard separately the simple parts whereof it is composed; we shall not even be able to hypothesize any untrue action concerning such objects, for we shall be obliged to consider at the same time the causes and manner of such action. [ ] ( ) these matters being thus understood, let us pass on to consider the false idea, observing the objects with which it is concerned, and the means of guarding ourselves from falling into false perceptions. ( ) neither of these tasks will present much difficulty, after our inquiry concerning fictitious ideas. ( ) the false idea only differs from the fictitious idea in the fact of implying a mental assent--that is, as we have already remarked, while the representations are occurring, there are no causes present to us, wherefrom, as in fiction, we can conclude that such representations do not arise from external objects: in fact, it is much the same as dreaming with our eyes open, or while awake. ( : ) thus, a false idea is concerned with, or (to speak more correctly) is attributable to, the existence of a thing whereof the essence is known, or the essence itself, in the same way as a fictitious idea. [ ] ( ) if attributable to the existence of the thing, it is corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea under similar circumstances. ( ) if attributable to the essence, it is likewise corrected in the same way as a fictitious idea. ( : ) for if the nature of the thing known implies necessary existence, we cannot possible be in error with regard to its existence; but if the nature of the thing be not an eternal truth, like its essence, but contrariwise the necessity or impossibility of its existence depends on external causes, then we must follow the same course as we adopted in the of fiction, for it is corrected in the same manner. [ ] ( ) as for false ideas concerned with essences, or even with actions, such perceptions are necessarily always confused, being compounded of different confused perceptions of things existing in nature, as, for instance, when men are persuaded that deities are present in woods, in statues, in brute beasts, and the like; that there are bodies which, by their composition alone, give rise to intellect; that corpses reason, walk about, and speak; that god is deceived, and so on. ( : ) but ideas which are clear and distinct can never be false: for ideas of things clearly and distinctly conceived are either very simple themselves, or are compounded from very simple ideas, that is, are deduced therefrom. ( ) the impossibility of a very simple idea being false is evident to everyone who understands the nature of truth or understanding and of falsehood. [ ] ( ) as regards that which constitutes the reality of truth, it is certain that a true idea is distinguished from a false one, not so much by its extrinsic object as by its intrinsic nature. ( ) if an architect conceives a building properly constructed, though such a building may never have existed, and amy never exist, nevertheless the idea is true; and the idea remains the same, whether it be put into execution or not. ( : ) on the other hand, if anyone asserts, for instance, that peter exists, without knowing whether peter really exists or not, the assertion, as far as its asserter is concerned, is false, or not true, even though peter actually does exist. ( ) the assertion that peter exists is true only with regard to him who knows for certain that peter does exist. [ ] ( ) whence it follows that there is in ideas something real, whereby the true are distinguished from the false. ( ) this reality must be inquired into, if we are to find the best standard of truth (we have said that we ought to determine our thoughts by the given standard of a true idea, and that method is reflective knowledge), and to know the properties of our understanding. ( : ) neither must we say that the difference between true and false arises from the fact, that true knowledge consists in knowing things through their primary causes, wherein it is totally different from false knowledge, as i have just explained it: for thought is said to be true, if it involves subjectively the essence of any principle which has no cause, and is known through itself and in itself. [ ] ( ) wherefore the reality (forma) of true thought must exist in the thought itself, without reference to other thoughts; it does not acknowledge the object as its cause, but must depend on the actual power and nature of the understanding. ( ) for, if we suppose that the understanding has perceived some new entity which has never existed, as some conceive the understanding of god before he created thing (a perception which certainly could not arise any object), and has legitimately deduced other thoughts from said perception, all such thoughts would be true, without being determined by any external object; they would depend solely on the power and nature of the understanding. ( : ) thus, that which constitutes the reality of a true thought must be sought in the thought itself, and deduced from the nature of the understanding. [ ] ( ) in order to pursue our investigation, let us confront ourselves with some true idea, whose object we know for certain to be dependent on our power of thinking, and to have nothing corresponding to it in nature. ( ) with an idea of this kind before us, we shall, as appears from what has just been said, be more easily able to carry on the research we have in view. ( : ) for instance, in order to form the conception of a sphere, i invent a cause at my pleasure--namely, a semicircle revolving round its center, and thus producing a sphere. ( ) this is indisputably a true idea; and, although we know that no sphere in nature has ever actually been so formed, the perception remains true, and is the easiest manner of conceiving a sphere. ( : ) we must observe that this perception asserts the rotation of a semicircle--which assertion would be false, if it were not associated with the conception of a sphere, or of a cause determining a motion of the kind, or absolutely, if the assertion were isolated. ( ) the mind would then only tend to the affirmation of the sole motion of a semicircle, which is not contained in the conception of a semicircle, and does not arise from the conception of any cause capable of producing such motion. ( : ) thus falsity consists only in this, that something is affirmed of a thing, which is not contained in the conception we have formed of that thing, as motion or rest of a semicircle. ( ) whence it follows that simple ideas cannot be other than true--e.g., the simple idea of a semicircle, of motion, of rest, of quantity, &c. ( : ) whatsoever affirmation such ideas contain is equal to the concept formed, and does not extend further. ( ) wherefore we form as many simple ideas as we please, without any fear of error. [ ] ( ) it only remains for us to inquire by what power our mind can form true ideas, and how far such power extends. ( ) it is certain that such power cannot extend itself infinitely. ( ) for when we affirm somewhat of a thing, which is not contained in the concept we have formed of that thing, such an affirmation shows a defect of our perception, or that we have formed fragmentary or mutilated ideas. ( ) thus we have seen that the notion of a semicircle is false when it is isolated in the mind, but true when it is associated with the concept of a sphere, or of some cause determining such a motion. ( : ) but if it be the nature of a thinking being, as seems, prima facie, to be the case, to form true or adequate thoughts, it is plain that inadequate ideas arise in us only because we are parts of a thinking being, whose thoughts--some in their entirety, others in fragments only--constitute our mind. [ ] ( ) but there is another point to be considered, which was not worth raising in the case of fiction, but which give rise to complete deception--namely, that certain things presented to the imagination also exist in the understanding--in other words, are conceived clearly and distinctly. ( ) hence, so long as we do not separate that which is distinct from that which is confused, certainty, or the true idea, becomes mixed with indistinct ideas. ( ) for instance, certain stoics heard, perhaps, the term "soul," and also that the soul is immortal, yet imagined it only confusedly; they imaged, also, and understood that very subtle bodies penetrate all others, and are penetrated by none. ( : ) by combining these ideas, and being at the same time certain of the truth of the axiom, they forthwith became convinced that the mind consists of very subtle bodies; that these very subtle bodies cannot be divided &c. [ ] ( ) but we are freed from mistakes of this kind, so long as we endeavor to examine all our perceptions by the standard of the given true idea. ( ) we must take care, as has been said, to separate such perceptions from all those which arise from hearsay or unclassified experience. ( ) moreover, such mistakes arise from things being conceived too much in the abstract; for it is sufficiently self-evident that what i conceive as in its true object i cannot apply to anything else. ( : ) lastly, they arise from a want of understanding of the primary elements of nature as a whole; whence we proceed without due order, and confound nature with abstract rules, which, although they be true enough in their sphere, yet, when misapplied, confound themselves, and pervert the order of nature. ( ) however, if we proceed with as little abstraction as possible, and begin from primary elements--that is, from the source and origin of nature, as far back as we can reach,--we need not fear any deceptions of this kind. [ ] ( ) as far as the knowledge of the origin of nature is concerned, there is no danger of our confounding it with abstractions. ( ) for when a thing is conceived in the abstract, as are all universal notions, the said universal notions are always more extensive in the mind than the number of individuals forming their contents really existing in nature. ( ) again, there are many things in nature, the difference between which is so slight as to be hardly perceptible to the understanding; so that it may readily happen that such things are confounded together, if they be conceived abstractedly. ( ) but since the first principle of nature cannot (as we shall see hereafter) be conceived abstractedly or universally, and cannot extend further in the understanding than it does in reality, and has no likeness to mutable things, no confusion need be feared in respect to the idea of it, provided (as before shown) that we possess a standard of truth. ( ) this is, in fact, a being single and infinite [ z]; in other words, it is the sum total of being, beyond which there is no being found. [ a] [ ] ( ) thus far we have treated of the false idea. we have now to investigate the doubtful idea--that is, to inquire what can cause us to doubt, and how doubt may be removed. ( ) i speak of real doubt existing in the mind, not of such doubt as we see exemplified when a man says that he doubts, though his mind does not really hesitate. ( : ) the cure of the latter does not fall within the province of method, it belongs rather to inquiries concerning obstinacy and its cure. [ ] ( ) real doubt is never produced in the mind by the thing doubted of. ( ) in other words, if there were only one idea in the mind, whether that idea were true or false, there would be no doubt or certainty present, only a certain sensation. ( ) for an idea is in itself nothing else than a certain sensation. ( ) but doubt will arise through another idea, not clear and distinct enough for us to be able to draw any certain conclusions with regard to the matter under consideration; that is, the idea which causes us to doubt is not clear and distinct. ( ) to take an example. ( : ) supposing that a man has never reflected, taught by experience or by any other means, that our senses sometimes deceive us, he will never doubt whether the sun be greater or less than it appears. ( ) thus rustics are generally astonished when they hear that the sun is much larger than the earth. ( ) but from reflection on the deceitfulness of the senses [ a] doubt arises, and if, after doubting, we acquire a true knowledge of the senses, and how things at a distance are represented through their instrumentality, doubt is again removed. [ ] ( ) hence we cannot cast doubt on true ideas by the supposition that there is a deceitful deity, who leads us astray even in what is most certain. ( ) we can only hold such an hypothesis so long as we have no clear and distinct idea--in other words, until we reflect the knowledge which we have of the first principle of all things, and find that which teaches us that god is not a deceiver, and until we know this with the same certainty as we know from reflecting on the are equal to two right angles. ( ) but if we have a knowledge of god equal to that which we have of a triangle, all doubt is removed. ( : ) in the same way as we can arrive at the said knowledge of a triangle, though not absolutely sure that there is not some arch-deceiver leading us astray, so can we come to a like knowledge of god under the like condition, and when we have attained to it, it is sufficient, as i said before, to remove every doubt which we can possess concerning clear and distinct ideas. [ ] ( ) thus, if a man proceeded with our investigations in due order, inquiring first into those things which should first be inquired into, never passing over a link in the chain of association, and with knowledge how to define his questions before seeking to answer them, he will never have any ideas save such as are very certain, or, in other words, clear and distinct; for doubt is only a suspension of the spirit concerning some affirmation or negation which it would pronounce upon unhesitatingly if it were not in ignorance of something, without which the knowledge of the matter in hand must needs be imperfect. ( ) we may, therefore, conclude that doubt always proceeds from want of due order in investigation. [ ] ( ) these are the points i promised to discuss in the first part of my treatise on method. ( ) however, in order not to omit anything which can conduce to the knowledge of the understanding and its faculties, i will add a few words on the subject of memory and forgetfulness. ( : ) the point most worthy of attention is, that memory is strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding. ( ) for the more intelligible a thing is, the more easily is it remembered, and the less intelligible it is, the more easily do we forget it. ( ) for instance, a number of unconnected words is much more difficult to remember than the same number in the form of a narration. [ ] ( ) the memory is also strengthened without the aid of the understanding by means of the power wherewith the imagination or the sense called common, is affected by some particular physical object. ( ) i say particular, for the imagination is only affected by particular objects. ( ) if we read, for instance, a single romantic comedy, we shall remember it very well, so long as we do not read many others of the same kind, for it will reign alone in the memory ( ) if, however, we read several others of the same kind, we shall think of them altogether, and easily confuse one with another. ( : ) i say also, physical. ( ) for the imagination is only affected by physical objects. ( ) as, then, the memory is strengthened both with and without the aid of the understanding, we may conclude that it is different from the understanding, and that in the latter considered in itself there is neither memory nor forgetfulness. [ ] ( ) what, then, is memory? ( ) it is nothing else than the actual sensation of impressions on the brain, accompanied with the thought of a definite duration, [ d] of the sensation. ( ) this is also shown by reminiscence. ( ) for then we think of the sensation, but without the notion of continuous duration; thus the idea of that sensation is not the actual duration of the sensation or actual memory. ( : ) whether ideas are or are not subject to corruption will be seen in philosophy. ( ) if this seems too absurd to anyone, it will be sufficient for our purpose, if he reflect on the fact that a thing is more easily remembered in proportion to its singularity, as appears from the example of the comedy just cited. ( : ) further, a thing is remembered more easily in proportion to its intelligibility; therefore we cannot help remember that which is extremely singular and sufficiently intelligible. [ ] ( ) thus, then, we have distinguished between a true idea and other perceptions, and shown that ideas fictitious, false, and the rest, originate in the imagination--that is, in certain sensations fortuitous (so to speak) and disconnected, arising not from the power of the mind, but from external causes, according as the body, sleeping or waking, receives various motions. ( ) but one may take any view one likes of the imagination so long as one acknowledges that it is different from the understanding, and that the soul is passive with regard to it. ( ) the view taken is immaterial, if we know that the imagination is something indefinite, with regard to which the soul is passive, and that we can by some means or other free ourselves therefrom with the help of the understanding. ( ) let no one then be astonished that before proving the existence of body, and other necessary things, i speak of imagination of body, and of its composition. ( ) the view taken is, i repeat, immaterial, so long as we know that imagination is something indefinite, &c. [ ] ( ) as regards as a true idea, we have shown that it is simple or compounded of simple ideas; that it shows how and why something is or has been made; and that its subjective effects in the soul correspond to the actual reality of its object. ( ) this conclusion is identical with the saying of the ancients, that true proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as i know, never formed the conception put forward here that the soul acts according to fixed laws, and is as it were an immaterial automaton. [ ] ( ) hence, as far as is possible at the outset, we have acquired a knowledge of our understanding, and such a standard of a true idea that we need no longer fear confounding truth with falsehood and fiction. ( ) neither shall we wonder why we understand some things which in nowise fall within the scope of the imagination, while other things are in the imagination but wholly opposed to the understanding, or others, again, which agree therewith. ( ) we now know that the operations, whereby the effects of imagination are produced, take place under other laws quite different from the laws of the understanding, and that the mind is entirely passive with regard to them. [ ] ( ) whence we may also see how easily men may fall into grave errors through not distinguishing accurately between the imagination and the understanding; such as believing that extension must be localized, that it must be finite, that its parts are really distinct one from the other, that it is the primary and single foundation of all things, that it occupies more space at one time than at another and other similar doctrines, all entirely opposed to truth, as we shall duly show. [ ] ( ) again, since words are a part of the imagination--that is, since we form many conceptions in accordance with confused arrangements of words in the memory, dependent on particular bodily conditions,--there is no doubt that words may, equally with the imagination, be the cause of many and great errors, unless we strictly on our guard. [ ] ( ) moreover, words are formed according to popular fancy and intelligence, and are, therefore, signs of things as existing in the imagination, not as existing in the understanding. ( ) this is evident from the fact that to all such things as exist only in the understanding, not in the imagination, negative names are often given, such as incorporeal, infinite, &c. ( ) so, also, many conceptions really affirmative are expressed negatively, and vice versa, such as uncreate, independent, infinite, immortal, &c., inasmuch as their contraries are much more easily imagined, and, therefore, occurred first to men, and usurped positive names. ( : ) many things we affirm and deny, because the nature of words allows us to do so, though the nature of things does not. ( ) while we remain unaware of this fact, we may easily mistake falsehood for truth. [ ] ( ) let us also beware of another great cause of confusion, which prevents the understanding from reflecting on itself. ( ) sometimes, while making no distinction between the imagination and the intellect, we think that what we more readily imagine is clearer to us; and also we think that what we imagine we understand. ( ) thus, we put first that which should be last: the true order of progression is reversed, and no legitimate conclusion is drawn. [ ] [ e] ( ) now, in order at length to pass on to the second part of this method, i shall first set forth the object aimed at, and next the means for its attainment. ( ) the object aimed at is the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas, such as are produced by the pure intellect, and not by chance physical motions. ( ) in order that all ideas may be reduced to unity, we shall endeavor so to associate and arrange them that our mind may, as far as possible, reflect subjectively the reality of nature, both as a whole and as parts. [ ] ( ) as for the first point, it is necessary (as we have said) for our purpose that everything should be conceived, either solely through its essence, or through its proximate cause. ( ) if the thing be self-existent, or, as is commonly said, the cause of itself, it must be understood through its essence only; if it be not self-existent, but requires a cause for its existence, it must be understood through its proximate cause. ( ) for, in reality, the knowledge, [ f] of an effect is nothing else than the acquisition of more perfect knowledge of its cause. [ ] ( ) therefore, we may never, while we are concerned with inquiries into actual things, draw any conclusion from abstractions; we shall be extremely careful not to confound that which is only in the understanding with that which is in the thing itself. ( ) the best basis for drawing a conclusion will be either some particular affirmative essence, or a true and legitimate definition. ( : ) for the understanding cannot descend from universal axioms by themselves to particular things, since axioms are of infinite extent, and do not determine the understanding to contemplate one particular thing more than another. [ ] ( ) thus the true method of discovery is to form thoughts from some given definition. ( ) this process will be the more fruitful and easy in proportion as the thing given be better defined. ( ) wherefore, the cardinal point of all this second part of method consists in the knowledge of the conditions of good definition, and the means of finding them. ( ) i will first treat of the conditions of definition. [ ] ( ) a definition, if it is to be called perfect, must explain the inmost essence of a thing, and must take care not to substitute for this any of its properties. ( ) in order to illustrate my meaning, without taking an example which would seem to show a desire to expose other people's errors, i will choose the case of something abstract, the definition of which is of little moment. ( : ) such is a circle. ( ) if a circle be defined as a figure, such that all straight lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal, every one can see that such a definition does not in the least explain the essence of a circle, but solely one of its properties. ( ) though, as i have said, this is of no importance in the case of figures and other abstractions, it is of great importance in the case of physical beings and realities: for the properties of things are not understood so long as their essences are unknown. ( ) if the latter be passed over, there is necessarily a perversion of the succession of ideas which should reflect the succession of nature, and we go far astray from our object. [ ] in order to be free from this fault, the following rules should be observed in definition:-- i. ( ) if the thing in question be created, the definition must (as we have said) comprehend the proximate cause. ( ) for instance, a circle should, according to this rule, be defined as follows: the figure described by any line whereof one end is fixed and the other free. ( ) this definition clearly comprehends the proximate cause. ii. ( ) a conception or definition of a thing should be such that all the properties of that thing, in so far as it is considered by itself, and not in conjunction with other things, can be deduced from it, as may be seen in the definition given of a circle: for from that it clearly follows that all straight lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal. ( ) that this is a necessary characteristic of a definition is so clear to anyone, who reflects on the matter, that there is no need to spend time in proving it, or in showing that, owing to this second condition, every definition should be affirmative. ( ) i speak of intellectual affirmation, giving little thought to verbal affirmations which, owing to the poverty of language, must sometimes, perhaps, be expressed negatively, though the idea contained is affirmative. [ ] the rules for the definition of an uncreated thing are as follows:-- i. the exclusion of all idea of cause--that is, the thing must not need explanation by anything outside itself. ii. when the definition of the thing has been given, there must be no room for doubt as to whether the thing exists or not. iii. it must contain, as far as the mind is concerned, no substantives which could be put into an adjectival form; in other words, the object defined must not be explained through abstractions. iv. lastly, though this is not absolutely necessary, it should be possible to deduce from the definition all the properties of the thing defined. all these rules become obvious to anyone giving strict attention to the matter. [ ] ( ) i have also stated that the best basis for drawing a conclusion is a particular affirmative essence. ( ) the more specialized the idea is, the more it is distinct, and therefore clear. ( ) wherefore a knowledge of particular things should be sought for as diligently as possible. [ ] ( ) as regards the order of our perceptions, and the manner in which they should be arranged and united, it is necessary that, as soon as is possible and rational, we should inquire whether there be any being (and, if so, what being), that is the cause of all things, so that its essence, represented in thought, may be the cause of all our ideas, and then our mind will to the utmost possible extent reflect nature. ( ) for it will possess, subjectively, nature's essence, order, and union. ( ) thus we can see that it is before all things necessary for us to deduce all our ideas from physical things--that is, from real entities, proceeding, as far as may be, according to the series of causes, from one real entity to another real entity, never passing to universals and abstractions, either for the purpose of deducing some real entity from them, or deducing them from some real entity. ( ) either of these processes interrupts the true progress of the understanding. [ ] ( ) but it must be observed that, by the series of causes and real entities, i do not here mean the series of particular and mutable things, but only the series of fixed and eternal things. ( ) it would be impossible for human infirmity to follow up the series of particular mutable things, both on account their multitude, surpassing all calculation, and on account of the infinitely diverse circumstances surrounding one and the same thing, any one of which may be the cause of its existence or non-existence. ( ) indeed, their existence has no connection with their essence, or (as we have said already) is not an eternal truth. [ ] ( ) neither is there any need that we should understand their series, for the essences of particular mutable things are not to be gathered from their series or order of existence, which would furnish us with nothing beyond their extrinsic denominations, their relations, or, at most, their circumstances, all of which are very different from their inmost essence. ( : ) this inmost essence must be sought solely from fixed and eternal things, and from the laws, inscribed (so to speak) in those things as in their true codes, according to which all particular things take place and are arranged; nay, these mutable particular things depend so intimately and essentially (so to phrase it) upon the fixed things, that they cannot either be conceived without them. [ ] ( ) but, though this be so, there seems to be no small difficulty in arriving at the knowledge of these particular things, for to conceive them all at once would far surpass the powers of the human understanding. ( ) the arrangement whereby one thing is understood, before another, as we have stated, should not be sought from their series of existence, nor from eternal things. ( ) for the latter are all by nature simultaneous. ( ) other aids are therefore needed besides those employed for understanding eternal things and their laws. ( ) however, this is not the place to recount such aids, nor is there any need to do so, until we have acquired a sufficient knowledge of eternal things and their infallible laws, and until the nature of our senses has become plain to us. [ ] ( ) before betaking ourselves to seek knowledge of particular things, it will be seasonable to speak of such aids, as all tend to teach us the mode of employing our senses, and to make certain experiments under fixed rules and arrangements which may suffice to determine the object of our inquiry, so that we may therefrom infer what laws of eternal things it has been produced under, and may gain an insight into its inmost nature, as i will duly show. ( ) here, to return to my purpose, i will only endeavor to set forth what seems necessary for enabling us to attain to knowledge of eternal things, and to define them under the conditions laid down above. [ ] ( ) with this end, we must bear in mind what has already been stated, namely, that when the mind devotes itself to any thought, so as to examine it, and to deduce therefrom in due order all the legitimate conclusions possible, any falsehood which may lurk in the thought will be detected; but if the thought be true, the mind will readily proceed without interruption to deduce truths from it. ( : ) this, i say, is necessary for our purpose, for our thoughts may be brought to a close by the absence of a foundation. [ ] ( ) if, therefore, we wish to investigate the first thing of all, it will be necessary to supply some foundation which may direct our thoughts thither. ( ) further, since method is reflective knowledge, the foundation which must direct our thoughts can be nothing else than the knowledge of that which constitutes the reality of truth, and the knowledge of the understanding, its properties, and powers. ( ) when this has been acquired we shall possess a foundation wherefrom we can deduce our thoughts, and a path whereby the intellect, according to its capacity, may attain the knowledge of eternal things, allowance being made for the extent of the intellectual powers. [ ] ( ) if, as i stated in the first part, it belongs to the nature of thought to form true ideas, we must here inquire what is meant by the faculties and power of the understanding. ( ) the chief part of our method is to understand as well as possible the powers of the intellect, and its nature; we are, therefore, compelled (by the considerations advanced in the second part of the method) necessarily to draw these conclusions from the definition itself of thought and understanding. [ ] ( ) but, so far as we have not got any rules for finding definitions, and, as we cannot set forth such rules without a previous knowledge of nature, that is without a definition of the understanding and its power, it follows either that the definition of the understanding must be clear in itself, or that we can understand nothing. ( ) nevertheless this definition is not absolutely clear in itself; however, since its properties, like all things that we possess through the understanding, cannot be known clearly and distinctly, unless its nature be known previously, understanding makes itself manifest, if we pay attention to its properties, which we know clearly and distinctly. ( ) let us, then, enumerate here the properties of the understanding, let us examine them, and begin by discussing the instruments for research which we find innate in us. see [ ] [ ] ( ) the properties of the understanding which i have chiefly remarked, and which i clearly understand, are the following:-- i. ( ) it involves certainty--in other words, it knows that a thing exists in reality as it is reflected subjectively. ii. ( : ) that it perceives certain things, or forms some ideas absolutely, some ideas from others. ( ) thus it forms the idea of quantity absolutely, without reference to any other thoughts; but ideas of motion it only forms after taking into consideration the idea of quantity. iii. ( : ) those ideas which the understanding forms absolutely express infinity; determinate ideas are derived from other ideas. ( ) thus in the idea of quantity, perceived by means of a cause, the quantity is determined, as when a body is perceived to be formed by the motion of a plane, a plane by the motion of a line, or, again, a line by the motion of a point. ( ) all these are perceptions which do not serve towards understanding quantity, but only towards determining it. ( : ) this is proved by the fact that we conceive them as formed as it were by motion, yet this motion is not perceived unless the quantity be perceived also; we can even prolong the motion to form an infinite line, which we certainly could not do unless we had an idea of infinite quantity. iv. ( ) the understanding forms positive ideas before forming negative ideas. v. ( : ) it perceives things not so much under the condition of duration as under a certain form of eternity, and in an infinite number; or rather in perceiving things it does not consider either their number or duration, whereas, in imagining them, it perceives them in a determinate number, duration, and quantity. vi. ( : ) the ideas which we form as clear and distinct, seem to follow from the sole necessity of our nature, that they appear to depend absolutely on our sole power; with confused ideas the contrary is the case. ( ) they are often formed against our will. vii. ( : ) the mind can determine in many ways the ideas of things, which the understanding forms from other ideas: thus, for instance, in order to define the plane of an ellipse, it supposes a point adhering to a cord to be moved around two centers, or, again, it conceives an infinity of points, always in the same fixed relation to a given straight line, angle of the vertex of the cone, or in an infinity of other ways. viii. ( : ) the more ideas express perfection of any object, the more perfect are they themselves; for we do not admire the architect who has planned a chapel so much as the architect who has planned a splendid temple. [ ] ( ) i do not stop to consider the rest of what is referred to thought, such as love, joy, &c. ( ) they are nothing to our present purpose, and cannot even be conceived unless the understanding be perceived previously. ( ) when perception is removed, all these go with it. [ ] ( ) false and fictitious ideas have nothing positive about them (as we have abundantly shown), which causes them to be called false or fictitious; they are only considered as such through the defectiveness of knowledge. ( ) therefore, false and fictitious ideas as such can teach us nothing concerning the essence of thought; this must be sought from the positive properties just enumerated; in other words, we must lay down some common basis from which these properties necessarily follow, so that when this is given, the properties are necessarily given also, and when it is removed, they too vanish with it. the rest of the treatise is wanting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- spinoza's endnotes: marks as per curley, see note above. [a] ( ) this might be explained more at large and more clearly: i mean by distinguishing riches according as they are pursued for their own sake, in or furtherance of fame, or sensual pleasure, or the advancement of science and art. ( ) but this subject is reserved to its own place, for it is not here proper to investigate the matter more accurately. [b] these considerations should be set forth more precisely. [c] these matters are explained more at length elsewhere. [d] n.b. i do no more here than enumerate the sciences necessary for our purpose; i lay no stress on their order. [e] there is for the sciences but one end, to which they should all be directed. [f] ( ) in this case we do not understand anything of the cause from the consideration of it in the effect. ( ) this is sufficiently evident from the fact that the cause is only spoken of in very general terms, such as--there exists then something; there exists then some power, &c.; or from the that we only express it in a negative manner--it is not or that, &c. ( ) in the second case something is ascribed to the cause because of the effect, as we shall show in an example, but only a property, never an essence. [g] ( ) from this example may be clearly seen what i have just drawn attention to. ( ) for through this union we understand nothing beyond the sensation, the effect, to wit, from which we inferred the cause of which we understand nothing. [h] ( ) a conclusion of this sort, though it be certain, is yet not to be relied on without great caution; for unless we are exceedingly careful we shall forthwith fall into error. ( ) when things are conceived thus abstractedly, and not through their true essence, they are apt to be confused by the imagination. ( ) for that which is in itself one, men imagine to be multiplex. ( ) to those things which are conceived abstractedly, apart, and confusedly, terms are applied which are apt to become wrested from their strict meaning, and bestowed on things more familiar; whence it results that these latter are imagined in the same way as the former to which the terms were originally given. [i] i shall here treat a little more in detail of experience, and shall examine the method adopted by the empirics, and by recent philosophers. [k] by native strength, i mean that not bestowed on us by external causes, as i shall afterwards explain in my philosophy. [l] here i term them operations: i shall explain their nature in my philosophy. [m] i shall take care not only to demonstrate what i have just advanced, but also that we have hitherto proceeded rightly, and other things needful to be known. [ note ] ( ) in modern language, "the idea may become the subject of another presentation." ( ) objectivus generally corresponds to the modern "subjective," formalis to the modern "objective." [trans.- note ] [n] ( ) observe that we are not here inquiring how the first subjective essence is innate in us. ( ) this belongs to an investigation into nature, where all these matters are amply explained, and it is shown that without ideas neither affirmation, nor negation, nor volition are possible. [o] the nature of mental search is explained in my philosophy. [p] to be connected with other things is to be produced by them, or to produce them. [q] in the same way as we have here no doubt of the truth of our knowledge. [r] see below the note on hypotheses, whereof we have a clear understanding; the fiction consists in saying that such hypotheses exist in heavenly bodies. [s] ( ) as a thing, when once it is understood, manifests itself, we have need only of an example without further proof. ( ) in the same way the contrary has only to be presented to our minds to be recognized as false, as will forthwith appear when we come to discuss fiction concerning essences. [t] observe, that although many assert that they doubt whether god exists, they have nought but his name in their minds, or else some fiction which they call god: this fiction is not in harmony with god's real nature, as we will duly show. [u] ( ) i shall presently show that no fiction can concern eternal truths. by an eternal truth, i mean that which being positive could never become negative. ( ) thus it is a primary and eternal truth that god exists, but it is not an eternal truth that adam thinks. ( ) that the chimaera does not exist is an eternal truth, that adam does not think is not so. [x] ( ) afterwards, when we come to speak of fiction that is concerned with essences, it will be evident that fiction never creates or furnishes the mind with anything new; only such things as are already in the brain or imagination are recalled to the memory, when the attention is directed to them confusedly and all at once. ( ) for instance, we have remembrance of spoken words and of a tree; when the mind directs itself to them confusedly, it forms the notion of a tree speaking. ( ) the same may be said of existence, especially when it is conceived quite generally as an entity; it is then readily applied to all things together in the memory. ( ) this is specially worthy of remark. [y] we must understand as much in the case of hypotheses put forward to explain certain movements accompanying celestial phenomena; but from these, when applied to the celestial motions, we any draw conclusions as to the nature of the heavens, whereas this last may be quite different, especially as many other causes are conceivable which would account for such motions. [z] ( ) it often happens that a man recalls to mind this word soul, and forms at the same time some corporeal image: as the two representations are simultaneous, he easily thinks that he imagines and feigns a corporeal soul: thus confusing the name with the thing itself. ( ) i here beg that my readers will not be in a hurry to refute this proposition; they will, i hope, have no mind to do so, if they pay close attention to the examples given and to what follows. [ a] ( ) though i seem to deduce this from experience, some may deny its cogency because i have given no formal proof. ( ) i therefore append the following for those who may desire it. ( ) as there can be nothing in nature contrary to nature's laws, since all things come to pass by fixed laws, so that each thing must irrefragably produce its own proper effect, it follows that the soul, as soon as it possesses the true conception of a thing, proceeds to reproduce in thought that thing's effects. ( ) see below, where i speak of the false idea. [ b] ( ) observe that fiction regarded in itself, only differs from dreams in that in the latter we do not perceive the external causes which we perceive through the senses while awake. ( ) it has hence been inferred that representations occurring in sleep have no connection with objects external to us. ( ) we shall presently see that error is the dreaming of a waking man: if it reaches a certain pitch it becomes delirium. [ z] these are not attributes of god displaying his essence, as i will show in my philosophy. [ a] ( ) this has been shown already. ( ) for if such a being did not exist it would never be produced; therefore the mind would be able to understand more than nature could furnish; and this has been shown above to be false. [ a] ( ) that is, it is known that the senses sometimes deceive us. ( ) but it is only known confusedly, for it is not known how they deceive us. [ d] ( ) if the duration be indefinite, the recollection is imperfect; this everyone seems to have learnt from nature. ( ) for we often ask, to strengthen our belief in something we hear of, when and where it happened; though ideas themselves have their own duration in the mind, yet, as we are wont to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion which, again, takes place by aid of imagination, we preserve no memory connected with pure intellect. [ e] the chief rule of this part is, as appears from the first part, to review all the ideas coming to us through pure intellect, so as to distinguish them from such as we imagine: the distinction will be shown through the properties of each, namely, of the imagination and of the understanding. [ f] observe that it is thereby manifest that we cannot understand anything of nature without at the same time increasing our knowledge of the first cause, or god. end of "on the improvement of the understanding." notes by volunteer. . used, in part, with kind permission from: http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/spinoza/tie/ . the text is that of the translation of the tractatus de intellectus emendatione by r. h. m. elwes, as printed by dover publications (ny): ), isbn - - -x. this text is "an unabridged and unaltered republication of the bohn library edition originally published by george bell and sons in ." . paragraph numbers, shown thus [ ], are from edwin curley's translation in his "the collected works of spinoza", volume , , princeton university press; isbn - - - . . sentence numbers, shown thus ( ), have been added by volunteer. . spinoza's endnotes are shown thus [a]. the letter is taken from curley, see note . . search strings are enclosed in square brackets; include brackets. . html versions of "on the improvement of the understanding" are published in the books on-line web pages; ttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/books.html and they include: http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/spinoza/tie/ http://www.erols.com/jyselman/teielwes.htm the varieties of religious experience a study in human nature being the gifford lectures on natural religion delivered at edinburgh in - by william james longmans, green, and co, new york, london, bombay, calcutta, and madras contents preface. lecture i. religion and neurology. lecture ii. circumscription of the topic. lecture iii. the reality of the unseen. lectures iv and v. the religion of healthy-mindedness. lectures vi and vii. the sick soul. lecture viii. the divided self, and the process of its unification. lecture ix. conversion. lecture x. conversion--concluded. lectures xi, xii, and xiii. saintliness. lectures xiv and xv. the value of saintliness. lectures xvi and xvii. mysticism. lecture xviii. philosophy. lecture xix. other characteristics. lecture xx. conclusions. postscript. index. footnotes [title page] to c. p. g. in filial gratitude and love preface. this book would never have been written had i not been honored with an appointment as gifford lecturer on natural religion at the university of edinburgh. in casting about me for subjects of the two courses of ten lectures each for which i thus became responsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well be a descriptive one on "man's religious appetites," and the second a metaphysical one on "their satisfaction through philosophy." but the unexpected growth of the psychological matter as i came to write it out has resulted in the second subject being postponed entirely, and the description of man's religious constitution now fills the twenty lectures. in lecture xx i have suggested rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, and the reader who desires immediately to know them should turn to pages - , and to the "postscript" of the book. i hope to be able at some later day to express them in more explicit form. in my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep, i have loaded the lectures with concrete examples, and i have chosen these among the extremer expressions of the religious temperament. to some readers i may consequently seem, before they get beyond the middle of the book, to offer a caricature of the subject. such convulsions of piety, they will say, are not sane. if, however, they will have the patience to read to the end, i believe that this unfavorable impression will disappear; for i there combine the religious impulses with other principles of common sense which serve as correctives of exaggeration, and allow the individual reader to draw as moderate conclusions as he will. my thanks for help in writing these lectures are due to edwin d. starbuck, of stanford university, who made over to me his large collection of manuscript material; to henry w. rankin, of east northfield, a friend unseen but proved, to whom i owe precious information; to theodore flournoy, of geneva, to canning schiller, of oxford, and to my colleague benjamin rand, for documents; to my colleague dickinson s. miller, and to my friends, thomas wren ward, of new york, and wincenty lutoslawski, late of cracow, for important suggestions and advice. finally, to conversations with the lamented thomas davidson and to the use of his books, at glenmore, above keene valley, i owe more obligations than i can well express. harvard university, march, . lecture i. religion and neurology. it is with no small amount of trepidation that i take my place behind this desk, and face this learned audience. to us americans, the experience of receiving instruction from the living voice, as well as from the books, of european scholars, is very familiar. at my own university of harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large or small, of lectures from scottish, english, french, or german representatives of the science or literature of their respective countries whom we have either induced to cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing as they were visiting our land. it seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the europeans talk. the contrary habit, of talking whilst the europeans listen, we have not yet acquired; and in him who first makes the adventure it begets a certain sense of apology being due for so presumptuous an act. particularly must this be the case on a soil as sacred to the american imagination as that of edinburgh. the glories of the philosophic chair of this university were deeply impressed on my imagination in boyhood. professor fraser's essays in philosophy, then just published, was the first philosophic book i ever looked into, and i well remember the awe- struck feeling i received from the account of sir william hamilton's class-room therein contained. hamilton's own lectures were the first philosophic writings i ever forced myself to study, and after that i was immersed in dugald stewart and thomas brown. such juvenile emotions of reverence never get outgrown; and i confess that to find my humble self promoted from my native wilderness to be actually for the time an official here, and transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious names, carries with it a sense of dreamland quite as much as of reality. but since i have received the honor of this appointment i have felt that it would never do to decline. the academic career also has its heroic obligations, so i stand here without further deprecatory words. let me say only this, that now that the current, here and at aberdeen, has begun to run from west to east, i hope it may continue to do so. as the years go by, i hope that many of my countrymen may be asked to lecture in the scottish universities, changing places with scotsmen lecturing in the united states; i hope that our people may become in all these higher matters even as one people; and that the peculiar philosophic temperament, as well as the peculiar political temperament, that goes with our english speech may more and more pervade and influence the world. ------------------------------------- as regards the manner in which i shall have to administer this lectureship, i am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. psychology is the only branch of learning in which i am particularly versed. to the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. it would seem, therefore, that, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities. if the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, but rather religious feelings and religious impulses must be its subject, and i must confine myself to those more developed subjective phenomena recorded in literature produced by articulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety and autobiography. interesting as the origins and early stages of a subject always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full significance, one must always look to its more completely evolved and perfect forms. it follows from this that the documents that will most concern us will be those of the men who were most accomplished in the religious life and best able to give an intelligible account of their ideas and motives. these men, of course, are either comparatively modern writers, or else such earlier ones as have become religious classics. the _documents humains_ which we shall find most instructive need not then be sought for in the haunts of special erudition--they lie along the beaten highway; and this circumstance, which flows so naturally from the character of our problem, suits admirably also your lecturer's lack of special theological learning. i may take my citations, my sentences and paragraphs of personal confession, from books that most of you at some time will have had already in your hands, and yet this will be no detriment to the value of my conclusions. it is true that some more adventurous reader and investigator, lecturing here in future, may unearth from the shelves of libraries documents that will make a more delectable and curious entertainment to listen to than mine. yet i doubt whether he will necessarily, by his control of so much more out-of-the-way material, get much closer to the essence of the matter in hand. the question, what are the religious propensities? and the question, what is their philosophic significance? are two entirely different orders of question from the logical point of view; and, as a failure to recognize this fact distinctly may breed confusion, i wish to insist upon the point a little before we enter into the documents and materials to which i have referred. in recent books on logic, distinction is made between two orders of inquiry concerning anything. first, what is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history? and second, what is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? the answer to the one question is given in an _existential judgment_ or proposition. the answer to the other is a _proposition of value_, what the germans call a _werthurtheil_, or what we may, if we like, denominate a _spiritual judgment_. neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other. they proceed from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind combines them only by making them first separately, and then adding them together. in the matter of religions it is particularly easy to distinguish the two orders of question. every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents. what is nowadays called the higher criticism of the bible is only a study of the bible from this existential point of view, neglected too much by the earlier church. under just what biographic conditions did the sacred writers bring forth their various contributions to the holy volume? and what had they exactly in their several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances? these are manifestly questions of historical fact, and one does not see how the answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: of what use should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? to answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in a thing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation; and this theory itself would be what i just called a spiritual judgment. combining it with our existential judgment, we might indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the bible's worth. thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the bible would probably fare ill at our hands. but if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. you see that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritual problem. with the same conclusions of fact before them, some take one view, and some another, of the bible's value as a revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to the foundation of values differs. ------------------------------------- i make these general remarks about the two sorts of judgment, because there are many religious persons--some of you now present, possibly, are among them--who do not yet make a working use of the distinction, and who may therefore feel at first a little startled at the purely existential point of view from which in the following lectures the phenomena of religious experience must be considered. when i handle them biologically and psychologically as if they were mere curious facts of individual history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a subject, and may even suspect me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of deliberately seeking to discredit the religious side of life. such a result is of course absolutely alien to my intention; and since such a prejudice on your part would seriously obstruct the due effect of much of what i have to relate, i will devote a few more words to the point. there can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. i speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be buddhist, christian, or mohammedan. his religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. it would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. we must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. these experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. but such individuals are "geniuses" in the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. they have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence. if you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is furnished by the person of george fox. the quaker religion which he founded is something which it is impossible to overpraise. in a day of shams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in england. so far as our christian sects to-day are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which fox and the early quakers so long ago assumed. no one can pretend for a moment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, fox's mind was unsound. every one who confronted him personally, from oliver cromwell down to county magistrates and jailers, seems to have acknowledged his superior power. yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution, fox was a psychopath or _détraqué_ of the deepest dye. his journal abounds in entries of this sort:-- "as i was walking with several friends, i lifted up my head, and saw three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. i asked them what place that was? they said, lichfield. immediately the word of the lord came to me, that i must go thither. being come to the house we were going to, i wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither i was to go. as soon as they were gone i stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till i came within a mile of lichfield; where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. then was i commanded by the lord to pull off my shoes. i stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the lord was like a fire in me. so i put off my shoes, and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds trembled, and were astonished. then i walked on about a mile, and as soon as i was got within the city, the word of the lord came to me again, saying: cry, 'wo to the bloody city of lichfield!' so i went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, wo to the bloody city of lichfield! it being market day, i went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before, wo to the bloody city of lichfield! and no one laid hands on me. as i went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. when i had declared what was upon me, and felt myself clear, i went out of the town in peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them some money, and took my shoes of them again. but the fire of the lord was so on my feet, and all over me, that i did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether i should or no, till i felt freedom from the lord so to do: then, after i had washed my feet, i put on my shoes again. after this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason i should be sent to cry against that city, and call it the bloody city! for though the parliament had the minister one while, and the king another, and much blood had been shed in the town during the wars between them, yet there was no more than had befallen many other places. but afterwards i came to understand, that in the emperor diocletian's time a thousand christians were martyr'd in lichfield. so i was to go, without my shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the pool of their blood in the market-place, that i might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had been shed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets. so the sense of this blood was upon me, and i obeyed the word of the lord." bent as we are on studying religion's existential conditions, we cannot possibly ignore these pathological aspects of the subject. we must describe and name them just as if they occurred in non-religious men. it is true that we instinctively recoil from seeing an object to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. the first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. but any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be _sui generis_ and unique. probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "i am no such thing," it would say; "i am myself, myself alone." ------------------------------------- the next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the causes in which the thing originates. spinoza says: "i will analyze the actions and appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes, and of solids." and elsewhere he remarks that he will consider our passions and their properties with the same eye with which he looks on all other natural things, since the consequences of our affections flow from their nature with the same necessity as it results from the nature of a triangle that its three angles should be equal to two right angles. similarly m. taine, in the introduction to his history of english literature, has written: "whether facts be moral or physical, it makes no matter. they always have their causes. there are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar." when we read such proclamations of the intellect bent on showing the existential conditions of absolutely everything, we feel--quite apart from our legitimate impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors are actually able to perform--menaced and negated in the springs of our innermost life. such cold-blooded assimilations threaten, we think, to undo our soul's vital secrets, as if the same breath which should succeed in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their significance, and make them appear of no more preciousness, either, than the useful groceries of which m. taine speaks. perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value is undone if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people so often pass on their more sentimental acquaintances. alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his temperament is so emotional. fanny's extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter of over-instigated nerves. william's melancholy about the universe is due to bad digestion--probably his liver is torpid. eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. peter would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air, etc. a more fully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticising the religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the sexual life. conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. the macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone astray. for the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more earthly object of affection. and the like.( ) we are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. we all use it to some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. but when other people criticise our own more exalted soul- flights by calling them "nothing but" expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue. medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple- minded system of thought which we are considering. medical materialism finishes up saint paul by calling his vision on the road to damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. it snuffs out saint teresa as an hysteric, saint francis of assisi as an hereditary degenerate. george fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh. all such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto- intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover. and medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined.( ) let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. modern psychology, finding definite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thorough-going and complete. if we adopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a general way, if not in every detail: saint paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure; george fox was an hereditary degenerate; carlyle was undoubtedly auto-intoxicated by some organ or other, no matter which,--and the rest. but now, i ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance? according to the general postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of our states of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition. scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. when it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind. so of all our raptures and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. they are equally organically founded, be they of religious or of non-religious content. to plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our _dis_-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time. it is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no such sweeping skeptical conclusion. it is sure, just as every simple man is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinary spiritual judgment. it has no physiological theory of the production of these its favorite states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating them with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting bodily affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent. let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts. when we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? no! it is always for two entirely different reasons. it is either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life. when we speak disparagingly of "feverish fancies," surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem--for aught we know to the contrary, ° or ° fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of or degrees. it is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. when we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. we know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. it is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem. now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not always hang together. inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. what immediately feels most "good" is not always most "true," when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. the difference between philip drunk and philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. if merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. but its revelations, however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. the consequence of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. there are moments of sentimental and mystical experience--we shall hereafter hear much of them--that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. but they come seldom, and they do not come to every one; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end. ------------------------------------- it is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely medical test. a good example of the impossibility of holding strictly to the medical tests is seen in the theory of the pathological causation of genius promulgated by recent authors. "genius," said dr. moreau, "is but one of the many branches of the neuropathic tree." "genius," says dr. lombroso, "is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "whenever a man's life," writes mr. nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded with sufficient fullness to be a subject of profitable study, he inevitably falls into the morbid category.... and it is worthy of remark that, as a rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness."( ) now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their own satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of disease, consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the _value_ of the fruits? do they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of existential conditions? do they frankly forbid us to admire the productions of genius from now onwards? and say outright that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth? no! their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong for them here, and hold their own against inferences which, in mere love of logical consistency, medical materialism ought to be only too glad to draw. one disciple of the school, indeed, has striven to impugn the value of works of genius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many) by using medical arguments.( ) but for the most part the masterpieces are left unchallenged; and the medical line of attack either confines itself to such secular productions as every one admits to be intrinsically eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively to religious manifestations. and then it is because the religious manifestations have been already condemned because the critic dislikes them on internal or spiritual grounds. in the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. it should be no otherwise with religious opinions. their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true. _immediate luminousness_, in short, _philosophical reasonableness_, and _moral helpfulness_ are the only available criteria. saint teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. and conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off her balance saint teresa may have been when she was with us here below. ------------------------------------- you see that at bottom we are thrown back upon the general principles by which the empirical philosophy has always contended that we must be guided in our search for truth. dogmatic philosophies have sought for tests for truth which might dispense us from appealing to the future. some direct mark, by noting which we can be protected immediately and absolutely, now and forever, against all mistake--such has been the darling dream of philosophic dogmatists. it is clear that the _origin_ of the truth would be an admirable criterion of this sort, if only the various origins could be discriminated from one another from this point of view, and the history of dogmatic opinion shows that origin has always been a favorite test. origin in immediate intuition; origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision, hearing, or unaccountable impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance generally,--these origins have been stock warrants for the truth of one opinion after another which we find represented in religious history. the medical materialists are therefore only so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tables on their predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive instead of an accreditive way. they are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so long as supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. but the argument from origin has seldom been used alone, for it is too obviously insufficient. dr. maudsley is perhaps the cleverest of the rebutters of supernatural religion on grounds of origin. yet he finds himself forced to write:-- "what right have we to believe nature under any obligation to do her work by means of complete minds only? she may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. it is the work that is done, and the quality in the worker by which it was done, that is alone of moment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other qualities of character he was singularly defective--if indeed he were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic.... home we come again, then, to the old and last resort of certitude,--namely the common assent of mankind, or of the competent by instruction and training among mankind."( ) in other words, not its origin, but _the way in which it works on the whole_, is dr. maudsley's final test of a belief. this is our own empiricist criterion; and this criterion the stoutest insisters on supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end. among the visions and messages some have always been too patently silly, among the trances and convulsive seizures some have been too fruitless for conduct and character, to pass themselves off as significant, still less as divine. in the history of christian mysticism the problem how to discriminate between such messages and experiences as were really divine miracles, and such others as the demon in his malice was able to counterfeit, thus making the religious person twofold more the child of hell he was before, has always been a difficult one to solve, needing all the sagacity and experience of the best directors of conscience. in the end it had to come to our empiricist criterion: by their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots, jonathan edwards's treatise on religious affections is an elaborate working out of this thesis. the _roots_ of a man's virtue are inaccessible to us. no appearances whatever are infallible proofs of grace. our practice is the only sure evidence, even to ourselves, that we are genuinely christians. "in forming a judgment of ourselves now," edwards writes, "we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day.... there is not one grace of the spirit of god, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, christian practice is not the most decisive evidence.... the degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine." catholic writers are equally emphatic. the good dispositions which a vision, or voice, or other apparent heavenly favor leave behind them are the only marks by which we may be sure they are not possible deceptions of the tempter. says saint teresa:-- "like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to the head, doth but leave it the more exhausted, the result of mere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul. instead of nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and disgust: whereas a genuine heavenly vision yields to her a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. i alleged these reasons to those who so often accused my visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination.... i showed them the jewels which the divine hand had left with me:--they were my actual dispositions. all those who knew me saw that i was changed; my confessor bore witness to the fact; this improvement, palpable in all respects, far from being hidden, was brilliantly evident to all men. as for myself, it was impossible to believe that if the demon were its author, he could have used, in order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient so contrary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices, and filling me with masculine courage and other virtues instead, for i saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to enrich me with all that wealth."( ) i fear i may have made a longer excursus than was necessary, and that fewer words would have dispelled the uneasiness which may have arisen among some of you as i announced my pathological programme. at any rate you must all be ready now to judge the religious life by its results exclusively, and i shall assume that the bugaboo of morbid origin will scandalize your piety no more. still, you may ask me, if its results are to be the ground of our final spiritual estimate of a religious phenomenon, why threaten us at all with so much existential study of its conditions? why not simply leave pathological questions out? to this i reply in two ways: first, i say, irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads one on; and i say, secondly, that it always leads to a better understanding of a thing's significance to consider its exaggerations and perversions, its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere. not that we may thereby swamp the thing in the wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferior congeners, but rather that we may by contrast ascertain the more precisely in what its merits consist, by learning at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption it may also be exposed. insane conditions have this advantage, that they isolate special factors of the mental life, and enable us to inspect them unmasked by their more usual surroundings. they play the part in mental anatomy which the scalpel and the microscope play in the anatomy of the body. to understand a thing rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance with the whole range of its variations. the study of hallucinations has in this way been for psychologists the key to their comprehension of normal sensation, that of illusions has been the key to the right comprehension of perception. morbid impulses and imperative conceptions, "fixed ideas," so called, have thrown a flood of light on the psychology of the normal will; and obsessions and delusions have performed the same service for that of the normal faculty of belief. similarly, the nature of genius has been illuminated by the attempts, of which i already made mention, to class it with psychopathical phenomena. borderland insanity, crankiness, insane temperament, loss of mental balance, psychopathic degeneration (to use a few of the many synonyms by which it has been called), has certain peculiarities and liabilities which, when combined with a superior quality of intellect in an individual, make it more probable that he will make his mark and affect his age, than if his temperament were less neurotic. there is of course no special affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect,( ) for most psychopaths have feeble intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. but the psychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. the cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. he is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. his conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, he has no rest till he proclaims it, or in some way "works it off." "what shall i think of it?" a common person says to himself about a vexed question; but in a "cranky" mind "what must i do about it?" is the form the question tends to take. in the autobiography of that high-souled woman, mrs. annie besant, i read the following passage: "plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support. 'some one ought to do it, but why should i?' is the ever reëchoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. 'some one ought to do it, so why not i?' is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." true enough! and between these two sentences lie also the different destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic man. thus, when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce--as in the endless permutations and combinations of human faculty, they are bound to coalesce often enough--in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or their age. it is they who get counted when messrs lombroso, nisbet, and others invoke statistics to defend their paradox. to pass now to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which, as we shall see, constitutes an essential moment in every complete religious evolution. take the happiness which achieved religious belief confers. take the trance-like states of insight into truth which all religious mystics report.( ) these are each and all of them special cases of kinds of human experience of much wider scope. religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have _quâ_ religious, is at any rate melancholy. religious happiness is happiness. religious trance is trance. and the moment we renounce the absurd notion that a thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with others, or its origin is shown; the moment we agree to stand by experimental results and inner quality, in judging of values,--who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether? i hope that the course of these lectures will confirm us in this supposition. as regards the psychopathic origin of so many religious phenomena, that would not be in the least surprising or disconcerting, even were such phenomena certified from on high to be the most precious of human experiences. no one organism can possibly yield to its owner the whole body of truth. few of us are not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. in the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the _sine quâ non_ of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. what, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robust philistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors? if there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity. and having said thus much, i think that i may let the matter of religion and neuroticism drop. ------------------------------------- the mass of collateral phenomena, morbid or healthy, with which the various religious phenomena must be compared in order to understand them better, forms what in the slang of pedagogics is termed "the apperceiving mass" by which we comprehend them. the only novelty that i can imagine this course of lectures to possess lies in the breadth of the apperceiving mass. i may succeed in discussing religious experiences in a wider context than has been usual in university courses. lecture ii. circumscription of the topic. most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. some of these would-be definitions may possibly come before us in later portions of this course, and i shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now. meanwhile the very fact that they are so many and so different from one another is enough to prove that the word "religion" cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name. the theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification of its materials. this is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested. let us not fall immediately into a one-sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one essence, but many characters which may alternately be equally important in religion. if we should inquire for the essence of "government," for example, one man might tell us it was authority, another submission, another police, another an army, another an assembly, another a system of laws; yet all the while it would be true that no concrete government can exist without all these things, one of which is more important at one moment and others at another. the man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening. and why may not religion be a conception equally complex?( ) ------------------------------------- consider also the "religious sentiment" which we see referred to in so many books, as if it were a single sort of mental entity. in the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion, we find the authors attempting to specify just what entity it is. one man allies it to the feeling of dependence; one makes it a derivative from fear; others connect it with the sexual life; others still identify it with the feeling of the infinite; and so on. such different ways of conceiving it ought of themselves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term "religious sentiment" as a collective name for the many sentiments which religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it probably contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific nature. there is religious fear, religious love, religious awe, religious joy, and so forth. but religious love is only man's natural emotion of love directed to a religious object; religious fear is only the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the common quaking of the human breast, in so far as the notion of divine retribution may arouse it; religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only this time it comes over us at the thought of our supernatural relations; and similarly of all the various sentiments which may be called into play in the lives of religious persons. as concrete states of mind, made up of a feeling _plus_ a specific sort of object, religious emotions of course are psychic entities distinguishable from other concrete emotions; but there is no ground for assuming a simple abstract "religious emotion" to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present in every religious experience without exception. as there thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw, so there might conceivably also prove to be no one specific and essential kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential kind of religious act. ------------------------------------- the field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible that i should pretend to cover it. my lectures must be limited to a fraction of the subject. and, although it would indeed be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed to defend that definition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what religion shall consist in _for the purpose of these lectures_, or, out of the many meanings of the word, from choosing the one meaning in which i wish to interest you particularly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when i say "religion" i mean _that_. this, in fact, is what i must do, and i will now preliminarily seek to mark out the field i choose. one way to mark it out easily is to say what aspects of the subject we leave out. at the outset we are struck by one great partition which divides the religious field. on the one side of it lies institutional, on the other personal religion. as m. p. sabatier says, one branch of religion keeps the divinity, another keeps man most in view. worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. in the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. and although the favor of the god, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. the relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and his maker. now in these lectures i propose to ignore the institutional branch entirely, to say nothing of the ecclesiastical organization, to consider as little as possible the systematic theology and the ideas about the gods themselves, and to confine myself as far as i can to personal religion pure and simple. to some of you personal religion, thus nakedly considered, will no doubt seem too incomplete a thing to wear the general name. "it is a part of religion," you will say, "but only its unorganized rudiment; if we are to name it by itself, we had better call it man's conscience or morality than his religion. the name 'religion' should be reserved for the fully organized system of feeling, thought, and institution, for the church, in short, of which this personal religion, so called, is but a fractional element." but if you say this, it will only show the more plainly how much the question of definition tends to become a dispute about names. rather than prolong such a dispute, i am willing to accept almost any name for the personal religion of which i propose to treat. call it conscience or morality, if you yourselves prefer, and not religion--under either name it will be equally worthy of our study. as for myself, i think it will prove to contain some elements which morality pure and simple does not contain, and these elements i shall soon seek to point out; so i will myself continue to apply the word "religion" to it; and in the last lecture of all, i will bring in the theologies and the ecclesiasticisms, and say something of its relation to them. in one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon tradition; but the _founders_ of every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. not only the superhuman founders, the christ, the buddha, mahomet, but all the originators of christian sects have been in this case;--so personal religion should still seem the primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteem it incomplete. there are, it is true, other things in religion chronologically more primordial than personal devoutness in the moral sense. fetishism and magic seem to have preceded inward piety historically--at least our records of inward piety do not reach back so far. and if fetishism and magic be regarded as stages of religion, one may say that personal religion in the inward sense and the genuinely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds are phenomena of secondary or even tertiary order. but, quite apart from the fact that many anthropologists--for instance, jevons and frazer--expressly oppose "religion" and "magic" to each other, it is certain that the whole system of thought which leads to magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science as called primitive religion. the question thus becomes a verbal one again; and our knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling is in any case so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussion would not be worth while. religion, therefore, as i now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us _the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine_. since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. in these lectures, however, as i have already said, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all. we escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition of our field. but, still, a chance of controversy comes up over the word "divine" if we take it in the definition in too narrow a sense. there are systems of thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet which do not positively assume a god. buddhism is in this case. popularly, of course, the buddha himself stands in place of a god; but in strictness the buddhistic system is atheistic. modern transcendental idealism, emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let god evaporate into abstract ideality. not a deity _in concreto_, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. in that address to the graduating class at divinity college in which made emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance. "these laws," said the speaker, "execute themselves. they are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. he who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. he who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted. he who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity. if a man is at heart just, then in so far is he god; the safety of god, the immortality of god, the majesty of god, do enter into that man with justice. if a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. character is always known. thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. the least admixture of a lie--for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance--will instantly vitiate the effect. but speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear your witness. for all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. in so far as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries. his being shrinks ... he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. the perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. wonderful is its power to charm and to command. it is a mountain air. it is the embalmer of the world. it makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. it is the beatitude of man. it makes him illimitable. when he says 'i ought'; when love warns him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from supreme wisdom. then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. all the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. [they] affect us more than all other compositions. the sentences of the olden time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. and the unique impression of jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion."( ) such is the emersonian religion. the universe has a divine soul of order, which soul is moral, being also the soul within the soul of man. but whether this soul of the universe be a mere quality like the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious life like the eye's seeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision that never unmistakably appears in emerson's pages. it quivers on the boundary of these things, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other, to suit the literary rather than the philosophic need. whatever it is, though, it is active. as much as if it were a god, we can trust it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance straight. the sentences in which emerson, to the very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as anything in literature: "if you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. it is impossible to tilt the beam. all the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."( ) now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that underlie such expressions of faith as this and impel the writer to their utterance are quite unworthy to be called religious experiences. the sort of appeal that emersonian optimism, on the one hand, and buddhistic pessimism, on the other, make to the individual and the sort of response which he makes to them in his life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many respects identical with, the best christian appeal and response. we must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or quasi-godless creeds "religions"; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual's relation to "what he considers the divine," we must interpret the term "divine" very broadly, as denoting any object that is god_like_, whether it be a concrete deity or not. ------------------------------------- but the term "godlike," if thus treated as a floating general quality, becomes exceedingly vague, for many gods have flourished in religious history, and their attributes have been discrepant enough. what then is that essentially godlike quality--be it embodied in a concrete deity or not--our relation to which determines our character as religious men? it will repay us to seek some answer to this question before we proceed farther. for one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being and power. they overarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape. what relates to them is the first and last word in the way of truth. whatever then were most primal and enveloping and deeply true might at this rate be treated as godlike, and a man's religion might thus be identified with his attitude, whatever it might be, towards what he felt to be the primal truth. such a definition as this would in a way be defensible. religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life, so why not say that any total reaction upon life is a religion? total reactions are different from casual reactions, and total attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes. to get at them you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree every one possesses. this sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, "what is the character of this universe in which we dwell?" it expresses our individual sense of it in the most definite way. why then not call these reactions our religion, no matter what specific character they may have? non-religious as some of these reactions may be, in one sense of the word "religious," they yet belong to _the general sphere of the religious life_, and so should generically be classed as religious reactions. "he believes in no-god, and he worships him," said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a fine atheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of christian doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal. but so very broad a use of the word "religion" would be inconvenient, however defensible it might remain on logical grounds. there are trifling, sneering attitudes even towards the whole of life; and in some men these attitudes are final and systematic. it would strain the ordinary use of language too much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the point of view of an unbiased critical philosophy, they might conceivably be perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life. voltaire, for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of seventy-three: "as for myself," he says, "weak as i am, i carry on the war to the last moment, i get a hundred pike-thrusts, i return two hundred, and i laugh. i see near my door geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and i laugh again; and, thank god, i can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes as tragic as it sometimes does. all comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over." much as we may admire such a robust old gamecock spirit in a valetudinarian, to call it a religious spirit would be odd. yet it is for the moment voltaire's reaction on the whole of life. _je m'en fiche_ is the vulgar french equivalent for our english ejaculation "who cares?" and the happy term _je m'en fichisme_ recently has been invented to designate the systematic determination not to take anything in life too solemnly. "all is vanity" is the relieving word in all difficult crises for this mode of thought, which that exquisite literary genius renan took pleasure, in his later days of sweet decay, in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms which remain to us as excellent expressions of the "all is vanity" state of mind. take the following passage, for example,--we must hold to duty, even against the evidence, renan says,--but he then goes on:-- "there are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy pantomime of which no god has care. we must therefore arrange ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completely wrong. we must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way that if the second hypothesis were true we should not have been too completely duped. if in effect the world be not a serious thing, it is the dogmatic people who will be the shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom the theologians now call frivolous will be those who are really wise. "_in utrumque paratus_, then. be ready for anything--that perhaps is wisdom. give ourselves up, according to the hour, to confidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony, and we may be sure that at certain moments at least we shall be with the truth.... good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. i maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. we owe it to the eternal to be virtuous; but we have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal. in this way we return to the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. saint augustine's phrase: _lord, if we are deceived, it is by thee!_ remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling. only we wish the eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept it knowingly and willingly. we are resigned in advance to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them too securely."( ) surely all the usual associations of the word "religion" would have to be stripped away if such a systematic _parti pris_ of irony were also to be denoted by the name. for common men "religion," whatever more special meanings it may have, signifies always a _serious_ state of mind. if any one phrase could gather its universal message, that phrase would be, "all is _not_ vanity in this universe, whatever the appearances may suggest." if it can stop anything, religion as commonly apprehended can stop just such chaffing talk as renan's. it favors gravity, not pertness; it says "hush" to all vain chatter and smart wit. but if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy grumbling and complaint. the world appears tragic enough in some religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way of deliverance is held to exist. we shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when, in marcus aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. the mood of a schopenhauer or a nietzsche,--and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own sad carlyle,--though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. the sallies of the two german authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. they lack the purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth. there must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. if glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. it is precisely as being _solemn_ experiences that i wish to interest you in religious experiences. so i propose--arbitrarily again, if you please--to narrow our definition once more by saying that the word "divine," as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken without restriction might well prove too broad. the divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest. but solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of experience where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. the pretension, under such conditions, to be rigorously "scientific" or "exact" in our terms would only stamp us as lacking in understanding of our task. things are more or less divine, states of mind are more or less religious, reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always misty, and it is everywhere a question of amount and degree. nevertheless, at their extreme of development, there can never be any question as to what experiences are religious. the divinity of the object and the solemnity of the reaction are too well marked for doubt. hesitation as to whether a state of mind is "religious," or "irreligious," or "moral," or "philosophical," is only likely to arise when the state of mind is weakly characterized, but in that case it will be hardly worthy of our study at all. with states that can only by courtesy be called religious we need have nothing to do, our only profitable business being with what nobody can possibly feel tempted to call anything else. i said in my former lecture that we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, as it were, or in its most exaggerated form. this is as true of religious phenomena as of any other kind of fact. the only cases likely to be profitable enough to repay our attention will therefore be cases where the religious spirit is unmistakable and extreme. its fainter manifestations we may tranquilly pass by. here, for example, is the total reaction upon life of frederick locker lampson, whose autobiography, entitled "confidences," proves him to have been a most amiable man. "i am so far resigned to my lot that i feel small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. i would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. strange to say, i have but little wish to be younger. i submit with a chill at my heart. i humbly submit because it is the divine will, and my appointed destiny. i dread the increase of infirmities that will make me a burden to those around me, those dear to me. no! let me slip away as quietly and comfortably as i can. let the end come, if peace come with it. "i do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it has pleased god so to place us, and it must please me also. i ask you, what is human life? is not it a maimed happiness--care and weariness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, the strange cozenage of a brighter to-morrow? at best it is but a froward child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."( ) this is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of mind. for myself, i should have no objection to calling it on the whole a religious state of mind, although i dare say that to many of you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. but what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? it is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless he had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he found himself unable to compete. it is with these more energetic states that our sole business lies, and we can perfectly well afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain border go. it was the extremer cases that i had in mind a little while ago when i said that personal religion, even without theology or ritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure and simple does not contain. you may remember that i promised shortly to point out what those elements were. in a general way i can now say what i had in mind. ------------------------------------- "i accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our new england transcendentalist, margaret fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to thomas carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "gad! she'd better!" at bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? if we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission,--as carlyle would have us--"gad! we'd better!"--or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. but for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place. it makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of christian saints. the difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. gradual as are the steps by which an individual may grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other a "critical point" has been overcome. if we compare stoic with christian ejaculations we see much more than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of emotional mood that parts them. when marcus aurelius reflects on the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words which you rarely find in a jewish, and never in a christian piece of religious writing. the universe is "accepted" by all these writers; but how devoid of passion or exultation the spirit of the roman emperor is! compare his fine sentence: "if gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it," with job's cry: "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him!" and you immediately see the difference i mean. the _anima mundi_, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny the stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to, but the christian god is there to be loved; and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the same. "it is a man's duty," says marcus aurelius, "to comfort himself and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts--first that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and secondly that i need do nothing contrary to the god and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to transgress.( ) he is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature, through being displeased with the things which happen. for the same nature produces these, and has produced thee too. and so accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of zeus. for he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. the integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything. and thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way."( ) compare now this mood with that of the old christian author of the theologia germanica:-- "where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounce all desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and all things to the eternal goodness, so that every enlightened man could say: 'i would fain be to the eternal goodness what his own hand is to a man.' such men are in a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward or heaven, and are living in pure submission to the eternal goodness, in the perfect freedom of fervent love. when a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, and findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. and therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release; but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased; and he doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his eyes, and he hath nothing to say against them. this is what is meant by true repentance for sin; and he who in this present time entereth into this hell, none may console him. now god hath not forsaken a man in this hell, but he is laying his hand upon him, that the man may not desire nor regard anything but the eternal good only. and then, when the man neither careth for nor desireth anything but the eternal good alone, and seeketh not himself nor his own things, but the honour of god only, he is made a partaker of all manner of joy, bliss, peace, rest, and consolation, and so the man is henceforth in the kingdom of heaven. this hell and this heaven are two good safe ways for a man, and happy is he who truly findeth them."( ) how much more active and positive the impulse of the christian writer to accept his place in the universe is! marcus aurelius agrees _to_ the scheme--the german theologian agrees _with_ it. he literally _abounds_ in agreement, he runs out to embrace the divine decrees. occasionally, it is true, the stoic rises to something like a christian warmth of sentiment, as in the often quoted passage of marcus aurelius:-- "everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, o universe. nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, o nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. the poet says, dear city of cecrops; and wilt thou not say, dear city of zeus?"( ) but compare even as devout a passage as this with a genuine christian outpouring, and it seems a little cold. turn, for instance, to the imitation of christ:-- "lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou wilt. give what thou wilt, so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. do with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most to thine honour. place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things.... when could it be evil when thou wert near? i had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. i choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell."( ) it is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an organ, to ask after its most peculiar and characteristic sort of performance, and to seek its office in that one of its functions which no other organ can possibly exert. surely the same maxim holds good in our present quest. the essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else. and such a quality will be of course most prominent and easy to notice in those religious experiences which are most one- sided, exaggerated, and intense. now when we compare these intenser experiences with the experiences of tamer minds, so cool and reasonable that we are tempted to call them philosophical rather than religious, we find a character that is perfectly distinct. that character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the practically important _differentia_ of religion for our purpose; and just what it is can easily be brought out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived christian with that of a moralist similarly conceived. a life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in proportion as it is less swayed by paltry personal considerations and more by objective ends that call for energy, even though that energy bring personal loss and pain. this is the good side of war, in so far as it calls for "volunteers." and for morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers. even a sick man, unable to be militant outwardly, can carry on the moral warfare. he can willfully turn his attention away from his own future, whether in this world or the next. he can train himself to indifference to his present drawbacks and immerse himself in whatever objective interests still remain accessible. he can follow public news, and sympathize with other people's affairs. he can cultivate cheerful manners, and be silent about his miseries. he can contemplate whatever ideal aspects of existence his philosophy is able to present to him, and practice whatever duties, such as patience, resignation, trust, his ethical system requires. such a man lives on his loftiest, largest plane. he is a high-hearted freeman and no pining slave. and yet he lacks something which the christian _par excellence_, the mystic and ascetic saint, for example, has in abundant measure, and which makes of him a human being of an altogether different denomination. the christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show. but whereas the merely moralistic spurning takes an effort of volition, the christian spurning is the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, in the presence of which no exertion of volition is required. the moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes well--morality suffices. but the athletic attitude tends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break down even in the most stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind. to suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. what he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort. the sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. and whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-_being_ that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not. and here religion comes to our rescue and takes our fate into her hands. there is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of god. in this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. the time for tension in our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. fear is not held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and washed away. we shall see abundant examples of this happy state of mind in later lectures of this course. we shall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. this enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come,--a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of god's grace, the theologians say,--is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject's range of life. it gives him a new sphere of power. when the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste. if religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me that we ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. it ought to mean nothing short of this new reach of freedom for us, with the struggle over, the keynote of the universe sounding in our ears, and everlasting possession spread before our eyes.( ) this sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowhere but in religion. it is parted off from all mere animal happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that element of solemnity of which i have already made so much account. solemnity is a hard thing to define abstractly, but certain of its marks are patent enough. a solemn state of mind is never crude or simple--it seems to contain a certain measure of its own opposite in solution. a solemn joy preserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we intimately consent. but there are writers who, realizing that happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion, forget this complication, and call all happiness, as such, religious. mr. havelock ellis, for example, identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's liberation from oppressive moods. "the simplest functions of physiological life," he writes, "may be its ministers. every one who is at all acquainted with the persian mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument of religion. indeed, in all countries and in all ages, some form of physical enlargement--singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement--has been intimately associated with worship. even the momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise.... whenever an impulse from the world strikes against the organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous expansion or aspiration of the whole soul--there is religion. it is the infinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on every little wave that promises to bear us towards it."( ) but such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. the more commonplace happinesses which we get are "reliefs," occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. but in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. it cares no longer to escape. it consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice--inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. if you ask _how_ religion thus falls on the thorns and faces death, and in the very act annuls annihilation, i cannot explain the matter, for it is religion's secret, and to understand it you must yourself have been a religious man of the extremer type. in our future examples, even of the simplest and healthiest-minded type of religious consciousness, we shall find this complex sacrificial constitution, in which a higher happiness holds a lower unhappiness in check. in the louvre there is a picture, by guido reni, of st. michael with his foot on satan's neck. the richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. the richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there--that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, _so long as we keep our foot upon his neck_. in the religious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle, is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point of view.( ) we shall see how in certain men and women it takes on a monstrously ascetic form. there are saints who have literally fed on the negative principle, on humiliation and privation, and the thought of suffering and death,--their souls growing in happiness just in proportion as their outward state grew more intolerable. no other emotion than religious emotion can bring a man to this peculiar pass. and it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value of religion for human life, i think we ought to look for the answer among these violenter examples rather than among those of a more moderate hue. having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest possible form to start with, we can shade down as much as we please later. and if in these cases, repulsive as they are to our ordinary worldly way of judging, we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion's value and treat it with respect, it will have proved in some way its value for life at large. by subtracting and toning down extravagances we may thereupon proceed to trace the boundaries of its legitimate sway. to be sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal so much with eccentricities and extremes. "how _can_ religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and pruned away?" such a thesis seems a paradox impossible to sustain reasonably,--yet i believe that something like it will have to be our final contention. that personal attitude which the individual finds himself impelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine--and you will remember that this was our definition--will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. that is, we shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. the constitution of the world we live in requires it:-- "entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren! das ist der ewige gesang der jedem an die ohren klingt, den, unser ganzes leben lang uns heiser jede stunde singt." for when all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. in the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. _religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary_; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute. it becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill. from the merely biological point of view, so to call it, this is a conclusion to which, so far as i can now see, we shall inevitably be led, and led moreover by following the purely empirical method of demonstration which i sketched to you in the first lecture. of the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation i will say nothing now. but to foreshadow the terminus of one's investigations is one thing, and to arrive there safely is another. in the next lecture, abandoning the extreme generalities which have engrossed us hitherto, i propose that we begin our actual journey by addressing ourselves directly to the concrete facts. lecture iii. the reality of the unseen. were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. this belief and this adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul. i wish during this hour to call your attention to some of the psychological peculiarities of such an attitude as this, of belief in an object which we cannot see. all our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the "objects" of our consciousness, the things which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves. such objects may be present to our senses, or they may be present only to our thought. in either case they elicit from us a _reaction_; and the reaction due to things of thought is notoriously in many cases as strong as that due to sensible presences. it may be even stronger. the memory of an insult may make us angrier than the insult did when we received it. we are frequently more ashamed of our blunders afterwards than we were at the moment of making them; and in general our whole higher prudential and moral life is based on the fact that material sensations actually present may have a weaker influence on our action than ideas of remoter facts. the more concrete objects of most men's religion, the deities whom they worship, are known to them only in idea. it has been vouchsafed, for example, to very few christian believers to have had a sensible vision of their saviour; though enough appearances of this sort are on record, by way of miraculous exception, to merit our attention later. the whole force of the christian religion, therefore, so far as belief in the divine personages determines the prevalent attitude of the believer, is in general exerted by the instrumentality of pure ideas, of which nothing in the individual's past experience directly serves as a model. but in addition to these ideas of the more concrete religious objects, religion is full of abstract objects which prove to have an equal power. god's attributes as such, his holiness, his justice, his mercy, his absoluteness, his infinity, his omniscience, his tri-unity, the various mysteries of the redemptive process, the operation of the sacraments, etc., have proved fertile wells of inspiring meditation for christian believers.( ) we shall see later that the absence of definite sensible images is positively insisted on by the mystical authorities in all religions as the _sine qua non_ of a successful orison, or contemplation of the higher divine truths. such contemplations are expected (and abundantly verify the expectation, as we shall also see) to influence the believer's subsequent attitude very powerfully for good. immanuel kant held a curious doctrine about such objects of belief as god, the design of creation, the soul, its freedom, and the life hereafter. these things, he said, are properly not objects of knowledge at all. our conceptions always require a sense-content to work with, and as the words "soul," "god," "immortality," cover no distinctive sense-content whatever, it follows that theoretically speaking they are words devoid of any significance. yet strangely enough they have a definite meaning _for our practice_. we can act _as if_ there were a god; feel _as if_ we were free; consider nature _as if_ she were full of special designs; lay plans _as if_ we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life. our faith _that_ these unintelligible objects actually exist proves thus to be a full equivalent in _praktischer hinsicht_, as kant calls it, or from the point of view of our action, for a knowledge of _what_ they might be, in case we were permitted positively to conceive them. so we have the strange phenomenon, as kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its strength in the real presence of a set of things of no one of which it can form any notion whatsoever. my object in thus recalling kant's doctrine to your mind is not to express any opinion as to the accuracy of this particularly uncouth part of his philosophy, but only to illustrate the characteristic of human nature which we are considering, by an example so classical in its exaggeration. the sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that thing, for purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all. it is as if a bar of iron, without touch or sight, with no representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling; and as if, through the various arousals of its magnetism by magnets coming and going in its neighborhood, it might be consciously determined to different attitudes and tendencies. such a bar of iron could never give you an outward description of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so strongly; yet of their presence, and of their significance for its life, it would be intensely aware through every fibre of its being. it is not only the ideas of pure reason, as kant styled them, that have this power of making us vitally feel presences that we are impotent articulately to describe. all sorts of higher abstractions bring with them the same kind of impalpable appeal. remember those passages from emerson which i read at my last lecture. the whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims, not only for such a transcendentalist writer, but for all of us, in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance. as time, space, and the ether soak through all things, so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice, soak through all things good, strong, significant, and just. such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. they give its "nature," as we call it, to every special thing. everything we know is "what" it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. we can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception. this absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the cardinal facts in our human constitution. polarizing and magnetizing us as they do, we turn towards them and from them, we seek them, hold them, hate them, bless them, just as if they were so many concrete beings. and beings they are, beings as real in the realm which they inhabit as the changing things of sense are in the realm of space. plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this common human feeling, that the doctrine of the reality of abstract objects has been known as the platonic theory of ideas ever since. abstract beauty, for example, is for plato a perfectly definite individual being, of which the intellect is aware as of something additional to all the perishing beauties of the earth. "the true order of going," he says, in the often quoted passage in his "banquet," "is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which one mounts upwards for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is."( ) in our last lecture we had a glimpse of the way in which a platonizing writer like emerson may treat the abstract divineness of things, the moral structure of the universe, as a fact worthy of worship. in those various churches without a god which to- day are spreading through the world under the name of ethical societies, we have a similar worship of the abstract divine, the moral law believed in as an ultimate object. "science" in many minds is genuinely taking the place of a religion. where this is so, the scientist treats the "laws of nature" as objective facts to be revered. a brilliant school of interpretation of greek mythology would have it that in their origin the greek gods were only half-metaphoric personifications of those great spheres of abstract law and order into which the natural world falls apart--the sky-sphere, the ocean-sphere, the earth-sphere, and the like; just as even now we may speak of the smile of the morning, the kiss of the breeze, or the bite of the cold, without really meaning that these phenomena of nature actually wear a human face.( ) as regards the origin of the greek gods, we need not at present seek an opinion. but the whole array of our instances leads to a conclusion something like this: it is as if there were in the human consciousness a _sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception_ of what we may call "_something there_," more deep and more general than any of the special and particular "senses" by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. if this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess. so far as religious conceptions were able to touch this reality- feeling, they would be believed in in spite of criticism, even though they might be so vague and remote as to be almost unimaginable, even though they might be such non-entities in point of _whatness_, as kant makes the objects of his moral theology to be. the most curious proofs of the existence of such an undifferentiated sense of reality as this are found in experiences of hallucination. it often happens that an hallucination is imperfectly developed: the person affected will feel a "presence" in the room, definitely localized, facing in one particular way, real in the most emphatic sense of the word, often coming suddenly, and as suddenly gone; and yet neither seen, heard, touched, nor cognized in any of the usual "sensible" ways. let me give you an example of this, before i pass to the objects with whose presence religion is more peculiarly concerned. an intimate friend of mine, one of the keenest intellects i know, has had several experiences of this sort. he writes as follows in response to my inquiries:-- "i have several times within the past few years felt the so-called 'consciousness of a presence.' the experiences which i have in mind are clearly distinguishable from another kind of experience which i have had very frequently, and which i fancy many persons would also call the 'consciousness of a presence.' but the difference for me between the two sets of experience is as great as the difference between feeling a slight warmth originating i know not where, and standing in the midst of a conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert. "it was about september, , when i had the first experience. on the previous night i had had, after getting into bed at my rooms in college, a vivid tactile hallucination of being grasped by the arm, which made me get up and search the room for an intruder; but the sense of presence properly so called came on the next night. after i had got into bed and blown out the candle, i lay awake awhile thinking on the previous night's experience, when suddenly i _felt_ something come into the room and stay close to my bed. it remained only a minute or two. i did not recognize it by any ordinary sense, and yet there was a horribly unpleasant 'sensation' connected with it. it stirred something more at the roots of my being than any ordinary perception. the feeling had something of the quality of a very large tearing vital pain spreading chiefly over the chest, but within the organism--and yet the feeling was not _pain_ so much as _abhorrence_. at all events, something was present with me, and i knew its presence far more surely than i have ever known the presence of any fleshly living creature. i was conscious of its departure as of its coming: an almost instantaneously swift going through the door, and the 'horrible sensation' disappeared. "on the third night when i retired my mind was absorbed in some lectures which i was preparing, and i was still absorbed in these when i became aware of the actual presence (though not of the _coming_) of the thing that was there the night before, and of the 'horrible sensation.' i then mentally concentrated all my effort to charge this 'thing,' if it was evil, to depart, if it was _not_ evil, to tell me who or what it was, and if it could not explain itself, to go, and that i would compel it to go. it went as on the previous night, and my body quickly recovered its normal state. "on two other occasions in my life i have had precisely the same 'horrible sensation.' once it lasted a full quarter of an hour. in all three instances the certainty that there in outward space there stood _something_ was indescribably _stronger_ than the ordinary certainty of companionship when we are in the close presence of ordinary living people. the something seemed close to me, and intensely more real than any ordinary perception. although i felt it to be like unto myself, so to speak, or finite, small, and distressful, as it were, i didn't recognize it as any individual being or person." of course such an experience as this does not connect itself with the religious sphere. yet it may upon occasion do so; and the same correspondent informs me that at more than one other conjuncture he had the sense of presence developed with equal intensity and abruptness, only then it was filled with a quality of joy. "there was not a mere consciousness of something there, but fused in the central happiness of it, a startling awareness of some ineffable good. not vague either, not like the emotional effect of some poem, or scene, or blossom, of music, but the sure knowledge of the close presence of a sort of mighty person, and after it went, the memory persisted as the one perception of reality. everything else might be a dream, but not that." my friend, as it oddly happens, does not interpret these latter experiences theistically, as signifying the presence of god. but it would clearly not have been unnatural to interpret them as a revelation of the deity's existence. when we reach the subject of mysticism, we shall have much more to say upon this head. lest the oddity of these phenomena should disconcert you, i will venture to read you a couple of similar narratives, much shorter, merely to show that we are dealing with a well-marked natural kind of fact. in the first case, which i take from the journal of the society for psychical research, the sense of presence developed in a few moments into a distinctly visualized hallucination,--but i leave that part of the story out. "i had read," the narrator says, "some twenty minutes or so, was thoroughly absorbed in the book, my mind was perfectly quiet, and for the time being my friends were quite forgotten, when suddenly without a moment's warning my whole being seemed roused to the highest state of tension or aliveness, and i was aware, with an intenseness not easily imagined by those who had never experienced it, that another being or presence was not only in the room, but quite close to me. i put my book down, and although my excitement was great, i felt quite collected, and not conscious of any sense of fear. without changing my position, and looking straight at the fire, i knew somehow that my friend a. h. was standing at my left elbow, but so far behind me as to be hidden by the armchair in which i was leaning back. moving my eyes round slightly without otherwise changing my position, the lower portion of one leg became visible, and i instantly recognized the gray-blue material of trousers he often wore, but the stuff appeared semi- transparent, reminding me of tobacco smoke in consistency,"( )--and hereupon the visual hallucination came. another informant writes:-- "quite early in the night i was awakened.... i felt as if i had been aroused intentionally, and at first thought some one was breaking into the house.... i then turned on my side to go to sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in the room, and singular to state, it was not the consciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. this may provoke a smile, but i can only tell you the facts as they occurred to me. i do not know how to better describe my sensations than by simply stating that i felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence.... i felt also at the same time a strong feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful were about to happen."( ) professor flournoy of geneva gives me the following testimony of a friend of his, a lady, who has the gift of automatic or involuntary writing:-- "whenever i practice automatic writing, what makes me feel that it is not due to a subconscious self is the feeling i always have of a foreign presence, external to my body. it is sometimes so definitely characterized that i could point to its exact position. this impression of presence is impossible to describe. it varies in intensity and clearness according to the personality from whom the writing professes to come. if it is some one whom i love, i feel it immediately, before any writing has come. my heart seems to recognize it." in an earlier book of mine i have cited at full length a curious case of presence felt by a blind man. the presence was that of the figure of a gray-bearded man dressed in a pepper and salt suit, squeezing himself under the crack of the door and moving across the floor of the room towards a sofa. the blind subject of this quasi-hallucination is an exceptionally intelligent reporter. he is entirely without internal visual imagery and cannot represent light or colors to himself, and is positive that his other senses, hearing, etc., were not involved in this false perception. it seems to have been an abstract conception rather, with the feelings of reality and spatial outwardness directly attached to it--in other words, a fully objectified and exteriorized _idea_. such cases, taken along with others which would be too tedious for quotation, seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than that which our special senses yield. for the psychologists the tracing of the organic seat of such a feeling would form a pretty problem--nothing could be more natural than to connect it with the muscular sense, with the feeling that our muscles were innervating themselves for action. whatsoever thus innervated our activity, or "made our flesh creep,"--our senses are what do so oftenest,--might then appear real and present, even though it were but an abstract idea. but with such vague conjectures we have no concern at present, for our interest lies with the faculty rather than with its organic seat. like all positive affections of consciousness, the sense of reality has its negative counterpart in the shape of a feeling of unreality by which persons may be haunted, and of which one sometimes hears complaint:-- "when i reflect on the fact that i have made my appearance by accident upon a globe itself whirled through space as the sport of the catastrophes of the heavens," says madame ackermann; "when i see myself surrounded by beings as ephemeral and incomprehensible as i am myself, and all excitedly pursuing pure chimeras, i experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. it seems to me as if i have loved and suffered and that erelong i shall die, in a dream. my last word will be, 'i have been dreaming.' "( ) in another lecture we shall see how in morbid melancholy this sense of the unreality of things may become a carking pain, and even lead to suicide. we may now lay it down as certain that in the distinctively religious sphere of experience, many persons (how many we cannot tell) possess the objects of their belief, not in the form of mere conceptions which their intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi-sensible realities directly apprehended. as his sense of the real presence of these objects fluctuates, so the believer alternates between warmth and coldness in his faith. other examples will bring this home to one better than abstract description, so i proceed immediately to cite some. the first example is a negative one, deploring the loss of the sense in question. i have extracted it from an account given me by a scientific man of my acquaintance, of his religious life. it seems to me to show clearly that the feeling of reality may be something more like a sensation than an intellectual operation properly so-called. "between twenty and thirty i gradually became more and more agnostic and irreligious, yet i cannot say that i ever lost that 'indefinite consciousness' which herbert spencer describes so well, of an absolute reality behind phenomena. for me this reality was not the pure unknowable of spencer's philosophy, for although i had ceased my childish prayers to god, and never prayed to _it_ in a formal manner, yet my more recent experience shows me to have been in a relation to _it_ which practically was the same thing as prayer. whenever i had any trouble, especially when i had conflict with other people, either domestically or in the way of business, or when i was depressed in spirits or anxious about affairs, i now recognize that i used to fall back for support upon this curious relation i felt myself to be in to this fundamental cosmical _it_. it was on my side, or i was on its side, however you please to term it, in the particular trouble, and it always strengthened me and seemed to give me endless vitality to feel its underlying and supporting presence. in fact, it was an unfailing fountain of living justice, truth, and strength, to which i instinctively turned at times of weakness, and it always brought me out. i know now that it was a personal relation i was in to it, because of late years the power of communicating with it has left me, and i am conscious of a perfectly definite loss. i used never to fail to find it when i turned to it. then came a set of years when sometimes i found it, and then again i would be wholly unable to make connection with it. i remember many occasions on which at night in bed, i would be unable to get to sleep on account of worry. i turned this way and that in the darkness, and groped mentally for the familiar sense of that higher mind of my mind which had always seemed to be close at hand as it were, closing the passage, and yielding support, but there was no electric current. a blank was there instead of _it_: i couldn't find anything. now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting into connection with it has entirely left me; and i have to confess that a great help has gone out of my life. life has become curiously dead and indifferent; and i can now see that my old experience was probably exactly the same thing as the prayers of the orthodox, only i did not call them by that name. what i have spoken of as 'it' was practically not spencer's unknowable, but just my own instinctive and individual god, whom i relied upon for higher sympathy, but whom somehow i have lost." nothing is more common in the pages of religious biography than the way in which seasons of lively and of difficult faith are described as alternating. probably every religious person has the recollection of particular crises in which a directer vision of the truth, a direct perception, perhaps, of a living god's existence, swept in and overwhelmed the languor of the more ordinary belief. in james russell lowell's correspondence there is a brief memorandum of an experience of this kind:-- "i had a revelation last friday evening. i was at mary's, and happening to say something of the presence of spirits (of whom, i said, i was often dimly aware), mr. putnam entered into an argument with me on spiritual matters. as i was speaking, the whole system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming from the abyss. i never before so clearly felt the spirit of god in me and around me. the whole room seemed to me full of god. the air seemed to waver to and fro with the presence of something i knew not what. i spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. i cannot tell you what this revelation was. i have not yet studied it enough. but i shall perfect it one day, and then you shall hear it and acknowledge its grandeur."( ) here is a longer and more developed experience from a manuscript communication by a clergyman,--i take it from starbuck's manuscript collection:-- "i remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hilltop, where my soul opened out, as it were, into the infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer. it was deep calling unto deep,--the deep that my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. i stood alone with him who had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. i did not seek him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with his. the ordinary sense of things around me faded. for the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and exaltation remained. it is impossible fully to describe the experience. it was like the effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener conscious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards, and almost bursting with its own emotion. the perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. the darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. i could not any more have doubted that _he_ was there than that i was. indeed, i felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two. "my highest faith in god and truest idea of him were then born in me. i have stood upon the mount of vision since, and felt the eternal round about me. but never since has there come quite the same stirring of the heart. then, if ever, i believe, i stood face to face with god, and was born anew of his spirit. there was, as i recall it, no sudden change of thought or of belief, except that my early crude conception had, as it were, burst into flower. there was no destruction of the old, but a rapid, wonderful unfolding. since that time no discussion that i have heard of the proofs of god's existence has been able to shake my faith. having once felt the presence of god's spirit, i have never lost it again for long. my most assuring evidence of his existence is deeply rooted in that hour of vision, in the memory of that supreme experience, and in the conviction, gained from reading and reflection, that something the same has come to all who have found god. i am aware that it may justly be called mystical. i am not enough acquainted with philosophy to defend it from that or any other charge. i feel that in writing of it i have overlaid it with words rather than put it clearly to your thought. but, such as it is, i have described it as carefully as i now am able to do." here is another document, even more definite in character, which, the writer being a swiss, i translate from the french original.( ) "i was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training. we had come the day before from sixt to trient by buet. i felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my state of mind was equally healthy. i had had at forlaz good news from home; i was subject to no anxiety, either near or remote, for we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of uncertainty about the road we should follow. i can best describe the condition in which i was by calling it a state of equilibrium. when all at once i experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, i felt the presence of god--i tell of the thing just as i was conscious of it--as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether. the throb of emotion was so violent that i could barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. i then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes overflowed with tears. i thanked god that in the course of my life he had taught me to know him, that he sustained my life and took pity both on the insignificant creature and on the sinner that i was. i begged him ardently that my life might be consecrated to the doing of his will. i felt his reply, which was that i should do his will from day to day, in humility and poverty, leaving him, the almighty god, to be judge of whether i should some time be called to bear witness more conspicuously. then, slowly, the ecstasy left my heart; that is, i felt that god had withdrawn the communion which he had granted, and i was able to walk on, but very slowly, so strongly was i still possessed by the interior emotion. besides, i had wept uninterruptedly for several minutes, my eyes were swollen, and i did not wish my companions to see me. the state of ecstasy may have lasted four or five minutes, although it seemed at the time to last much longer. my comrades waited for me ten minutes at the cross of barine, but i took about twenty-five or thirty minutes to join them, for as well as i can remember, they said that i had kept them back for about half an hour. the impression had been so profound that in climbing slowly the slope i asked myself if it were possible that moses on sinai could have had a more intimate communication with god. i think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine god had neither form, color, odor, nor taste; moreover, that the feeling of his presence was accompanied with no determinate localization. it was rather as if my personality had been transformed by the presence of a _spiritual spirit_. but the more i seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the more i feel the impossibility of describing the thing by any of our usual images. at bottom the expression most apt to render what i felt is this: god was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him." the adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often, to states that are of brief duration. of course such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture i shall have much to say. meanwhile here is the abridged record of another mystical or semi-mystical experience, in a mind evidently framed by nature for ardent piety. i owe it to starbuck's collection. the lady who gives the account is the daughter of a man well known in his time as a writer against christianity. the suddenness of her conversion shows well how native the sense of god's presence must be to certain minds. she relates that she was brought up in entire ignorance of christian doctrine, but, when in germany, after being talked to by christian friends, she read the bible and prayed, and finally the plan of salvation flashed upon her like a stream of light. "to this day," she writes, "i cannot understand dallying with religion and the commands of god. the very instant i heard my father's cry calling unto me, my heart bounded in recognition. i ran, i stretched forth my arms, i cried aloud, 'here, here i am, my father.' oh, happy child, what should i do? 'love me,' answered my god. 'i do, i do,' i cried passionately. 'come unto me,' called my father. 'i will,' my heart panted. did i stop to ask a single question? not one. it never occurred to me to ask whether i was good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what i thought of his church, or ... to wait until i should be satisfied. satisfied! i was satisfied. had i not found my god and my father? did he not love me? had he not called me? was there not a church into which i might enter?... since then i have had direct answers to prayer--so significant as to be almost like talking with god and hearing his answer. the idea of god's reality has never left me for one moment." here is still another case, the writer being a man aged twenty-seven, in which the experience, probably almost as characteristic, is less vividly described:-- "i have on a number of occasions felt that i had enjoyed a period of intimate communion with the divine. these meetings came unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the temporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and cover my life.... once it was when from the summit of a high mountain i looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again from the same point when i could see nothing beneath me but a boundless expanse of white cloud, on the blown surface of which a few high peaks, including the one i was on, seemed plunging about as if they were dragging their anchors. what i felt on these occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by an illumination which revealed to me a deeper significance than i had been wont to attach to life. it is in this that i find my justification for saying that i have enjoyed communication with god. of course the absence of such a being as this would be chaos. i cannot conceive of life without its presence." of the more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of god's presence the following sample from professor starbuck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea. it is from a man aged forty-nine,--probably thousands of unpretending christians would write an almost identical account. "god is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. i feel his presence positively, and the more as i live in closer harmony with his laws as written in my body and mind. i feel him in the sunshine or rain; and awe mingled with a delicious restfulness most nearly describes my feelings. i talk to him as to a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful. he answers me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken that it seems my outer ear must have carried the tone, but generally in strong mental impressions. usually a text of scripture, unfolding some new view of him and his love for me, and care for my safety. i could give hundreds of instances, in school matters, social problems, financial difficulties, etc. that he is mine and i am his never leaves me, it is an abiding joy. without it life would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste." i subjoin some more examples from writers of different ages and sexes. they are also from professor starbuck's collection, and their number might be greatly multiplied. the first is from a man twenty-seven years old:-- "god is quite real to me. i talk to him and often get answers. thoughts sudden and distinct from any i have been entertaining come to my mind after asking god for his direction. something over a year ago i was for some weeks in the direst perplexity. when the trouble first appeared before me i was dazed, but before long (two or three hours) i could hear distinctly a passage of scripture: 'my grace is sufficient for thee.' every time my thoughts turned to the trouble i could hear this quotation. i don't think i ever doubted the existence of god, or had him drop out of my consciousness. god has frequently stepped into my affairs very perceptibly, and i feel that he directs many little details all the time. but on two or three occasions he has ordered ways for me very contrary to my ambitions and plans." another statement (none the less valuable psychologically for being so decidedly childish) is that of a boy of seventeen:-- "sometimes as i go to church, i sit down, join in the service, and before i go out i feel as if god was with me, right side of me, singing and reading the psalms with me.... and then again i feel as if i could sit beside him, and put my arms around him, kiss him, etc. when i am taking holy communion at the altar, i try to get with him and generally feel his presence." i let a few other cases follow at random:-- "god surrounds me like the physical atmosphere. he is closer to me than my own breath. in him literally i live and move and have my being."-- "there are times when i seem to stand, in his very presence, to talk with him. answers to prayer have come, sometimes direct and overwhelming in their revelation of his presence and powers. there are times when god seems far off, but this is always my own fault."-- "i have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time soothing, which hovers over me. sometimes it seems to enwrap me with sustaining arms." such is the human ontological imagination, and such is the convincingness of what it brings to birth. unpicturable beings are realized, and realized with an intensity almost like that of an hallucination. they determine our vital attitude as decisively as the vital attitude of lovers is determined by the habitual sense, by which each is haunted, of the other being in the world. a lover has notoriously this sense of the continuous being of his idol, even when his attention is addressed to other matters and he no longer represents her features. he cannot forget her; she uninterruptedly affects him through and through. i spoke of the convincingness of these feelings of reality, and i must dwell a moment longer on that point. they are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are. one may indeed be entirely without them; probably more than one of you here present is without them in any marked degree; but if you do have them, and have them at all strongly, the probability is that you cannot help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth, as revelations of a kind of reality which no adverse argument, however unanswerable by you in words, can expel from your belief. the opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes spoken of as _rationalism_. rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds. such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: ( ) definitely statable abstract principles; ( ) definite facts of sensation; ( ) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and ( ) definite inferences logically drawn. vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in the rationalistic system, which on its positive side is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for not only are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is its result. nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. it is the part that has the _prestige_ undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. but it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. if you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely _knows_ that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it. this inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it. that vast literature of proofs of god's existence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than gather dust in libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of god it argued for. whatever sort of a being god may be, we _know_ to-day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of "contrivances" intended to make manifest his "glory" in which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves. i defy any of you here fully to account for your persuasion that if a god exist he must be a more cosmic and tragic personage than that being. the truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion. then, indeed, our intuitions and our reason work together, and great world-ruling systems, like that of the buddhist or of the catholic philosophy, may grow up. our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. the unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. instinct leads, intelligence does but follow. if a person feels the presence of a living god after the fashion shown by my quotations, your critical arguments, be they never so superior, will vainly set themselves to change his faith. please observe, however, that i do not yet say that it is _better_ that the subconscious and non-rational should thus hold primacy in the religious realm. i confine myself to simply pointing out that they do so hold it as a matter of fact. so much for our sense of the reality of the religious objects. let me now say a brief word more about the attitudes they characteristically awaken. we have already agreed that they are _solemn_; and we have seen reason to think that the most distinctive of them is the sort of joy which may result in extreme cases from absolute self-surrender. the sense of the kind of object to which the surrender is made has much to do with determining the precise complexion of the joy; and the whole phenomenon is more complex than any simple formula allows. in the literature of the subject, sadness and gladness have each been emphasized in turn. the ancient saying that the first maker of the gods was fear receives voluminous corroboration from every age of religious history; but none the less does religious history show the part which joy has evermore tended to play. sometimes the joy has been primary; sometimes secondary, being the gladness of deliverance from the fear. this latter state of things, being the more complex, is also the more complete; and as we proceed, i think we shall have abundant reason for refusing to leave out either the sadness or the gladness, if we look at religion with the breadth of view which it demands. stated in the completest possible terms, a man's religion involves both moods of contraction and moods of expansion of his being. but the quantitative mixture and order of these moods vary so much from one age of the world, from one system of thought, and from one individual to another, that you may insist either on the dread and the submission, or on the peace and the freedom as the essence of the matter, and still remain materially within the limits of the truth. the constitutionally sombre and the constitutionally sanguine onlooker are bound to emphasize opposite aspects of what lies before their eyes. the constitutionally sombre religious person makes even of his religious peace a very sober thing. danger still hovers in the air about it. flexion and contraction are not wholly checked. it were sparrowlike and childish after our deliverance to explode into twittering laughter and caper- cutting, and utterly to forget the imminent hawk on bough. lie low, rather, lie low; for you are in the hands of a living god. in the book of job, for example, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of god is the exclusive burden of its author's mind. "it is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?--deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" there is an astringent relish about the truth of this conviction which some men can feel, and which for them is as near an approach as can be made to the feeling of religious joy. "in job," says that coldly truthful writer, the author of mark rutherford, "god reminds us that man is not the measure of his creation. the world is immense, constructed on no plan or theory which the intellect of man can grasp. it is _transcendent_ everywhere. this is the burden of every verse, and is the secret, if there be one, of the poem. sufficient or insufficient, there is nothing more.... god is great, we know not his ways. he takes from us all we have, but yet if we possess our souls in patience, we _may_ pass the valley of the shadow, and come out in sunlight again. we may or we may not!... what more have we to say now than god said from the whirlwind over two thousand five hundred years ago?"( ) if we turn to the sanguine onlooker, on the other hand, we find that deliverance is felt as incomplete unless the burden be altogether overcome and the danger forgotten. such onlookers give us definitions that seem to the sombre minds of whom we have just been speaking to leave out all the solemnity that makes religious peace so different from merely animal joys. in the opinion of some writers an attitude might be called religious, though no touch were left in it of sacrifice or submission, no tendency to flexion, no bowing of the head. any "habitual and regulated admiration," says professor j. r. seeley,( ) "is worthy to be called a religion"; and accordingly he thinks that our music, our science, and our so-called "civilization," as these things are now organized and admiringly believed in, form the more genuine religions of our time. certainly the unhesitating and unreasoning way in which we feel that we must inflict our civilization upon "lower" races, by means of hotchkiss guns, etc., reminds one of nothing so much as of the early spirit of islam spreading its religion by the sword. in my last lecture i quoted to you the ultra-radical opinion of mr. havelock ellis, that laughter of any sort may be considered a religious exercise, for it bears witness to the soul's emancipation. i quoted this opinion in order to deny its adequacy. but we must now settle our scores more carefully with this whole optimistic way of thinking. it is far too complex to be decided off-hand. i propose accordingly that we make of religious optimism the theme of the next two lectures. lectures iv and v. the religion of healthy-mindedness. if we were to ask the question: "what is human life's chief concern?" one of the answers we should receive would be: "it is happiness." how to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure. the hedonistic school in ethics deduces the moral life wholly from the experiences of happiness and unhappiness which different kinds of conduct bring; and, even more in the religious life than in the moral life, happiness and unhappiness seem to be the poles round which the interest revolves. we need not go so far as to say with the author whom i lately quoted that any persistent enthusiasm is, as such, religion, nor need we call mere laughter a religious exercise; but we must admit that any persistent enjoyment may _produce_ the sort of religion which consists in a grateful admiration of the gift of so happy an existence; and we must also acknowledge that the more complex ways of experiencing religion are new manners of producing happiness, wonderful inner paths to a supernatural kind of happiness, when the first gift of natural existence is unhappy, as it so often proves itself to be. with such relations between religion and happiness, it is perhaps not surprising that men come to regard the happiness which a religious belief affords as a proof of its truth. if a creed makes a man feel happy, he almost inevitably adopts it. such a belief ought to be true; therefore it is true--such, rightly or wrongly, is one of the "immediate inferences" of the religious logic used by ordinary men. "the near presence of god's spirit," says a german writer,( ) "may be experienced in its reality--indeed _only_ experienced. and the mark by which the spirit's existence and nearness are made irrefutably clear to those who have ever had the experience is the utterly incomparable _feeling of happiness_ which is connected with the nearness, and which is therefore not only a possible and altogether proper feeling for us to have here below, but is the best and most indispensable proof of god's reality. no other proof is equally convincing, and therefore happiness is the point from which every efficacious new theology should start." in the hour immediately before us, i shall invite you to consider the simpler kinds of religious happiness, leaving the more complex sorts to be treated on a later day. in many persons, happiness is congenital and irreclaimable. "cosmic emotion" inevitably takes in them the form of enthusiasm and freedom. i speak not only of those who are animally happy. i mean those who, when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, positively refuse to feel it, as if it were something mean and wrong. we find such persons in every age, passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in spite of the sinister theologies into which they may be born. from the outset their religion is one of union with the divine. the heretics who went before the reformation are lavishly accused by the church writers of antinomian practices, just as the first christians were accused of indulgence in orgies by the romans. it is probable that there never has been a century in which the deliberate refusal to think ill of life has not been idealized by a sufficient number of persons to form sects, open or secret, who claimed all natural things to be permitted. saint augustine's maxim, _dilige et quod vis fac_,--if you but love [god], you may do as you incline,--is morally one of the profoundest of observations, yet it is pregnant, for such persons, with passports beyond the bounds of conventional morality. according to their characters they have been refined or gross; but their belief has been at all times systematic enough to constitute a definite religious attitude. god was for them a giver of freedom, and the sting of evil was overcome. saint francis and his immediate disciples were, on the whole, of this company of spirits, of which there are of course infinite varieties. rousseau in the earlier years of his writing, diderot, b. de saint pierre, and many of the leaders of the eighteenth century anti-christian movement were of this optimistic type. they owed their influence to a certain authoritativeness in their feeling that nature, if you will only trust her sufficiently, is absolutely good. it is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often feminine than masculine, and young than old, whose soul is of this sky- blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or god, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden. "god has two families of children on this earth," says francis w. newman,( ) "_the once-born_ and _the twice-born_," and the once- born he describes as follows: "they see god, not as a strict judge, not as a glorious potentate; but as the animating spirit of a beautiful harmonious world, beneficent and kind, merciful as well as pure. the same characters generally have no metaphysical tendencies: they do not look back into themselves. hence they are not distressed by their own imperfections: yet it would be absurd to call them self-righteous; for they hardly think of themselves _at all_. this childlike quality of their nature makes the opening of religion very happy to them: for they no more shrink from god, than a child from an emperor, before whom the parent trembles: in fact, they have no vivid conception of _any_ of the qualities in which the severer majesty of god consists.( ) he is to them the impersonation of kindness and beauty. they read his character, not in the disordered world of man, but in romantic and harmonious nature. of human sin they know perhaps little in their own hearts and not very much in the world; and human suffering does but melt them to tenderness. thus, when they approach god, no inward disturbance ensues; and without being as yet spiritual, they have a certain complacency and perhaps romantic sense of excitement in their simple worship." in the romish church such characters find a more congenial soil to grow in than in protestantism, whose fashions of feeling have been set by minds of a decidedly pessimistic order. but even in protestantism they have been abundant enough; and in its recent "liberal" developments of unitarianism and latitudinarianism generally, minds of this order have played and still are playing leading and constructive parts. emerson himself is an admirable example. theodore parker is another,--here are a couple of characteristic passages from parker's correspondence.( ) "orthodox scholars say: 'in the heathen classics you find no consciousness of sin.' it is very true--god be thanked for it. they were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth, cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled and got rid of the deformities, but they were not conscious of 'enmity against god,' and didn't sit down and whine and groan against non- existent evil. i have done wrong things enough in my life, and do them now; i miss the mark, draw bow, and try again. but i am not conscious of hating god, or man, or right, or love, and i know there is much 'health in me'; and in my body, even now, there dwelleth many a good thing, spite of consumption and saint paul." in another letter parker writes: "i have swum in clear sweet waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse and something rough, it was never too strong to be breasted and swum through. from the days of earliest boyhood, when i went stumbling through the grass,... up to the gray-bearded manhood of this time, there is none but has left me honey in the hive of memory that i now feed on for present delight. when i recall the years ... i am filled with a sense of sweetness and wonder that such little things can make a mortal so exceedingly rich. but i must confess that the chiefest of all my delights is still the religious." another good expression of the "once-born" type of consciousness, developing straight and natural, with no element of morbid compunction or crisis, is contained in the answer of dr. edward everett hale, the eminent unitarian preacher and writer, to one of dr. starbuck's circulars. i quote a part of it:-- "i observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation of the hero. i ought to speak of these, to say that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as i was, into a family where the religion is simple and rational; who is trained in the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, what these religious or irreligious struggles are. i always knew god loved me, and i was always grateful to him for the world he placed me in. i always liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestions to me.... i can remember perfectly that when i was coming to manhood, the half- philosophical novels of the time had a deal to say about the young men and maidens who were facing the 'problem of life.' i had no idea whatever what the problem of life was. to live with all my might seemed to me easy; to learn where there was so much to learn seemed pleasant and almost of course; to lend a hand, if one had a chance, natural; and if one did this, why, he enjoyed life because he could not help it, and without proving to himself that he ought to enjoy it.... a child who is early taught that he is god's child, that he may live and move and have his being in god, and that he has, therefore, infinite strength at hand for the conquering of any difficulty, will take life more easily, and probably will make more of it, than one who is told that he is born the child of wrath and wholly incapable of good."( ) one can but recognize in such writers as these the presence of a temperament organically weighted on the side of cheer and fatally forbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperament linger, over the darker aspects of the universe. in some individuals optimism may become quasi-pathological. the capacity for even a transient sadness or a momentary humility seems cut off from them as by a kind of congenital anæsthesia.( ) the supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course walt whitman. "his favorite occupation," writes his disciple, dr. bucke, "seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. it was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people. until i knew the man," continues dr. bucke, "it had not occurred to me that any one could derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. he was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; liked all sorts. i think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as walt whitman. all natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. all sights and sounds seemed to please him. he appeared to like (and i believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw (though i never knew him to say that he liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. i never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. he always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and i often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. when i first knew [him], i used to think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. it did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. after long observation, however, i satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. he never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world's history, or against any trades or occupations--not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. he never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. he never swore. he could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. he never exhibited fear, and i do not believe he ever felt it."( ) walt whitman owes his importance in literature to the systematic expulsion from his writings of all contractile elements. the only sentiments he allowed himself to express were of the expansive order; and he expressed these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously conceited individual might so express them, but vicariously for all men, so that a passionate and mystic ontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things are divinely good. thus it has come about that many persons to-day regard walt whitman as the restorer of the eternal natural religion. he has infected them with his own love of comrades, with his own gladness that he and they exist. societies are actually formed for his cult; a periodical organ exists for its propagation, in which the lines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy are already beginning to be drawn;( ) hymns are written by others in his peculiar prosody; and he is even explicitly compared with the founder of the christian religion, not altogether to the advantage of the latter. whitman is often spoken of as a "pagan." the word nowadays means sometimes the mere natural animal man without a sense of sin; sometimes it means a greek or roman with his own peculiar religious consciousness. in neither of these senses does it fitly define this poet. he is more than your mere animal man who has not tasted of the tree of good and evil. he is aware enough of sin for a swagger to be present in his indifference towards it, a conscious pride in his freedom from flexions and contractions, which your genuine pagan in the first sense of the word would never show. "i could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self- contained, i stand and look at them long and long; they do not sweat and whine about their condition. they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."( ) no natural pagan could have written these well-known lines. but on the other hand whitman is less than a greek or roman; for their consciousness, even in homeric times, was full to the brim of the sad mortality of this sunlit world, and such a consciousness walt whitman resolutely refuses to adopt. when, for example, achilles, about to slay lycaon, priam's young son, hears him sue for mercy, he stops to say:-- "ah, friend, thou too must die: why thus lamentest thou? patroclos too is dead, who was better far than thou.... over me too hang death and forceful fate. there cometh morn or eve or some noonday when my life too some man shall take in battle, whether with spear he smite, or arrow from the string."( ) then achilles savagely severs the poor boy's neck with his sword, heaves him by the foot into the scamander, and calls to the fishes of the river to eat the white fat of lycaon. just as here the cruelty and the sympathy each ring true, and do not mix or interfere with one another, so did the greeks and romans keep all their sadnesses and gladnesses unmingled and entire. instinctive good they did not reckon sin; nor had they any such desire to save the credit of the universe as to make them insist, as so many of _us_ insist, that what immediately appears as evil must be "good in the making," or something equally ingenious. good was good, and bad just bad, for the earlier greeks. they neither denied the ills of nature,--walt whitman's verse, "what is called good is perfect and what is called bad is just as perfect," would have been mere silliness to them,--nor did they, in order to escape from those ills, invent "another and a better world" of the imagination, in which, along with the ills, the innocent goods of sense would also find no place. this integrity of the instinctive reactions, this freedom from all moral sophistry and strain, gives a pathetic dignity to ancient pagan feeling. and this quality whitman's outpourings have not got. his optimism is too voluntary and defiant; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected twist,( ) and this diminishes its effect on many readers who yet are well disposed towards optimism, and on the whole quite willing to admit that in important respects whitman is of the genuine lineage of the prophets. ------------------------------------- if, then, we give the name of healthy-mindedness to the tendency which looks on all things and sees that they are good, we find that we must distinguish between a more involuntary and a more voluntary or systematic way of being healthy-minded. in its involuntary variety, healthy- mindedness is a way of feeling happy about things immediately. in its systematical variety, it is an abstract way of conceiving things as good. every abstract way of conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as their essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects. systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from its field of vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this might seem a difficult feat to perform for one who is intellectually sincere with himself and honest about facts, a little reflection shows that the situation is too complex to lie open to so simple a criticism. in the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state, has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturbance. when happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. to the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. he must ignore it; and to the bystander he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up. but more than this: the hushing of it up may, in a perfectly candid and honest mind, grow into a deliberate religious policy, or _parti pris_. much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. it can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its sting so often departs and turns into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully, that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to many of the facts that seem at first to disconcert his peace, to adopt this way of escape. refuse to admit their badness; despise their power; ignore their presence; turn your attention the other way; and so far as you yourself are concerned at any rate, though the facts may still exist, their evil character exists no longer. since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern. the deliberate adoption of an optimistic turn of mind thus makes its entrance into philosophy. and once in, it is hard to trace its lawful bounds. not only does the human instinct for happiness, bent on self- protection by ignoring, keep working in its favor, but higher inner ideals have weighty words to say. the attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. what can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered? what is more injurious to others? what less helpful as a way out of the difficulty? it but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. at all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance. but it is impossible to carry on this discipline in the subjective sphere without zealously emphasizing the brighter and minimizing the darker aspects of the objective sphere of things at the same time. and thus our resolution not to indulge in misery, beginning at a comparatively small point within ourselves, may not stop until it has brought the entire frame of reality under a systematic conception optimistic enough to be congenial with its needs. in all this i say nothing of any mystical insight or persuasion that the total frame of things absolutely must be good. such mystical persuasion plays an enormous part in the history of the religious consciousness, and we must look at it later with some care. but we need not go so far at present. more ordinary non-mystical conditions of rapture suffice for my immediate contention. all invasive moral states and passionate enthusiasms make one feelingless to evil in some direction. the common penalties cease to deter the patriot, the usual prudences are flung by the lover to the winds. when the passion is extreme, suffering may actually be gloried in, provided it be for the ideal cause, death may lose its sting, the grave its victory. in these states, the ordinary contrast of good and ill seems to be swallowed up in a higher denomination, an omnipotent excitement which engulfs the evil, and which the human being welcomes as the crowning experience of his life. this, he says, is truly to live, and i exult in the heroic opportunity and adventure. the systematic cultivation of healthy-mindedness as a religious attitude is therefore consonant with important currents in human nature, and is anything but absurd. in fact, we all do cultivate it more or less, even when our professed theology should in consistency forbid it. we divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughter- houses and indecencies without end on which our life is founded are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer and cleaner and better than the world that really is.( ) the advance of liberalism, so-called, in christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related. we have now whole congregations whose preachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem devoted rather to making little of it. they ignore, or even deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on the depravity of man. they look at the continual preoccupation of the old-fashioned christian with the salvation of his soul as something sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and "muscular" attitude, which to our forefathers would have seemed purely heathen, has become in their eyes an ideal element of christian character. i am not asking whether or not they are right, i am only pointing out the change. the persons to whom i refer have still retained for the most part their nominal connection with christianity, in spite of their discarding of its more pessimistic theological elements. but in that "theory of evolution" which, gathering momentum for a century, has within the past twenty-five years swept so rapidly over europe and america, we see the ground laid for a new sort of religion of nature, which has entirely displaced christianity from the thought of a large part of our generation. the idea of a universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of general meliorism and progress which fits the religious needs of the healthy-minded so well that it seems almost as if it might have been created for their use. accordingly we find "evolutionism" interpreted thus optimistically and embraced as a substitute for the religion they were born in, by a multitude of our contemporaries who have either been trained scientifically, or been fond of reading popular science, and who had already begun to be inwardly dissatisfied with what seemed to them the harshness and irrationality of the orthodox christian scheme. as examples are better than descriptions, i will quote a document received in answer to professor starbuck's circular of questions. the writer's state of mind may by courtesy be called a religion, for it is his reaction on the whole nature of things, it is systematic and reflective, and it loyally binds him to certain inner ideals. i think you will recognize in him, coarse- meated and incapable of wounded spirit as he is, a sufficiently familiar contemporary type. q. _what does religion mean to you?_ a. it means nothing; and it seems, so far as i can observe, useless to others. i am sixty-seven years of age and have resided in x. fifty years, and have been in business forty-five, consequently i have some little experience of life and men, and some women too, and i find that the most religious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. the men who do not go to church or have any religious convictions are the best. praying, singing of hymns, and sermonizing are pernicious--they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we ought to rely on ourselves. i _tee_totally disbelieve in a god. the god-idea was begotten in ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of nature. if i were to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both mentally and physically, i would just as lief, yes, rather, die with a hearty enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational pastime. as a timepiece stops, we die--there being no immortality in either case. q. _what comes before your mind corresponding to the words god, heaven, angels, etc.?_ a. nothing whatever. i am a man without a religion. these words mean so much mythic bosh. q. _have you had any experiences which appeared providential?_ a. none whatever. there is no agency of the superintending kind. a little judicious observation as well as knowledge of scientific law will convince any one of this fact. q. _what things work most strongly on your emotions?_ a. lively songs and music; pinafore instead of an oratorio. i like scott, burns, byron, longfellow, especially shakespeare, etc., etc. of songs, the star-spangled banner, america, marseillaise, and all moral and soul-stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. i greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather, and until within a few years used to walk sundays into the country, twelve miles often, with no fatigue, and bicycle forty or fifty. i have dropped the bicycle. i never go to church, but attend lectures when there are any good ones. all of my thoughts and cogitations have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for instead of doubts and fears i see things as they are, for i endeavor to adjust myself to my environment. this i regard as the deepest law. mankind is a progressive animal. i am satisfied he will have made a great advance over his present status a thousand years hence. q. _what is your notion of sin?_ a. it seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man's development not being yet advanced enough. morbidness over it increases the disease. we should think that a million of years hence equity, justice, and mental and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that no one will have any idea of evil or sin. q. _what is your temperament?_ a. nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically. sorry that nature compels us to sleep at all. if we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not look to this brother. his contentment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell and shields him from all morbid repining at his distance from the infinite. we have in him an excellent example of the optimism which may be encouraged by popular science. to my mind a current far more important and interesting religiously than that which sets in from natural science towards healthy-mindedness is that which has recently poured over america and seems to be gathering force every day,--i am ignorant what foothold it may yet have acquired in great britain,--and to which, for the sake of having a brief designation, i will give the title of the "mind-cure movement." there are various sects of this "new thought," to use another of the names by which it calls itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be neglected for my present purpose, and i will treat the movement, without apology, as if it were a simple thing. it is a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a practical side. in its gradual development during the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. it has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers,--a phenomenon never observed, i imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings. one of the doctrinal sources of mind-cure is the four gospels; another is emersonianism or new england transcendentalism; another is berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of "law" and "progress" and "development"; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of which i have recently spoken; and, finally, hinduism has contributed a strain. but the most characteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration much more direct. the leaders in this faith have had an intuitive belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states of mind.( ) their belief has in a general way been corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this experience forms to-day a mass imposing in amount. the blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have had their health restored. the moral fruits have been no less remarkable. the deliberate adoption of a healthy-minded attitude has proved possible to many who never supposed they had it in them; regeneration of character has gone on on an extensive scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to countless homes. the indirect influence of this has been great. the mind- cure principles are beginning so to pervade the air that one catches their spirit at second-hand. one hears of the "gospel of relaxation," of the "don't worry movement," of people who repeat to themselves, "youth, health, vigor!" when dressing in the morning, as their motto for the day. complaints of the weather are getting to be forbidden in many households; and more and more people are recognizing it to be bad form to speak of disagreeable sensations, or to make much of the ordinary inconveniences and ailments of life. these general tonic effects on public opinion would be good even if the more striking results were non-existent. but the latter abound so that we can afford to overlook the innumerable failures and self-deceptions that are mixed in with them (for in everything human failure is a matter of course), and we can also overlook the verbiage of a good deal of the mind-cure literature, some of which is so moonstruck with optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible to read it at all. the plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been due to practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of character of the american people has never been better shown than by the fact that this, their only decidedly original contribution to the systematic philosophy of life, should be so intimately knit up with concrete therapeutics. to the importance of mind-cure the medical and clerical professions in the united states are beginning, though with much recalcitrancy and protesting, to open their eyes. it is evidently bound to develop still farther, both speculatively and practically, and its latest writers are far and away the ablest of the group.( ) it matters nothing that, just as there are hosts of persons who cannot pray, so there are greater hosts who cannot by any possibility be influenced by the mind-curers' ideas. for our immediate purpose, the important point is that so large a number should exist who _can_ be so influenced. they form a psychic type to be studied with respect.( ) to come now to a little closer quarters with their creed. the fundamental pillar on which it rests is nothing more than the general basis of all religious experience, the fact that man has a dual nature, and is connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and a profounder sphere, in either of which he may learn to live more habitually. the shallower and lower sphere is that of the fleshly sensations, instincts, and desires, of egotism, doubt, and the lower personal interests. but whereas christian theology has always considered _frowardness_ to be the essential vice of this part of human nature, the mind-curers say that the mark of the beast in it is _fear_; and this is what gives such an entirely new religious turn to their persuasion. "fear," to quote a writer of the school, "has had its uses in the evolutionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of forethought in most animals; but that it should remain any part of the mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. i find that the fear element of forethought is not stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom duty and attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and deterrent. as soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue. to assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its expressions, i have coined the word _fearthought_ to stand for the unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined the word 'worry' as _fearthought in contradistinction to forethought_. i have also defined fearthought as _the self-imposed or self- permitted suggestion of inferiority_, in order to place it where it really belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable things."( ) the "misery-habit," the "martyr-habit," engendered by the prevalent "fearthought," get pungent criticism from the mind-cure writers:-- "consider for a moment the habits of life into which we are born. there are certain social conventions or customs and alleged requirements, there is a theological bias, a general view of the world. there are conservative ideas in regard to our early training, our education, marriage, and occupation in life. following close upon this, there is a long series of anticipations, namely, that we shall suffer certain children's diseases, diseases of middle life, and of old age; the thought that we shall grow old, lose our faculties, and again become childlike; while crowning all is the fear of death. then there is a long line of particular fears and trouble-bearing expectations, such, for example, as ideas associated with certain articles of food, the dread of the east wind, the terrors of hot weather, the aches and pains associated with cold weather, the fear of catching cold if one sits in a draught, the coming of hay-fever upon the th of august in the middle of the day, and so on through a long list of fears, dreads, worriments, anxieties, anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the whole ghostly train of fateful shapes which our fellow-men, and especially physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with bradley's 'unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.' "yet this is not all. this vast array is swelled by innumerable volunteers from daily life,--the fear of accident, the possibility of calamity, the loss of property, the chance of robbery, of fire, or the outbreak of war. and it is not deemed sufficient to fear for ourselves. when a friend is taken ill, we must forthwith fear the worst and apprehend death. if one meets with sorrow ... sympathy means to enter into and increase the suffering."( ) "man," to quote another writer, "often has fear stamped upon him before his entrance into the outer world; he is reared in fear; all his life is passed in bondage to fear of disease and death, and thus his whole mentality becomes cramped, limited, and depressed, and his body follows its shrunken pattern and specification.... think of the millions of sensitive and responsive souls among our ancestors who have been under the dominion of such a perpetual nightmare! is it not surprising that health exists at all? nothing but the boundless divine love, exuberance, and vitality, constantly poured in, even though unconsciously to us, could in some degree neutralize such an ocean of morbidity."( ) although the disciples of the mind-cure often use christian terminology, one sees from such quotations how widely their notion of the fall of man diverges from that of ordinary christians.( ) their notion of man's higher nature is hardly less divergent, being decidedly pantheistic. the spiritual in man appears in the mind-cure philosophy as partly conscious, but chiefly subconscious; and through the subconscious part of it we are already one with the divine without any miracle of grace, or abrupt creation of a new inner man. as this view is variously expressed by different writers, we find in it traces of christian mysticism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and of the modern psychology of the subliminal self. a quotation or two will put us at the central point of view:-- "the great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in and through all. this spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all is what i call god. i care not what term you may use, be it kindly light, providence, the over-soul, omnipotence, or whatever term may be most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to the great central fact itself. god then fills the universe alone, so that all is from him and in him, and there is nothing that is outside. he is the life of our life, our very life itself. we are partakers of the life of god; and though we differ from him in that we are individualized spirits, while he is the infinite spirit, including us, as well as all else beside, yet in essence the life of god and the life of man are identically the same, and so are one. they differ not in essence or quality; they differ in degree. "the great central fact in human life is the coming into a conscious vital realization of our oneness with this infinite life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. in just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with the infinite life, and open ourselves to this divine inflow, do we actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the infinite life, do we make ourselves channels through which the infinite intelligence and power can work. in just the degree in which you realize your oneness with the infinite spirit, you will exchange dis-ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength. to recognize our own divinity, and our intimate relation to the universal, is to attach the belts of our machinery to the powerhouse of the universe. one need remain in hell no longer than one chooses to; we can rise to any heaven we ourselves choose; and when we choose so to rise, all the higher powers of the universe combine to help us heavenward."( ) let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete accounts of experience with the mind-cure religion. i have many answers from correspondents--the only difficulty is to choose. the first two whom i shall quote are my personal friends. one of them, a woman, writing as follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the infinite power, by which all mind-cure disciples are inspired. "the first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or depression is the _human sense of separateness_ from that divine energy which we call god. the soul which can feel and affirm in serene but jubilant confidence, as did the nazarene: 'i and my father are one,' has no further need of healer, or of healing. this is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine union. disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the deific breath. if one with omnipotence, how can weariness enter the consciousness, how illness assail that indomitable spark? "this possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has been abundantly proven in my own case; for my earlier life bears a record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism, with spine and lower limbs paralyzed. my thoughts were no more impure than they are to-day, although my belief in the necessity of illness was dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in the flesh, i have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years without a vacation, and can truthfully assert that i have never known a moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touch constantly with excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. for how can a conscious part of deity be sick?--since 'greater is he that is _with_ us than all that can strive against us.' " my second correspondent, also a woman, sends me the following statement:-- "life seemed difficult to me at one time. i was always breaking down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the digestive organs. i had been sent away from home in charge of doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. but i never recovered permanently till this new thought took possession of me. "i think that the one thing which impressed me most was learning the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental touch (this word is to me very expressive) with that essence of life which permeates all and which we call god. this is almost unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves _actually_, that is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepest consciousness of our real selves or of god in us, for illumination from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and invigoration without. when you do this consciously, realizing that to turn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence of god or your divine self, you soon discover the unreality of the objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which have engrossed you without. "i have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude for bodily health _as such_, because that comes of itself, as an incidental result, and cannot be found by any special mental act or desire to have it, beyond that general attitude of mind i have referred to above. that which we usually make the object of life, those outer things we are all so wildly seeking, which we so often live and die for, but which then do not give us peace and happiness, they should all come of themselves as accessory, and as the mere outcome or natural result of a far higher life sunk deep in the bosom of the spirit. this life is the real seeking of the kingdom of god, the desire for his supremacy in our hearts, so that all else comes as that which shall be 'added unto you'--as quite incidental and as a surprise to us, perhaps; and yet it is the proof of the reality of the perfect poise in the very centre of our being. "when i say that we commonly make the object of our life that which we should not work for primarily, i mean many things which the world considers praiseworthy and excellent, such as success in business, fame as author or artist, physician or lawyer, or renown in philanthropic undertakings. such things should be results, not objects. i would also include pleasures of many kinds which seem harmless and good at the time, and are pursued because many accept them--i mean conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in their various development, these being mostly approved by the masses, although they may be unreal, and even unhealthy superfluities." here is another case, more concrete, also that of a woman. i read you these cases without comment,--they express so many varieties of the state of mind we are studying. "i had been a sufferer from my childhood till my fortieth year. [details of ill-health are given which i omit.] i had been in vermont several months hoping for good from the change of air, but steadily growing weaker, when one day during the latter part of october, while resting in the afternoon, i suddenly heard as it were these words: 'you will be healed and do a work you never dreamed of.' these words were impressed upon my mind with such power i said at once that only god could have put them there. i believed them in spite of myself and of my suffering and weakness, which continued until christmas, when i returned to boston. within two days a young friend offered to take me to a mental healer (this was january , ). the healer said: 'there is nothing but mind; we are expressions of the one mind; body is only a mortal belief; as a man thinketh so is he.' i could not accept all she said, but i translated all that was there for _me_ in this way: 'there is nothing but god; i am created by him, and am absolutely dependent upon him; mind is given me to use; and by just so much of it as i will put upon the thought of right action in body i shall be lifted out of bondage to my ignorance and fear and past experience.' that day i commenced accordingly to take a little of every food provided for the family, constantly saying to myself: 'the power that created the stomach must take care of what i have eaten.' by holding these suggestions through the evening i went to bed and fell asleep, saying: 'i am soul, spirit, just one with god's thought of me,' and slept all night without waking, for the first time in several years [the distress-turns had usually recurred about two o'clock in the night]. i felt the next day like an escaped prisoner, and believed i had found the secret that would in time give me perfect health. within ten days i was able to eat anything provided for others, and after two weeks i began to have my own positive mental suggestions of truth, which were to me like stepping-stones. i will note a few of them; they came about two weeks apart. " st. i am soul, therefore it is well with me. " d. i am soul, therefore i _am_ well. " d. a sort of inner vision of myself as a four-footed beast with a protuberance on every part of my body where i had suffering, with my own face, begging me to acknowledge it as myself. i resolutely fixed my attention on being well, and refused to even look at my old self in this form. " th. again the vision of the beast far in the background, with faint voice. again refusal to acknowledge. " th. once more the vision, but only of my eyes with the longing look; and again the refusal. then came the conviction, the inner consciousness, that i was perfectly well and always had been, for i was soul, an expression of god's perfect thought. that was to me the perfect and completed separation between what i was and what i appeared to be. i succeeded in never losing sight after this of my real being, by constantly affirming this truth, and by degrees (though it took me two years of hard work to get there) _i expressed health continuously throughout my whole body_. "in my subsequent nineteen years' experience i have never known this truth to fail when i applied it, though in my ignorance i have often failed to apply it, but through my failures i have learned the simplicity and trustfulness of the little child." but i fear that i risk tiring you by so many examples, and i must lead you back to philosophic generalities again. you see already by such records of experience how impossible it is not to class mind-cure as primarily a religious movement. its doctrine of the oneness of our life with god's life is in fact quite indistinguishable from an interpretation of christ's message which in these very gifford lectures has been defended by some of your very ablest scottish religious philosophers.( ) but philosophers usually profess to give a quasi-logical explanation of the existence of evil, whereas of the general fact of evil in the world, the existence of the selfish, suffering, timorous finite consciousness, the mind-curers, so far as i am acquainted with them, profess to give no speculative explanation. evil is empirically there for them as it is for everybody, but the practical point of view predominates, and it would ill agree with the spirit of their system to spend time in worrying over it as a "mystery" or "problem," or in "laying to heart" the lesson of its experience, after the manner of the evangelicals. don't reason about it, as dante says, but give a glance and pass beyond! it is avidhya, ignorance! something merely to be outgrown and left behind, transcended and forgotten. christian science so-called, the sect of mrs. eddy, is the most radical branch of mind-cure in its dealings with evil. for it evil is simply a _lie_, and any one who mentions it is a liar. the optimistic ideal of duty forbids us to pay it the compliment even of explicit attention. of course, as our next lectures will show us, this is a bad speculative omission, but it is intimately linked with the practical merits of the system we are examining. why regret a philosophy of evil, a mind-curer would ask us, if i can put you in possession of a life of good? after all, it is the life that tells; and mind-cure has developed a living system of mental hygiene which may well claim to have thrown all previous literature of the _diätetik der seele_ into the shade. this system is wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism: "pessimism leads to weakness. optimism leads to power." "thoughts are things," as one of the most vigorous mind-cure writers prints in bold type at the bottom of each of his pages; and if your thoughts are of health, youth, vigor, and success, before you know it these things will also be your outward portion. no one can fail of the regenerative influence of optimistic thinking, pertinaciously pursued. every man owns indefeasibly this inlet to the divine. fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic modes of thought, are inlets to destruction. most mind-curers here bring in a doctrine that thoughts are "forces," and that, by virtue of a law that like attracts like, one man's thoughts draw to themselves as allies all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. thus one gets, by one's thinking, reinforcements from elsewhere for the realization of one's desires; and the great point in the conduct of life is to get the heavenly forces on one's side by opening one's own mind to their influx. on the whole, one is struck by a psychological similarity between the mind-cure movement and the lutheran and wesleyan movements. to the believer in moralism and works, with his anxious query, "what shall i do to be saved?" luther and wesley replied: "you are saved now, if you would but believe it." and the mind-curers come with precisely similar words of emancipation. they speak, it is true, to persons for whom the conception of salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning, but who labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty. _things are wrong with them_; and "what shall i do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?" is the form of their question. and the answer is: "you _are_ well, sound, and clear already, if you did but know it." "the whole matter may be summed up in one sentence," says one of the authors whom i have already quoted, "_god is well, and so are you_. you must awaken to the knowledge of your real being." the adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large fraction of mankind is what gave force to those earlier gospels. exactly the same adequacy holds in the case of the mind-cure message, foolish as it may sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth in influence, and its therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whether it may not be destined (probably by very reason of the crudity and extravagance of many of its manifestations( )) to play a part almost as great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future as did those earlier movements in their day. ------------------------------------- but i here fear that i may begin to "jar upon the nerves" of some of the members of this academic audience. such contemporary vagaries, you may think, should hardly take so large a place in dignified gifford lectures. i can only beseech you to have patience. the whole outcome of these lectures will, i imagine, be the emphasizing to your mind of the enormous diversities which the spiritual lives of different men exhibit. their wants, their susceptibilities, and their capacities all vary and must be classed under different heads. the result is that we have really different types of religious experience; and, seeking in these lectures closer acquaintance with the healthy-minded type, we must take it where we find it in most radical form. the psychology of individual types of character has hardly begun even to be sketched as yet--our lectures may possibly serve as a crumb-like contribution to the structure. the first thing to bear in mind (especially if we ourselves belong to the clerico-academic- scientific type, the officially and conventionally "correct" type, "the deadly respectable" type, for which to ignore others is a besetting temptation) is that nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena from our notice, merely because we are incapable of taking part in anything like them ourselves. now the history of lutheran salvation by faith, of methodistic conversions, and of what i call the mind-cure movement seems to prove the existence of numerous persons in whom--at any rate at a certain stage in their development--a change of character for the better, so far from being facilitated by the rules laid down by official moralists, will take place all the more successfully if those rules be exactly reversed. official moralists advise us never to relax our strenuousness. "be vigilant, day and night," they adjure us; "hold your passive tendencies in check; shrink from no effort; keep your will like a bow always bent." but the persons i speak of find that all this conscious effort leads to nothing but failure and vexation in their hands, and only makes them two-fold more the children of hell they were before. the tense and voluntary attitude becomes in them an impossible fever and torment. their machinery refuses to run at all when the bearings are made so hot and the belts so tight. under these circumstances the way to success, as vouched for by innumerable authentic personal narrations, is by an anti-moralistic method, by the "surrender" of which i spoke in my second lecture. passivity, not activity; relaxation, not intentness, should be now the rule. give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all, and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing. this is the salvation through self- despair, the dying to be truly born, of lutheran theology, the passage into _nothing_ of which jacob behmen writes. to get to it, a critical point must usually be passed, a corner turned within one. something must give way, a native hardness must break down and liquefy; and this event (as we shall abundantly see hereafter) is frequently sudden and automatic, and leaves on the subject an impression that he has been wrought on by an external power. whatever its ultimate significance may prove to be, this is certainly one fundamental form of human experience. some say that the capacity or incapacity for it is what divides the religious from the merely moralistic character. with those who undergo it in its fullness, no criticism avails to cast doubt on its reality. they _know_; for they have actually _felt_ the higher powers, in giving up the tension of their personal will. a story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found himself at night slipping down the side of a precipice. at last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours. but finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing farewell to life, he let himself drop. he fell just six inches. if he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared. as the mother earth received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the everlasting arms receive _us_ if we confide absolutely in them, and give up the hereditary habit of relying on our personal strength, with its precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save. the mind-curers have given the widest scope to this sort of experience. they have demonstrated that a form of regeneration by relaxing, by letting go, psychologically indistinguishable from the lutheran justification by faith and the wesleyan acceptance of free grace, is within the reach of persons who have no conviction of sin and care nothing for the lutheran theology. it is but giving your little private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater self is there. the results, slow or sudden, or great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic- idealistic, or a medical-materialistic view of their ultimate causal explanation.( ) when we take up the phenomena of revivalistic conversion, we shall learn something more about all this. meanwhile i will say a brief word about the mind-curer's _methods_. they are of course largely suggestive. the suggestive influence of environment plays an enormous part in all spiritual education. but the word "suggestion," having acquired official status, is unfortunately already beginning to play in many quarters the part of a wet blanket upon investigation, being used to fend off all inquiry into the varying susceptibilities of individual cases. "suggestion" is only another name for the power of ideas, _so far as they prove efficacious over belief and conduct_. ideas efficacious over some people prove inefficacious over others. ideas efficacious at some times and in some human surroundings are not so at other times and elsewhere. the ideas of christian churches are not efficacious in the therapeutic direction to-day, whatever they may have been in earlier centuries; and when the whole question is as to why the salt has lost its savor here or gained it there, the mere blank waving of the word "suggestion" as if it were a banner gives no light. dr. goddard, whose candid psychological essay on faith cures ascribes them to nothing but ordinary suggestion, concludes by saying that "religion [and by this he seems to mean our popular christianity] has in it all there is in mental therapeutics, and has it in its best form. living up to [our religious] ideas will do anything for us that can be done." and this in spite of the actual fact that the popular christianity does absolutely _nothing_, or did nothing until mind-cure came to the rescue.( ) an idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation. the mind-cure with its gospel of healthy-mindedness has come as a revelation to many whose hearts the church christianity had left hardened. it has let loose their springs of higher life. in what can the originality of any religious movement consist, save in finding a channel, until then sealed up, through which those springs may be set free in some group of human beings? the force of personal faith, enthusiasm, and example, and above all the force of novelty, are always the prime suggestive agency in this kind of success. if mind-cure should ever become official, respectable, and intrenched, these elements of suggestive efficacy will be lost. in its acuter stages every religion must be a homeless arab of the desert. the church knows this well enough, with its everlasting inner struggle of the acute religion of the few against the chronic religion of the many, indurated into an obstructiveness worse than that which irreligion opposes to the movings of the spirit. "we may pray," says jonathan edwards, "concerning all those saints that are not lively christians, that they may either be enlivened, or taken away; if that be true that is often said by some at this day, that these cold dead saints do more hurt than natural men, and lead more souls to hell, and that it would be well for mankind if they were all dead."( ) the next condition of success is the apparent existence, in large numbers, of minds who unite healthy-mindedness with readiness for regeneration by letting go. protestantism has been too pessimistic as regards the natural man, catholicism has been too legalistic and moralistic, for either the one or the other to appeal in any generous way to the type of character formed of this peculiar mingling of elements. however few of us here present may belong to such a type, it is now evident that it forms a specific moral combination, well represented in the world. finally, mind-cure has made what in our protestant countries is an unprecedentedly great use of the subconscious life. to their reasoned advice and dogmatic assertion, its founders have added systematic exercise in passive relaxation, concentration, and meditation, and have even invoked something like hypnotic practice. i quote some passages at random:-- "the value, the potency of ideals is the great practical truth on which the new thought most strongly insists,--the development namely from within outward, from small to great.( ) consequently one's thought should be centred on the ideal outcome, even though this trust be literally like a step in the dark.( ) to attain the ability thus effectively to direct the mind, the new thought advises the practice of concentration, or in other words, the attainment of self-control. one is to learn to marshal the tendencies of the mind, so that they may be held together as a unit by the chosen ideal. to this end, one should set apart times for silent meditation, by one's self, preferably in a room where the surroundings are favorable to spiritual thought. in new thought terms, this is called 'entering the silence.' "( ) "the time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of your own thoughts about you and realizing that there and everywhere the spirit of infinite life, love, wisdom, peace, power, and plenty is guiding, keeping, protecting, leading you. this is the spirit of continual prayer.( ) one of the most intuitive men we ever met had a desk at a city office where several other gentlemen were doing business constantly, and often talking loudly. entirely undisturbed by the many various sounds about him, this self-centred faithful man would, in any moment of perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about him that he would be as fully inclosed in his own psychic aura, and thereby as effectually removed from all distractions, as though he were alone in some primeval wood. taking his difficulty with him into the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which he expected a certain answer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came, and never once through many years' experience did he find himself disappointed or misled."( ) wherein, i should like to know, does this _intrinsically_ differ from the practice of "recollection" which plays so great a part in catholic discipline? otherwise called the practice of the presence of god (and so known among ourselves, as for instance in jeremy taylor), it is thus defined by the eminent teacher alvarez de paz in his work on contemplation. "it is the recollection of god, the thought of god, which in all places and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us commune respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with desire and affection for him.... would you escape from every ill? never lose this recollection of god, neither in prosperity nor in adversity, nor on any occasion whichsoever it be. invoke not, to excuse yourself from this duty, either the difficulty or the importance of your business, for you can always remember that god sees you, that you are under his eye. if a thousand times an hour you forget him, reanimate a thousand times the recollection. if you cannot practice this exercise continuously, at least make yourself as familiar with it as possible; and, like unto those who in a rigorous winter draw near the fire as often as they can, go as often as you can to that ardent fire which will warm your soul."( ) all the external associations of the catholic discipline are of course unlike anything in mind-cure thought, but the purely spiritual part of the exercise is identical in both communions, and in both communions those who urge it write with authority, for they have evidently experienced in their own persons that whereof they tell. compare again some mind-cure utterances:-- "high, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, promoted, and strengthened. its current can be turned upon grand ideals until it forms a habit and wears a channel. by means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. to inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful. "the soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. if we _will_, we can turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and real, and there gain a residence. the assumption of states of expectancy and receptivity will attract spiritual sunshine, and it will flow in as naturally as air inclines to a vacuum.... whenever the thought is not occupied with one's daily duty or profession, it should be sent aloft into the spiritual atmosphere. there are quiet leisure moments by day, and wakeful hours at night, when this wholesome and delightful exercise may be engaged in to great advantage. if one who has never made any systematic effort to lift and control the thought- forces will, for a single month, earnestly pursue the course here suggested, he will be surprised and delighted at the result, and nothing will induce him to go back to careless, aimless, and superficial thinking. at such favorable seasons the outside world, with all its current of daily events, is barred out, and one goes into the silent sanctuary of the inner temple of soul to commune and aspire. the spiritual hearing becomes delicately sensitive, so that the 'still, small voice' is audible, the tumultuous waves of external sense are hushed, and there is a great calm. the ego gradually becomes conscious that it is face to face with the divine presence; that mighty, healing, loving, fatherly life which is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. there is soul-contact with the parent-soul, and an influx of life, love, virtue, health, and happiness from the inexhaustible fountain."( ) when we reach the subject of mysticism, you will undergo so deep an immersion into these exalted states of consciousness as to be wet all over, if i may so express myself; and the cold shiver of doubt with which this little sprinkling may affect you will have long since passed away--doubt, i mean, as to whether all such writing be not mere abstract talk and rhetoric set down _pour encourager les autres_. you will then be convinced, i trust, that these states of consciousness of "union" form a perfectly definite class of experiences, of which the soul may occasionally partake, and which certain persons may live by in a deeper sense than they live by anything else with which they have acquaintance. this brings me to a general philosophical reflection with which i should like to pass from the subject of healthy-mindedness, and close a topic which i fear is already only too long drawn out. it concerns the relation of all this systematized healthy-mindedness and mind-cure religion to scientific method and the scientific life. ------------------------------------- in a later lecture i shall have to treat explicitly of the relation of religion to science on the one hand, and to primeval savage thought on the other. there are plenty of persons to-day--"scientists" or "positivists," they are fond of calling themselves--who will tell you that religious thought is a mere survival, an atavistic reversion to a type of consciousness which humanity in its more enlightened examples has long since left behind and outgrown. if you ask them to explain themselves more fully, they will probably say that for primitive thought everything is conceived of under the form of personality. the savage thinks that things operate by personal forces, and for the sake of individual ends. for him, even external nature obeys individual needs and claims, just as if these were so many elementary powers. now science, on the other hand, these positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of the really elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-physical, which are all impersonal and general in character. nothing individual accomplishes anything in the universe save in so far as it obeys and exemplifies some universal law. should you then inquire of them by what means science has thus supplanted primitive thought, and discredited its personal way of looking at things, they would undoubtedly say it has been by the strict use of the method of experimental verification. follow out science's conceptions practically, they will say, the conceptions that ignore personality altogether, and you will always be corroborated. the world is so made that all your expectations will be experientially verified so long, and only so long, as you keep the terms from which you infer them impersonal and universal. but here we have mind-cure, with her diametrically opposite philosophy, setting up an exactly identical claim. live as if i were true, she says, and every day will practically prove you right. that the controlling energies of nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond to your individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole bodily and mental experience will verify. and that experience does largely verify these primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the mind-cure movement spreads as it does, not by proclamation and assertion simply, but by palpable experiential results. here, in the very heyday of science's authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific philosophy, and succeeds by using science's own peculiar methods and weapons. believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not impugned, but corroborated by its observation. how conversions are thus made, and converts confirmed, is evident enough from the narratives which i have quoted. i will quote yet another couple of shorter ones to give the matter a perfectly concrete turn. here is one:-- "one of my first experiences in applying my teaching was two months after i first saw the healer. i fell, spraining my right ankle, which i had done once four years before, having then had to use a crutch and elastic anklet for some months, and carefully guarding it ever since. as soon as i was on my feet i made the positive suggestion (and felt it through all my being): 'there is nothing but god, all life comes from him perfectly. i cannot be sprained or hurt, i will let him take care of it.' well, i never had a sensation in it, and i walked two miles that day." the next case not only illustrates experiment and verification, but also the element of passivity and surrender of which awhile ago i made such account. "i went into town to do some shopping one morning, and i had not been gone long before i began to feel ill. the ill feeling increased rapidly, until i had pains in all my bones, nausea and faintness, headache, all the symptoms in short that precede an attack of influenza. i thought that i was going to have the grippe, epidemic then in boston, or something worse. the mind-cure teachings that i had been listening to all the winter thereupon came into my mind, and i thought that here was an opportunity to test myself. on my way home i met a friend, and i refrained with some effort from telling her how i felt. that was the first step gained. i went to bed immediately, and my husband wished to send for the doctor. but i told him that i would rather wait until morning and see how i felt. then followed one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. "i cannot express it in any other way than to say that i did 'lie down in the stream of life and let it flow over me.' i gave up all fear of any impending disease; i was perfectly willing and obedient. there was no intellectual effort, or train of thought. my dominant idea was: 'behold the handmaid of the lord: be it unto me even as thou wilt,' and a perfect confidence that all would be well, that all _was_ well. the creative life was flowing into me every instant, and i felt myself allied with the infinite, in harmony, and full of the peace that passeth understanding. there was no place in my mind for a jarring body. i had no consciousness of time or space or persons; but only of love and happiness and faith. "i do not know how long this state lasted, nor when i fell asleep; but when i woke up in the morning, _i was well_." these are exceedingly trivial instances,( ) but in them, if we have anything at all, we have the method of experiment and verification. for the point i am driving at now, it makes no difference whether you consider the patients to be deluded victims of their imagination or not. that they seemed to _themselves_ to have been cured by the experiments tried was enough to make them converts to the system. and although it is evident that one must be of a certain mental mould to get such results (for not every one can get thus cured to his own satisfaction any more than every one can be cured by the first regular practitioner whom he calls in), yet it would surely be pedantic and over-scrupulous for those who _can_ get their savage and primitive philosophy of mental healing verified in such experimental ways as this, to give them up at word of command for more scientific therapeutics. what are we to think of all this? has science made too wide a claim? i believe that the claims of the sectarian scientist are, to say the least, premature. the experiences which we have been studying during this hour (and a great many other kinds of religious experiences are like them) plainly show the universe to be a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for. what, in the end, are all our verifications but experiences that agree with more or less isolated systems of ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? but why in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such system of ideas can be true? the obvious outcome of our total experience is that the world can be handled according to many systems of ideas, and is so handled by different men, and will each time give some characteristic kind of profit, for which he cares, to the handler, while at the same time some other kind of profit has to be omitted or postponed. science gives to all of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and succeeds in preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. religion in the shape of mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons. evidently, then, the science and the religion are both of them genuine keys for unlocking the world's treasure- house to him who can use either of them practically. just as evidently neither is exhaustive or exclusive of the other's simultaneous use. and why, after all, may not the world be so complex as to consist of many interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus approach in alternation by using different conceptions and assuming different attitudes, just as mathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial facts by geometry, by analytical geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or by quaternions, and each time come out right? on this view religion and science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to life, would be co-eternal. primitive thought, with its belief in individualized personal forces, seems at any rate as far as ever from being driven by science from the field to-day. numbers of educated people still find it the directest experimental channel by which to carry on their intercourse with reality.( ) the case of mind-cure lay so ready to my hand that i could not resist the temptation of using it to bring these last truths home to your attention, but i must content myself to-day with this very brief indication. in a later lecture the relations of religion both to science and to primitive thought will have to receive much more explicit attention. appendix (see note to p. .) case i. "my own experience is this: i had long been ill, and one of the first results of my illness, a dozen years before, had been a diplopia which deprived me of the use of my eyes for reading and writing almost entirely, while a later one had been to shut me out from exercise of any kind under penalty of immediate and great exhaustion. i had been under the care of doctors of the highest standing both in europe and america, men in whose power to help me i had had great faith, with no or ill result. then, at a time when i seemed to be rather rapidly losing ground, i heard some things that gave me interest enough in mental healing to make me try it; i had no great hope of getting any good from it--it was a _chance_ i tried, partly because my thought was interested by the new possibility it seemed to open, partly because it was the only chance i then could see. i went to x. in boston, from whom some friends of mine had got, or thought that they had got, great help; the treatment was a silent one; little was said, and that little carried no conviction to my mind; whatever influence was exerted was that of another person's thought or feeling silently projected on to my unconscious mind, into my nervous system as it were, as we sat still together. i believed from the start in the _possibility_ of such action, for i knew the power of the mind to shape, helping or hindering, the body's nerve-activities, and i thought telepathy probable, although unproved, but i had no belief in it as more than a possibility, and no strong conviction nor any mystic or religious faith connected with my thought of it that might have brought imagination strongly into play. "i sat quietly with the healer for half an hour each day, at first with no result; then, after ten days or so, i became quite suddenly and swiftly conscious of a tide of new energy rising within me, a sense of power to pass beyond old halting-places, of power to break the bounds that, though often tried before, had long been veritable walls about my life, too high to climb. i began to read and walk as i had not done for years, and the change was sudden, marked, and unmistakable. this tide seemed to mount for some weeks, three or four perhaps, when, summer having come, i came away, taking the treatment up again a few months later. the lift i got proved permanent, and left me slowly gaining ground instead of losing it, but with this lift the influence seemed in a way to have spent itself, and, though my confidence in the reality of the power had gained immensely from this first experience, and should have helped me to make further gain in health and strength if my belief in it had been the potent factor there, i never after this got any result at all as striking or as clearly marked as this which came when i made trial of it first, with little faith and doubtful expectation. it is difficult to put all the evidence in such a matter into words, to gather up into a distinct statement all that one bases one's conclusions on, but i have always felt that i had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at least) the conclusion that i came to then, and since have held to, that the physical change which came at that time was, first, the result of a change wrought within me by a change of mental state; and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not, save in a very secondary way, brought about through the influence of an excited imagination, or a _consciously_ received suggestion of an hypnotic sort. lastly, i believe that this change was the result of my receiving telepathically, and upon a mental stratum quite below the level of immediate consciousness, a healthier and more energetic attitude, receiving it from another person whose thought was directed upon me with the intention of impressing the idea of this attitude upon me. in my case the disease was distinctly what would be classed as nervous, not organic; but from such opportunities as i have had of observing, i have come to the conclusion that the dividing line that has been drawn is an arbitrary one, the nerves controlling the internal activities and the nutrition of the body throughout; and i believe that the central nervous system, by starting and inhibiting local centres, can exercise a vast influence upon disease of any kind, if it can be brought to bear. in my judgment the question is simply how to bring it to bear, and i think that the uncertainty and remarkable differences in the results obtained through mental healing do but show how ignorant we are as yet of the forces at work and of the means we should take to make them effective. that these results are not due to chance coincidences my observation of myself and others makes me sure; that the conscious mind, the imagination, enters into them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but in many others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly seems to enter in at all. on the whole i am inclined to think that as the healing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane of the normally _un_conscious mind, so the strongest and most effective impressions are those which _it_ receives, in some as yet unknown, subtle way, _directly_ from a healthier mind whose state, through a hidden law of sympathy, it reproduces." case ii. "at the urgent request of friends, and with no faith and hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful experience with a christian scientist), our little daughter was placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about which the physician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis. this interested me, and i began studying earnestly the method and philosophy of this method of healing. gradually an inner peace and tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner changed greatly. my children and friends noticed the change and commented upon it. all feelings of irritability disappeared. even the expression of my face changed noticeably. "i had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discussion, both in public and private. i grew broadly tolerant and receptive toward the views of others. i had been nervous and irritable, coming home two or three times a week with a sick headache induced, as i then supposed, by dyspepsia and catarrh. i grew serene and gentle, and the physical troubles entirely disappeared. i had been in the habit of approaching every business interview with an almost morbid dread. i now meet every one with confidence and inner calm. "i may say that the growth has all been toward the elimination of selfishness. i do not mean simply the grosser, more sensual forms, but those subtler and generally unrecognized kinds, such as express themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy, etc. it has been in the direction of a practical, working realization of the immanence of god and the divinity of man's true, inner self." lectures vi and vii. the sick soul. at our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded temperament, the temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of crystallization in which the individual's character is set. we saw how this temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion in which good, even the good of this world's life, is regarded as the essential thing for a rational being to attend to. this religion directs him to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by ignoring them in his reflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by denying outright that they exist. evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint. even repentance and remorse, affections which come in the character of ministers of good, may be but sickly and relaxing impulses. the best repentance is to up and act for righteousness, and forget that you ever had relations with sin. spinoza's philosophy has this sort of healthy-mindedness woven into the heart of it, and this has been one secret of its fascination. he whom reason leads, according to spinoza, is led altogether by the influence over his mind of good. knowledge of evil is an "inadequate" knowledge, fit only for slavish minds. so spinoza categorically condemns repentance. when men make mistakes, he says,-- "one might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to help to bring them on the right path, and might thereupon conclude (as every one does conclude) that these affections are good things. yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that not only are they not good, but on the contrary deleterious and evil passions. for it is manifest that we can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse. harmful are these and evil, inasmuch as they form a particular kind of sadness; and the disadvantages of sadness," he continues, "i have already proved, and shown that we should strive to keep it from our life. just so we should endeavor, since uneasiness of conscience and remorse are of this kind of complexion, to flee and shun these states of mind."( ) within the christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the critical religious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation. repentance according to such healthy-minded christians means _getting away from_ the sin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. the catholic practice of confession and absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthy-mindedness on top. by it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. any catholic will tell us how clean and fresh and free he feels after the purging operation. martin luther by no means belonged to the healthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and he repudiated priestly absolution for sin. yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due in the main to the largeness of his conception of god. "when i was a monk," he says, "i thought that i was utterly cast away, if at any time i felt the lust of the flesh: that is to say, if i felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy against any brother. i assayed many ways to help to quiet my conscience, but it would not be; for the concupiscence and lust of my flesh did always return, so that i could not rest, but was continually vexed with these thoughts: this or that sin thou hast committed: thou art infected with envy, with impatiency, and such other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in vain, and all thy good works are unprofitable. but if then i had rightly understood these sentences of paul: 'the flesh lusteth contrary to the spirit, and the spirit contrary to the flesh; and these two are one against another, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would do,' i should not have so miserably tormented myself, but should have thought and said to myself, as now commonly i do, 'martin, thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for thou hast flesh; thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof.' i remember that staupitz was wont to say, 'i have vowed unto god above a thousand times that i would become a better man: but i never performed that which i vowed. hereafter i will make no such vow: for i have now learned by experience that i am not able to perform it. unless, therefore, god be favorable and merciful unto me for christ's sake, i shall not be able, with all my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him.' this (of staupitz's) was not only a true, but also a godly and a holy desperation; and this must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will be saved. for the godly trust not to their own righteousness. they look unto christ their reconciler, who gave his life for their sins. moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned. notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against the flesh, lest they should _fulfill_ the lusts thereof; and although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of life, and the works which are done according to their calling, displease god; but they raise up themselves by faith."( ) one of the heresies for which the jesuits got that spiritual genius, molinos, the founder of quietism, so abominably condemned was his healthy- minded opinion of repentance:-- "when thou fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be, do not trouble nor afflict thyself for it. for they are effects of our frail nature, stained by original sin. the common enemy will make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of god and his favor, and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine grace, telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse instead of better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. o blessed soul, open thine eyes; and shut the gate against these diabolical suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in the mercy divine. would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his fall? man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his race is as if he had never fallen. if thou seest thyself fallen once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy which i have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the divine mercy. these are the weapons with which thou must fight and conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. this is the means thou oughtest to use--not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap no good."( ) now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these, if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please so to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart. we have now to address ourselves to this more morbid way of looking at the situation. but as i closed our last hour with a general philosophical reflection on the healthy-minded way of taking life, i should like at this point to make another philosophical reflection upon it before turning to that heavier task. you will excuse the brief delay. if we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to the interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion. theism, whenever it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has shown a reluctance to let god be anything less than all-in-all. in other words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or practical theism, which latter has ever been more or less frankly pluralistic, not to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectly well satisfied with a universe composed of many original principles, provided we be only allowed to believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and that the others are subordinate. in this latter case god is not necessarily responsible for the existence of evil; he would only be responsible if it were not finally overcome. but on the monistic or pantheistic view, evil, like everything else, must have its foundation in god; and the difficulty is to see how this can possibly be the case if god be absolutely good. this difficulty faces us in every form of philosophy in which the world appears as one flawless unit of fact. such a unit is an _individual_, and in it the worst parts must be as essential as the best, must be as necessary to make the individual what he is; since if any part whatever in an individual were to vanish or alter, it would no longer be _that_ individual at all. the philosophy of absolute idealism, so vigorously represented both in scotland and america to-day, has to struggle with this difficulty quite as much as scholastic theism struggled in its time; and although it would be premature to say that there is no speculative issue whatever from the puzzle, it is perfectly fair to say that there is no clear or easy issue, and that the only _obvious_ escape from paradox here is to cut loose from the monistic assumption altogether, and to allow the world to have existed from its origin in pluralistic form, as an aggregate or collection of higher and lower things and principles, rather than an absolutely unitary fact. for then evil would not need to be essential; it might be, and may always have been, an independent portion that had no rational or absolute right to live with the rest, and which we might conceivably hope to see got rid of at last. now the gospel of healthy-mindedness, as we have described it, casts its vote distinctly for this pluralistic view. whereas the monistic philosopher finds himself more or less bound to say, as hegel said, that everything actual is rational, and that evil, as an element dialectically required, must be pinned in and kept and consecrated and have a function awarded to it in the final system of truth, healthy-mindedness refuses to say anything of the sort.( ) evil, it says, is emphatically irrational, and _not_ to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final system of truth. it is a pure abomination to the lord, an alien unreality, a waste element, to be sloughed off and negated, and the very memory of it, if possible, wiped out and forgotten. the ideal, so far from being co- extensive with the whole actual, is a mere _extract_ from the actual, marked by its deliverance from all contact with this diseased, inferior, and excrementitious stuff. here we have the interesting notion fairly and squarely presented to us, of there being elements of the universe which may make no rational whole in conjunction with the other elements, and which, from the point of view of any system which those other elements make up, can only be considered so much irrelevance and accident--so much "dirt," as it were, and matter out of place. i ask you now not to forget this notion; for although most philosophers seem either to forget it or to disdain it too much ever to mention it, i believe that we shall have to admit it ourselves in the end as containing an element of truth. the mind-cure gospel thus once more appears to us as having dignity and importance. we have seen it to be a genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal to imagination to cure disease; we have seen its method of experimental verification to be not unlike the method of all science; and now here we find mind-cure as the champion of a perfectly definite conception of the metaphysical structure of the world. i hope that, in view of all this, you will not regret my having pressed it upon your attention at such length. ------------------------------------- let us now say good-by for a while to all this way of thinking, and turn towards those persons who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its presence. just as we saw that in healthy-mindedness there are shallower and profounder levels, happiness like that of the mere animal, and more regenerate sorts of happiness, so also are there different levels of the morbid mind, and the one is much more formidable than the other. there are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment with _things_, a wrong correspondence of one's life with the environment. such evil as this is curable, in principle at least, upon the natural plane, for merely by modifying either the self or the things, or both at once, the two terms may be made to fit, and all go merry as a marriage bell again. but there are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy. on the whole, the latin races have leaned more towards the former way of looking upon evil, as made up of ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail; while the germanic races have tended rather to think of sin in the singular, and with a capital s, as of something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.( ) these comparisons of races are always open to exception, but undoubtedly the northern tone in religion has inclined to the more intimately pessimistic persuasion, and this way of feeling, being the more extreme, we shall find by far the more instructive for our study. recent psychology has found great use for the word "threshold" as a symbolic designation for the point at which one state of mind passes into another. thus we speak of the threshold of a man's consciousness in general, to indicate the amount of noise, pressure, or other outer stimulus which it takes to arouse his attention at all. one with a high threshold will doze through an amount of racket by which one with a low threshold would be immediately waked. similarly, when one is sensitive to small differences in any order of sensation, we say he has a low "difference-threshold"--his mind easily steps over it into the consciousness of the differences in question. and just so we might speak of a "pain-threshold," a "fear-threshold," a "misery-threshold," and find it quickly overpassed by the consciousness of some individuals, but lying too high in others to be often reached by their consciousness. the sanguine and healthy-minded live habitually on the sunny side of their misery-line, the depressed and melancholy live beyond it, in darkness and apprehension. there are men who seem to have started in life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed to their credit; whilst others seem to have been born close to the pain-threshold, which the slightest irritants fatally send them over. does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the pain-threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who habitually lived on the other? this question, of the relativity of different types of religion to different types of need, arises naturally at this point, and will become a serious problem ere we have done. but before we confront it in general terms, we must address ourselves to the unpleasant task of hearing what the sick souls, as we may call them in contrast to the healthy-minded, have to say of the secrets of their prison-house, their own peculiar form of consciousness. let us then resolutely turn our backs on the once-born and their sky-blue optimistic gospel; let us not simply cry out, in spite of all appearances, "hurrah for the universe!--god's in his heaven, all's right with the world." let us see rather whether pity, pain, and fear, and the sentiment of human helplessness may not open a profounder view and put into our hands a more complicated key to the meaning of the situation. ------------------------------------- to begin with, how _can_ things so insecure as the successful experiences of this world afford a stable anchorage? a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain. in the healthiest and most prosperous existence, how many links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. the buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it. of course the music can commence again;--and again and again,--at intervals. but with this the healthy-minded consciousness is left with an irremediable sense of precariousness. it is a bell with a crack; it draws its breath on sufferance and by an accident. even if we suppose a man so packed with healthy-mindedness as never to have experienced in his own person any of these sobering intervals, still, if he is a reflecting being, he must generalize and class his own lot with that of others; and, doing so, he must see that his escape is just a lucky chance and no essential difference. he might just as well have been born to an entirely different fortune. and then indeed the hollow security! what kind of a frame of things is it of which the best you can say is, "thank god, it has let me off clear this time!" is not its blessedness a fragile fiction? is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success? if indeed it were all success, even on such terms as that! but take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting. when such a conquering optimist as goethe can express himself in this wise, how must it be with less successful men? "i will say nothing," writes goethe in , "against the course of my existence. but at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and i can affirm that during the whole of my years, i have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. it is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever." what single-handed man was ever on the whole as successful as luther? yet when he had grown old, he looked back on his life as if it were an absolute failure. "i am utterly weary of life. i pray the lord will come forthwith and carry me hence. let him come, above all, with his last judgment: i will stretch out my neck, the thunder will burst forth, and i shall be at rest."--and having a necklace of white agates in his hand at the time he added: "o god, grant that it may come without delay. i would readily eat up this necklace to-day, for the judgment to come to-morrow."--the electress dowager, one day when luther was dining with her, said to him: "doctor, i wish you may live forty years to come." "madam," replied he, "rather than live forty years more, i would give up my chance of paradise." failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. we strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. and with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! no easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all its blood. the subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to these results. and they are pivotal human experiences. a process so ubiquitous and everlasting is evidently an integral part of life. "there is indeed one element in human destiny," robert louis stevenson writes, "that not blindness itself can controvert. whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted."( ) and our nature being thus rooted in failure, is it any wonder that theologians should have held it to be essential, and thought that only through the personal experience of humiliation which it engenders the deeper sense of life's significance is reached?( ) but this is only the first stage of the world-sickness. make the human being's sensitiveness a little greater, carry him a little farther over the misery-threshold, and the good quality of the successful moments themselves when they occur is spoiled and vitiated. all natural goods perish. riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. can things whose end is always dust and disappointment be the real goods which our souls require? back of everything is the great spectre of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness:-- "what profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? i looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit. for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.... the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. also their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.... truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many." in short, life and its negation are beaten up inextricably together. but if the life be good, the negation of it must be bad. yet the two are equally essential facts of existence; and all natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. the breath of the sepulchre surrounds it. to a mind attentive to this state of things and rightly subject to the joy-destroying chill which such a contemplation engenders, the only relief that healthy-mindedness can give is by saying: "stuff and nonsense, get out into the open air!" or "cheer up, old fellow, you'll be all right erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!" but in all seriousness, can such bald animal talk as that be treated as a rational answer? to ascribe religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentment with one's brief chance at natural good is but the very consecration of forgetfulness and superficiality. our troubles lie indeed too deep for _that_ cure. the fact that we _can_ die, that we _can_ be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. we need a life not correlated with death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the goods of nature. it all depends on how sensitive the soul may become to discords. "the trouble with me is that i believe too much in common happiness and goodness," said a friend of mine whose consciousness was of this sort, "and nothing can console me for their transiency. i am appalled and disconcerted at its being possible." and so with most of us: a little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. the pride of life and glory of the world will shrivel. it is after all but the standing quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. this sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. in the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. let it be known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow and gilding vanish. the old man, sick with an insidious internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well as ever, but he knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions. they are partners of death and the worm is their brother, and they turn to a mere flatness. the lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with. let our common experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let our suffering have an immortal significance; let heaven smile upon the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith and hope be the atmosphere which man breathes in;--and his days pass by with zest; they stir with prospects, they thrill with remoter values. place round them on the contrary the curdling cold and gloom and absence of all permanent meaning which for pure naturalism and the popular science evolutionism of our time are all that is visible ultimately, and the thrill stops short, or turns rather to an anxious trembling. for naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the last film of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion. the merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of the total situation. the early greeks are continually held up to us in literary works as models of the healthy-minded joyousness which the religion of nature may engender. there was indeed much joyousness among the greeks--homer's flow of enthusiasm for most things that the sun shines upon is steady. but even in homer the reflective passages are cheerless,( ) and the moment the greeks grew systematically pensive and thought of ultimates, they became unmitigated pessimists.( ) the jealousy of the gods, the nemesis that follows too much happiness, the all-encompassing death, fate's dark opacity, the ultimate and unintelligible cruelty, were the fixed background of their imagination. the beautiful joyousness of their polytheism is only a poetic modern fiction. they knew no joys comparable in quality of preciousness to those which we shall erelong see that brahmans, buddhists, christians, mohammedans, twice-born people whose religion is non-naturalistic, get from their several creeds of mysticism and renunciation. stoic insensibility and epicurean resignation were the farthest advance which the greek mind made in that direction. the epicurean said: "seek not to be happy, but rather to escape unhappiness; strong happiness is always linked with pain; therefore hug the safe shore, and do not tempt the deeper raptures. avoid disappointment by expecting little, and by aiming low; and above all do not fret." the stoic said: "the only genuine good that life can yield a man is the free possession of his own soul; all other goods are lies." each of these philosophies is in its degree a philosophy of despair in nature's boons. trustful self-abandonment to the joys that freely offer has entirely departed from both epicurean and stoic; and what each proposes is a way of rescue from the resultant dust- and-ashes state of mind. the epicurean still awaits results from economy of indulgence and damping of desire. the stoic hopes for no results, and gives up natural good altogether. there is dignity in both these forms of resignation. they represent distinct stages in the sobering process which man's primitive intoxication with sense-happiness is sure to undergo. in the one the hot blood has grown cool, in the other it has become quite cold; and although i have spoken of them in the past tense, as if they were merely historic, yet stoicism and epicureanism will probably be to all time typical attitudes, marking a certain definite stage accomplished in the evolution of the world-sick soul.( ) they mark the conclusion of what we call the once-born period, and represent the highest flights of what twice-born religion would call the purely natural man--epicureanism, which can only by great courtesy be called a religion, showing his refinement, and stoicism exhibiting his moral will. they leave the world in the shape of an unreconciled contradiction, and seek no higher unity. compared with the complex ecstasies which the supernaturally regenerated christian may enjoy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, their receipts for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude in their simplicity. please observe, however, that i am not yet pretending finally to _judge_ any of these attitudes. i am only describing their variety. the securest way to the rapturous sorts of happiness of which the twice- born make report has as an historic matter of fact been through a more radical pessimism than anything that we have yet considered. we have seen how the lustre and enchantment may be rubbed off from the goods of nature. but there is a pitch of unhappiness so great that the goods of nature may be entirely forgotten, and all sentiment of their existence vanish from the mental field. for this extremity of pessimism to be reached, something more is needed than observation of life and reflection upon death. the individual must in his own person become the prey of a pathological melancholy. as the healthy-minded enthusiast succeeds in ignoring evil's very existence, so the subject of melancholy is forced in spite of himself to ignore that of all good whatever: for him it may no longer have the least reality. such sensitiveness and susceptibility to mental pain is a rare occurrence where the nervous constitution is entirely normal; one seldom finds it in a healthy subject even where he is the victim of the most atrocious cruelties of outward fortune. so we note here the neurotic constitution, of which i said so much in my first lecture, making its active entrance on our scene, and destined to play a part in much that follows. since these experiences of melancholy are in the first instance absolutely private and individual, i can now help myself out with personal documents. painful indeed they will be to listen to, and there is almost an indecency in handling them in public. yet they lie right in the middle of our path; and if we are to touch the psychology of religion at all seriously, we must be willing to forget conventionalities, and dive below the smooth and lying official conversational surface. one can distinguish many kinds of pathological depression. sometimes it is mere passive joylessness and dreariness, discouragement, dejection, lack of taste and zest and spring. professor ribot has proposed the name _anhedonia_ to designate this condition. "the state of _anhedonia_, if i may coin a new word to pair off with _analgesia_," he writes, "has been very little studied, but it exists. a young girl was smitten with a liver disease which for some time altered her constitution. she felt no longer any affection for her father and mother. she would have played with her doll, but it was impossible to find the least pleasure in the act. the same things which formerly convulsed her with laughter entirely failed to interest her now. esquirol observed the case of a very intelligent magistrate who was also a prey to hepatic disease. every emotion appeared dead within him. he manifested neither perversion nor violence, but complete absence of emotional reaction. if he went to the theatre, which he did out of habit, he could find no pleasure there. the thought of his house, of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children moved him as little, he said, as a theorem of euclid."( ) prolonged seasickness will in most persons produce a temporary condition of anhedonia. every good, terrestrial or celestial, is imagined only to be turned from with disgust. a temporary condition of this sort, connected with the religious evolution of a singularly lofty character, both intellectual and moral, is well described by the catholic philosopher, father gratry, in his autobiographical recollections. in consequence of mental isolation and excessive study at the polytechnic school, young gratry fell into a state of nervous exhaustion with symptoms which he thus describes:-- "i had such a universal terror that i woke at night with a start, thinking that the pantheon was tumbling on the polytechnic school, or that the school was in flames, or that the seine was pouring into the catacombs, and that paris was being swallowed up. and when these impressions were past, all day long without respite i suffered an incurable and intolerable desolation, verging on despair. i thought myself, in fact, rejected by god, lost, damned! i felt something like the suffering of hell. before that i had never even thought of hell. my mind had never turned in that direction. neither discourses nor reflections had impressed me in that way. i took no account of hell. now, and all at once, i suffered in a measure what is suffered there. "but what was perhaps still more dreadful is that every idea of heaven was taken away from me: i could no longer conceive of anything of the sort. heaven did not seem to me worth going to. it was like a vacuum; a mythological elysium, an abode of shadows less real than the earth. i could conceive no joy, no pleasure in inhabiting it. happiness, joy, light, affection, love--all these words were now devoid of sense. without doubt i could still have talked of all these things, but i had become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything from them, or of believing them to exist. there was my great and inconsolable grief! i neither perceived nor conceived any longer the existence of happiness or perfection. an abstract heaven over a naked rock. such was my present abode for eternity."( ) so much for melancholy in the sense of incapacity for joyous feeling. a much worse form of it is positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to healthy life. such anguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing; sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear. the patient may rebel or submit; may accuse himself, or accuse outside powers; and he may or he may not be tormented by the theoretical mystery of why he should so have to suffer. most cases are mixed cases, and we should not treat our classifications with too much respect. moreover, it is only a relatively small proportion of cases that connect themselves with the religious sphere of experience at all. exasperated cases, for instance, as a rule do not. i quote now literally from the first case of melancholy on which i lay my hand. it is a letter from a patient in a french asylum. "i suffer too much in this hospital, both physically and morally. besides the burnings and the sleeplessness (for i no longer sleep since i am shut up here, and the little rest i get is broken by bad dreams, and i am waked with a jump by nightmares, dreadful visions, lightning, thunder, and the rest), fear, atrocious fear, presses me down, holds me without respite, never lets me go. where is the justice in it all! what have i done to deserve this excess of severity? under what form will this fear crush me? what would i not owe to any one who would rid me of my life! eat, drink, lie awake all night, suffer without interruption--such is the fine legacy i have received from my mother! what i fail to understand is this abuse of power. there are limits to everything, there is a middle way. but god knows neither middle way nor limits. i say god, but why? all i have known so far has been the devil. after all, i am afraid of god as much as of the devil, so i drift along, thinking of nothing but suicide, but with neither courage nor means here to execute the act. as you read this, it will easily prove to you my insanity. the style and the ideas are incoherent enough--i can see that myself. but i cannot keep myself from being either crazy or an idiot; and, as things are, from whom should i ask pity? i am defenseless against the invisible enemy who is tightening his coils around me. i should be no better armed against him even if i saw him, or had seen him. oh, if he would but kill me, devil take him! death, death, once for all! but i stop. i have raved to you long enough. i say raved, for i can write no otherwise, having neither brain nor thoughts left. o god! what a misfortune to be born! born like a mushroom, doubtless between an evening and a morning; and how true and right i was when in our philosophy-year in college i chewed the cud of bitterness with the pessimists. yes, indeed, there is more pain in life than gladness--it is one long agony until the grave. think how gay it makes me to remember that this horrible misery of mine, coupled with this unspeakable fear, may last fifty, one hundred, who knows how many more years!"( ) this letter shows two things. first, you see how the entire consciousness of the poor man is so choked with the feeling of evil that the sense of there being any good in the world is lost for him altogether. his attention excludes it, cannot admit it: the sun has left his heaven. and secondly you see how the querulous temper of his misery keeps his mind from taking a religious direction. querulousness of mind tends in fact rather towards irreligion; and it has played, so far as i know, no part whatever in the construction of religious systems. ------------------------------------- religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting mood. tolstoy has left us, in his book called my confession, a wonderful account of the attack of melancholy which led him to his own religious conclusions. the latter in some respects are peculiar; but the melancholy presents two characters which make it a typical document for our present purpose. first it is a well-marked case of anhedonia, of passive loss of appetite for all life's values; and second, it shows how the altered and estranged aspect which the world assumed in consequence of this stimulated tolstoy's intellect to a gnawing, carking questioning and effort for philosophic relief. i mean to quote tolstoy at some length; but before doing so, i will make a general remark on each of these two points. first on our spiritual judgments and the sense of value in general. it is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments, since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times in the same person; and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provoke. these have their source in another sphere of existence altogether, in the animal and spiritual region of the subject's being. conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it _as it exists_, purely by itself, without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. it will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. no one portion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear endued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator's mind. the passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of this fact. if it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. yet it transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms mont blanc from a corpse-like gray to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole world to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his life. so with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. if they are there, life changes. and whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon non-logical, often on organic conditions. and as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves _gifts_,--gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non-logical and beyond our control. how can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well? gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world's materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferently whatever alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in the gallery. meanwhile the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, is the compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in indistinguishable combination. withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant, and the kind of experience we call pathological ensues. in tolstoy's case the sense that life had any meaning whatever was for a time wholly withdrawn. the result was a transformation in the whole expression of reality. when we come to study the phenomenon of conversion or religious regeneration, we shall see that a not infrequent consequence of the change operated in the subject is a transfiguration of the face of nature in his eyes. a new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth. in melancholiacs there is usually a similar change, only it is in the reverse direction. the world now looks remote, strange, sinister, uncanny. its color is gone, its breath is cold, there is no speculation in the eyes it glares with. "it is as if i lived in another century," says one asylum patient.--"i see everything through a cloud," says another, "things are not as they were, and i am changed."--"i see," says a third, "i touch, but the things do not come near me, a thick veil alters the hue and look of everything."--"persons move like shadows, and sounds seem to come from a distant world."--"there is no longer any past for me; people appear so strange; it is as if i could not see any reality, as if i were in a theatre; as if people were actors, and everything were scenery; i can no longer find myself; i walk, but why? everything floats before my eyes, but leaves no impression."--"i weep false tears, i have unreal hands: the things i see are not real things."--such are expressions that naturally rise to the lips of melancholy subjects describing their changed state.( ) now there are some subjects whom all this leaves a prey to the profoundest astonishment. the strangeness is wrong. the unreality cannot be. a mystery is concealed, and a metaphysical solution must exist. if the natural world is so double-faced and unhomelike, what world, what thing is real? an urgent wondering and questioning is set up, a poring theoretic activity, and in the desperate effort to get into right relations with the matter, the sufferer is often led to what becomes for him a satisfying religious solution. at about the age of fifty, tolstoy relates that he began to have moments of perplexity, of what he calls arrest, as if he knew not "how to live," or what to do. it is obvious that these were moments in which the excitement and interest which our functions naturally bring had ceased. life had been enchanting, it was now flat sober, more than sober, dead. things were meaningless whose meaning had always been self-evident. the questions "why?" and "what next?" began to beset him more and more frequently. at first it seemed as if such questions must be answerable, and as if he could easily find the answers if he would take the time; but as they ever became more urgent, he perceived that it was like those first discomforts of a sick man, to which he pays but little attention till they run into one continuous suffering, and then he realizes that what he took for a passing disorder means the most momentous thing in the world for him, means his death. these questions "why?" "wherefore?" "what for?" found no response. "i felt," says tolstoy, "that something had broken within me on which my life had always rested, that i had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my life had stopped. an invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another. it cannot be said exactly that i _wished_ to kill myself, for the force which drew me away from life was fuller, more powerful, more general than any mere desire. it was a force like my old aspiration to live, only it impelled me in the opposite direction. it was an aspiration of my whole being to get out of life. "behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding the rope in order not to hang myself to the rafters of the room where every night i went to sleep alone; behold me no longer going shooting, lest i should yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end to myself with my gun. "i did not know what i wanted. i was afraid of life; i was driven to leave it; and in spite of that i still hoped something from it. "all this took place at a time when so far as all my outer circumstances went, i ought to have been completely happy. i had a good wife who loved me and whom i loved; good children and a large property which was increasing with no pains taken on my part. i was more respected by my kinsfolk and acquaintance than i had ever been; i was loaded with praise by strangers; and without exaggeration i could believe my name already famous. moreover i was neither insane nor ill. on the contrary, i possessed a physical and mental strength which i have rarely met in persons of my age. i could mow as well as the peasants, i could work with my brain eight hours uninterruptedly and feel no bad effects. "and yet i could give no reasonable meaning to any actions of my life. and i was surprised that i had not understood this from the very beginning. my state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played upon me by some one. one can live only so long as one is intoxicated, drunk with life; but when one grows sober one cannot fail to see that it is all a stupid cheat. what is truest about it is that there is nothing even funny or silly in it; it is cruel and stupid, purely and simply. "the oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert by a wild beast is very old. "seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well with no water in it; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. and the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush which grows out of one of the cracks of the well. his hands weaken, and he feels that he must soon give way to certain fate; but still he clings, and sees two mice, one white, the other black, evenly moving round the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing off its roots. "the traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish; but while thus hanging he looks about him and finds on the leaves of the bush some drops of honey. these he reaches with his tongue and licks them off with rapture. "thus i hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and i cannot comprehend why i am thus made a martyr. i try to suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw the branch to which i cling. i can see but one thing: the inevitable dragon and the mice--i cannot turn my gaze away from them. "this is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may understand. what will be the outcome of what i do to-day? of what i shall do to-morrow? what will be the outcome of all my life? why should i live? why should i do anything? is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death which awaits me does not undo and destroy? "these questions are the simplest in the world. from the stupid child to the wisest old man, they are in the soul of every human being. without an answer to them, it is impossible, as i experienced, for life to go on. " 'but perhaps,' i often said to myself, 'there may be something i have failed to notice or to comprehend. it is not possible that this condition of despair should be natural to mankind.' and i sought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. i questioned painfully and protractedly and with no idle curiosity. i sought, not with indolence, but laboriously and obstinately for days and nights together. i sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself,--and i found nothing. i became convinced, moreover, that all those who before me had sought for an answer in the sciences have also found nothing. and not only this, but that they have recognized that the very thing which was leading me to despair--the meaningless absurdity of life--is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man." to prove this point, tolstoy quotes the buddha, solomon, and schopenhauer. and he finds only four ways in which men of his own class and society are accustomed to meet the situation. either mere animal blindness, sucking the honey without seeing the dragon or the mice,--"and from such a way," he says, "i can learn nothing, after what i now know;" or reflective epicureanism, snatching what it can while the day lasts,--which is only a more deliberate sort of stupefaction than the first; or manly suicide; or seeing the mice and dragon and yet weakly and plaintively clinging to the bush of life. suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical intellect. "yet," says tolstoy, "whilst my intellect was working, something else in me was working too, and kept me from the deed--a consciousness of life, as i may call it, which was like a force that obliged my mind to fix itself in another direction and draw me out of my situation of despair.... during the whole course of this year, when i almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all that time, alongside of all those movements of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing with another pining emotion. i can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for god. this craving for god had nothing to do with the movement of my ideas,--in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement,--but it came from my heart. it was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like an orphan and isolated in the midst of all these things that were so foreign. and this feeling of dread was mitigated by the hope of finding the assistance of some one."( ) of the process, intellectual as well as emotional, which, starting from this idea of god, led to tolstoy's recovery, i will say nothing in this lecture, reserving it for a later hour. the only thing that need interest us now is the phenomenon of his absolute disenchantment with ordinary life, and the fact that the whole range of habitual values may, to a man as powerful and full of faculty as he was, come to appear so ghastly a mockery. when disillusionment has gone as far as this, there is seldom a _restitutio ad integrum_. one has tasted of the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of eden never comes again. the happiness that comes, when any does come,--and often enough it fails to return in an acute form, though its form is sometimes very acute,--is not the simple ignorance of ill, but something vastly more complex, including natural evil as one of its elements, but finding natural evil no such stumbling-block and terror because it now sees it swallowed up in supernatural good. the process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before. ------------------------------------- we find a somewhat different type of religious melancholy enshrined in literature in john bunyan's autobiography. tolstoy's preoccupations were largely objective, for the purpose and meaning of life in general was what so troubled him; but poor bunyan's troubles were over the condition of his own personal self. he was a typical case of the psychopathic temperament, sensitive of conscience to a diseased degree, beset by doubts, fears, and insistent ideas, and a victim of verbal automatisms, both motor and sensory. these were usually texts of scripture which, sometimes damnatory and sometimes favorable, would come in a half-hallucinatory form as if they were voices, and fasten on his mind and buffet it between them like a shuttlecock. added to this were a fearful melancholy self-contempt and despair. "nay, thought i, now i grow worse and worse; now i am farther from conversion than ever i was before. if now i should have burned at the stake, i could not believe that christ had love for me; alas, i could neither hear him, nor see him, nor feel him, nor savor any of his things. sometimes i would tell my condition to the people of god, which, when they heard, they would pity me, and would tell of the promises. but they had as good have told me that i must reach the sun with my finger as have bidden me receive or rely upon the promise. [yet] all this while as to the act of sinning, i never was more tender than now; i durst not take a pin or stick, though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch; i could not tell how to speak my words, for fear i should misplace them. oh, how gingerly did i then go, in all i did or said! i found myself as on a miry bog that shook if i did but stir; and was as there left both by god and christ, and the spirit, and all good things. "but my original and inward pollution, that was my plague and my affliction. by reason of that, i was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad; and i thought i was so in god's eyes too. sin and corruption, i said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. i could have changed heart with anybody. i thought none but the devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. sure, thought i, i am forsaken of god; and thus i continued a long while, even for some years together. "and now i was sorry that god had made me a man. the beasts, birds, fishes, etc., i blessed their condition, for they had not a sinful nature; they were not obnoxious to the wrath of god; they were not to go to hell-fire after death. i could therefore have rejoiced, had my condition been as any of theirs. now i blessed the condition of the dog and toad, yea, gladly would i have been in the condition of the dog or horse, for i knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of hell or sin, as mine was like to do. nay, and though i saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieces with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that i could not find with all my soul that i did desire deliverance. my heart was at times exceedingly hard. if i would have given a thousand pounds for a tear, i could not shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one. "i was both a burthen and a terror to myself; nor did i ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die. how gladly would i have been anything but myself! anything but a man! and in any condition but my own."( ) poor patient bunyan, like tolstoy, saw the light again, but we must also postpone that part of his story to another hour. in a later lecture i will also give the end of the experience of henry alline, a devoted evangelist who worked in nova scotia a hundred years ago, and who thus vividly describes the high-water mark of the religious melancholy which formed its beginning. the type was not unlike bunyan's. "everything i saw seemed to be a burden to me; the earth seemed accursed for my sake: all trees, plants, rocks, hills, and vales seemed to be dressed in mourning and groaning, under the weight of the curse, and everything around me seemed to be conspiring my ruin. my sins seemed to be laid open; so that i thought that every one i saw knew them, and sometimes i was almost ready to acknowledge many things, which i thought they knew: yea sometimes it seemed to me as if every one was pointing me out as the most guilty wretch upon earth. i had now so great a sense of the vanity and emptiness of all things here below, that i knew the whole world could not possibly make me happy, no, nor the whole system of creation. when i waked in the morning, the first thought would be, oh, my wretched soul, what shall i do, where shall i go? and when i laid down, would say, i shall be perhaps in hell before morning. i would many times look on the beasts with envy, wishing with all my heart i was in their place, that i might have no soul to lose; and when i have seen birds flying over my head, have often thought within myself, oh, that i could fly away from my danger and distress! oh, how happy should i be, if i were in their place!"( ) envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very widespread affection in this type of sadness. ------------------------------------- the worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear. here is an excellent example, for permission to print which i have to thank the sufferer. the original is in french, and though the subject was evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his case has otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. i translate freely. "whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, i went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom i had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. he sat there like a sort of sculptured egyptian cat or peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. this image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. _that shape am i_, i felt, potentially. nothing that i possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. there was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and i became a mass of quivering fear. after this the universe was changed for me altogether. i awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that i never knew before, and that i have never felt since.( ) it was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. it gradually faded, but for months i was unable to go out into the dark alone. "in general i dreaded to be left alone. i remember wondering how other people could live, how i myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. my mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe i was very careful not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. i have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing." on asking this correspondent to explain more fully what he meant by these last words, the answer he wrote was this:-- "i mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that if i had not clung to scripture-texts like 'the eternal god is my refuge,' etc., 'come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,' etc., 'i am the resurrection and the life,' etc., i think i should have grown really insane."( ) there is no need of more examples. the cases we have looked at are enough. one of them gives us the vanity of mortal things; another the sense of sin; and the remaining one describes the fear of the universe;--and in one or other of these three ways it always is that man's original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with the dust. in none of these cases was there any intellectual insanity or delusion about matters of fact; but were we disposed to open the chapter of really insane melancholia, with its hallucinations and delusions, it would be a worse story still--desperation absolute and complete, the whole universe coagulating about the sufferer into a material of overwhelming horror, surrounding him without opening or end. not the conception or intellectual perception of evil, but the grisly blood-freezing heart-palsying sensation of it close upon one, and no other conception or sensation able to live for a moment in its presence. how irrelevantly remote seem all our usual refined optimisms and intellectual and moral consolations in presence of a need of help like this! here is the real core of the religious problem: help! help! no prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says things that will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims such as these. but the deliverance must come in as strong a form as the complaint, if it is to take effect; and that seems a reason why the coarser religions, revivalistic, orgiastic, with blood and miracles and supernatural operations, may possibly never be displaced. some constitutions need them too much. ------------------------------------- arrived at this point, we can see how great an antagonism may naturally arise between the healthy-minded way of viewing life and the way that takes all this experience of evil as something essential. to this latter way, the morbid-minded way, as we might call it, healthy-mindedness pure and simple seems unspeakably blind and shallow. to the healthy-minded way, on the other hand, the way of the sick soul seems unmanly and diseased. with their grubbing in rat-holes instead of living in the light; with their manufacture of fears, and preoccupation with every unwholesome kind of misery, there is something almost obscene about these children of wrath and cravers of a second birth. if religious intolerance and hanging and burning could again become the order of the day, there is little doubt that, however it may have been in the past, the healthy-minded would at present show themselves the less indulgent party of the two. in our own attitude, not yet abandoned, of impartial onlookers, what are we to say of this quarrel? it seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. the method of averting one's attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. it will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. but it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth. the normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. the lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. if you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! to believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our imagination--they seem too much like mere museum specimens. yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did not daily through long years of the foretime hold fast to the body struggling in despair of some fated living victim. forms of horror just as dreadful to their victims, if on a smaller spatial scale, fill the world about us to- day. here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws. crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.( ) it may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible. some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms of evil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect of such evil, dumb submission or neglect to notice is the only practical resource. this question must confront us on a later day. but provisionally, and as a mere matter of program and method, since the evil facts are as genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic presumption should be that they have some rational significance, and that systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sorrow, pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is formally less complete than systems that try at least to include these elements in their scope. the completest religions would therefore seem to be those in which the pessimistic elements are best developed. buddhism, of course, and christianity are the best known to us of these. they are essentially religions of deliverance: the man must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life. in my next lecture, i will try to discuss some of the psychological conditions of this second birth. fortunately from now onward we shall have to deal with more cheerful subjects than those which we have recently been dwelling on. lecture viii. the divided self, and the process of its unification. the last lecture was a painful one, dealing as it did with evil as a pervasive element of the world we live in. at the close of it we were brought into full view of the contrast between the two ways of looking at life which are characteristic respectively of what we called the healthy- minded, who need to be born only once, and of the sick souls, who must be twice-born in order to be happy. the result is two different conceptions of the universe of our experience. in the religion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilinear or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in one denomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of which a simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth. happiness and religious peace consist in living on the plus side of the account. in the religion of the twice- born, on the other hand, the world is a double-storied mystery. peace cannot be reached by the simple addition of pluses and elimination of minuses from life. natural good is not simply insufficient in amount and transient, there lurks a falsity in its very being. cancelled as it all is by death if not by earlier enemies, it gives no final balance, and can never be the thing intended for our lasting worship. it keeps us from our real good, rather; and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in the direction of the truth. there are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other. in their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure salvationism, the two types are violently contrasted; though here as in most other current classifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and the concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are intermediate varieties and mixtures. practically, however, you all recognize the difference: you understand, for example, the disdain of the methodist convert for the mere sky-blue healthy-minded moralist; and you likewise enter into the aversion of the latter to what seems to him the diseased subjectivism of the methodist, dying to live, as he calls it, and making of paradox and the inversion of natural appearances the essence of god's truth.( ) ------------------------------------- the psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament of the subject, an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution. "homo duplex, homo duplex!" writes alphonse daudet. "the first time that i perceived that i was two was at the death of my brother henri, when my father cried out so dramatically, 'he is dead, he is dead!' while my first self wept, my second self thought, 'how truly given was that cry, how fine it would be at the theatre.' i was then fourteen years old. "this horrible duality has often given me matter for reflection. oh, this terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. this second me that i have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. and how it sees into things, and how it mocks!"( ) recent works on the psychology of character have had much to say upon this point.( ) some persons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset. their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. others are oppositely constituted; and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity i find a good example in mrs. annie besant's autobiography. "i have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. as a child i used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl i would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that i was full of eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly; as the young mistress of a house i was afraid of my servants, and would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer; when i have been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platform, i have preferred to go without what i wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it. combative on the platform in defense of any cause i cared for, i shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward at heart in private while a good fighter in public. how often have i passed unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have i jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. an unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition makes me speak my best."( ) this amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a stronger degree of heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject's life. there are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes. heterogeneous personality has been explained as the result of inheritance--the traits of character of incompatible and antagonistic ancestors are supposed to be preserved alongside of each other.( ) this explanation may pass for what it is worth--it certainly needs corroboration. but whatever the cause of heterogeneous personality may be, we find the extreme examples of it in the psychopathic temperament, of which i spoke in my first lecture. all writers about that temperament make the inner heterogeneity prominent in their descriptions. frequently, indeed, it is only this trait that leads us to ascribe that temperament to a man at all. a "dégénéré supérieur" is simply a man of sensibility in many directions, who finds more difficulty than is common in keeping his spiritual house in order and running his furrow straight, because his feelings and impulses are too keen and too discrepant mutually. in the haunting and insistent ideas, in the irrational impulses, the morbid scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psychopathic temperament when it is thoroughly pronounced, we have exquisite examples of heterogeneous personality. bunyan had an obsession of the words, "sell christ for this, sell him for that, sell him, sell him!" which would run through his mind a hundred times together, until one day out of breath with retorting, "i will not, i will not," he impulsively said, "let him go if he will," and this loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a year. the lives of the saints are full of such blasphemous obsessions, ascribed invariably to the direct agency of satan. the phenomenon connects itself with the life of the subconscious self, so-called, of which we must ere-long speak more directly. now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. the higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us--they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle. if the individual be of tender conscience and religiously quickened, the unhappiness will take the form of moral remorse and compunction, of feeling inwardly vile and wrong, and of standing in false relations to the author of one's being and appointer of one's spiritual fate. this is the religious melancholy and "conviction of sin" that have played so large a part in the history of protestant christianity. the man's interior is a battle-ground for what he feels to be two deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other ideal. as victor hugo makes his mahomet say:-- "je suis le champ vil des sublimes combats: tantôt l'homme d'en haut, et tantôt l'homme d'en bas; et le mal dans ma bouche avec le bien alterne, comme dans le désert le sable et la citerne." wrong living, impotent aspirations; "what i would, that do i not; but what i hate, that do i," as saint paul says; self-loathing, self-despair; an unintelligible and intolerable burden to which one is mysteriously the heir. let me quote from some typical cases of discordant personality, with melancholy in the form of self-condemnation and sense of sin. saint augustine's case is a classic example. you all remember his half-pagan, half-christian bringing up at carthage, his emigration to rome and milan, his adoption of manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own weakness of will, when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown off the shackles of sensuality and dedicated themselves to chastity and the higher life, he heard a voice in the garden say, "_sume, lege_" (take and read), and opening the bible at random, saw the text, "not in chambering and wantonness," etc., which seemed directly sent to his address, and laid the inner storm to rest forever.( ) augustine's psychological genius has given an account of the trouble of having a divided self which has never been surpassed. "the new will which i began to have was not yet strong enough to overcome that other will, strengthened by long indulgence. so these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the other spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. i understood by my own experience what i had read, 'flesh lusteth against spirit, and spirit against flesh.' it was myself indeed in both the wills, yet more myself in that which i approved in myself than in that which i disapproved in myself. yet it was through myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over me, because i had willingly come whither i willed not. still bound to earth, i refused, o god, to fight on thy side, as much afraid to be freed from all bonds, as i ought to have feared being trammeled by them. "thus the thoughts by which i meditated upon thee were like the efforts of one who would awake, but being overpowered with sleepiness is soon asleep again. often does a man when heavy sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though not approving it, encourage it; even so i was sure it was better to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet, though the former course convinced me, the latter pleased and held me bound. there was naught in me to answer thy call, 'awake, thou sleeper,' but only drawling, drowsy words, 'presently; yes, presently; wait a little while.' but the 'presently' had no 'present,' and the 'little while' grew long.... for i was afraid thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my disease of lust, which i wished to satiate rather than to see extinguished. with what lashes of words did i not scourge my own soul. yet it shrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to offer.... i said within myself: 'come, let it be done now,' and as i said it, i was on the point of the resolve. i all but did it, yet i did not do it. and i made another effort, and almost succeeded, yet i did not reach it, and did not grasp it, hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and the evil to which i was so wonted held me more than the better life i had not tried."( ) there could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch of explosive intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of the psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make irruption efficaciously into life and quell the lower tendencies forever. in a later lecture we shall have much to say about this higher excitability. ------------------------------------- i find another good description of the divided will in the autobiography of henry alline, the nova scotian evangelist, of whose melancholy i read a brief account in my last lecture. the poor youth's sins were, as you will see, of the most harmless order, yet they interfered with what proved to be his truest vocation, so they gave him great distress. "i was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience. i now began to be esteemed in young company, who knew nothing of my mind all this while, and their esteem began to be a snare to my soul, for i soon began to be fond of carnal mirth, though i still flattered myself that if i did not get drunk, nor curse, nor swear, there would be no sin in frolicking and carnal mirth, and i thought god would indulge young people with some (what i called simple or civil) recreation. i still kept a round of duties, and would not suffer myself to run into any open vices, and so got along very well in time of health and prosperity, but when i was distressed or threatened by sickness, death, or heavy storms of thunder, my religion would not do, and i found there was something wanting, and would begin to repent my going so much to frolics, but when the distress was over, the devil and my own wicked heart, with the solicitations of my associates, and my fondness for young company, were such strong allurements, i would again give way, and thus i got to be very wild and rude, at the same time kept up my rounds of secret prayer and reading; but god, not willing i should destroy myself, still followed me with his calls, and moved with such power upon my conscience, that i could not satisfy myself with my diversions, and in the midst of my mirth sometimes would have such a sense of my lost and undone condition, that i would wish myself from the company, and after it was over, when i went home, would make many promises that i would attend no more on these frolics, and would beg forgiveness for hours and hours; but when i came to have the temptation again, i would give way: no sooner would i hear the music and drink a glass of wine, but i would find my mind elevated and soon proceed to any sort of merriment or diversion, that i thought was not debauched or openly vicious; but when i returned from my carnal mirth i felt as guilty as ever, and could sometimes not close my eyes for some hours after i had gone to my bed. i was one of the most unhappy creatures on earth. "sometimes i would leave the company (often speaking to the fiddler to cease from playing, as if i was tired), and go out and walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would break, and beseeching god that he would not cut me off, nor give me up to hardness of heart. oh, what unhappy hours and nights i thus wore away! when i met sometimes with merry companions, and my heart was ready to sink, i would labor to put on as cheerful a countenance as possible, that they might not distrust anything, and sometimes would begin some discourse with young men or young women on purpose, or propose a merry song, lest the distress of my soul would be discovered, or mistrusted, when at the same time i would then rather have been in a wilderness in exile, than with them or any of their pleasures or enjoyments. thus for many months when i was in company, i would act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart, but at the same time would endeavor as much as i could to shun their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that i was! everything i did, and wherever i went, i was still in a storm, and yet i continued to be the chief contriver and ringleader of the frolics for many months after; though it was a toil and torment to attend them; but the devil and my own wicked heart drove me about like a slave, telling me that i must do this and do that, and bear this and bear that, and turn here and turn there, to keep my credit up, and retain the esteem of my associates: and all this while i continued as strict as possible in my duties, and left no stone unturned to pacify my conscience, watching even against my thoughts, and praying continually wherever i went: for i did not think there was any sin in my conduct, when i was among carnal company, because i did not take any satisfaction there, but only followed it, i thought, for sufficient reasons. "but still, all that i did or could do, conscience would roar night and day." saint augustine and alline both emerged into the smooth waters of inner unity and peace, and i shall next ask you to consider more closely some of the peculiarities of the process of unification, when it occurs. it may come gradually, or it may occur abruptly; it may come through altered feelings, or through altered powers of action; or it may come through new intellectual insights, or through experiences which we shall later have to designate as "mystical." however it come, it brings a characteristic sort of relief; and never such extreme relief as when it is cast into the religious mould. happiness! happiness! religion is only one of the ways in which men gain that gift. easily, permanently, and successfully, it often transforms the most intolerable misery into the profoundest and most enduring happiness. but to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and the process of remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process, which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not necessarily assume the religious form. in judging of the religious types of regeneration which we are about to study, it is important to recognize that they are only one species of a genus that contains other types as well. for example, the new birth may be away from religion into incredulity; or it may be from moral scrupulosity into freedom and license; or it may be produced by the irruption into the individual's life of some new stimulus or passion, such as love, ambition, cupidity, revenge, or patriotic devotion. in all these instances we have precisely the same psychological form of event,--a firmness, stability, and equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency. in these non-religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually or suddenly. the french philosopher jouffroy has left an eloquent memorial of his own "counter-conversion," as the transition from orthodoxy to infidelity has been well styled by mr. starbuck. jouffroy's doubts had long harassed him; but he dates his final crisis from a certain night when his disbelief grew fixed and stable, and where the immediate result was sadness at the illusions he had lost. "i shall never forget that night of december," writes jouffroy, "in which the veil that concealed from me my own incredulity was torn. i hear again my steps in that narrow naked chamber where long after the hour of sleep had come i had the habit of walking up and down. i see again that moon, half-veiled by clouds, which now and again illuminated the frigid window-panes. the hours of the night flowed on and i did not note their passage. anxiously i followed my thoughts, as from layer to layer they descended towards the foundation of my consciousness, and, scattering one by one all the illusions which until then had screened its windings from my view, made them every moment more clearly visible. "vainly i clung to these last beliefs as a shipwrecked sailor clings to the fragments of his vessel; vainly, frightened at the unknown void in which i was about to float, i turned with them towards my childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me: the inflexible current of my thought was too strong,--parents, family, memory, beliefs, it forced me to let go of everything. the investigation went on more obstinate and more severe as it drew near its term, and did not stop until the end was reached. i knew then that in the depth of my mind nothing was left that stood erect. "this moment was a frightful one; and when towards morning i threw myself exhausted on my bed, i seemed to feel my earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before me another life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future i must live alone, alone with my fatal thought which had exiled me thither, and which i was tempted to curse. the days which followed this discovery were the saddest of my life."( ) in john foster's essay on decision of character, there is an account of a case of sudden conversion to avarice, which is illustrative enough to quote:-- a young man, it appears, "wasted, in two or three years, a large patrimony in profligate revels with a number of worthless associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his last means were exhausted, treated him of course with neglect or contempt. reduced to absolute want, he one day went out of the house with an intention to put an end to his life; but wandering awhile almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement, exulting emotion. he had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute. he walked hastily forward, determined to seize the first opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. the first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. he offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. he received a few pence for the labor; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. he then looked out for the next thing that might chance; and went, with indefatigable industry, through a succession of servile employments in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulous in avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. he promptly seized every opportunity which could advance his design, without regarding the meanness of occupation or appearance. by this method he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase in order to sell again a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. he speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. i did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued course of his life, but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth £ , ."( ) let me turn now to the kind of case, the religious case, namely, that immediately concerns us. here is one of the simplest possible type, an account of the conversion to the systematic religion of healthy-mindedness of a man who must already have been naturally of the healthy-minded type. it shows how, when the fruit is ripe, a touch will make it fall. mr. horace fletcher, in his little book called menticulture, relates that a friend with whom he was talking of the self-control attained by the japanese through their practice of the buddhist discipline said:-- " 'you must first get rid of anger and worry.' 'but,' said i, 'is that possible?' 'yes,' replied he; 'it is possible to the japanese, and ought to be possible to us.' "on my way back i could think of nothing else but the words 'get rid, get rid'; and the idea must have continued to possess me during my sleeping hours, for the first consciousness in the morning brought back the same thought, with the revelation of a discovery, which framed itself into the reasoning, 'if it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary to have them at all?' i felt the strength of the argument, and at once accepted the reasoning. the baby had discovered that it could walk. it would scorn to creep any longer. "from the instant i realized that these cancer spots of worry and anger were removable, they left me. with the discovery of their weakness they were exorcised. from that time life has had an entirely different aspect. "although from that moment the possibility and desirability of freedom from the depressing passions has been a reality to me, it took me some months to feel absolute security in my new position; but, as the usual occasions for worry and anger have presented themselves over and over again, and i have been unable to feel them in the slightest degree, i no longer dread or guard against them, and i am amazed at my increased energy and vigor of mind; at my strength to meet situations of all kinds, and at my disposition to love and appreciate everything. "i have had occasion to travel more than ten thousand miles by rail since that morning. the same pullman porter, conductor, hotel-waiter, peddler, book-agent, cabman, and others who were formerly a source of annoyance and irritation have been met, but i am not conscious of a single incivility. all at once the whole world has turned good to me. i have become, as it were, sensitive only to the rays of good. "i could recount many experiences which prove a brand-new condition of mind, but one will be sufficient. without the slightest feeling of annoyance or impatience, i have seen a train that i had planned to take with a good deal of interested and pleasurable anticipation move out of the station without me, because my baggage did not arrive. the porter from the hotel came running and panting into the station just as the train pulled out of sight. when he saw me, he looked as if he feared a scolding, and began to tell of being blocked in a crowded street and unable to get out. when he had finished, i said to him: 'it doesn't matter at all, you couldn't help it, so we will try again to- morrow. here is your fee, i am sorry you had all this trouble in earning it.' the look of surprise that came over his face was so filled with pleasure that i was repaid on the spot for the delay in my departure. next day he would not accept a cent for the service, and he and i are friends for life. "during the first weeks of my experience i was on guard only against worry and anger; but, in the mean time, having noticed the absence of the other depressing and dwarfing passions, i began to trace a relationship, until i was convinced that they are all growths from the two roots i have specified. i have felt the freedom now for so long a time that i am sure of my relation toward it; and i could no more harbor any of the thieving and depressing influences that once i nursed as a heritage of humanity than a fop would voluntarily wallow in a filthy gutter. "there is no doubt in my mind that pure christianity and pure buddhism, and the mental sciences and all religions, fundamentally teach what has been a discovery to me; but none of them have presented it in the light of a simple and easy process of elimination. at one time i wondered if the elimination would not yield to indifference and sloth. in my experience, the contrary is the result. i feel such an increased desire to do something useful that it seems as if i were a boy again and the energy for play had returned. i could fight as readily as (and better than) ever, if there were occasion for it. it does not make one a coward. it can't, since fear is one of the things eliminated. i notice the absence of timidity in the presence of any audience. when a boy, i was standing under a tree which was struck by lightning, and received a shock from the effects of which i never knew exemption until i had dissolved partnership with worry. since then, lightning and thunder have been encountered under conditions which would formerly have caused great depression and discomfort, without [my] experiencing a trace of either. surprise is also greatly modified, and one is less liable to become startled by unexpected sights or noises. "as far as i am individually concerned, i am not bothering myself at present as to what the results of this emancipated condition may be. i have no doubt that the perfect health aimed at by christian science may be one of the possibilities, for i note a marked improvement in the way my stomach does its duty in assimilating the food i give it to handle, and i am sure it works better to the sound of a song than under the friction of a frown. neither am i wasting any of this precious time formulating an idea of a future existence or a future heaven. the heaven that i have within myself is as attractive as any that has been promised or that i can imagine; and i am willing to let the growth lead where it will, as long as the anger and their brood have no part in misguiding it."( ) the older medicine used to speak of two ways, _lysis_ and _crisis_, one gradual, the other abrupt, in which one might recover from a bodily disease. in the spiritual realm there are also two ways, one gradual, the other sudden, in which inner unification may occur. tolstoy and bunyan may again serve us as examples, examples, as it happens, of the gradual way, though it must be confessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these windings of the hearts of others, and one feels that their words do not reveal their total secret. howe'er this be, tolstoy, pursuing his unending questioning, seemed to come to one insight after another. first he perceived that his conviction that life was meaningless took only this finite life into account. he was looking for the value of one finite term in that of another, and the whole result could only be one of those indeterminate equations in mathematics which end with = . yet this is as far as the reasoning intellect by itself can go, unless irrational sentiment or faith brings in the infinite. believe in the infinite as common people do, and life grows possible again. "since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there also has been the faith that gave the possibility of living. faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. it is the force whereby we live. if man did not believe that he must live for something, he would not live at all. the idea of an infinite god, of the divinity of the soul, of the union of men's actions with god--these are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of human thought. they are ideas without which there would be no life, without which i myself," said tolstoy, "would not exist. i began to see that i had no right to rely on my individual reasoning and neglect these answers given by faith, for they are the only answers to the question." yet how believe as the common people believe, steeped as they are in grossest superstition? it is impossible,--but yet their life! their life! it is normal. it is happy! it is an answer to the question! little by little, tolstoy came to the settled conviction--he says it took him two years to arrive there--that his trouble had not been with life in general, not with the common life of common men, but with the life of the upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life which he had personally always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. he had been living wrongly and must change. to work for animal needs, to abjure lies and vanities, to relieve common wants, to be simple, to believe in god, therein lay happiness again. "i remember," he says, "one day in early spring, i was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. i listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it always was busy with--the quest of god. but the idea of him, i said, how did i ever come by the idea? "and again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. everything in me awoke and received a meaning.... why do i look farther? a voice within me asked. he is there: he, without whom one cannot live. to acknowledge god and to live are one and the same thing. god is what life is. well, then! live, seek god, and there will be no life without him.... "after this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. i was saved from suicide. just how or when the change took place i cannot tell. but as insensibly and gradually as the force of life had been annulled within me, and i had reached my moral death-bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. and what was strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. it was my ancient juvenile force of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to be _better_. i gave up the life of the conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities simply keep us from comprehending,"--and tolstoy thereupon embraced the life of the peasants, and has felt right and happy, or at least relatively so, ever since.( ) as i interpret his melancholy, then, it was not merely an accidental vitiation of his humors, though it was doubtless also that. it was logically called for by the clash between his inner character and his outer activities and aims. although a literary artist, tolstoy was one of those primitive oaks of men to whom the superfluities and insincerities, the cupidities, complications, and cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying, and for whom the eternal veracities lie with more natural and animal things. his crisis was the getting of his soul in order, the discovery of its genuine habitat and vocation, the escape from falsehoods into what for him were ways of truth. it was a case of heterogeneous personality tardily and slowly finding its unity and level. and though not many of us can imitate tolstoy, not having enough, perhaps, of the aboriginal human marrow in our bones, most of us may at least feel as if it might be better for us if we could. bunyan's recovery seems to have been even slower. for years together he was alternately haunted with texts of scripture, now up and now down, but at last with an ever growing relief in his salvation through the blood of christ. "my peace would be in and out twenty times a day; comfort now and trouble presently; peace now and before i could go a furlong as full of guilt and fear as ever heart could hold." when a good text comes home to him, "this," he writes, "gave me good encouragement for the space of two or three hours"; or "this was a good day to me, i hope i shall not forget it"; or "the glory of these words was then so weighty on me that i was ready to swoon as i sat; yet not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace"; or "this made a strange seizure on my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts that before did use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me. it showed me that jesus christ had not quite forsaken and cast off my soul." such periods accumulate until he can write: "and now remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder was gone beyond me, only some drops would still remain, that now and then would fall upon me";--and at last: "now did my chains fall off my legs indeed; i was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time, those dreadful scriptures of god left off to trouble me; now went i also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of god.... now could i see myself in heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my christ, by my head, by my righteousness and life, though on earth by my body or person.... christ was a precious christ to my soul that night; i could scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through christ." bunyan became a minister of the gospel, and in spite of his neurotic constitution, and of the twelve years he lay in prison for his non- conformity, his life was turned to active use. he was a peacemaker and doer of good, and the immortal allegory which he wrote has brought the very spirit of religious patience home to english hearts. but neither bunyan nor tolstoy could become what we have called healthy- minded. they had drunk too deeply of the cup of bitterness ever to forget its taste, and their redemption is into a universe two stories deep. each of them realized a good which broke the effective edge of his sadness; yet the sadness was preserved as a minor ingredient in the heart of the faith by which it was overcome. the fact of interest for us is that as a matter of fact they could and did find _something_ welling up in the inner reaches of their consciousness, by which such extreme sadness could be overcome. tolstoy does well to talk of it as _that by which men live_; for that is exactly what it is, a stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force that re-infuses the positive willingness to live, even in full presence of the evil perceptions that erewhile made life seem unbearable. for tolstoy's perceptions of evil appear within their sphere to have remained unmodified. his later works show him implacable to the whole system of official values: the ignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness of the church, the vain conceit of the professions; the meannesses and cruelties that go with great success; and every other pompous crime and lying institution of this world. to all patience with such things his experience has been for him a permanent ministry of death. bunyan also leaves this world to the enemy. "i must first pass a sentence of death," he says, "upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them; to trust in god through christ, as touching the world to come; and as touching this world, to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and sister.... the parting with my wife and my poor children hath often been to me as the pulling of my flesh from my bones, especially my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than all i had besides. poor child, thought i, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though i cannot now endure that the wind should blow upon thee. but yet i must venture you all with god, though it goeth to the quick to leave you."( ) the "hue of resolution" is there, but the full flood of ecstatic liberation seems never to have poured over poor john bunyan's soul. these examples may suffice to acquaint us in a general way with the phenomenon technically called "conversion." in the next lecture i shall invite you to study its peculiarities and concomitants in some detail. lecture ix. conversion. to be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. this at least is what conversion signifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to bring such a moral change about. before entering upon a minuter study of the process, let me enliven our understanding of the definition by a concrete example. i choose the quaint case of an unlettered man, stephen h. bradley, whose experience is related in a scarce american pamphlet.( ) i select this case because it shows how in these inner alterations one may find one unsuspected depth below another, as if the possibilities of character lay disposed in a series of layers or shells, of whose existence we have no premonitory knowledge. bradley thought that he had been already fully converted at the age of fourteen. "i thought i saw the saviour, by faith, in human shape, for about one second in the room, with arms extended, appearing to say to me, come. the next day i rejoiced with trembling; soon after, my happiness was so great that i said that i wanted to die; this world had no place in my affections, as i knew of, and every day appeared as solemn to me as the sabbath. i had an ardent desire that all mankind might feel as i did; i wanted to have them all love god supremely. previous to this time i was very selfish and self-righteous; but now i desired the welfare of all mankind, and could with a feeling heart forgive my worst enemies, and i felt as if i should be willing to bear the scoffs and sneers of any person, and suffer anything for his sake, if i could be the means in the hands of god, of the conversion of one soul." nine years later, in , mr. bradley heard of a revival of religion that had begun in his neighborhood. "many of the young converts," he says, "would come to me when in meeting and ask me if i had religion, and my reply generally was, i hope i have. this did not appear to satisfy them; they said they _knew they_ had it. i requested them to pray for me, thinking with myself, that if i had not got religion now, after so long a time professing to be a christian, that it was time i had, and hoped their prayers would be answered in my behalf. "one sabbath, i went to hear the methodist at the academy. he spoke of the ushering in of the day of general judgment; and he set it forth in such a solemn and terrible manner as i never heard before. the scene of that day appeared to be taking place, and so awakened were all the powers of my mind that, like felix, i trembled involuntarily on the bench where i was sitting, though i felt nothing at heart. the next day evening i went to hear him again. he took his text from revelation: 'and i saw the dead, small and great, stand before god.' and he represented the terrors of that day in such a manner that it appeared as if it would melt the heart of stone. when he finished his discourse, an old gentleman turned to me and said, 'this is what i call preaching.' i thought the same; but my feelings were still unmoved by what he said, and i did not enjoy religion, but i believe he did. "i will now relate my experience of the power of the holy spirit which took place on the same night. had any person told me previous to this that i could have experienced the power of the holy spirit in the manner which i did, i could not have believed it, and should have thought the person deluded that told me so. i went directly home after the meeting, and when i got home i wondered what made me feel so stupid. i retired to rest soon after i got home, and felt indifferent to the things of religion until i began to be exercised by the holy spirit, which began in about five minutes after, in the following manner:-- "at first, i began to feel my heart beat very quick all on a sudden, which made me at first think that perhaps something is going to ail me, though i was not alarmed, for i felt no pain. my heart increased in its beating, which soon convinced me that it was the holy spirit from the effect it had on me. i began to feel exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense of unworthiness as i never felt before. i could not very well help speaking out, which i did, and said, lord, i do not deserve this happiness, or words to that effect, while there was a stream (resembling air in feeling) came into my mouth and heart in a more sensible manner than that of drinking anything, which continued, as near as i could judge, five minutes or more, which appeared to be the cause of such a palpitation of my heart. it took complete possession of my soul, and i am certain that i desired the lord, while in the midst of it, not to give me any more happiness, for it seemed as if i could not contain what i had got. my heart seemed as if it would burst, but it did not stop until i felt as if i was unutterably full of the love and grace of god. in the mean time while thus exercised, a thought arose in my mind, what can it mean? and all at once, as if to answer it, my memory became exceedingly clear, and it appeared to me just as if the new testament was placed open before me, eighth chapter of romans, and as light as if some candle lighted was held for me to read the th and th verses of that chapter, and i read these words: 'the spirit helpeth our infirmities with groanings which cannot be uttered.' and all the time that my heart was a-beating, it made me groan like a person in distress, which was not very easy to stop, though i was in no pain at all, and my brother being in bed in another room came and opened the door, and asked me if i had got the toothache. i told him no, and that he might get to sleep. i tried to stop. i felt unwilling to go to sleep myself, i was so happy, fearing i should lose it--thinking within myself 'my willing soul would stay in such a frame as this.' and while i lay reflecting, after my heart stopped beating, feeling as if my soul was full of the holy spirit, i thought that perhaps there might be angels hovering round my bed. i felt just as if i wanted to converse with them, and finally i spoke, saying, 'o ye affectionate angels! how is it that ye can take so much interest in our welfare, and we take so little interest in our own.' after this, with difficulty i got to sleep; and when i awoke in the morning my first thoughts were: what has become of my happiness? and, feeling a degree of it in my heart, i asked for more, which was given to me as quick as thought. i then got up to dress myself, and found to my surprise that i could but just stand. it appeared to me as if it was a little heaven upon earth. my soul felt as completely raised above the fears of death as of going to sleep; and like a bird in a cage, i had a desire, if it was the will of god, to get released from my body and to dwell with christ, though willing to live to do good to others, and to warn sinners to repent. i went downstairs feeling as solemn as if i had lost all my friends, and thinking with myself, that i would not let my parents know it until i had first looked into the testament. i went directly to the shelf and looked into it, at the eighth chapter of romans, and every verse seemed to almost speak and to confirm it to be truly the word of god, and as if my feelings corresponded with the meaning of the word. i then told my parents of it, and told them that i thought that they must see that when i spoke, that it was not my own voice, for it appeared so to me. my speech seemed entirely under the control of the spirit within me; i do not mean that the words which i spoke were not my own, for they were. i thought that i was influenced similar to the apostles on the day of pentecost (with the exception of having power to give it to others, and doing what they did). after breakfast i went round to converse with my neighbors on religion, which i could not have been hired to have done before this, and at their request i prayed with them, though i had never prayed in public before. "i now feel as if i had discharged my duty by telling the truth, and hope by the blessing of god, it may do some good to all who shall read it. he has fulfilled his promise in sending the holy spirit down into our hearts, or mine at least, and i now defy all the deists and atheists in the world to shake my faith in christ." so much for mr. bradley and his conversion, of the effect of which upon his later life we gain no information. now for a minuter survey of the constituent elements of the conversion process. ------------------------------------- if you open the chapter on association, of any treatise on psychology, you will read that a man's ideas, aims, and objects form diverse internal groups and systems, relatively independent of one another. each "aim" which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement, and gathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as its associates; and if the aims and excitements are distinct in kind, their groups of ideas may have little in common. when one group is present and engrosses the interest, all the ideas connected with other groups may be excluded from the mental field. the president of the united states when, with paddle, gun, and fishing-rod, he goes camping in the wilderness for a vacation, changes his system of ideas from top to bottom. the presidential anxieties have lapsed into the background entirely; the official habits are replaced by the habits of a son of nature, and those who knew the man only as the strenuous magistrate would not "know him for the same person" if they saw him as the camper. if now he should never go back, and never again suffer political interests to gain dominion over him, he would be for practical intents and purposes a permanently transformed being. our ordinary alterations of character, as we pass from one of our aims to another, are not commonly called transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction; but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from the individual's life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder at it, as a "transformation." these alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be divided. a less complete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or more different groups of aims, of which one practically holds the right of way and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious wishes, and never practically come to anything. saint augustine's aspirations to a purer life, in our last lecture, were for a while an example. another would be the president in his full pride of office, wondering whether it were not all vanity, and whether the life of a wood-chopper were not the wholesomer destiny. such fleeting aspirations are mere _velleitates_, whimsies. they exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind, and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system. as life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness. i remember, for instance, that one evening when i was a youth, my father read aloud from a boston newspaper that part of lord gifford's will which founded these four lectureships. at that time i did not think of being a teacher of philosophy: and what i listened to was as remote from my own life as if it related to the planet mars. yet here i am, with the gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my energies, for the time being, devoted to successfully identifying myself with it. my soul stands now planted in what once was for it a practically unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and centre. when i say "soul," you need not take me in the ontological sense unless you prefer to; for although ontological language is instinctive in such matters, yet buddhists or humians can perfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. for them the soul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," "now," "mine," or "me"; and we ascribe to the other parts the positions "there," "then," "that," "his" or "thine," "it," "not me." but a "here" can change to a "there," and a "there" become a "here," and what was "mine" and what was "not mine" change their places. what brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement alters. things hot and vital to us to-day are cold to-morrow. it is as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their sallies. they are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness. whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no importance. it is exact enough, if you recognize from your own experience the facts which i seek to designate by it. now there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through burnt-up paper. then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. or the focus of excitement and heat, the point of view from which the aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certain system; and then, if the change be a religious one, we call it a _conversion_, especially if it be by crisis, or sudden. let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it _the habitual centre of his personal energy_. it makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central or remain peripheral in him. to say that a man is "converted" means, in these terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy. now if you ask of psychology just _how_ the excitement shifts in a man's mental system, and _why_ aims that were peripheral become at a certain moment central, psychology has to reply that although she can give a general description of what happens, she is unable in a given case to account accurately for all the single forces at work. neither an outside observer nor the subject who undergoes the process can explain fully how particular experiences are able to change one's centre of energy so decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do so. we have a thought, or we perform an act, repeatedly, but on a certain day the real meaning of the thought peals through us for the first time, or the act has suddenly turned into a moral impossibility. all we know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas, and cold beliefs, and there are hot and live ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re- crystallize about it. we may say that the heat and liveliness mean only the "motor efficacy," long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? and our explanations then get so vague and general that one realizes all the more the intense individuality of the whole phenomenon. in the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. a mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another. the collection of ideas alters by subtraction or by addition in the course of experience, and the tendencies alter as the organism gets more aged. a mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. but a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure remains permanent. formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation in such changes of equilibrium. new information, however acquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes; and the slow mutation of our instincts and propensities, under the "unimaginable touch of time" has an enormous influence. moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously.( ) and when you get a subject in whom the subconscious life--of which i must speak more fully soon--is largely developed, and in whom motives habitually ripen in silence, you get a case of which you can never give a full account, and in which, both to the subject and the onlookers, there may appear an element of marvel. emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. the sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody.( ) hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive. and emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them. in his recent work on the psychology of religion, professor starbuck of california has shown by a statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its manifestations the ordinary "conversion" which occurs in young people brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of human beings. the age is the same, falling usually between fourteen and seventeen. the symptoms are the same,--sense of incompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about the hereafter; distress over doubts, and the like. and the result is the same,--a happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to the wider outlook. in spontaneous religious awakening, apart from revivalistic examples, and in the ordinary storm and stress and moulting-time of adolescence, we also may meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the subjects by their suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion. the analogy, in fact, is complete; and starbuck's conclusion as to these ordinary youthful conversions would seem to be the only sound one: conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity. "theology," says dr. starbuck, "takes the adolescent tendencies and builds upon them; it sees that the essential thing in adolescent growth is bringing the person out of childhood into the new life of maturity and personal insight. it accordingly brings those means to bear which will intensify the normal tendencies. it shortens up the period of duration of storm and stress." the conversion phenomena of "conviction of sin" last, by this investigator's statistics, about one fifth as long as the periods of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he also got statistics, but they are very much more intense. bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for example, are much more frequent in them. "the essential distinction appears to be that conversion intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person to a definite crisis."( ) the conversions which dr. starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly those of very commonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed type by instruction, appeal, and example. the particular form which they affect is the result of suggestion and imitation.( ) if they went through their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the change would be the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable), its accidents would be different. in catholic lands, for example, and in our own episcopalian sects, no such anxiety and conviction of sin is usual as in sects that encourage revivals. the sacraments being more relied on in these more strictly ecclesiastical bodies, the individual's personal acceptance of salvation needs less to be accentuated and led up to. but every imitative phenomenon must once have had its original, and i propose that for the future we keep as close as may be to the more first- hand and original forms of experience. these are more likely to be found in sporadic adult cases. professor leuba, in a valuable article on the psychology of conversion,( ) subordinates the theological aspect of the religious life almost entirely to its moral aspect. the religious sense he defines as "the feeling of un-wholeness, of moral imperfection, of sin, to use the technical word, accompanied by the yearning after the peace of unity." "the word 'religion,' " he says, "is getting more and more to signify the conglomerate of desires and emotions springing from the sense of sin and its release"; and he gives a large number of examples, in which the sin ranges from drunkenness to spiritual pride, to show that the sense of it may beset one and crave relief as urgently as does the anguish of the sickened flesh or any form of physical misery. undoubtedly this conception covers an immense number of cases. a good one to use as an example is that of mr. s. h. hadley, who after his conversion became an active and useful rescuer of drunkards in new york. his experience runs as follows:-- "one tuesday evening i sat in a saloon in harlem, a homeless, friendless, dying drunkard. i had pawned or sold everything that would bring a drink. i could not sleep unless i was dead drunk. i had not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding i had suffered with delirium tremens, or the horrors, from midnight till morning. i had often said, 'i will never be a tramp. i will never be cornered, for when that time comes, if ever it comes, i will find a home in the bottom of the river.' but the lord so ordered it that when that time did come i was not able to walk one quarter of the way to the river. as i sat there thinking, i seemed to feel some great and mighty presence. i did not know then what it was. i did learn afterwards that it was jesus, the sinner's friend. i walked up to the bar and pounded it with my fist till i made the glasses rattle. those who stood by drinking looked on with scornful curiosity. i said i would never take another drink, if i died on the street, and really i felt as though that would happen before morning. something said, 'if you want to keep this promise, go and have yourself locked up.' i went to the nearest station- house and had myself locked up. "i was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as though all the demons that could find room came in that place with me. this was not all the company i had, either. no, praise the lord; that dear spirit that came to me in the saloon was present, and said, pray. i did pray, and though i did not feel any great help, i kept on praying. as soon as i was able to leave my cell i was taken to the police court and remanded back to the cell. i was finally released, and found my way to my brother's house, where every care was given me. while lying in bed the admonishing spirit never left me, and when i arose the following sabbath morning i felt that day would decide my fate, and toward evening it came into my head to go to jerry m'auley's mission. i went. the house was packed, and with great difficulty i made my way to the space near the platform. there i saw the apostle to the drunkard and the outcast--that man of god, jerry m'auley. he rose, and amid deep silence told his experience. there was a sincerity about this man that carried conviction with it, and i found myself saying, 'i wonder if god can save _me_?' i listened to the testimony of twenty-five or thirty persons, every one of whom had been saved from rum, and i made up my mind that i would be saved or die right there. when the invitation was given, i knelt down with a crowd of drunkards. jerry made the first prayer. then mrs. m'auley prayed fervently for us. oh, what a conflict was going on for my poor soul! a blessed whisper said, 'come'; the devil said, 'be careful.' i halted but a moment, and then, with a breaking heart, i said, 'dear jesus, can you help me?' never with mortal tongue can i describe that moment. although up to that moment my soul had been filled with indescribable gloom, i felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart. i felt i was a free man. oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of resting on jesus! i felt that christ with all his brightness and power had come into my life; that, indeed, old things had passed away and all things had become new. "from that moment till now i have never wanted a drink of whiskey, and i have never seen money enough to make me take one. i promised god that night that if he would take away the appetite for strong drink, i would work for him all my life. he has done his part, and i have been trying to do mine."( ) dr. leuba rightly remarks that there is little doctrinal theology in such an experience, which starts with the absolute need of a higher helper, and ends with the sense that he has helped us. he gives other cases of drunkards' conversions which are purely ethical, containing, as recorded, no theological beliefs whatever. john b. gough's case, for instance, is practically, says dr. leuba, the conversion of an atheist--neither god nor jesus being mentioned.( ) but in spite of the importance of this type of regeneration, with little or no intellectual readjustment, this writer surely makes it too exclusive. it corresponds to the subjectively centred form of morbid melancholy, of which bunyan and alline were examples. but we saw in our seventh lecture that there are objective forms of melancholy also, in which the lack of rational meaning of the universe, and of life anyhow, is the burden that weighs upon one--you remember tolstoy's case.( ) so there are distinct elements in conversion, and their relations to individual lives deserve to be discriminated.( ) some persons, for instance, never are, and possibly never under any circumstances could be, converted. religious ideas cannot become the centre of their spiritual energy. they may be excellent persons, servants of god in practical ways, but they are not children of his kingdom. they are either incapable of imagining the invisible; or else, in the language of devotion, they are life-long subjects of "barrenness" and "dryness." such inaptitude for religious faith may in some cases be intellectual in its origin. their religious faculties may be checked in their natural tendency to expand, by beliefs about the world that are inhibitive, the pessimistic and materialistic beliefs, for example, within which so many good souls, who in former times would have freely indulged their religious propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us to-day lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts. in many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. to the end of their days they refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter remains inactive in perpetuity. in other persons the trouble is profounder. there are men anæsthetic on the religious side, deficient in that category of sensibility. just as a bloodless organism can never, in spite of all its goodwill, attain to the reckless "animal spirits" enjoyed by those of sanguine temperament; so the nature which is spiritually barren may admire and envy faith in others, but can never compass the enthusiasm and peace which those who are temperamentally qualified for faith enjoy. all this may, however, turn out eventually to have been a matter of temporary inhibition. even late in life some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest breast, and the man's hard heart may soften and break into religious feeling. such cases more than any others suggest the idea that sudden conversion is by miracle. so long as they exist, we must not imagine ourselves to deal with irretrievably fixed classes. ------------------------------------- now there are two forms of mental occurrence in human beings, which lead to a striking difference in the conversion process, a difference to which professor starbuck has called attention. you know how it is when you try to recollect a forgotten name. usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally running over the places, persons, and things with which the word was connected. but sometimes this effort fails: you feel then as if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though the name were _jammed_, and pressure in its direction only kept it all the more from rising. and then the opposite expedient often succeeds. give up the effort entirely; think of something altogether different, and in half an hour the lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as emerson says, as carelessly as if it had never been invited. some hidden process was started in you by the effort, which went on after the effort ceased, and made the result come as if it came spontaneously. a certain music teacher, says dr. starbuck, says to her pupils after the thing to be done has been clearly pointed out, and unsuccessfully attempted: "stop trying and it will do itself!"( ) there is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an involuntary and unconscious way in which mental results may get accomplished; and we find both ways exemplified in the history of conversion, giving us two types, which starbuck calls the _volitional type_ and the _type by self- surrender_ respectively. in the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits. but there are always critical points here at which the movement forward seems much more rapid. this psychological fact is abundantly illustrated by dr. starbuck. our education in any practical accomplishment proceeds apparently by jerks and starts, just as the growth of our physical bodies does. "an athlete ... sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it, just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. if he keeps on engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at once the game plays itself through him--when he loses himself in some great contest. in the same way, a musician may suddenly reach a point at which pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away, and in some moment of inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music flows. the writer has chanced to hear two different married persons, both of whose wedded lives had been beautiful from the beginning, relate that not until a year or more after marriage did they awake to the full blessedness of married life. so it is with the religious experience of these persons we are studying."( ) we shall erelong hear still more remarkable illustrations of subconsciously maturing processes eventuating in results of which we suddenly grow conscious. sir william hamilton and professor laycock of edinburgh were among the first to call attention to this class of effects; but dr. carpenter first, unless i am mistaken, introduced the term "unconscious cerebration," which has since then been a popular phrase of explanation. the facts are now known to us far more extensively than he could know them, and the adjective "unconscious," being for many of them almost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced by the vaguer term "subconscious" or "subliminal." of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give examples,( ) but they are as a rule less interesting than those of the self-surrender type, in which the subconscious effects are more abundant and often startling. i will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so because the difference between the two types is after all not radical. even in the most voluntarily built-up sort of regeneration there are passages of partial self-surrender interposed; and in the great majority of all cases, when the will has done its uttermost towards bringing one close to the complete unification aspired after, it seems that the very last step must be left to other forces and performed without the help of its activity. in other words, self-surrender becomes then indispensable. "the personal will," says dr. starbuck, "must be given up. in many cases relief persistently refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go." "i had said i would not give up; but when my will was broken, it was all over," writes one of starbuck's correspondents.--another says: "i simply said: 'lord, i have done all i can; i leave the whole matter with thee;' and immediately there came to me a great peace."--another: "all at once it occurred to me that i might be saved, too, if i would stop trying to do it all myself, and follow jesus: somehow i lost my load."--another: "i finally ceased to resist, and gave myself up, though it was a hard struggle. gradually the feeling came over me that i had done my part, and god was willing to do his."( )--"lord, thy will be done; damn or save!" cries john nelson,( ) exhausted with the anxious struggle to escape damnation; and at that moment his soul was filled with peace. dr. starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me a true, account--so far as conceptions so schematic can claim truth at all--of the reasons why self-surrender at the last moment should be so indispensable. to begin with, there are two things in the mind of the candidate for conversion: first, the present incompleteness or wrongness, the "sin" which he is eager to escape from; and, second, the positive ideal which he longs to compass. now with most of us the sense of our present wrongness is a far more distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any positive ideal we can aim at. in a majority of cases, indeed, the "sin" almost exclusively engrosses the attention, so that conversion is "_a process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards righteousness_."( ) a man's conscious wit and will, so far as they strain towards the ideal, are aiming at something only dimly and inaccurately imagined. yet all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces tend is pretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he consciously conceives and determines. it may consequently be actually interfered with (_jammed_, as it were, like the lost word when we seek too energetically to recall it), by his voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction. starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says that to exercise the personal will is still to live in the region where the imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. where, on the contrary, the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably the better self _in posse_ which directs the operation. instead of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, it is then itself the organizing centre. what then must the person do? "he must relax," says dr. starbuck,--"that is, he must fall back on the larger power that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun.... the act of yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over to the new life, making it the centre of a new personality, and living, from within, the truth of it which had before been viewed objectively."( ) "man's extremity is god's opportunity" is the theological way of putting this fact of the need of self-surrender; whilst the physiological way of stating it would be, "let one do all in one's power, and one's nervous system will do the rest." both statements acknowledge the same fact.( ) to state it in terms of our own symbolism: when the new centre of personal energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower, "hands off" is the only word for us, it must burst forth unaided! we have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. but since, in any terms, the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy of powers which, whatever they may be, are more ideal than we are actually, and make for our redemption, you see why self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the vital turning-point of the religious life, so far as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of outer works and ritual and sacraments. one may say that the whole development of christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than the greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self- surrender. from catholicism to lutheranism, and then to calvinism; from that to wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technical christianity altogether, to pure "liberalism" or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure type, taking in the mediæval mystics, the quietists, the pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the individual in his forlornness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or propitiatory machinery. psychology and religion are thus in perfect harmony up to this point, since both admit that there are forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bring redemption to his life. nevertheless psychology, defining these forces as "subconscious," and speaking of their effects as due to "incubation," or "cerebration," implies that they do not transcend the individual's personality; and herein she diverges from christian theology, which insists that they are direct supernatural operations of the deity. i propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergence final, but leave the question for a while in abeyance--continued inquiry may enable us to get rid of some of the apparent discord. ------------------------------------- revert, then, for a moment more to the psychology of self-surrender. when you find a man living on the ragged edge of his consciousness, pent in to his sin and want and incompleteness, and consequently inconsolable, and then simply tell him that all is well with him, that he must stop his worry, break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety, you seem to him to come with pure absurdities. the only positive consciousness he has tells him that all is _not_ well, and the better way you offer sounds simply as if you proposed to him to assert cold-blooded falsehoods. "the will to believe" cannot be stretched as far as that. we can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of its opposite. the better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation. there are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. one is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop,--so we drop down, give up, and _don't care_ any longer. our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into a temporary apathy. now there is documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not infrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. so long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. but let the former faint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired possession, may retain it. carlyle's teufelsdröckh passes from the everlasting no to the everlasting yes through a "centre of indifference." let me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion process. that genuine saint, david brainerd, describes his own crisis in the following words:-- "one morning, while i was walking in a solitary place as usual, i at once saw that all my contrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in vain; i was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. i saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards helping or delivering myself, that i had made all the pleas i ever could have made to all eternity; and that all my pleas were vain, for i saw that self-interest had led me to pray, and that i had never once prayed from any respect to the glory of god. i saw that there was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divine mercy; that they laid not the least obligation upon god to bestow his grace upon me; and that there was no more virtue or goodness in them than there would be in my paddling with my hand in the water. i saw that i had been heaping up my devotions before god, fasting, praying, etc., pretending, and indeed really thinking sometimes that i was aiming at the glory of god; whereas i never once truly intended it, but only my own happiness. i saw that as i had never done anything for god, i had no claim on anything from him but perdition, on account of my hypocrisy and mockery. when i saw evidently that i had regard to nothing but self-interest, then my duties appeared a vile mockery and a continual course of lies, for the whole was nothing but self-worship, and an horrid abuse of god. "i continued, as i remember, in this state of mind, from friday morning till the sabbath evening following (july , ), when i was walking again in the same solitary place. here, in a mournful melancholy state _i was attempting to pray; but found no heart to engage in that or any other duty; my former concern, exercise, and religious affections were now gone. i thought that the spirit of god had quite left me; but still was not distressed; yet disconsolate, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy. having been thus endeavoring to pray--though, as i thought, very stupid and senseless_--for near half an hour; then, as i was walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. i do not mean any external brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a new inward apprehension or view that i had of god, such as i never had before, nor anything which had the least resemblance to it. i had no particular apprehension of any one person in the trinity, either the father, the son, or the holy ghost; but it appeared to be divine glory. my soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a god, such a glorious divine being; and i was inwardly pleased and satisfied that he should be god over all for ever and ever. my soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency of god that i was even swallowed up in him; at least to that degree that i had no thought about my own salvation, and scarce reflected that there was such a creature as myself. i continued in this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till near dark without any sensible abatement; and then began to think and examine what i had seen; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the evening following. i felt myself in a new world, and everything about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was wont to do. at this time, the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that i wondered i should ever think of any other way of salvation; was amazed that i had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. if i could have been saved by my own duties or any other way that i had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it. i wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of christ."( ) i have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious emotion hitherto habitual. in a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,( ) yet often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out. this is undoubtedly true in a great many instances, as we shall presently see. but often there seems little doubt that both conditions--subconscious ripening of the one affection and exhaustion of the other--must simultaneously have conspired, in order to produce the result. t. w. b., a convert of nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "how long, o lord, how long?" "after repeating this and similar language," he says, "several times, _i seemed to sink away into a state of insensibility_. when i came to myself again i was on my knees, praying not for myself but for others. i felt submission to the will of god, willing that he should do with me as should seem good in his sight. my concern seemed all lost in concern for others."( ) our great american revivalist finney writes: "i said to myself: 'what is this? i must have grieved the holy ghost entirely away. i have lost all my conviction. i have not a particle of concern about my soul; and it must be that the spirit has left me.' 'why!' thought i, 'i never was so far from being concerned about my own salvation in my life.'... i tried to recall my convictions, to get back again the load of sin under which i had been laboring. i tried in vain to make myself anxious. i was so quiet and peaceful that i tried to feel concerned about that, lest it should be the result of my having grieved the spirit away."( ) but beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite independently of any exhaustion in the subject's capacity for feeling, or even in the absence of any acute previous feeling, the higher condition, having reached the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and sweeps in like a sudden flood. these are the most striking and memorable cases, the cases of instantaneous conversion to which the conception of divine grace has been most peculiarly attached. i have given one of them at length--the case of mr. bradley. but i had better reserve the other cases and my comments on the rest of the subject for the following lecture. lecture x. conversion--concluded. in this lecture we have to finish the subject of conversion, considering at first those striking instantaneous instances of which saint paul's is the most eminent, and in which, often amid tremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new. conversion of this type is an important phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it has played in protestant theology, and it behooves us to study it conscientiously on that account. i think i had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalized account. one must know concrete instances first; for, as professor agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particulars enables one to take it in. i will go back, then, to the case of our friend henry alline, and quote his report of the th of march, , on which his poor divided mind became unified for good. "as i was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my miserable lost and undone condition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, i thought i was in such a miserable case as never any man was before. i returned to the house, and when i got to the door, just as i was stepping off the threshold, the following impressions came into my mind like a powerful but small still voice. you have been seeking, praying, reforming, laboring, reading, hearing, and meditating, and what have you done by it towards your salvation? are you any nearer to conversion now than when you first began? are you any more prepared for heaven, or fitter to appear before the impartial bar of god, than when you first began to seek? "it brought such conviction on me that i was obliged to say that i did not think i was one step nearer than at first, but as much condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before. i cried out within myself, o lord god, i am lost, and if thou, o lord, dost not find out some new way, i know nothing of, i shall never be saved, for the ways and methods i have prescribed to myself have all failed me, and i am willing they should fail. o lord, have mercy! o lord, have mercy! "these discoveries continued until i went into the house and sat down. after i sat down, being all in confusion, like a drowning man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in an agony, i turned very suddenly round in my chair, and seeing part of an old bible lying in one of the chairs, i caught hold of it in great haste; and opening it without any premeditation, cast my eyes on the th psalm, which was the first time i ever saw the word of god: it took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go through my whole soul, so that it seemed as if god was praying in, with, and for me. about this time my father called the family to attend prayers; i attended, but paid no regard to what he said in his prayer, but continued praying in those words of the psalm. oh, help me, help me! cried i, thou redeemer of souls, and save me, or i am gone forever; thou canst this night, if thou pleasest, with one drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of an angry god. at that instant of time when i gave all up to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willing that god should rule over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with repeated scriptures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be melted down with love; the burden of guilt and condemnation was gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled with gratitude, and my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, and crying to an unknown god for help, was now filled with immortal love, soaring on the wings of faith, freed from the chains of death and darkness, and crying out, my lord and my god; thou art my rock and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my present and my everlasting portion. looking up, i thought i saw that same light [he had on more than one previous occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze of light], though it appeared different; and as soon as i saw it, the design was opened to me, according to his promise, and i was obliged to cry out: enough, enough, o blessed god! the work of conversion, the change, and the manifestations of it are no more disputable than that light which i see, or anything that ever i saw. "in the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after my soul was set at liberty, the lord discovered to me my labor in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. i cried out, amen, lord, i'll go; send me, send me. i spent the greatest part of the night in ecstasies of joy, praising and adoring the ancient of days for his free and unbounded grace. after i had been so long in this transport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require sleep, i thought to close my eyes for a few moments; then the devil stepped in, and told me that if i went to sleep, i should lose it all, and when i should awake in the morning i would find it to be nothing but a fancy and delusion. i immediately cried out, o lord god, if i am deceived, undeceive me. "i then closed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be refreshed with sleep; and when i awoke, the first inquiry was, where is my god? and in an instant of time, my soul seemed awake in and with god, and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love. about sunrise i arose with joy to relate to my parents what god had done for my soul, and declared to them the miracle of god's unbounded grace. i took a bible to show them the words that were impressed by god on my soul the evening before; but when i came to open the bible, it appeared all new to me. "i so longed to be useful in the cause of christ, in preaching the gospel, that it seemed as if i could not rest any longer, but go i must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. i lost all taste for carnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was enabled to forsake them."( ) young mr. alline, after the briefest of delays, and with no book-learning but his bible, and no teaching save that of his own experience, became a christian minister, and thenceforward his life was fit to rank, for its austerity and single-mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. but happy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even the most innocent carnal pleasures back. we must class him, like bunyan and tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. his redemption was into another universe than this mere natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. years later we can find him making such an entry as this in his diary: "on wednesday the th i preached at a wedding, and had the happiness thereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth." the next case i will give is that of a correspondent of professor leuba, printed in the latter's article, already cited, in vol. vi. of the american journal of psychology. this subject was an oxford graduate, the son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic case of colonel gardiner, which everybody may be supposed to know. here it is, somewhat abridged:-- "between the period of leaving oxford and my conversion i never darkened the door of my father's church, although i lived with him for eight years, making what money i wanted by journalism, and spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me and drink it away. so i lived, sometimes drunk for a week together, and then a terrible repentance, and would not touch a drop for a whole month. "in all this period, that is, up to thirty-three years of age, i never had a desire to reform on religious grounds. but all my pangs were due to some terrible remorse i used to feel after a heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after my folly in wasting my life in such a way--a man of superior talents and education. this terrible remorse turned me gray in one night, and whenever it came upon me i was perceptibly grayer the next morning. what i suffered in this way is beyond the expression of words. it was hell-fire in all its most dreadful tortures. often did i vow that if i got over 'this time' i would reform. alas, in about three days i fully recovered, and was as happy as ever. so it went on for years, but, with a physique like a rhinoceros, i always recovered, and as long as i let drink alone, no man was as capable of enjoying life as i was. "i was converted in my own bedroom in my father's rectory house at precisely three o'clock in the afternoon of a hot july day (july , ). i was in perfect health, having been off from the drink for nearly a month. i was in no way troubled about my soul. in fact, god was not in my thoughts that day. a young lady friend sent me a copy of professor drummond's natural law in the spiritual world, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work only. being proud of my critical talents and wishing to enhance myself in my new friend's esteem, i took the book to my bedroom for quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write her what i thought of it. it was here that god met me face to face, and i shall never forget the meeting. 'he that hath the son hath life eternal, he that hath not the son hath not life.' i had read this scores of times before, but this made all the difference. i was now in god's presence and my attention was absolutely 'soldered' on to this verse, and i was not allowed to proceed with the book till i had fairly considered what these words really involved. only then was i allowed to proceed, feeling all the while that there was another being in my bedroom, though not seen by me. the stillness was very marvelous, and i felt supremely happy. it was most unquestionably shown me, in one second of time, that i had never touched the eternal: and that if i died then, i must inevitably be lost. i was undone. i knew it as well as i now know i am saved. the spirit of god showed it me in ineffable love; there was no terror in it; i felt god's love so powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that i had lost all through my own folly; and what was i to do? what could i do? i did not repent even; god never asked me to repent. all i felt was 'i am undone,' and god cannot help it, although he loves me. no fault on the part of the almighty. all the time i was supremely happy: i felt like a little child before his father. i had done wrong, but my father did not scold me, but loved me most wondrously. still my doom was sealed. i was lost to a certainty, and being naturally of a brave disposition i did not quail under it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret for what i had lost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled within me to think it was all over. then there crept in upon me so gently, so lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape, and what was it after all? the old, old story over again, told in the simplest way: 'there is no name under heaven whereby ye can be saved except that of the lord jesus christ.' no words were spoken to me; my soul seemed to see my saviour in the spirit, and from that hour to this, nearly nine years now, there has never been in my life one doubt that the lord jesus christ and god the father both worked upon me that afternoon in july, both differently, and both in the most perfect love conceivable, and i rejoiced there and then in a conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in less than twenty-four hours. "but a time of trouble was yet to come. the day after my conversion i went into the hay-field to lend a hand with the harvest, and not having made any promise to god to abstain or drink in moderation only, i took too much and came home drunk. my poor sister was heart-broken; and i felt ashamed of myself and got to my bedroom at once, where she followed me, weeping copiously. she said i had been converted and fallen away instantly. but although i was quite full of drink (not muddled, however), i knew that god's work begun in me was not going to be wasted. about midday i made on my knees the first prayer before god for twenty years. i did not ask to be forgiven; i felt that was no good, for i would be sure to fall again. well, what did i do? i committed myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was going to be destroyed, that he would take all from me, and i was willing. in such a surrender lies the secret of a holy life. from that hour drink has had no terrors for me: i never touch it, never want it. the same thing occurred with my pipe: after being a regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for it went at once, and has never returned. so with every known sin, the deliverance in each case being permanent and complete. i have had no temptation since conversion, god seemingly having shut out satan from that course with me. he gets a free hand in other ways, but never on sins of the flesh. since i gave up to god all ownership in my own life, he has guided me in a thousand ways, and has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the blessing of a truly surrendered life." so much for our graduate of oxford, in whom you notice the complete abolition of an ancient appetite as one of the conversion's fruits. the most curious record of sudden conversion with which i am acquainted is that of m. alphonse ratisbonne, a freethinking french jew, to catholicism, at rome in . in a letter to a clerical friend, written a few months later, the convert gives a palpitating account of the circumstances.( ) the predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. he had an elder brother who had been converted and was a catholic priest. he was himself irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and generally to his "cloth." finding himself at rome in his twenty-ninth year, he fell in with a french gentleman who tried to make a proselyte of him, but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations than to get him to hang (half jocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to accept and read a copy of a short prayer to the virgin. m. ratisbonne represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light and chaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to banish the words of the prayer from his mind, and that the night before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imagery of which a black cross with no christ upon it figured. nevertheless, until noon of the next day he was free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. i now give his own words. "if at this time any one had accosted me, saying: 'alphonse, in a quarter of an hour you shall be adoring jesus christ as your god and saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon the ground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at the foot of a priest; you shall pass the carnival in a college of jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give your life for the catholic faith; you shall renounce the world and its pomps and pleasures; renounce your fortune, your hopes, and if need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family, the esteem of your friends, and your attachment to the jewish people; you shall have no other aspiration than to follow christ and bear his cross till death;'--if, i say, a prophet had come to me with such a prediction, i should have judged that only one person could be more mad than he,--whosoever, namely, might believe in the possibility of such senseless folly becoming true. and yet that folly is at present my only wisdom, my sole happiness. "coming out of the café i met the carriage of monsieur b. [the proselyting friend]. he stopped and invited me in for a drive, but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended to some duty at the church of san andrea delle fratte. instead of waiting in the carriage, i entered the church myself to look at it. the church of san andrea was poor, small, and empty; i believe that i found myself there almost alone. no work of art attracted my attention; and i passed my eyes mechanically over its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. i can only remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as i mused. in an instant the dog had disappeared, the whole church had vanished, i no longer saw anything, ... or more truly i saw, o my god, one thing alone. "heavens, how can i speak of it? oh no! human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. any description, however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth. "i was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears, with my heart beside itself, when m. b. called me back to life. i could not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon the other. but finally i took the medal which i had on my breast, and with all the effusion of my soul i kissed the image of the virgin, radiant with grace, which it bore. oh, indeed, it was she! it was indeed she! [what he had seen had been a vision of the virgin.] "i did not know where i was: i did not know whether i was alphonse or another. i only felt myself changed and believed myself another me; i looked for myself in myself and did not find myself. in the bottom of my soul i felt an explosion of the most ardent joy; i could not speak; i had no wish to reveal what had happened. but i felt something solemn and sacred within me which made me ask for a priest. i was led to one; and there, alone, after he had given me the positive order, i spoke as best i could, kneeling, and with my heart still trembling. i could give no account to myself of the truth of which i had acquired a knowledge and a faith. all that i can say is that in an instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes; and not one bandage only, but the whole manifold of bandages in which i had been brought up. one after another they rapidly disappeared, even as the mud and ice disappear under the rays of the burning sun. "i came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness; and i was living, perfectly living. but i wept, for at the bottom of that gulf i saw the extreme of misery from which i had been saved by an infinite mercy; and i shuddered at the sight of my iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhelmed with wonder and with gratitude. you may ask me how i came to this new insight, for truly i had never opened a book of religion nor even read a single page of the bible, and the dogma of original sin is either entirely denied or forgotten by the hebrews of to-day, so that i had thought so little about it that i doubt whether i ever knew its name. but how came i, then, to this perception of it? i can answer nothing save this, that on entering that church i was in darkness altogether, and on coming out of it i saw the fullness of the light. i can explain the change no better than by the simile of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should suddenly open his eyes to the day. he sees, but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects which excite his wonder. if we cannot explain physical light, how can we explain the light which is the truth itself? and i think i remain within the limits of veracity when i say that without having any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, i now intuitively perceived its sense and spirit. better than if i saw them, i _felt_ those hidden things; i felt them by the inexplicable effects they produced in me. it all happened in my interior mind; and those impressions, more rapid than thought, shook my soul, revolved and turned it, as it were, in another direction, towards other aims, by other paths. i express myself badly. but do you wish, lord, that i should inclose in poor and barren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?" i might multiply cases almost indefinitely, but these will suffice to show you how real, definite, and memorable an event a sudden conversion may be to him who has the experience. throughout the height of it he undoubtedly seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astounding process performed upon him from above. there is too much evidence of this for any doubt of it to be possible. theology, combining this fact with the doctrines of election and grace, has concluded that the spirit of god is with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way, unlike what happens at any other juncture of our lives. at that moment, it believes, an absolutely new nature is breathed into us, and we become partakers of the very substance of the deity. that the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view, and the moravian protestants appear to have been the first to see this logical consequence. the methodists soon followed suit, practically if not dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, john wesley wrote:-- "in london alone i found members of our society who were exceeding clear in their experience, and whose testimony i could see no reason to doubt. and every one of these (without a single exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous; that the change was wrought in a moment. had half of these, or one third, or one in twenty, declared it was _gradually_ wrought in _them_, i should have believed this, with regard to _them_, and thought that _some_ were gradually sanctified and some instantaneously. but as i have not found, in so long a space of time, a single person speaking thus, i cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always, an instantaneous work." tyerman's life of wesley, i. . all this while the more usual sects of protestantism have set no such store by instantaneous conversion. for them as for the catholic church, christ's blood, the sacraments, and the individual's ordinary religious duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, even though no acute crisis of self-despair and surrender followed by relief should be experienced. for methodism, on the contrary, unless there have been a crisis of this sort, salvation is only offered, not effectively received, and christ's sacrifice in so far forth is incomplete. methodism surely here follows, if not the healthier-minded, yet on the whole the profounder spiritual instinct. the individual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically, but psychologically they have been the more complete. in the fully evolved revivalism of great britain and america we have, so to speak, the codified and stereotyped procedure to which this way of thinking has led. in spite of the unquestionable fact that saints of the once-born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in holiness without a cataclysm; in spite of the obvious leakage (as one may say) of much mere natural goodness into the scheme of salvation; revivalism has always assumed that only its own type of religious experience can be perfect; you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and agony, and then in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released. it is natural that those who personally have traversed such an experience should carry away a feeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural process. voices are often heard, lights seen, or visions witnessed; automatic motor phenomena occur; and it always seems, after the surrender of the personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and taken possession. moreover the sense of renovation, safety, cleanness, rightness, can be so marvelous and jubilant as well to warrant one's belief in a radically new substantial nature. "conversion," writes the new england puritan, joseph alleine, "is not the putting in a patch of holiness; but with the true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice. the sincere christian is quite a new fabric, from the foundation to the top-stone. he is a new man, a new creature." and jonathan edwards says in the same strain: "those gracious influences which are the effects of the spirit of god are altogether supernatural--are quite different from anything that unregenerate men experience. they are what no improvement, or composition of natural qualifications or principles will ever produce; because they not only differ from what is natural, and from everything that natural men experience in degree and circumstances, but also in kind, and are of a nature far more excellent. from hence it follows that in gracious affections there are [also] new perceptions and sensations entirely different in their nature and kind from anything experienced by the [same] saints before they were sanctified.... the conceptions which the saints have of the loveliness of god, and that kind of delight which they experience in it, are quite peculiar, and entirely different from anything which a natural man can possess, or of which he can form any proper notion." and that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be preceded by despair is shown by edwards in another passage. "surely it cannot be unreasonable," he says, "that before god delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe, he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the value of what god is pleased to do for us. as those who are saved are successively in two extremely different states--first in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justification and blessedness--and as god, in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and intelligent creatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that those who are saved should be made sensible of their being, in those two different states. in the first place, that they should be made sensible of their state of condemnation; and afterwards, of their state of deliverance and happiness." such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal interpretation of these changes. whatever part suggestion and imitation may have played in producing them in men and women in excited assemblies, they have at any rate been in countless individual instances an original and unborrowed experience. were we writing the story of the mind from the purely natural-history point of view, with no religious interest whatever, we should still have to write down man's liability to sudden and complete conversion as one of his most curious peculiarities. ------------------------------------- what, now, must we ourselves think of this question? is an instantaneous conversion a miracle in which god is present as he is present in no change of heart less strikingly abrupt? are there two classes of human beings, even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class really partakes of christ's nature while the other merely seems to do so? or, on the contrary, may the whole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these startling instantaneous examples, possibly be a strictly natural process, divine in its fruits, of course, but in one case more and in another less so, and neither more nor less divine in its mere causation and mechanism than any other process, high or low, of man's interior life? before proceeding to answer this question, i must ask you to listen to some more psychological remarks. at our last lecture, i explained the shifting of men's centres of personal energy within them and the lighting up of new crises of emotion. i explained the phenomena as partly due to explicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely also to the subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited by the experiences of life. when ripe, the results hatch out, or burst into flower. i have now to speak of the subconscious region, in which such processes of flowering may occur, in a somewhat less vague way. i only regret that my limits of time here force me to be so short. the expression "field of consciousness" has but recently come into vogue in the psychology books. until quite lately the unit of mental life which figured most was the single "idea" supposed to be a definitely outlined thing. but at present psychologists are tending, first, to admit that the actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field, with any definiteness. as our mental fields succeed one another, each has its centre of interest, around which the objects of which we are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limits are unassignable. some fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields. usually when we have a wide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of truth together, and often get glimpses of relations which we divine rather than see, for they shoot beyond the field into still remoter regions of objectivity, regions which we seem rather to be about to perceive than to perceive actually. at other times, of drowsiness, illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted. different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter of width of field. your great organizing geniuses are men with habitually vast fields of mental vision, in which a whole programme of future operations will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far ahead into definite directions of advance. in common people there is never this magnificent inclusive view of a topic. they stumble along, feeling their way, as it were, from point to point, and often stop entirely. in certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of the body. the important fact which this "field" formula commemorates is the indetermination of the margin. inattentively realized as is the matter which the margin contains, it is nevertheless there, and helps both to guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention. it lies around us like a "magnetic field," inside of which our centre of energy turns like a compass-needle, as the present phase of consciousness alters into its successor. our whole past store of memories floats beyond this margin, ready at a touch to come in; and the entire mass of residual powers, impulses, and knowledges that constitute our empirical self stretches continuously beyond it. so vaguely drawn are the outlines between what is actual and what is only potential at any moment of our conscious life, that it is always hard to say of certain mental elements whether we are conscious of them or not. the ordinary psychology, admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the marginal outline, has nevertheless taken for granted, first, that all the consciousness the person now has, be the same focal or marginal, inattentive or attentive, is there in the "field" of the moment, all dim and impossible to assign as the latter's outline may be; and, second, that what is absolutely extra-marginal is absolutely non-existent, and cannot be a fact of consciousness at all. and having reached this point, i must now ask you to recall what i said in my last lecture about the subconscious life. i said, as you may recollect, that those who first laid stress upon these phenomena could not know the facts as we now know them. my first duty now is to tell you what i meant by such a statement. i cannot but think that the most important step forward that has occurred in psychology since i have been a student of that science is the discovery, first made in , that, in certain subjects at least, there is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre and margin, but an addition thereto in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of the primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. i call this the most important step forward because, unlike the other advances which psychology has made, this discovery has revealed to us an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature. no other step forward which psychology has made can proffer any such claim as this. in particular this discovery of a consciousness existing beyond the field, or subliminally as mr. myers terms it, casts light on many phenomena of religious biography. that is why i have to advert to it now, although it is naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any account of the evidence on which the admission of such a consciousness is based. you will find it set forth in many recent books, binet's alterations of personality( ) being perhaps as good a one as any to recommend. the human material on which the demonstration has been made has so far been rather limited and, in part at least, eccentric, consisting of unusually suggestible hypnotic subjects, and of hysteric patients. yet the elementary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform that what is shown to be true in a marked degree of some persons is probably true in some degree of all, and may in a few be true in an extraordinarily high degree. the most important consequence of having a strongly developed ultra- marginal life of this sort is that one's ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions from it of which the subject does not guess the source, and which, therefore, take for him the form of unaccountable impulses to act, or inhibitions of action, of obsessive ideas, or even of hallucinations of sight or hearing. the impulses may take the direction of automatic speech or writing, the meaning of which the subject himself may not understand even while he utters it; and generalizing this phenomenon, mr. myers has given the name of _automatism_, sensory or motor, emotional or intellectual, to this whole sphere of effects, due to "uprushes" into the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the subliminal parts of the mind. the simplest instance of an automatism is the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion, so-called. you give to a hypnotized subject, adequately susceptible, an order to perform some designated act--usual or eccentric, it makes no difference--after he wakes from his hypnotic sleep. punctually, when the signal comes or the time elapses upon which you have told him that the act must ensue, he performs it;--but in so doing he has no recollection of your suggestion, and he always trumps up an improvised pretext for his behavior if the act be of an eccentric kind. it may even be suggested to a subject to have a vision or to hear a voice at a certain interval after waking, and when the time comes the vision is seen or the voice heard, with no inkling on the subject's part of its source. in the wonderful explorations by binet, janet, breuer, freud, mason, prince, and others, of the subliminal consciousness of patients with hysteria, we have revealed to us whole systems of underground life, in the shape of memories of a painful sort which lead a parasitic existence, buried outside of the primary fields of consciousness, and making irruptions thereinto with hallucinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling and of motion, and the whole procession of symptoms of hysteric disease of body and of mind. alter or abolish by suggestion these subconscious memories, and the patient immediately gets well. his symptoms were automatisms, in mr. myers's sense of the word. these clinical records sound like fairy-tales when one first reads them, yet it is impossible to doubt their accuracy; and, the path having been once opened by these first observers, similar observations have been made elsewhere. they throw, as i said, a wholly new light upon our natural constitution. and it seems to me that they make a farther step inevitable. interpreting the unknown after the analogy of the known, it seems to me that hereafter, wherever we meet with a phenomenon of automatism, be it motor impulses, or obsessive idea, or unaccountable caprice, or delusion, or hallucination, we are bound first of all to make search whether it be not an explosion, into the fields of ordinary consciousness, of ideas elaborated outside of those fields in subliminal regions of the mind. we should look, therefore, for its source in the subject's subconscious life. in the hypnotic cases, we ourselves create the source by our suggestion, so we know it directly. in the hysteric cases, the lost memories which are the source have to be extracted from the patient's subliminal by a number of ingenious methods, for an account of which you must consult the books. in other pathological cases, insane delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions, the source is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should be in subliminal regions which improvements in our methods may yet conceivably put on tap. there lies the mechanism logically to be assumed,--but the assumption involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification, in which the religious experiences of man must play their part.( ) ------------------------------------- and thus i return to our own specific subject of instantaneous conversions. you remember the cases of alline, bradley, brainerd, and the graduate of oxford converted at three in the afternoon. similar occurrences abound, some with and some without luminous visions, all with a sense of astonished happiness, and of being wrought on by a higher control. if, abstracting altogether from the question of their value for the future spiritual life of the individual, we take them on their psychological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them remind us of what we find outside of conversion that we are tempted to class them along with other automatisms, and to suspect that what makes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert is not necessarily the presence of divine miracle in the case of one and of something less divine in that of the other, but rather a simple psychological peculiarity, the fact, namely, that in the recipient of the more instantaneous grace we have one of those subjects who are in possession of a large region in which mental work can go on subliminally, and from which invasive experiences, abruptly upsetting the equilibrium of the primary consciousness, may come. i do not see why methodists need object to such a view. pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which i sought to lead you in my very first lecture. you may remember how i there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. our spiritual judgment, i said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. if the _fruits for life_ of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work with it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it. well, how is it with these fruits? if we except the class of preëminent saints of whom the names illumine history, and consider only the usual run of "saints," the shopkeeping church-members and ordinary youthful or middle-aged recipients of instantaneous conversion, whether at revivals or in the spontaneous course of methodistic growth, you will probably agree that no splendor worthy of a wholly supernatural creature fulgurates from them, or sets them apart from the mortals who have never experienced that favor. were it true that a suddenly converted man as such is, as edwards says,( ) of an entirely different kind from a natural man, partaking as he does directly of christ's substance, there surely ought to be some exquisite class-mark, some distinctive radiance attaching even to the lowliest specimen of this genus, to which no one of us could remain insensible, and which, so far as it went, would prove him more excellent than ever the most highly gifted among mere natural men. but notoriously there is no such radiance. converted men as a class are indistinguishable from natural men; some natural men even excel some converted men in their fruits; and no one ignorant of doctrinal theology could guess by mere every-day inspection of the "accidents" of the two groups of persons before him, that their substance differed as much as divine differs from human substance. the believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. the super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by satan. the real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of god, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. and this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of christianity altogether. throughout jonathan edwards's admirably rich and delicate description of the supernaturally infused condition, in his treatise on religious affections, there is not one decisive trait, not one mark, that unmistakably parts it off from what may possibly be only an exceptionally high degree of natural goodness. in fact, one could hardly read a clearer argument than this book unwittingly offers in favor of the thesis that no chasm exists between the orders of human excellence, but that here as elsewhere, nature shows continuous differences, and generation and regeneration are matters of degree. all which denial of two objective classes of human beings separated by a chasm must not leave us blind to the extraordinary momentousness of the fact of his conversion to the individual himself who gets converted. there are higher and lower limits of possibility set to each personal life. if a flood but goes above one's head, its absolute elevation becomes a matter of small importance; and when we touch our own upper limit and live in our own highest centre of energy, we may call ourselves saved, no matter how much higher some one else's centre may be. a small man's salvation will always be a great salvation and the greatest of all facts _for him_, and we should remember this when the fruits of our ordinary evangelicism look discouraging. who knows how much less ideal still the lives of these spiritual grubs and earthworms, these crumps and stigginses, might have been, if such poor grace as they have received had never touched them at all?( ) if we roughly arrange human beings in classes, each class standing for a grade of spiritual excellence, i believe we shall find natural men and converts both sudden and gradual in all the classes. the forms which regenerative change effects have, then, no general spiritual significance, but only a psychological significance. we have seen how starbuck's laborious statistical studies tend to assimilate conversion to ordinary spiritual growth. another american psychologist, prof. george a. coe,( ) has analyzed the cases of seventy-seven converts or ex-candidates for conversion, known to him, and the results strikingly confirm the view that sudden conversion is connected with the possession of an active subliminal self. examining his subjects with reference to their hypnotic sensibility and to such automatisms as hypnagogic hallucinations, odd impulses, religious dreams about the time of their conversion, etc., he found these relatively much more frequent in the group of converts whose transformation had been "striking," "striking" transformation being defined as a change which, though not necessarily instantaneous, seems to the subject of it to be distinctly different from a process of growth, however rapid.( ) candidates for conversion at revivals are, as you know, often disappointed: they experience nothing striking. professor coe had a number of persons of this class among his seventy-seven subjects, and they almost all, when tested by hypnotism, proved to belong to a subclass which he calls "spontaneous," that is, fertile in self- suggestions, as distinguished from a "passive" subclass, to which most of the subjects of striking transformation belonged. his inference is that self-suggestion of impossibility had prevented the influence upon these persons of an environment which, on the more "passive" subjects, had easily brought forth the effects they looked for. sharp distinctions are difficult in these regions, and professor coe's numbers are small. but his methods were careful, and the results tally with what one might expect; and they seem, on the whole, to justify his practical conclusion, which is that if you should expose to a converting influence a subject in whom three factors unite: first, pronounced emotional sensibility; second, tendency to automatisms; and third, suggestibility of the passive type; you might then safely predict the result: there would be a sudden conversion, a transformation of the striking kind. does this temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden conversion when it has occurred? not in the least, as professor coe well says; for "the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological, nothing definable in terms of _how it happens_, but something ethical, definable only in terms of _what is attained_."( ) as we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that what is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have become possible, and new energies and endurances are shown. the personality is changed, the man _is_ born anew, whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to his metamorphosis. "sanctification" is the technical name of this result; and erelong examples of it shall be brought before you. in this lecture i have still only to add a few remarks on the assurance and peace which fill the hour of change itself. ------------------------------------- one word more, though, before proceeding to that point, lest the final purpose of my explanation of suddenness by subliminal activity be misunderstood. i do indeed believe that if the subject have no liability to such subconscious activity, or if his conscious fields have a hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it, his conversion must be gradual if it occur, and must resemble any simple growth into new habits. his possession of a developed subliminal self, and of a leaky or pervious margin, is thus a _conditio sine qua non_ of the subject's becoming converted in the instantaneous way. but if you, being orthodox christians, ask me as a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon to a subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the direct presence of the deity altogether, i have to say frankly that as a psychologist i do not see why it necessarily should. the lower manifestations of the subliminal, indeed, fall within the resources of the personal subject: his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will account for all his usual automatisms. but just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material, so it is logically conceivable that _if there be_ higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so _might be_ our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them. the hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy subliminal might remain ajar or open. thus that perception of external control which is so essential a feature in conversion might, in some cases at any rate, be interpreted as the orthodox interpret it: forces transcending the finite individual might impress him, on condition of his being what we may call a subliminal human specimen. but in any case the _value_ of these forces would have to be determined by their effects, and the mere fact of their transcendency would of itself establish no presumption that they were more divine than diabolical. i confess that this is the way in which i should rather see the topic left lying in your minds until i come to a much later lecture, when i hope once more to gather these dropped threads together into more definitive conclusions. the notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this point of our inquiry to be held to _exclude_ all notion of a higher penetration. if there be higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us only through the subliminal door. (see below, p. ff.) ------------------------------------- let us turn now to the feelings which immediately fill the hour of the conversion experience. the first one to be noted is just this sense of higher control. it is not always, but it is very often present. we saw examples of it in alline, bradley, brainerd, and elsewhere. the need of such a higher controlling agency is well expressed in the short reference which the eminent french protestant adolphe monod makes to the crisis of his own conversion. it was at naples in his early manhood, in the summer of . "my sadness," he says, "was without limit, and having got entire possession of me, it filled my life from the most indifferent external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at their source my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. it was then that i saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder by my reason and my will, which were themselves diseased, would be to act like a blind man who should pretend to correct one of his eyes by the aid of the other equally blind one. i had then no resource save in _some influence from without_. i remembered the promise of the holy ghost; and what the positive declarations of the gospel had never succeeded in bringing home to me, i learned at last from necessity, and believed, for the first time in my life, in this promise, in the only sense in which it answered the needs of my soul, in that, namely, of a real external supernatural action, capable of giving me thoughts, and taking them away from me, and exerted on me by a god as truly master of my heart as he is of the rest of nature. renouncing then all merit, all strength, abandoning all my personal resources, and acknowledging no other title to his mercy than my own utter misery, i went home and threw myself on my knees, and prayed as i never yet prayed in my life. from this day onwards a new interior life began for me: not that my melancholy had disappeared, but it had lost its sting. hope had entered into my heart, and once entered on the path, the god of jesus christ, to whom i then had learned to give myself up, little by little did the rest."( ) it is needless to remind you once more of the admirable congruity of protestant theology with the structure of the mind as shown in such experiences. in the extreme of melancholy the self that consciously _is_ can do absolutely nothing. it is completely bankrupt and without resource, and no works it can accomplish will avail. redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free gift or nothing, and grace through christ's accomplished sacrifice is such a gift. "god," says luther, "is the god of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate, and of those that are brought even to nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and damned. now that pernicious and pestilent opinion of man's own righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable, and damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not god to come to his own natural and proper work. therefore god must take this maul in hand (the law, i mean) to beat in pieces and bring to nothing this beast with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned. but here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and cast down, he is so little able to raise himself up again and say, 'now i am bruised and afflicted enough; now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear christ.' the foolishness of man's heart is so great that then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. 'if i live,' saith he, 'i will amend my life: i will do this, i will do that.' but here, except thou do the quite contrary, except thou send moses away with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon christ who died for thy sins, look for no salvation. thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? what shall all these do? what shall the law of moses avail? if i, wretched and damnable sinner, through works or merits could have loved the son of god, and so come to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? if i, being a wretch and damned sinner, could be redeemed by any other price, what needed the son of god to be given? but because there was no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even god himself, entirely and wholly 'for me,' even 'for me,' i say, a miserable, wretched sinner. now, therefore, i take comfort and apply this to _myself_. and this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith. for he died _not_ to justify the righteous, but the _un_-righteous, and to make _them_ the children of god."( ) that is, the more literally lost you are, the more literally you are the very being whom christ's sacrifice has already saved. nothing in catholic theology, i imagine, has ever spoken to sick souls as straight as this message from luther's personal experience. as protestants are not all sick souls, of course reliance on what luther exults in calling the dung of one's merits, the filthy puddle of one's own righteousness, has come to the front again in their religion; but the adequacy of his view of christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental structure is shown by its wildfire contagiousness when it was a new and quickening thing. faith that christ has genuinely done his work was part of what luther meant by faith, which so far is faith in a fact intellectually conceived of. but this is only one part of luther's faith, the other part being far more vital. this other part is something not intellectual but immediate and intuitive, the assurance, namely, that i, this individual i, just as i stand, without one plea, etc., am saved now and forever.( ) professor leuba is undoubtedly right in contending that the conceptual belief about christ's work, although so often efficacious and antecedent, is really accessory and non-essential, and that the "joyous conviction" can also come by far other channels than this conception. it is to the joyous conviction itself, the assurance that all is well with one, that he would give the name of faith _par excellence_. "when the sense of estrangement," he writes, "fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego, breaks down, the individual finds himself 'at one with all creation.' he lives in the universal life; he and man, he and nature, he and god, are one. that state of confidence, trust, union with all things, following upon the achievement of moral unity, is the _faith-state_. various dogmatic beliefs suddenly, on the advent of the faith-state, acquire a character of certainty, assume a new reality, become an object of faith. as the ground of assurance here is not rational, argumentation is irrelevant. but such conviction being a mere casual offshoot of the faith-state, it is a gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of the faith-state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain particular theological conceptions.( ) on the contrary, its value lies solely in the fact that it is the psychic correlate of a biological growth reducing contending desires to one direction; a growth which expresses itself in new affective states and new reactions; in larger, nobler, more christ-like activities. the ground of the specific assurance in religious dogmas is then an affective experience. the objects of faith may even be preposterous; the affective stream will float them along, and invest them with unshakable certitude. the more startling the affective experience, the less explicable it seems, the easier it is to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions."( ) the characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, i think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith- state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one have been through the experience one's self. the central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the _willingness to be_, even though the outer conditions should remain the same. the certainty of god's "grace," of "justification," "salvation," is an objective belief that usually accompanies the change in christians; but this may be entirely lacking and yet the affective peace remain the same--you will recollect the case of the oxford graduate: and many might be given where the assurance of personal salvation was only a later result. a passion of willingness, of acquiescence, of admiration, is the glowing centre of this state of mind. the second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. the mysteries of life become lucid, as professor leuba says; and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words. but these more intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat of mysticism. a third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. "an appearance of newness beautifies every object," the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients, and of which you may recall my relating some examples.( ) this sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one of the commonest entries in conversion records. jonathan edwards thus describes it in himself:-- "after this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. the appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. god's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. and scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. before, i used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when i saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me."( ) billy bray, an excellent little illiterate english evangelist, records his sense of newness thus:-- "i said to the lord: 'thou hast said, they that ask shall receive, they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the door shall be opened, and i have faith to believe it.' in an instant the lord made me so happy that i cannot express what i felt. i shouted for joy. i praised god with my whole heart.... i think this was in november, , but what day of the month i do not know. i remember this, that everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. i was like a new man in a new world. i spent the greater part of my time in praising the lord."( ) starbuck and leuba both illustrate this sense of newness by quotations. i take the two following from starbuck's manuscript collection. one, a woman, says:-- "i was taken to a camp-meeting, mother and religious friends seeking and praying for my conversion. my emotional nature was stirred to its depths; confessions of depravity and pleading with god for salvation from sin made me oblivious of all surroundings. i plead for mercy, and had a vivid realization of forgiveness and renewal of my nature. when rising from my knees i exclaimed, 'old things have passed away, all things have become new.' it was like entering another world, a new state of existence. natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that i saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenly music; my soul exulted in the love of god, and i wanted everybody to share in my joy." the next case is that of a man:-- "i know not how i got back into the encampment, but found myself staggering up to rev. ----'s holiness tent--and as it was full of seekers and a terrible noise inside, some groaning, some laughing, and some shouting, and by a large oak, ten feet from the tent, i fell on my face by a bench, and tried to pray, and every time i would call on god, something like a man's hand would strangle me by choking. i don't know whether there were any one around or near me or not. i thought i should surely die if i did not get help, but just as often as i would pray, that unseen hand was felt on my throat and my breath squeezed off. finally something said: 'venture on the atonement, for you will die anyway if you don't.' so i made one final struggle to call on god for mercy, with the same choking and strangling, determined to finish the sentence of prayer for mercy, if i did strangle and die, and the last i remember that time was falling back on the ground with the same unseen hand on my throat. i don't know how long i lay there or what was going on. none of my folks were present. when i came to myself, there were a crowd around me praising god. the very heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory. not for a moment only, but all day and night, floods of light and glory seemed to pour through my soul, and oh, how i was changed, and everything became new. my horses and hogs and even everybody seemed changed." this man's case introduces the feature of automatisms, which in suggestible subjects have been so startling a feature at revivals since, in edwards's, wesley's, and whitfield's time, these became a regular means of gospel propagation. they were at first supposed to be semi-miraculous proofs of "power" on the part of the holy ghost; but great divergence of opinion quickly arose concerning them. edwards, in his thoughts on the revival of religion in new england, has to defend them against their critics; and their value has long been matter of debate even within the revivalistic denominations.( ) they undoubtedly have no essential spiritual significance, and although their presence makes his conversion more memorable to the convert, it has never been proved that converts who show them are more persevering or fertile in good fruits than those whose change of heart has had less violent accompaniments. on the whole, unconsciousness, convulsions, visions, involuntary vocal utterances, and suffocation, must be simply ascribed to the subject's having a large subliminal region, involving nervous instability. this is often the subject's own view of the matter afterwards. one of starbuck's correspondents writes, for instance:-- "i have been through the experience which is known as conversion. my explanation of it is this: the subject works his emotions up to the breaking point, at the same time resisting their physical manifestations, such as quickened pulse, etc., and then suddenly lets them have their full sway over his body. the relief is something wonderful, and the pleasurable effects of the emotions are experienced to the highest degree." there is one form of sensory automatism which possibly deserves special notice on account of its frequency. i refer to hallucinatory or pseudo- hallucinatory luminous phenomena, _photisms_, to use the term of the psychologists. saint paul's blinding heavenly vision seems to have been a phenomenon of this sort; so does constantine's cross in the sky. the last case but one which i quoted mentions floods of light and glory. henry alline mentions a light, about whose externality he seems uncertain. colonel gardiner sees a blazing light. president finney writes:-- "all at once the glory of god shone upon and round about me in a manner almost marvelous.... a light perfectly ineffable shone in my soul, that almost prostrated me on the ground.... this light seemed like the brightness of the sun in every direction. it was too intense for the eyes.... i think i knew something then, by actual experience, of that light that prostrated paul on the way to damascus. it was surely a light such as i could not have endured long."( ) such reports of photisms are indeed far from uncommon. here is another from starbuck's collection, where the light appeared evidently external:-- "i had attended a series of revival services for about two weeks off and on. had been invited to the altar several times, all the time becoming more deeply impressed, when finally i decided i must do this, or i should be lost. realization of conversion was very vivid, like a ton's weight being lifted from my heart; a strange light which seemed to light up the whole room (for it was dark); a conscious supreme bliss which caused me to repeat 'glory to god' for a long time. decided to be god's child for life, and to give up my pet ambition, wealth and social position. my former habits of life hindered my growth somewhat, but i set about overcoming these systematically, and in one year my whole nature was changed, i.e., my ambitions were of a different order." here is another one of starbuck's cases, involving a luminous element:-- "i had been clearly converted twenty-three years before, or rather reclaimed. my experience in regeneration was then clear and spiritual, and i had not backslidden. but i experienced entire sanctification on the th day of march, , about eleven o'clock in the morning. the particular accompaniments of the experience were entirely unexpected. i was quietly sitting at home singing selections out of pentecostal hymns. suddenly there seemed to be a something sweeping into me and inflating my entire being--such a sensation as i had never experienced before. when this experience came, i seemed to be conducted around a large, capacious, well-lighted room. as i walked with my invisible conductor and looked around, a clear thought was coined in my mind, 'they are not here, they are gone.' as soon as the thought was definitely formed in my mind, though no word was spoken, the holy spirit impressed me that i was surveying my own soul. then, for the first time in all my life, did i know that i was cleansed from all sin, and filled with the fullness of god." leuba quotes the case of a mr. peek, where the luminous affection reminds one of the chromatic hallucinations produced by the intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by the mexicans:-- "when i went in the morning into the fields to work, the glory of god appeared in all his visible creation. i well remember we reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the oats seemed, as it were, arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if i may so express it, in the glory of god."( ) the most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis, and the last one of which i shall speak, is the ecstasy of happiness produced. we have already heard several accounts of it, but i will add a couple more. president finney's is so vivid that i give it at length:-- "all my feelings seemed to rise and flow out; and the utterance of my heart was, 'i want to pour my whole soul out to god.' the rising of my soul was so great that i rushed into the back room of the front office, to pray. there was no fire and no light in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. as i went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if i met the lord jesus christ face to face. it did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterwards, that it was wholly a mental state. on the contrary, it seemed to me that i saw him as i would see any other man. he said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet. i have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me a reality that he stood before me, and i fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. i wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as i could with my choked utterance. it seemed to me that i bathed his feet with my tears; and yet i had no distinct impression that i touched him, that i recollect. i must have continued in this state for a good while; but my mind was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect anything that i said. but i know, as soon as my mind became calm enough to break off from the interview, i returned to the front office, and found that the fire that i had made of large wood was nearly burned out. but as i turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, i received a mighty baptism of the holy ghost. without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that i had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the holy spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. i could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for i could not express it in any other way. it seemed like the very breath of god. i can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings. "no words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. i wept aloud with joy and love; and i do not know but i should say i literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. these waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until i recollect i cried out, 'i shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.' i said, 'lord, i cannot bear any more;' yet i had no fear of death. "how long i continued in this state, with this baptism continuing to roll over me and go through me, i do not know. but i know it was late in the evening when a member of my choir--for i was the leader of the choir--came into the office to see me. he was a member of the church. he found me in this state of loud weeping, and said to me, 'mr. finney, what ails you?' i could make him no answer for some time. he then said, 'are you in pain?' i gathered myself up as best i could, and replied, 'no, but so happy that i cannot live.' " i just now quoted billy bray; i cannot do better than give his own brief account of his post-conversion feelings:-- "i can't help praising the lord. as i go along the street, i lift up one foot, and it seems to say 'glory'; and i lift up the other, and it seems to say 'amen'; and so they keep up like that all the time i am walking."( ) one word, before i close this lecture, on the question of the transiency or permanence of these abrupt conversions. some of you, i feel sure, knowing that numerous backslidings and relapses take place, make of these their apperceiving mass for interpreting the whole subject, and dismiss it with a pitying smile at so much "hysterics." psychologically, as well as religiously, however, this is shallow. it misses the point of serious interest, which is not so much the duration as the nature and quality of these shiftings of character to higher levels. men lapse from every level--we need no statistics to tell us that. love is, for instance, well known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. these revelations form its significance to men and women, whatever be its duration. so with the conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its importance,--an importance which backsliding cannot diminish, although persistence might increase it. as a matter of fact, all the more striking instances of conversion, all those, for instance, which i have quoted, _have_ been permanent. the case of which there might be most doubt, on account of its suggesting so strongly an epileptoid seizure, was the case of m. ratisbonne. yet i am informed that ratisbonne's whole future was shaped by those few minutes. he gave up his project of marriage, became a priest, founded at jerusalem, where he went to dwell, a mission of nuns for the conversion of the jews, showed no tendency to use for egotistic purposes the notoriety given him by the peculiar circumstances of his conversion,--which, for the rest, he could seldom refer to without tears,--and in short remained an exemplary son of the church until he died, late in the 's, if i remember rightly. the only statistics i know of, on the subject of the duration of conversions, are those collected for professor starbuck by miss johnston. they embrace only a hundred persons, evangelical church-members, more than half being methodists. according to the statement of the subjects themselves, there had been backsliding of some sort in nearly all the cases, per cent. of the women, per cent. of the men. discussing the returns more minutely, starbuck finds that only per cent. are relapses from the religious faith which the conversion confirmed, and that the backsliding complained of is in most only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. only six of the hundred cases report a change of faith. starbuck's conclusion is that the effect of conversion is to bring with it "a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate.... in other words, the persons who have passed through conversion, having once taken a stand for the religious life, tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much their religious enthusiasm declines."( ) lectures xi, xii, and xiii. saintliness. the last lecture left us in a state of expectancy. what may the practical fruits for life have been, of such movingly happy conversions as those we heard of? with this question the really important part of our task opens, for you remember that we began all this empirical inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritual judgment as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness which we have seen. we must, therefore, first describe the fruits of the religious life, and then we must judge them. this divides our inquiry into two distinct parts. let us without further preamble proceed to the descriptive task. it ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business in these lectures. some small pieces of it, it is true, may be painful, or may show human nature in a pathetic light, but it will be mainly pleasant, because the best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show. they have always been esteemed so; here if anywhere is the genuinely strenuous life; and to call to mind a succession of such examples as i have lately had to wander through, though it has been only in the reading of them, is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in better moral air. the highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals. i can do no better than quote, as to this, some remarks which sainte-beuve in his history of port-royal makes on the results of conversion or the state of grace. "even from the purely human point of view," sainte-beuve says, "the phenomenon of grace must still appear sufficiently extraordinary, eminent, and rare, both in its nature and in its effects, to deserve a closer study. for the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixed and invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds which it ever performs are executed. through all the different forms of communion, and all the diversity of the means which help to produce this state, whether it be reached by a jubilee, by a general confession, by a solitary prayer and effusion, whatever in short be the place and the occasion, it is easy to recognize that it is fundamentally one state in spirit and in fruits. penetrate a little beneath the diversity of circumstances, and it becomes evident that in christians of different epochs it is always one and the same modification by which they are affected: there is veritably a single fundamental and identical spirit of piety and charity, common to those who have received grace; an inner state which before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in god, and of severity for one's self, accompanied with tenderness for others. the fruits peculiar to this condition of the soul have the same savor in all, under distant suns and in different surroundings, in saint teresa of avila just as in any moravian brother of herrnhut."( ) sainte-beuve has here only the more eminent instances of regeneration in mind, and these are of course the instructive ones for us also to consider. these devotees have often laid their course so differently from other men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be tempted to call them monstrous aberrations from the path of nature. i begin, therefore, by asking a general psychological question as to what the inner conditions are which may make one human character differ so extremely from another. i reply at once that where the character, as something distinguished from the intellect, is concerned, the causes of human diversity lie chiefly in our _differing susceptibilities of emotional excitement_, and in the _different impulses and inhibitions_ which these bring in their train. let me make this more clear. speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given time, is always a resultant of two sets of forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. "yes! yes!" say the impulses; "no! no!" say the inhibitions. few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar. the influence is so incessant that it becomes subconscious. all of you, for example, sit here with a certain constraint at this moment, and entirely without express consciousness of the fact, because of the influence of the occasion. if left alone in the room, each of you would probably involuntarily rearrange himself, and make his attitude more "free and easy." but proprieties and their inhibitions snap like cobwebs if any great emotional excitement supervenes. i have seen a dandy appear in the street with his face covered with shaving-lather because a house across the way was on fire; and a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown if it be a question of saving her baby's life or her own. take a self- indulgent woman's life in general. she will yield to every inhibition set by her disagreeable sensations, lie late in bed, live upon tea or bromides, keep indoors from the cold. every difficulty finds her obedient to its "no." but make a mother of her, and what have you? possessed by maternal excitement, she now confronts wakefulness, weariness, and toil without an instant of hesitation or a word of complaint. the inhibitive power of pain over her is extinguished wherever the baby's interests are at stake. the inconveniences which this creature occasions have become, as james hinton says, the glowing heart of a great joy, and indeed are now the very conditions whereby the joy becomes most deep. this is an example of what you have already heard of as the "expulsive power of a higher affection." but be the affection high or low, it makes no difference, so long as the excitement it brings be strong enough. in one of henry drummond's discourses he tells of an inundation in india where an eminence with a bungalow upon it remained unsubmerged, and became the refuge of a number of wild animals and reptiles in addition to the human beings who were there. at a certain moment a royal bengal tiger appeared swimming towards it, reached it, and lay panting like a dog upon the ground in the midst of the people, still possessed by such an agony of terror that one of the englishmen could calmly step up with a rifle and blow out its brains. the tiger's habitual ferocity was temporarily quelled by the emotion of fear, which became sovereign, and formed a new centre for his character. sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contrary ones are mixed together. in that case one hears both "yeses" and "noes," and the "will" is called on then to solve the conflict. take a soldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him towards various courses if his comrades offer various examples. his person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences; and he may for a time simply waver, because no one emotion prevails. there is a pitch of intensity, though, which, if any emotion reach it, enthrones that one as alone effective and sweeps its antagonists and all their inhibitions away. the fury of his comrades' charge, once entered on, will give this pitch of courage to the soldier; the panic of their rout will give this pitch of fear. in these sovereign excitements, things ordinarily impossible grow natural because the inhibitions are annulled. their "no! no!" not only is not heard, it does not exist. obstacles are then like tissue-paper hoops to the circus rider--no impediment; the flood is higher than the dam they make. "lass sie betteln gehn wenn sie hungrig sind!" cries the grenadier, frantic over his emperor's capture, when his wife and babes are suggested; and men pent into a burning theatre have been known to cut their way through the crowd with knives.( ) one mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. i mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. the pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self--it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. this is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. the sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited. it costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long- rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. rather do we take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation; and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist in the inaptitude for these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and the victims.( ) so far i have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shifting excitements in the same person. but the relatively fixed differences of character of different persons are explained in a precisely similar way. in a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective, and other sorts of inhibition take their place. when a person has an inborn genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely from that of ordinary people, for none of their usual deterrents check him. your mere aspirant to a type of character, on the contrary, only shows, when your natural lover, fighter, or reformer, with whom the passion is a gift of nature, comes along, the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctive action. he has deliberately to overcome his inhibitions; the genius with the inborn passion seems not to feel them at all; he is free of all that inner friction and nervous waste. to a fox, a garibaldi, a general booth, a john brown, a louise michel, a bradlaugh, the obstacles omnipotent over those around them are as if non-existent. could the rest of us so disregard them, there might be many such heroes, for many have the wish to live for similar ideals, and only the adequate degree of inhibition- quenching fury is lacking.( ) the difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam-pressure chronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of ideal excitement transiently acquired. given a certain amount of love, indignation, generosity, magnanimity, admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self- surrender, the result is always the same. that whole raft of cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments to action, sinks away at once. our conventionality,( ) our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, our demands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities, despairs, where are they now? severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun-- "wo sind die sorge nun und noth die mich noch gestern wollt' erschlaffen? ich schäm' mich dess' im morgenroth." the flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under that their very contact is unfelt. set free of them, we float and soar and sing. this auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion is religious. "the true monk," writes an italian mystic, "takes nothing with him but his lyre." ------------------------------------- we may now turn from these psychological generalities to those fruits of the religious state which form the special subject of our present lecture. the man who lives in his religious centre of personal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self in perfectly definite ways. the new ardor which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower "noes" which formerly beset him, and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature. magnanimities once impossible are now easy; paltry conventionalities and mean incentives once tyrannical hold no sway. the stone wall inside of him has fallen, the hardness in his heart has broken down. the rest of us can, i think, imagine this by recalling our state of feeling in those temporary "melting moods" into which either the trials of real life, or the theatre, or a novel sometimes throw us. especially if we weep! for it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading. with most of us the customary hardness quickly returns, but not so with saintly persons. many saints, even as energetic ones as teresa and loyola, have possessed what the church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the so-called gift of tears. in these persons the melting mood seems to have held almost uninterrupted control. and as it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with other exalted affections. their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but in either case it may have "come to stay." at the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence to be true of the general paramountcy of the higher insight, even though in the ebbs of emotional excitement meaner motives might temporarily prevail and backsliding might occur. but that lower temptations may remain completely annulled, apart from transient emotion and as if by alteration of the man's habitual nature, is also proved by documentary evidence in certain cases. before embarking on the general natural history of the regenerate character, let me convince you of this curious fact by one or two examples. the most numerous are those of reformed drunkards. you recollect the case of mr. hadley in the last lecture; the jerry mcauley water street mission abounds in similar instances.( ) you also remember the graduate of oxford, converted at three in the afternoon, and getting drunk in the hay-field the next day, but after that permanently cured of his appetite. "from that hour drink has had no terrors for me: i never touch it, never want it. the same thing occurred with my pipe, ... the desire for it went at once and has never returned. so with every known sin, the deliverance in each case being permanent and complete. i have had no temptations since conversion." here is an analogous case from starbuck's manuscript collection:-- "i went into the old adelphi theatre, where there was a holiness meeting, ... and i began saying, 'lord, lord, i must have this blessing.' then what was to me an audible voice said: 'are you willing to give up everything to the lord?' and question after question kept coming up, to all of which i said: 'yes, lord; yes, lord!' until this came: 'why do you not accept it _now_?' and i said: 'i do, lord.'--i felt no particular joy, only a trust. just then the meeting closed, and, as i went out on the street, i met a gentleman smoking a fine cigar, and a cloud of smoke came into my face, and i took a long, deep breath of it, and praise the lord, all my appetite for it was gone. then as i walked along the street, passing saloons where the fumes of liquor came out, i found that all my taste and longing for that accursed stuff was gone. glory to god! ... [but] for ten or eleven long years [after that] i was in the wilderness with its ups and downs. my appetite for liquor never came back." the classic case of colonel gardiner is that of a man cured of sexual temptation in a single hour. to mr. spears the colonel said, "i was effectually cured of all inclination to that sin i was so strongly addicted to that i thought nothing but shooting me through the head could have cured me of it; and all desire and inclination to it was removed, as entirely as if i had been a sucking child; nor did the temptation return to this day." mr. webster's words on the same subject are these: "one thing i have heard the colonel frequently say, that he was much addicted to impurity before his acquaintance with religion; but that, so soon as he was enlightened from above, he felt the power of the holy ghost changing his nature so wonderfully that his sanctification in this respect seemed more remarkable than in any other."( ) such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities reminds us so strongly of what has been observed as the result of hypnotic suggestion that it is difficult not to believe that subliminal influences play the decisive part in these abrupt changes of heart, just as they do in hypnotism.( ) suggestive therapeutics abound in records of cure, after a few sittings, of inveterate bad habits with which the patient, left to ordinary moral and physical influences, had struggled in vain. both drunkenness and sexual vice have been cured in this way, action through the subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change. if the grace of god miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. but just _how_ anything operates in this region is still unexplained, and we shall do well now to say good-by to the _process_ of transformation altogether,--leaving it, if you like, a good deal of a psychological or theological mystery,--and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religious condition, no matter in what way they may have been produced.( ) the collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is saintliness.( ) the saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.( ) they are these:-- . a feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an ideal power. in christian saintliness this power is always personified as god; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways which i described in the lecture on the reality of the unseen.( ) . a sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control. . an immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down. . a shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes, yes" and away from "no," where the claims of the non-ego are concerned. these fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, as follows:-- _a._ _asceticism._--the self-surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation. it may then so overrule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to the higher power. _b._ _strength of soul._--the sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out. fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place. come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference now! "we forbid ourselves all seeking after popularity, all ambition to appear important. we pledge ourselves to abstain from falsehood, in all its degrees. we promise not to create or encourage illusions as to what is possible, by what we say or write. we promise to one another active sincerity, which strives to see truth clearly, and which never fears to declare what it sees. "we promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion, to the 'booms' and panics of the public mind, to all the forms of weakness and of fear. "we forbid ourselves the use of sarcasm. of serious things we will speak seriously and unsmilingly, without banter and without the appearance of banter;--and even so of all things, for there are serious ways of being light of heart. "we will put ourselves forward always for what we are, simply and without false humility, as well as without pedantry, affectation, or pride." _c._ _purity._--the shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first, increase of purity. the sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative. occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. in some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity. _d._ _charity._--the shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fellow-creatures. the ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings, are inhibited. the saint loves his enemies, and treats loathsome beggars as his brothers. ------------------------------------- i now have to give some concrete illustrations of these fruits of the spiritual tree. the only difficulty is to choose, for they are so abundant. since the sense of presence of a higher and friendly power seems to be the fundamental feature in the spiritual life, i will begin with that. in our narratives of conversion we saw how the world might look shining and transfigured to the convert,( ) and, apart from anything acutely religious, we all have moments when the universal life seems to wrap us round with friendliness. in youth and health, in summer, in the woods or on the mountains, there come days when the weather seems all whispering with peace, hours when the goodness and beauty of existence enfold us like a dry warm climate, or chime through us as if our inner ears were subtly ringing with the world's security. thoreau writes:-- "once, a few weeks after i came to the woods, for an hour i doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. to be alone was somewhat unpleasant. but, in the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, i was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once, like an atmosphere, sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and i have never thought of them since. every little pine-needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. i was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, that i thought no place could ever be strange to me again."( ) in the christian consciousness this sense of the enveloping friendliness becomes most personal and definite. "the compensation," writes a german author, "for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all _fear_ from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner _security_, which one can only experience, but which, once it has been experienced, one can never forget."( ) i find an excellent description of this state of mind in a sermon by mr. voysey:-- "it is the experience of myriads of trustful souls, that this sense of god's unfailing presence with them in their going out and in their coming in, and by night and day, is a source of absolute repose and confident calmness. it drives away all fear of what may befall them. that nearness of god is a constant security against terror and anxiety. it is not that they are at all assured of physical safety, or deem themselves protected by a love which is denied to others, but that they are in a state of mind equally ready to be safe or to meet with injury. if injury befall them, they will be content to bear it because the lord is their keeper, and nothing can befall them without his will. if it be his will, then injury is for them a blessing and no calamity at all. thus and thus only is the trustful man protected and shielded from harm. and i for one--by no means a thick-skinned or hard-nerved man--am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement, and do not wish for any other kind of immunity from danger and catastrophe. quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strung organism, i yet feel that the worst of it is conquered, and the sting taken out of it altogether, by the thought that god is our loving and sleepless keeper, and that nothing can hurt us without his will."( ) more excited expressions of this condition are abundant in religious literature. i could easily weary you with their monotony. here is an account from mrs. jonathan edwards:-- "last night," mrs. edwards writes, "was the sweetest night i ever had in my life. i never before, for so long a time together, enjoyed so much of the light and rest and sweetness of heaven in my soul, but without the least agitation of body during the whole time. part of the night i lay awake, sometimes asleep, and sometimes between sleeping and waking. but all night i continued in a constant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of christ's excellent love, of his nearness to me, and of my dearness to him; with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in an entire rest in him. i seemed to myself to perceive a glow of divine love come down from the heart of christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream, like a stream or pencil of sweet light. at the same time my heart and soul all flowed out in love to christ, so that there seemed to be a constant flowing and reflowing of heavenly love, and i appeared to myself to float or swim, in these bright, sweet beams, like the motes swimming in the beams of the sun, or the streams of his light which come in at the window. i think that what i felt each minute was worth more than all the outward comfort and pleasure which i had enjoyed in my whole life put together. it was pleasure, without the least sting, or any interruption. it was a sweetness, which my soul was lost in; it seemed to be all that my feeble frame could sustain. there was but little difference, whether i was asleep or awake, but if there was any difference, the sweetness was greatest while i was asleep.( ) as i awoke early the next morning, it seemed to me that i had entirely done with myself. i felt that the opinions of the world concerning me were nothing, and that i had no more to do with any outward interest of my own than with that of a person whom i never saw. the glory of god seemed to swallow up every wish and desire of my heart.... after retiring to rest and sleeping a little while, i awoke, and was led to reflect on god's mercy to me, in giving me, for many years, a willingness to die; and after that, in making me willing to live, that i might do and suffer whatever he called me to here. i also thought how god had graciously given me an entire resignation to his will, with respect to the kind and manner of death that i should die; having been made willing to die on the rack, or at the stake, and if it were god's will, to die in darkness. but now it occurred to me, i used to think of living no longer than to the ordinary age of man. upon this i was led to ask myself, whether i was not willing to be kept out of heaven even longer; and my whole heart seemed immediately to reply: yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in horror, if it be most for the honor of god, the torment of my body being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to live in the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment of my mind being vastly greater. and it seemed to me that i found a perfect willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in consenting that it should be so, if it were most for the glory of god, so that there was no hesitation, doubt, or darkness in my mind. the glory of god seemed to overcome me and swallow me up, and every conceivable suffering, and everything that was terrible to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothing before it. this resignation continued in its clearness and brightness the rest of the night, and all the next day, and the night following, and on monday in the forenoon, without interruption or abatement."( ) the annals of catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more ecstatic than this. "often the assaults of the divine love," it is said of the sister séraphique de la martinière, "reduced her almost to the point of death. she used tenderly to complain of this to god. 'i cannot support it,' she used to say. 'bear gently with my weakness, or i shall expire under the violence of your love.' "( ) ------------------------------------- let me pass next to the charity and brotherly love which are a usual fruit of saintliness, and have always been reckoned essential theological virtues, however limited may have been the kinds of service which the particular theology enjoined. brotherly love would follow logically from the assurance of god's friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediate inference from that of god's fatherhood of us all. when christ utters the precepts: "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you," he gives for a reason: "that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." one might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. but these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. we find them in stoicism, in hinduism, and in buddhism in the highest possible degree. they harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they _harmonize_ with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes; and we must, i think, consider them not subordinate but coördinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we are engaged. religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, and tenderness to rule. the best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which our nature is liable, a region in which we find ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. like love or fear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity with it by organic consequence. jubilation is an expansive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forgetful and kindly so long as they endure. we find this the case even when they are pathological in origin. in his instructive work, la tristesse et la joie,( ) m. georges dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other is marked by altruistic impulses. no human being so stingy and useless as was marie in her melancholy period! but the moment the happy period begins, "sympathy and kindness become her characteristic sentiments. she displays a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act.... she becomes solicitous of the health of other patients, interested in getting them out, desirous to procure wool to knit socks for some of them. never since she has been under my observation have i heard her in her joyous period utter any but charitable opinions."( ) and later, dr. dumas says of all such joyous conditions that "unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only affective states to be found in them. the subject's mind is closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness, and wholly transformed into benevolence, indulgence, and mercy."( ) there is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise. along with the happiness, this increase of tenderness is often noted in narratives of conversion. "i began to work for others";--"i had more tender feeling for my family and friends";--"i spoke at once to a person with whom i had been angry";--"i felt for every one, and loved my friends better";--"i felt every one to be my friend";--these are so many expressions from the records collected by professor starbuck.( ) "when," says mrs. edwards, continuing the narrative from which i made quotation a moment ago, "i arose on the morning of the sabbath, i felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in its strength and sweetness, far beyond all that i had ever felt before. the power of that love seemed inexpressible. i thought, if i were surrounded by enemies, who were venting their malice and cruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would still be impossible that i should cherish any feelings towards them but those of love, and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness. i never before felt so far from a disposition to judge and censure others, as i did that morning. i realized also, in an unusual and very lively manner, how great a part of christianity lies in the performance of our social and relative duties to one another. the same joyful sense continued throughout the day--a sweet love to god and all mankind." whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human barriers.( ) here, for instance, is an example of christian non-resistance from richard weaver's autobiography. weaver was a collier, a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days, who became a much beloved evangelist. fighting, after drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. after his first conversion he had a backsliding, which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. feeling that, having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a christian man;--i mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied in the later conduct which he describes as follows:-- "i went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow- workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. i said to him:-- " 'tom, you mustn't take that wagon.' "he swore at me, and called me a methodist devil. i told him that god did not tell me to let him rob me. he cursed again, and said he would push the wagon over me. " 'well,' i said, 'let us see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the lord and me.' "and the lord and i proving stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way, or the wagon would have gone over him. so i gave the wagon to the boy. then said tom:-- " 'i've a good mind to smack thee on the face.' " 'well,' i said, 'if that will do thee any good, thou canst do it.' so he struck me on the face. "i turned the other cheek to him, and said, 'strike again.' "he struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. i turned my cheek for the sixth stroke; but he turned away cursing. i shouted after him: 'the lord forgive thee, for i do, and the lord save thee.' "this was on a saturday; and when i went home from the coal-pit my wife saw my face was swollen, and asked what was the matter with it. i said: 'i've been fighting, and i've given a man a good thrashing.' "she burst out weeping, and said, 'o richard, what made you fight?' then i told her all about it; and she thanked the lord i had not struck back. "but the lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than man's. monday came. the devil began to tempt me, saying: 'the other men will laugh at thee for allowing tom to treat thee as he did on saturday.' i cried, 'get thee behind me, satan;'--and went on my way to the coal-pit. "tom was the first man i saw. i said 'good-morning,' but got no reply. "he went down first. when i got down, i was surprised to see him sitting on the wagon-road waiting for me. when i came to him he burst into tears and said: 'richard, will you forgive me for striking you?' " 'i have forgiven thee,' said i; 'ask god to forgive thee. the lord bless thee.' i gave him my hand, and we went each to his work."( ) "love your enemies!" mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but your _enemies_, your positive and active enemies. either this is a mere oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is sincere and literal. outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has been taken literally. yet it makes one ask the question: can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? if positive well-wishing could attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem superhuman beings. their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind,--for there are few active examples in our scriptures, and the buddhistic examples are legendary,( )--what the effects might be: they might conceivably transform the world. psychologically and in principle, the precept "love your enemies" is not self-contradictory. it is merely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our oppressors, we are fairly familiar. yet if radically followed, it would involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole, and with the present world's arrangements, that a critical point would practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingdom of being. religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand, within our reach. the inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing of love to enemies, but by the showing of it to any one who is personally loathsome. in the annals of saintliness we find a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction. asceticism plays its part; and along with charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel on the common level before god. certainly all three principles were at work when francis of assisi and ignatius loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. all three are at work when religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly unpleasant diseases. the nursing of the sick is a function to which the religious seem strongly drawn, even apart from the fact that church traditions set that way. but in the annals of this sort of charity we find fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which are only explicable by the frenzy of self-immolation simultaneously aroused. francis of assisi kisses his lepers; margaret mary alacoque, francis xavier, st. john of god, and others are said to have cleansed the sores and ulcers of their patients with their respective tongues; and the lives of such saints as elizabeth of hungary and madame de chantal are full of a sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to read of, and which makes us admire and shudder at the same time. ------------------------------------- so much for the human love aroused by the faith-state. let me next speak of the equanimity, resignation, fortitude, and patience which it brings. "a paradise of inward tranquillity" seems to be faith's usual result; and it is easy, even without being religious one's self, to understand this. a moment back, in treating of the sense of god's presence, i spoke of the unaccountable feeling of safety which one may then have. and, indeed, how can it possibly fail to steady the nerves, to cool the fever, and appease the fret, if one be sensibly conscious that, no matter what one's difficulties for the moment may appear to be, one's life as a whole is in the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? in deeply religious men the abandonment of self to this power is passionate. whoever not only says, but _feels_, "god's will be done," is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs, missionaries, and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings. the temper of the tranquil-mindedness differs, of course, according as the person is of a constitutionally sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful cast of mind. in the sombre it partakes more of resignation and submission; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. as an example of the former temper, i quote part of a letter from professor lagneau, a venerated teacher of philosophy who lately died, a great invalid, at paris:-- "my life, for the success of which you send good wishes, will be what it is able to be. i ask nothing from it, i expect nothing from it. for long years now i exist, think, and act, and am worth what i am worth, only through the despair which is my sole strength and my sole foundation. may it preserve for me, even in these last trials to which i am coming, the courage to do without the desire of deliverance. i ask nothing more from the source whence all strength cometh, and if that is granted, your wishes will have been accomplished."( ) there is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of such a tone as a protection against outward shocks is manifest. pascal is another frenchman of pessimistic natural temperament. he expresses still more amply the temper of self-surrendering submissiveness:-- "deliver me, lord," he writes in his prayers, "from the sadness at my proper suffering which self-love might give, but put into me a sadness like your own. let my sufferings appease your choler. make them an occasion for my conversion and salvation. i ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the church and of your saints, of whom i would by your grace be one. you alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. i know but one thing, lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. apart from that, i know not what is good or bad in anything. i know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. that discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your providence, which i adore, but do not seek to fathom."( ) when we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less passive. examples are sown so broadcast throughout history that i might well pass on without citation. as it is, i snatch at the first that occurs to my mind. madame guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happy native disposition. she went through many perils with admirable serenity of soul. after being sent to prison for heresy,-- "some of my friends," she writes, "wept bitterly at the hearing of it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resignation that it failed to draw any tears from me.... there appeared to be in me then, as i find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what regards myself, that any of my own interests gave me little pain or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the very thing which god does." in another place she writes: "we all of us came near perishing in a river which we found it necessary to pass. the carriage sank in the quicksand. others who were with us threw themselves out in excessive fright. but i found my thoughts so much taken up with god that i had no distinct sense of danger. it is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than this--that i felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it were my heavenly father's choice." sailing from nice to genoa, a storm keeps her eleven days at sea. "as the irritated waves dashed round us," she writes, "i could not help experiencing a certain degree of satisfaction in my mind. i pleased myself with thinking that those mutinous billows, under the command of him who does all things rightly, might probably furnish me with a watery grave. perhaps i carried the point too far, in the pleasure which i took in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling waters. those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity."( ) the contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even more buoyant still. i take an example from that charming recent autobiography, "with christ at sea," by frank bullen. a couple of days after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives an account,-- "it was blowing stiffly," he writes, "and we were carrying a press of canvas to get north out of the bad weather. shortly after four bells we hauled down the flying-jib, and i sprang out astride the boom to furl it. i was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with me. the sail slipped through my fingers, and i fell backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult of shining foam under the ship's bows, suspended by one foot. but i felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life. although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, and i was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. i suppose i could have hung there no longer than five seconds, but in that time i lived a whole age of delight. but my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort i regained the boom. how i furled the sail i don't know, but i sang at the utmost pitch of my voice praises to god that went pealing out over the dark waste of waters."( ) the annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for religious imperturbability. let me cite as an example the statement of a humble sufferer, persecuted as a huguenot under louis xiv.:-- "they shut all the doors," blanche gamond writes, "and i saw six women, each with a bunch of willow rods as thick as the hand could hold, and a yard long. he gave me the order, 'undress yourself,' which i did. he said, 'you are leaving on your shift; you must take it off.' they had so little patience that they took it off themselves, and i was naked from the waist up. they brought a cord with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. they drew the cord tight with all their strength and asked me, 'does it hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaiming as they struck me, 'pray now to your god.' it was the roulette woman who held this language. but at this moment i received the greatest consolation that i can ever receive in my life, since i had the honor of being whipped for the name of christ, and in addition of being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. why can i not write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, and peace which i felt interiorly? to understand them one must have passed by the same trial; they were so great that i was ravished, for there where afflictions abound grace is given superabundantly. in vain the women cried, 'we must double our blows; she does not feel them, for she neither speaks nor cries.' and how should i have cried, since i was swooning with happiness within?"( ) the transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which i have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. this abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. it antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed.( ) christians who have it strongly live in what is called "recollection," and are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. of saint catharine of genoa it is said that "she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, _moment by moment_." to her holy soul, "the divine moment was the present moment,... and when the present moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the moment which came after."( ) hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy all lay great emphasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand. ------------------------------------- the next religious symptom which i will note is what i have called purity of life. the saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. all the mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the special spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. whatever is unspiritual taints the pure water of the soul and is repugnant. mixed with this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor of sacrifice, for the beloved deity's sake, of everything unworthy of him. sometimes the spiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a stroke--we have seen examples. usually it is a more gradual conquest. billy bray's account of his abandonment of tobacco is a good example of the latter form of achievement. "i had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and i used to love my tobacco as much as i loved my meat, and i would rather go down into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. in the days of old, the lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the prophets; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his son. i had not only the feeling part of religion, but i could hear the small, still voice within speaking to me. when i took the pipe to smoke, it would be applied within, 'it is an idol, a lust; worship the lord with clean lips.' so, i felt it was not right to smoke. the lord also sent a woman to convince me. i was one day in a house, and i took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and mary hawke--for that was the woman's name--said, 'do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?' i said that i felt something inside telling me that it was an idol, a lust, and she said that was the lord. then i said, 'now, i must give it up, for the lord is telling me of it inside, and the woman outside, so the tobacco must go, love it as i may.' there and then i took the tobacco out of my pocket, and threw it into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' and i have not smoked since. i found it hard to break off old habits, but i cried to the lord for help, and he gave me strength, for he has said, 'call upon me in the day of trouble, and i will deliver thee.' the day after i gave up smoking i had the toothache so bad that i did not know what to do. i thought this was owing to giving up the pipe, but i said i would never smoke again, if i lost every tooth in my head. i said, 'lord, thou hast told us my yoke is easy and my burden is light,' and when i said that, all the pain left me. sometimes the thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but the lord strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, i have not smoked since." bray's biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he thought that he would chew a little, but he conquered this dirty habit, too. "on one occasion," bray said, "when at a prayer- meeting at hicks mill, i heard the lord say to me, 'worship me with clean lips.' so, when we got up from our knees, i took the quid out of my mouth and 'whipped 'en' [threw it] under the form. but, when we got on our knees again, i put another quid into my mouth. then the lord said to me again, 'worship me with clean lips.' so i took the quid out of my mouth, and whipped 'en under the form again, and said, 'yes, lord, i will.' from that time i gave up chewing as well as smoking, and have been a free man." the ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and purity of life may take are often pathetic enough. the early quakers, for example, had hard battles to wage against the worldliness and insincerity of the ecclesiastical christianity of their time. yet the battle that cost them most wounds was probably that which they fought in defense of their own right to social veracity and sincerity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. it was laid on george fox that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body of his followers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and the spirit they professed might be more in accord. "when the lord sent me into the world," says fox in his journal, "he forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low: and i was required to 'thee' and 'thou' all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. and as i traveled up and down, i was not to bid people good-morning, or good-evening, neither might i bow or scrape with my leg to any one. this made the sects and professions rage. oh! the rage that was in the priests, magistrates, professors, and people of all sorts: and especially in priests and professors: for though 'thou' to a single person was according to their accidence and grammar rules, and according to the bible, yet they could not bear to hear it: and because i could not put off my hat to them, it set them all into a rage.... oh! the scorn, heat, and fury that arose! oh! the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that we underwent for not putting off our hats to men! some had their hats violently plucked off and thrown away, so that they quite lost them. the bad language and evil usage we received on this account is hard to be expressed, besides the danger we were sometimes in of losing our lives for this matter, and that by the great professors of christianity, who thereby discovered they were not true believers. and though it was but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a wonderful confusion it brought among all professors and priests: but, blessed be the lord, many came to see the vanity of that custom of putting off hats to men, and felt the weight of truth's testimony against it." in the autobiography of thomas elwood, an early quaker, who at one time was secretary to john milton, we find an exquisitely quaint and candid account of the trials he underwent both at home and abroad, in following fox's canons of sincerity. the anecdotes are too lengthy for citation; but elwood sets down his manner of feeling about these things in a shorter passage, which i will quote as a characteristic utterance of spiritual sensibility:-- "by this divine light, then," says elwood, "i saw that though i had not the evil of the common uncleanliness, debauchery, profaneness, and pollutions of the world to put away, because i had, through the great goodness of god and a civil education, been preserved out of those grosser evils, yet i had many other evils to put away and to cease from; some of which were not by the world, which lies in wickedness ( john v. ), accounted evils, but by the light of christ were made manifest to me to be evils, and as such condemned in me. "as particularly those fruits and effects of pride that discover themselves in the vanity and superfluity of apparel; which i took too much delight in. this evil of my doings i was required to put away and cease from; and judgment lay upon me till i did so. "i took off from my apparel those unnecessary trimmings of lace, ribbons, and useless buttons, which had no real service, but were set on only for that which was by mistake called ornament; and i ceased to wear rings. "again, the giving of flattering titles to men between whom and me there was not any relation to which such titles could be pretended to belong. this was an evil i had been much addicted to, and was accounted a ready artist in; therefore this evil also was i required to put away and cease from. so that thenceforward i durst not say, sir, master, my lord, madam (or my dame); or say your servant to any one to whom i did not stand in the real relation of a servant, which i had never done to any. "again, respect of persons, in uncovering the head and bowing the knee or body in salutation, was a practice i had been much in the use of; and this, being one of the vain customs of the world, introduced by the spirit of the world, instead of the true honor which this is a false representation of, and used in deceit as a token of respect by persons one to another, who bear no real respect one to another; and besides this, being a type and a proper emblem of that divine honor which all ought to pay to almighty god, and which all of all sorts, who take upon them the christian name, appear in when they offer their prayers to him, and therefore should not be given to men;--i found this to be one of those evils which i had been too long doing; therefore i was now required to put it away and cease from it. "again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, _you_ to one, instead of _thou_, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, _thou_ to one, and _you_ to more than one, which had always been used by god to men, and men to god, as well as one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speaking _you_ to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;--this evil custom i had been as forward in as others, and this i was now called out of and required to cease from. "these and many more evil customs which had sprung up in the night of darkness and general apostasy from the truth and true religion were now, by the inshining of this pure ray of divine light in my conscience, gradually discovered to me to be what i ought to cease from, shun, and stand a witness against."( ) these early quakers were puritans indeed. the slightest inconsistency between profession and deed jarred some of them to active protest. john woolman writes in his diary:-- "in these journeys i have been where much cloth hath been dyed; and have at sundry times walked over ground where much of their dyestuffs has drained away. this hath produced a longing in my mind that people might come into cleanness of spirit, cleanness of person, and cleanness about their houses and garments. dyes being invented partly to please the eye, and partly to hide dirt, i have felt in this weak state, when traveling in dirtiness, and affected with unwholesome scents, a strong desire that the nature of dyeing cloth to hide dirt may be more fully considered. "washing our garments to keep them sweet is cleanly, but it is the opposite to real cleanliness to hide dirt in them. through giving way to hiding dirt in our garments a spirit which would conceal that which is disagreeable is strengthened. real cleanliness becometh a holy people; but hiding that which is not clean by coloring our garments seems contrary to the sweetness of sincerity. through some sorts of dyes cloth is rendered less useful. and if the value of dyestuffs, and expense of dyeing, and the damage done to cloth, were all added together, and that cost applied to keeping all sweet and clean, how much more would real cleanliness prevail. "thinking often on these things, the use of hats and garments dyed with a dye hurtful to them, and wearing more clothes in summer than are useful, grew more uneasy to me; believing them to be customs which have not their foundation in pure wisdom. the apprehension of being singular from my beloved friends was a strait upon me; and thus i continued in the use of some things, contrary to my judgment, about nine months. then i thought of getting a hat the natural color of the fur, but the apprehension of being looked upon as one affecting singularity felt uneasy to me. on this account i was under close exercise of mind in the time of our general spring meeting in , greatly desiring to be rightly directed; when, being deeply bowed in spirit before the lord, i was made willing to submit to what i apprehended was required of me; and when i returned home, got a hat of the natural color of the fur. "in attending meetings, this singularity was a trial to me, and more especially at this time, as white hats were used by some who were fond of following the changeable modes of dress, and as some friends, who knew not from what motives i wore it, grew shy of me, i felt my way for a time shut up in the exercise of the ministry. some friends were apprehensive that my wearing such a hat savored of an affected singularity: those who spoke with me in a friendly way, i generally informed in a few words, that i believed my wearing it was not in my own will." when the craving for moral consistency and purity is developed to this degree, the subject may well find the outer world too full of shocks to dwell in, and can unify his life and keep his soul unspotted only by withdrawing from it. that law which impels the artist to achieve harmony in his composition by simply dropping out whatever jars, or suggests a discord, rules also in the spiritual life. to omit, says stevenson, is the one art in literature: "if i knew how to omit, i should ask no other knowledge." and life, when full of disorder and slackness and vague superfluity, can no more have what we call character than literature can have it under similar conditions. so monasteries and communities of sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless order, characterized by omissions quite as much as constituted of actions, the holy-minded person finds that inner smoothness and cleanness which it is torture to him to feel violated at every turn by the discordancy and brutality of secular existence. ------------------------------------- that the scrupulosity of purity may be carried to a fantastic extreme must be admitted. in this it resembles asceticism, to which further symptom of saintliness we had better turn next. the adjective "ascetic" is applied to conduct originating on diverse psychological levels, which i might as well begin by distinguishing from one another. . asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease. . temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of apparel, chastity, and non-pampering of the body generally, may be fruits of the love of purity, shocked by whatever savors of the sensual. . they may also be fruits of love, that is, they may appeal to the subject in the light of sacrifices which he is happy in making to the deity whom he acknowledges. . again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be due to pessimistic feelings about the self, combined with theological beliefs concerning expiation. the devotee may feel that he is buying himself free, or escaping worse sufferings hereafter, by doing penance now. . in psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on irrationally, by a sort of obsession or fixed idea which comes as a challenge and must be worked off, because only thus does the subject get his interior consciousness feeling right again. . finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted by genuine perversions of the bodily sensibility, in consequence of which normally pain-giving stimuli are actually felt as pleasures. i will try to give an instance under each of these heads in turn; but it is not easy to get them pure, for in cases pronounced enough to be immediately classed as ascetic, several of the assigned motives usually work together. moreover, before citing any examples at all, i must invite you to some general psychological considerations which apply to all of them alike. a strange moral transformation has within the past century swept over our western world. we no longer think that we are called on to face physical pain with equanimity. it is not expected of a man that he should either endure it or inflict much of it, and to listen to the recital of cases of it makes our flesh creep morally as well as physically. the way in which our ancestors looked upon pain as an eternal ingredient of the world's order, and both caused and suffered it as a matter-of-course portion of their day's work, fills us with amazement. we wonder that any human beings could have been so callous. the result of this historic alteration is that even in the mother church herself, where ascetic discipline has such a fixed traditional prestige as a factor of merit, it has largely come into desuetude, if not discredit. a believer who flagellates or "macerates" himself to-day arouses more wonder and fear than emulation. many catholic writers who admit that the times have changed in this respect do so resignedly; and even add that perhaps it is as well not to waste feelings in regretting the matter, for to return to the heroic corporeal discipline of ancient days might be an extravagance. where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinctive--and instinctive it appears to be in man; any deliberate tendency to pursue the hard and painful as such and for their own sakes might well strike one as purely abnormal. nevertheless, in moderate degrees it is natural and even usual to human nature to court the arduous. it is only the extreme manifestations of the tendency that can be regarded as a paradox. the psychological reasons for this lie near the surface. when we drop abstractions and take what we call our will in the act, we see that it is a very complex function. it involves both stimulations and inhibitions; it follows generalized habits; it is escorted by reflective criticisms; and it leaves a good or a bad taste of itself behind, according to the manner of the performance. the result is that, quite apart from the immediate pleasure which any sensible experience may give us, our own general moral attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience brings with it a secondary satisfaction or distaste. some men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles and the word "yes" forever. but for others (indeed for most), this is too tepid and relaxed a moral climate. passive happiness is slack and insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. some austerity and wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some "no! no!" must be mixed in, to produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and power. the range of individual differences in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the right proportion _for him_. this, he feels, is my proper vocation, this is the _optimum_, the law, the life for me to live. here i find the degree of equilibrium, safety, calm, and leisure which i need, or here i find the challenge, passion, fight, and hardship without which my soul's energy expires. every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. a given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certain amperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight, or exercise. you seem to do best, i heard a doctor say to a patient, at about millimeters of arterial tension. and it is just so with our sundry souls: some are happiest in calm weather; some need the sense of tension, of strong volition, to make them feel alive and well. for these latter souls, whatever is gained from day to day must be paid for by sacrifice and inhibition, or else it comes too cheap and has no zest. now when characters of this latter sort become religious, they are apt to turn the edge of their need of effort and negativity against their natural self; and the ascetic life gets evolved as a consequence. when professor tyndall in one of his lectures tells us that thomas carlyle put him into his bath-tub every morning of a freezing berlin winter, he proclaimed one of the lowest grades of asceticism. even without carlyle, most of us find it necessary to our soul's health to start the day with a rather cool immersion. a little farther along the scale we get such statements as this, from one of my correspondents, an agnostic:-- "often at night in my warm bed i would feel ashamed to depend so on the warmth, and whenever the thought would come over me i would have to get up, no matter what time of night it was, and stand for a minute in the cold, just so as to prove my manhood." such cases as these belong simply to our head . in the next case we probably have a mixture of heads and --the asceticism becomes far more systematic and pronounced. the writer is a protestant, whose sense of moral energy could doubtless be gratified on no lower terms, and i take his case from starbuck's manuscript collection. "i practiced fasting and mortification of the flesh. i secretly made burlap shirts, and put the burrs next the skin, and wore pebbles in my shoes. i would spend nights flat on my back on the floor without any covering." the roman church has organized and codified all this sort of thing, and given it a market-value in the shape of "merit." but we see the cultivation of hardship cropping out under every sky and in every faith, as a spontaneous need of character. thus we read of channing, when first settled as a unitarian minister, that-- "he was now more simple than ever, and seemed to have become incapable of any form of self-indulgence. he took the smallest room in the house for his study, though he might easily have commanded one more light, airy, and in every way more suitable; and chose for his sleeping chamber an attic which he shared with a younger brother. the furniture of the latter might have answered for the cell of an anchorite, and consisted of a hard mattress on a cot-bedstead, plain wooden chairs and table, with matting on the floor. it was without fire, and to cold he was throughout life extremely sensitive; but he never complained or appeared in any way to be conscious of inconvenience. 'i recollect,' says his brother, 'after one most severe night, that in the morning he sportively thus alluded to his suffering: "if my bed were my country, i should be somewhat like bonaparte: i have no control except over the part which i occupy; the instant i move, frost takes possession." ' in sickness only would he change for the time his apartment and accept a few comforts. the dress too that he habitually adopted was of most inferior quality; and garments were constantly worn which the world would call mean, though an almost feminine neatness preserved him from the least appearance of neglect."( ) channing's asceticism, such as it was, was evidently a compound of hardihood and love of purity. the democracy which is an offshoot of the enthusiasm of humanity, and of which i will speak later under the head of the cult of poverty, doubtless bore also a share. certainly there was no pessimistic element in his case. in the next case we have a strongly pessimistic element, so that it belongs under head . john cennick was methodism's first lay preacher. in he was convicted of sin, while walking in cheapside,-- "and at once left off song-singing, card-playing, and attending theatres. sometimes he wished to go to a popish monastery, to spend his life in devout retirement. at other times he longed to live in a cave, sleeping on fallen leaves, and feeding on forest fruits. he fasted long and often, and prayed nine times a day.... fancying dry bread too great an indulgence for so great a sinner as himself, he began to feed on potatoes, acorns, crabs, and grass; and often wished that he could live on roots and herbs. at length, in , he found peace with god, and went on his way rejoicing."( ) in this poor man we have morbid melancholy and fear, and the sacrifices made are to purge out sin, and to buy safety. the hopelessness of christian theology in respect of the flesh and the natural man generally has, in systematizing fear, made of it one tremendous incentive to self- mortification. it would be quite unfair, however, in spite of the fact that this incentive has often been worked in a mercenary way for hortatory purposes, to call it a mercenary incentive. the impulse to expiate and do penance is, in its first intention, far too immediate and spontaneous an expression of self-despair and anxiety to be obnoxious to any such reproach. in the form of loving sacrifice, of spending all we have to show our devotion, ascetic discipline of the severest sort may be the fruit of highly optimistic religious feeling. m. vianney, the curé of ars, was a french country priest, whose holiness was exemplary. we read in his life the following account of his inner need of sacrifice:-- " 'on this path,' m. vianney said, 'it is only the first step that costs. there is in mortification a balm and a savor without which one cannot live when once one has made their acquaintance. there is but one way in which to give one's self to god,--that is, to give one's self entirely, and to keep nothing for one's self. the little that one keeps is only good to double one and make one suffer.' accordingly he imposed it on himself that he should never smell a flower, never drink when parched with thirst, never drive away a fly, never show disgust before a repugnant object, never complain of anything that had to do with his personal comfort, never sit down, never lean upon his elbows when he was kneeling. the curé of ars was very sensitive to cold, but he would never take means to protect himself against it. during a very severe winter, one of his missionaries contrived a false floor to his confessional and placed a metal case of hot water beneath. the trick succeeded, and the saint was deceived: 'god is very good,' he said with emotion. 'this year, through all the cold, my feet have always been warm.' "( ) in this case the spontaneous impulse to make sacrifices for the pure love of god was probably the uppermost conscious motive. we may class it, then, under our head . some authors think that the impulse to sacrifice is the main religious phenomenon. it is a prominent, a universal phenomenon certainly, and lies deeper than any special creed. here, for instance, is what seems to be a spontaneous example of it, simply expressing what seemed right at the time between the individual and his maker. cotton mather, the new england puritan divine, is generally reputed a rather grotesque pedant; yet what is more touchingly simple than his relation of what happened when his wife came to die? "when i saw to what a point of resignation i was now called of the lord," he says, "i resolved, with his help, therein to glorify him. so, two hours before my lovely consort expired, i kneeled by her bedside, and i took into my two hands a dear hand, the dearest in the world. with her thus in my hands, i solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto the lord: and in token of my real _resignation_, i gently put her out of my hands, and laid away a most lovely hand, resolving that i would never touch it more. this was the hardest, and perhaps the bravest action that ever i did. she ... told me that she signed and sealed my act of resignation. and though before that she called for me continually, she after this never asked for me any more."( ) father vianney's asceticism taken in its totality was simply the result of a permanent flood of high spiritual enthusiasm, longing to make proof of itself. the roman church has, in its incomparable fashion, collected all the motives towards asceticism together, and so codified them that any one wishing to pursue christian perfection may find a practical system mapped out for him in any one of a number of ready-made manuals.( ) the dominant church notion of perfection is of course the negative one of avoidance of sin. sin proceeds from concupiscence, and concupiscence from our carnal passions and temptations, chief of which are pride, sensuality in all its forms, and the loves of worldly excitement and possession. all these sources of sin must be resisted; and discipline and austerities are a most efficacious mode of meeting them. hence there are always in these books chapters on self-mortification. but whenever a procedure is codified, the more delicate spirit of it evaporates, and if we wish the undiluted ascetic spirit,--the passion of self-contempt wreaking itself on the poor flesh, the divine irrationality of devotion making a sacrificial gift of all it has (its sensibilities, namely) to the object of its adoration,--we must go to autobiographies, or other individual documents. saint john of the cross, a spanish mystic who flourished--or rather who existed, for there was little that suggested flourishing about him--in the sixteenth century, will supply a passage suitable for our purpose. "first of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affectionate will in all things to imitate jesus christ. if anything agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at the same time tend purely to the honor and glory of god, renounce it and separate yourself from it for the love of christ, who all his life long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of his father whom he called his meat and nourishment. for example, you take satisfaction in _hearing_ of things in which the glory of god bears no part. deny yourself this satisfaction, mortify your wish to listen. you take pleasure in _seeing_ objects which do not raise your mind to god: refuse yourself this pleasure, and turn away your eyes. the same with conversations and all other things. act similarly, so far as you are able, with all the operations of the senses, striving to make yourself free from their yokes. "the radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four great natural passions, joy, hope, fear, and grief. you must seek to deprive these of every satisfaction and leave them as it were in darkness and the void. let your soul therefore turn always: "not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest; "not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful; "not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts; "not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation rather; "not to rest, but to labor; "not to desire the more, but the less; "not to aspire to what is highest and most precious, but to what is lowest and most contemptible; "not to will anything, but to will nothing; "not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, so that you may enter for the love of christ into a complete destitution, a perfect poverty of spirit, and an absolute renunciation of everything in this world. "embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul and you will find in a short time great delights and unspeakable consolations. "despise yourself, and wish that others should despise you. "speak to your own disadvantage, and desire others to do the same; "conceive a low opinion of yourself, and find it good when others hold the same; "to enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything. "to know all things, learn to know nothing. "to possess all things, resolve to possess nothing. "to be all things, be willing to be nothing. "to get to where you have no taste for anything, go through whatever experiences you have no taste for. "to learn to know nothing, go whither you are ignorant. "to reach what you possess not, go whithersoever you own nothing. "to be what you are not, experience what you are not." these later verses play with that vertigo of self-contradiction which is so dear to mysticism. those that come next are completely mystical, for in them saint john passes from god to the more metaphysical notion of the all. "when you stop at one thing, you cease to open yourself to the all. "for to come to the all you must give up the all. "and if you should attain to owning the all, you must own it, desiring nothing. "in this spoliation, the soul finds its tranquillity and rest. profoundly established in the centre of its own nothingness, it can be assailed by naught that comes from below; and since it no longer desires anything, what comes from above cannot depress it; for its desires alone are the causes of its woes."( ) and now, as a more concrete example of heads and , in fact of all our heads together, and of the irrational extreme to which a psychopathic individual may go in the line of bodily austerity, i will quote the sincere suso's account of his own self-tortures. suso, you will remember, was one of the fourteenth century german mystics; his autobiography, written in the third person, is a classic religious document. "he was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life; and when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to him; and he sought by many devices how he might bring his body into subjection. he wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, so that he was obliged to leave them off. he secretly caused an undergarment to be made for him; and in the undergarment he had strips of leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass nails, pointed and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails were always turned towards the flesh. he had this garment made very tight, and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in front, in order that it might fit the closer to his body, and the pointed nails might be driven into his flesh; and it was high enough to reach upwards to his navel. in this he used to sleep at night. now in summer, when it was hot, and he was very tired and ill from his journeyings, or when he held the office of lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious insects, cry aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist round and round in agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle. it often seemed to him as if he were lying upon an ant-hill, from the torture caused by the insects; for if he wished to sleep, or when he had fallen asleep, they vied with one another.( ) sometimes he cried to almighty god in the fullness of his heart: alas! gentle god, what a dying is this! when a man is killed by murderers or strong beasts of prey it is soon over; but i lie dying here under the cruel insects, and yet cannot die. the nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so hot, as to make him leave off this exercise. on the contrary, he devised something farther--two leathern loops into which he put his hands, and fastened one on each side his throat, and made the fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been on fire about him, he could not have helped himself. this he continued until his hands and arms had become almost tremulous with the strain, and then he devised something else: two leather gloves; and he caused a brazier to fit them all over with sharp-pointed brass tacks, and he used to put them on at night, in order that if he should try while asleep to throw off the hair undergarment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. and so it came to pass. if ever he sought to help himself with his hands in his sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so that his flesh festered. when after many weeks the wounds had healed, he tore himself again and made fresh wounds. "he continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. at the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled, and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in a vision on whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who told him that god required this of him no longer. whereupon he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a running stream." suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails. this he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night. "the first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. but soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and placed once more the cross upon him. it made his back, where the bones are, bloody and seared. whenever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog-skin were on him. if any one touched him unawares, or pushed against his clothes, it tore him." suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this cross and forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and likewise of his self-scourgings,--a dreadful story,--and then goes on as follows: "at this same period the servitor procured an old castaway door, and he used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes to make him comfortable, except that he took off his shoes and wrapped a thick cloak round him. he thus secured for himself a most miserable bed; for hard pea-stalks lay in humps under his head, the cross with the sharp nails stuck into his back, his arms were locked fast in bonds, the horsehair undergarment was round his loins, and the cloak too was heavy and the door hard. thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just like a log, and he would send up many a sigh to god. "in winter he suffered very much from the frost. if he stretched out his feet they lay bare on the floor and froze, if he gathered them up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and this was great pain. his feet were full of sores, his legs dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars from the horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched with intense thirst, and his hands tremulous from weakness. amid these torments he spent his nights and days; and he endured them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore in his heart to the divine and eternal wisdom, our lord jesus christ, whose agonizing sufferings he sought to imitate. after a time he gave up this penitential exercise of the door, and instead of it he took up his abode in a very small cell, and used the bench, which was so narrow and short that he could not stretch himself upon it, as his bed. in this hole, or upon the door, he lay at night in his usual bonds, for about eight years. it was also his custom, during the space of twenty-five years, provided he was staying in the convent, never to go after compline in winter into any warm room, or to the convent stove to warm himself, no matter how cold it might be, unless he was obliged to do so for other reasons. throughout all these years he never took a bath, either a water or a sweating bath; and this he did in order to mortify his comfort-seeking body. he practiced during a long time such rigid poverty that he would neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without it. for a considerable time he strove to attain such a high degree of purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any part of his body, save only his hands and feet."( ) i spare you the recital of poor suso's self-inflicted tortures from thirst. it is pleasant to know that after his fortieth year, god showed him by a series of visions that he had sufficiently broken down the natural man, and that he might leave these exercises off. his case is distinctly pathological, but he does not seem to have had the alleviation, which some ascetics have enjoyed, of an alteration of sensibility capable of actually turning torment into a perverse kind of pleasure. of the founder of the sacred heart order, for example, we read that "her love of pain and suffering was insatiable.... she said that she could cheerfully live till the day of judgment, provided she might always have matter for suffering for god; but that to live a single day without suffering would be intolerable. she said again that she was devoured with two unassuageable fevers, one for the holy communion, the other for suffering, humiliation, and annihilation. 'nothing but pain,' she continually said in her letters, 'makes my life supportable.' "( ) so much for the phenomena to which the ascetic impulse will in certain persons give rise. in the ecclesiastically consecrated character three minor branches of self-mortification have been recognized as indispensable pathways to perfection. i refer to the chastity, obedience, and poverty which the monk vows to observe; and upon the heads of obedience and poverty i will make a few remarks. ------------------------------------- first, of obedience. the secular life of our twentieth century opens with this virtue held in no high esteem. the duty of the individual to determine his own conduct and profit or suffer by the consequences seems, on the contrary, to be one of our best rooted contemporary protestant social ideals. so much so that it is difficult even imaginatively to comprehend how men possessed of an inner life of their own could ever have come to think the subjection of its will to that of other finite creatures recommendable. i confess that to myself it seems something of a mystery. yet it evidently corresponds to a profound interior need of many persons, and we must do our best to understand it. on the lowest possible plane, one sees how the expediency of obedience in a firm ecclesiastical organization must have led to its being viewed as meritorious. next, experience shows that there are times in every one's life when one can be better counseled by others than by one's self. inability to decide is one of the commonest symptoms of fatigued nerves; friends who see our troubles more broadly, often see them more wisely than we do; so it is frequently an act of excellent virtue to consult and obey a doctor, a partner, or a wife. but, leaving these lower prudential regions, we find, in the nature of some of the spiritual excitements which we have been studying, good reasons for idealizing obedience. obedience may spring from the general religious phenomenon of inner softening and self-surrender and throwing one's self on higher powers. so saving are these attitudes felt to be that in themselves, apart from utility, they become ideally consecrated; and in obeying a man whose fallibility we see through thoroughly, we, nevertheless, may feel much as we do when we resign our will to that of infinite wisdom. add self-despair and the passion of self-crucifixion to this, and obedience becomes an ascetic sacrifice, agreeable quite irrespective of whatever prudential uses it might have. it is as a sacrifice, a mode of "mortification," that obedience is primarily conceived by catholic writers, a "sacrifice which man offers to god, and of which he is himself both the priest and the victim. by poverty he immolates his exterior possessions; by chastity he immolates his body; by obedience he completes the sacrifice, and gives to god all that he yet holds as his own, his two most precious goods, his intellect and his will. the sacrifice is then complete and unreserved, a genuine holocaust, for the entire victim is now consumed for the honor of god."( ) accordingly, in catholic discipline, we obey our superior not as mere man, but as the representative of christ. obeying god in him by our intention, obedience is easy. but when the text-book theologians marshal collectively all their reasons for recommending it, the mixture sounds to our ears rather odd. "one of the great consolations of the monastic life," says a jesuit authority, "is the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. the superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault so long as you obey, because god will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received, and if you can furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved entirely. whether the things you did were opportune, or whether there were not something better that might have been done, these are questions not asked of you, but rather of your superior. the moment what you did was done obediently, god wipes it out of your account, and charges it to the superior. so that saint jerome well exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, 'oh, sovereign liberty! oh, holy and blessed security by which one becomes almost impeccable!' "saint john climachus is of the same sentiment when he calls obedience an excuse before god. in fact, when god asks why you have done this or that, and you reply, it is because i was so ordered by my superiors, god will ask for no other excuse. as a passenger in a good vessel with a good pilot need give himself no farther concern, but may go to sleep in peace, because the pilot has charge over all, and 'watches for him'; so a religious person who lives under the yoke of obedience goes to heaven as if while sleeping, that is, while leaning entirely on the conduct of his superiors, who are the pilots of his vessel, and keep watch for him continually. it is no small thing, of a truth, to be able to cross the stormy sea of life on the shoulders and in the arms of another, yet that is just the grace which god accords to those who live under the yoke of obedience. their superior bears all their burdens.... a certain grave doctor said that he would rather spend his life in picking up straws by obedience, than by his own responsible choice busy himself with the loftiest works of charity, because one is certain of following the will of god in whatever one may do from obedience, but never certain in the same degree of anything which we may do of our own proper movement."( ) one should read the letters in which ignatius loyola recommends obedience as the backbone of his order, if one would gain insight into the full spirit of its cult.( ) they are too long to quote; but ignatius's belief is so vividly expressed in a couple of sayings reported by companions that, though they have been so often cited, i will ask your permission to copy them once more:-- "i ought," an early biographer reports him as saying, "on entering religion, and thereafter, to place myself entirely in the hands of god, and of him who takes his place by his authority. i ought to desire that my superior should oblige me to give up my own judgment, and conquer my own mind. i ought to set up no difference between one superior and another, ... but recognize them all as equal before god, whose place they fill. for if i distinguish persons, i weaken the spirit of obedience. in the hands of my superior, i must be a soft wax, a thing, from which he is to require whatever pleases him, be it to write or receive letters, to speak or not to speak to such a person, or the like; and i must put all my fervor in executing zealously and exactly what i am ordered. i must consider myself as a corpse which has neither intelligence nor will; be like a mass of matter which without resistance lets itself be placed wherever it may please any one; like a stick in the hand of an old man, who uses it according to his needs and places it where it suits him. so must i be under the hands of the order, to serve it in the way it judges most useful. "i must never ask of the superior to be sent to a particular place, to be employed in a particular duty.... i must consider nothing as belonging to me personally, and as regards the things i use, be like a statue which lets itself be stripped and never opposes resistance."( ) the other saying is reported by rodriguez in the chapter from which i a moment ago made quotations. when speaking of the pope's authority, rodriguez writes:-- "saint ignatius said, when general of his company, that if the holy father were to order him to set sail in the first bark which he might find in the port of ostia, near rome, and to abandon himself to the sea, without a mast, without sails, without oars or rudder or any of the things that are needful for navigation or subsistence, he would obey not only with alacrity, but without anxiety or repugnance, and even with a great internal satisfaction."( ) with a solitary concrete example of the extravagance to which the virtue we are considering has been carried, i will pass to the topic next in order. "sister marie claire [of port royal] had been greatly imbued with the holiness and excellence of m. de langres. this prelate, soon after he came to port royal, said to her one day, seeing her so tenderly attached to mother angélique, that it would perhaps be better not to speak to her again. marie claire, greedy of obedience, took this inconsiderate word for an oracle of god, and from that day forward remained for several years without once speaking to her sister."( ) our next topic shall be poverty, felt at all times and under all creeds as one adornment of a saintly life. since the instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature, this is one more example of the ascetic paradox. yet it appears no paradox at all, but perfectly reasonable, the moment one recollects how easily higher excitements hold lower cupidities in check. having just quoted the jesuit rodriguez on the subject of obedience, i will, to give immediately a concrete turn to our discussion of poverty, also read you a page from his chapter on this latter virtue. you must remember that he is writing instructions for monks of his own order, and bases them all on the text, "blessed are the poor in spirit." "if any one of you," he says, "will know whether or not he is really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. see if you are glad to wear a worn-out habit full of patches. see if you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to you, when your cell is out of repair. if you are not glad of these things, if instead of loving them you avoid them, then there is proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of spirit." rodriguez then goes on to describe the practice of poverty in more detail. "the first point is that which saint ignatius proposes in his constitutions, when he says, 'let no one use anything as if it were his private possession.' 'a religious person,' he says, 'ought in respect to all the things that he uses, to be like a statue which one may drape with clothing, but which feels no grief and makes no resistance when one strips it again. it is in this way that you should feel towards your clothes, your books, your cell, and everything else that you make use of; if ordered to quit them, or to exchange them for others, have no more sorrow than if you were a statue being uncovered. in this way you will avoid using them as if they were your private possession. but if, when you give up your cell, or yield possession of this or that object or exchange it for another, you feel repugnance and are not like a statue, that shows that you view these things as if they were your private property.' "and this is why our holy founder wished the superiors to test their monks somewhat as god tested abraham, and to put their poverty and their obedience to trial, that by this means they may become acquainted with the degree of their virtue, and gain a chance to make ever farther progress in perfection, ... making the one move out of his room when he finds it comfortable and is attached to it; taking away from another a book of which he is fond; or obliging a third to exchange his garment for a worse one. otherwise we should end by acquiring a species of property in all these several objects, and little by little the wall of poverty that surrounds us and constitutes our principal defense would be thrown down. the ancient fathers of the desert used often thus to treat their companions.... saint dositheus, being sick-nurse, desired a certain knife, and asked saint dorotheus for it, not for his private use, but for employment in the infirmary of which he had charge. whereupon saint dorotheus answered him: 'ha! dositheus, so that knife pleases you so much! will you be the slave of a knife or the slave of jesus christ? do you not blush with shame at wishing that a knife should be your master? i will not let you touch it.' which reproach and refusal had such an effect upon the holy disciple that since that time he never touched the knife again." ... "therefore, in our rooms," father rodriguez continues, "there must be no other furniture than a bed, a table, a bench, and a candlestick, things purely necessary, and nothing more. it is not allowed among us that our cells should be ornamented with pictures or aught else, neither armchairs, carpets, curtains, nor any sort of cabinet or bureau of any elegance. neither is it allowed us to keep anything to eat, either for ourselves or for those who may come to visit us. we must ask permission to go to the refectory even for a glass of water; and finally we may not keep a book in which we can write a line, or which we may take away with us. one cannot deny that thus we are in great poverty. but this poverty is at the same time a great repose and a great perfection. for it would be inevitable, in case a religious person were allowed to own superfluous possessions, that these things would greatly occupy his mind, be it to acquire them, to preserve them, or to increase them; so that in not permitting us at all to own them, all these inconveniences are remedied. among the various good reasons why the company forbids secular persons to enter our cells, the principal one is that thus we may the easier be kept in poverty. after all, we are all men, and if we were to receive people of the world into our rooms, we should not have the strength to remain within the bounds prescribed, but should at least wish to adorn them with some books to give the visitors a better opinion of our scholarship."( ) since hindu fakirs, buddhist monks, and mohammedan dervishes unite with jesuits and franciscans in idealizing poverty as the loftiest individual state, it is worth while to examine into the spiritual grounds for such a seemingly unnatural opinion. and first, of those which lie closest to common human nature. the opposition between the men who _have_ and the men who _are_ is immemorial. though the gentleman, in the old-fashioned sense of the man who is well born, has usually in point of fact been predaceous and reveled in lands and goods, yet he has never identified his essence with these possessions, but rather with the personal superiorities, the courage, generosity, and pride supposed to be his birthright. to certain huckstering kinds of consideration he thanked god he was forever inaccessible, and if in life's vicissitudes he should become destitute through their lack, he was glad to think that with his sheer valor he was all the freer to work out his salvation. "wer nur selbst was hätte," says lessing's tempelherr, in nathan the wise, "mein gott, mein gott, ich habe nichts!" this ideal of the well-born man without possessions was embodied in knight-errantry and templardom; and, hideously corrupted as it has always been, it still dominates sentimentally, if not practically, the military and aristocratic view of life. we glorify the soldier as the man absolutely unencumbered. owning nothing but his bare life, and willing to toss that up at any moment when the cause commands him, he is the representative of unhampered freedom in ideal directions. the laborer who pays with his person day by day, and has no rights invested in the future, offers also much of this ideal detachment. like the savage, he may make his bed wherever his right arm can support him, and from his simple and athletic attitude of observation, the property-owner seems buried and smothered in ignoble externalities and trammels, "wading in straw and rubbish to his knees." the claims which _things_ make are corrupters of manhood, mortgages on the soul, and a drag anchor on our progress towards the empyrean. "everything i meet with," writes whitefield, "seems to carry this voice with it,--'go thou and preach the gospel; be a pilgrim on earth; have no party or certain dwelling place.' my heart echoes back, 'lord jesus, help me to do or suffer thy will. when thou seest me in danger of _nestling_,--in pity--in tender pity,--put a _thorn_ in my nest to prevent me from it.' "( ) the loathing of "capital" with which our laboring classes to-day are growing more and more infected seems largely composed of this sound sentiment of antipathy for lives based on mere having. as an anarchist poet writes:-- "not by accumulating riches, but by giving away that which you have, "shall you become beautiful; "you must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones; "not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and healthy, but rather by discarding them ... "for a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind; "knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use and handle is an impediment."( ) in short, lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being, and in the interest of action people subject to spiritual excitement throw away possessions as so many clogs. only those who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away. sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard. when a brother novice came to saint francis, saying: "father, it would be a great consolation to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our general should concede to me this indulgence, still i should like also to have your consent," francis put him off with the examples of charlemagne, roland, and oliver, pursuing the infidels in sweat and labor, and finally dying on the field of battle. "so care not," he said, "for owning books and knowledge, but care rather for works of goodness." and when some weeks later the novice came again to talk of his craving for the psalter, francis said: "after you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary; and after you have got your breviary you will sit in your stall like a grand prelate, and will say to your brother: 'hand me my breviary.' ... and thenceforward he denied all such requests, saying: 'a man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its fruits.' "( ) but beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doing and being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder still, something related to that fundamental mystery of religious experience, the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger power. so long as any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any residual prudential guarantee is clung to, so long the surrender is incomplete, the vital crisis is not passed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the divine obtains: we hold by two anchors, looking to god, it is true, after a fashion, but also holding by our proper machinations. in certain medical experiences we have the same critical point to overcome. a drunkard, or a morphine or cocaine maniac, offers himself to be cured. he appeals to the doctor to wean him from his enemy, but he dares not face blank abstinence. the tyrannical drug is still an anchor to windward: he hides supplies of it among his clothing; arranges secretly to have it smuggled in in case of need. even so an incompletely regenerate man still trusts in his own expedients. his money is like the sleeping potion which the chronically wakeful patient keeps beside his bed; he throws himself on god, but _if_ he should need the other help, there it will be also. every one knows cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for reform,--drunkards whom, with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one perceives to be quite unwilling seriously to contemplate _never_ being drunk again! really to give up anything on which we have relied, to give it up definitively, "for good and all" and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in the lectures on conversion. in it the inner man rolls over into an entirely different position of equilibrium, lives in a new centre of energy from this time on, and the turning-point and hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve the sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and destitutions. accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life, we find this ever- recurring note: fling yourself upon god's providence without making any reserve whatever,--take no thought for the morrow,--sell all you have and give it to the poor,--only when the sacrifice is ruthless and reckless will the higher safety really arrive. as a concrete example let me read a page from the biography of antoinette bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted in her day by both protestants and catholics, because she would not take her religion at second hand. when a young girl, in her father's house,-- "she spent whole nights in prayer, oft repeating: _lord, what wilt thou have me to do?_ and being one night in a most profound penitence, she said from the bottom of her heart: 'o my lord! what must i do to please thee? for i have nobody to teach me. speak to my soul and it will hear thee.' at that instant she heard, as if another had spoke within her: _forsake all earthly things. separate thyself from the love of the creatures. deny thyself._ she was quite astonished, not understanding this language, and mused long on these three points, thinking how she could fulfill them. she thought she could not live without earthly things, nor without loving the creatures, nor without loving herself. yet she said, 'by thy grace i will do it, lord!' but when she would perform her promise, she knew not where to begin. having thought on the religious in monasteries, that they forsook all earthly things by being shut up in a cloister, and the love of themselves by subjecting of their wills, she asked leave of her father to enter into a cloister of the barefoot carmelites, but he would not permit it, saying he would rather see her laid in her grave. this seemed to her a great cruelty, for she thought to find in the cloister the true christians she had been seeking, but she found afterwards that he knew the cloisters better than she; for after he had forbidden her, and told her he would never permit her to be a religious, nor give her any money to enter there, yet she went to father laurens, the director, and offered to serve in the monastery and work hard for her bread, and be content with little, if he would receive her. at which he smiled and said: _that cannot be. we must have money to build; we take no maids without money; you must find the way to get it, else there is no entry here._ "this astonished her greatly, and she was thereby undeceived as to the cloisters, resolving to forsake all company and live alone till it should please god to show her what she ought to do and whither to go. she asked always earnestly, 'when shall i be perfectly thine, o my god?' and she thought he still answered her, _when thou shalt no longer possess anything, and shalt die to thyself_. 'and where shall i do that, lord?' he answered her, _in the desert_. this made so strong an impression on her soul that she aspired after this; but being a maid of eighteen years only, she was afraid of unlucky chances, and was never used to travel, and knew no way. she laid aside all these doubts and said, 'lord, thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee. it is for thee that i do it. i will lay aside my habit of a maid, and will take that of a hermit that i may pass unknown.' having then secretly made ready this habit, while her parents thought to have married her, her father having promised her to a rich french merchant, she prevented the time, and on easter evening, having cut her hair, put on the habit, and slept a little, she went out of her chamber about four in the morning, taking nothing but one penny to buy bread for that day. and it being said to her in the going out, _where is thy faith? in a penny?_ she threw it away, begging pardon of god for her fault, and saying, 'no, lord, my faith is not in a penny, but in thee alone.' thus she went away wholly delivered from the heavy burthen of the cares and good things of this world, and found her soul so satisfied that she no longer wished for anything upon earth, resting entirely upon god, with this only fear lest she should be discovered and be obliged to return home; for she felt already more content in this poverty than she had done for all her life in all the delights of the world."( ) the penny was a small financial safeguard, but an effective spiritual obstacle. not till it was thrown away could the character settle into the new equilibrium completely. ------------------------------------- over and above the mystery of self-surrender, there are in the cult of poverty other religious mysteries. there is the mystery of veracity: "naked came i into the world," etc.,--whoever first said that, possessed this mystery. my own bare entity must fight the battle--shams cannot save me. there is also the mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality before god of all his creatures. this sentiment (which seems in general to have been more widespread in mohammedan than in christian lands) tends to nullify man's usual acquisitiveness. those who have it spurn dignities and honors, privileges and advantages, preferring, as i said in a former lecture, to grovel on the common level before the face of god. it is not exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes so close to it in practice. it is _humanity_, rather, refusing to enjoy anything that others do not share. a profound moralist, writing of christ's saying, "sell all thou hast and follow me," proceeds as follows:-- "christ may have meant: if you love mankind absolutely you will as a result not care for any possessions whatever, and this seems a very likely proposition. but it is one thing to believe that a proposition is probably true; it is another thing to see it as a fact. if you loved mankind as christ loved them, you would see his conclusion as a fact. it would be obvious. you would sell your goods, and they would be no loss to you. these truths, while literal to christ, and to any mind that has christ's love for mankind, become parables to lesser natures. there are in every generation people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into the vortex by their interest in helping mankind, and by the understanding that comes from actually doing it. the abandonment of their old mode of life is like dust in the balance. it is done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly. thus the whole question of the abandonment of luxury is no question at all, but a mere incident to another question, namely, the degree to which we abandon ourselves to the remorseless logic of our love for others."( ) but in all these matters of sentiment one must have "been there" one's self in order to understand them. no american can ever attain to understanding the loyalty of a briton towards his king, of a german towards his emperor; nor can a briton or german ever understand the peace of heart of an american in having no king, no kaiser, no spurious nonsense, between him and the common god of all. if sentiments as simple as these are mysteries which one must receive as gifts of birth, how much more is this the case with those subtler religious sentiments which we have been considering! one can never fathom an emotion or divine its dictates by standing outside of it. in the glowing hour of excitement, however, all incomprehensibilities are solved, and what was so enigmatical from without becomes transparently obvious. each emotion obeys a logic of its own, and makes deductions which no other logic can draw. piety and charity live in a different universe from worldly lusts and fears, and form another centre of energy altogether. as in a supreme sorrow lesser vexations may become a consolation; as a supreme love may turn minor sacrifices into gain; so a supreme trust may render common safeguards odious, and in certain glows of generous excitement it may appear unspeakably mean to retain one's hold of personal possessions. the only sound plan, if we are ourselves outside the pale of such emotions, is to observe as well as we are able those who feel them, and to record faithfully what we observe; and this, i need hardly say, is what i have striven to do in these last two descriptive lectures, which i now hope will have covered the ground sufficiently for our present needs. lectures xiv and xv. the value of saintliness. we have now passed in review the more important of the phenomena which are regarded as fruits of genuine religion and characteristics of men who are devout. to-day we have to change our attitude from that of description to that of appreciation; we have to ask whether the fruits in question can help us to judge the absolute value of what religion adds to human life. were i to parody kant, i should say that a "critique of pure saintliness" must be our theme. if, in turning to this theme, we could descend upon our subject from above like catholic theologians, with our fixed definitions of man and man's perfection and our positive dogmas about god, we should have an easy time of it. man's perfection would be the fulfillment of his end; and his end would be union with his maker. that union could be pursued by him along three paths, active, purgative, and contemplative, respectively; and progress along either path would be a simple matter to measure by the application of a limited number of theological and moral conceptions and definitions. the absolute significance and value of any bit of religious experience we might hear of would thus be given almost mathematically into our hands. if convenience were everything, we ought now to grieve at finding ourselves cut off from so admirably convenient a method as this. but we did cut ourselves off from it deliberately in those remarks which you remember we made, in our first lecture, about the empirical method; and it must be confessed that after that act of renunciation we can never hope for clean-cut and scholastic results. _we_ cannot divide man sharply into an animal and a rational part. _we_ cannot distinguish natural from supernatural effects; nor among the latter know which are favors of god, and which are counterfeit operations of the demon. we have merely to collect things together without any special _a priori_ theological system, and out of an aggregate of piecemeal judgments as to the value of this and that experience--judgments in which our general philosophic prejudices, our instincts, and our common sense are our only guides--decide that _on the whole_ one type of religion is approved by its fruits, and another type condemned. "on the whole,"--i fear we shall never escape complicity with that qualification, so dear to your practical man, so repugnant to your systematizer! i also fear that as i make this frank confession, i may seem to some of you to throw our compass overboard, and to adopt caprice as our pilot. skepticism or wayward choice, you may think, can be the only results of such a formless method as i have taken up. a few remarks in deprecation of such an opinion, and in farther explanation of the empiricist principles which i profess, may therefore appear at this point to be in place. ------------------------------------- abstractly, it would seem illogical to try to measure the worth of a religion's fruits in merely human terms of value. how _can_ you measure their worth without considering whether the god really exists who is supposed to inspire them? if he really exists, then all the conduct instituted by men to meet his wants must necessarily be a reasonable fruit of his religion,--it would be unreasonable only in case he did not exist. if, for instance, you were to condemn a religion of human or animal sacrifices by virtue of your subjective sentiments, and if all the while a deity were really there demanding such sacrifices, you would be making a theoretical mistake by tacitly assuming that the deity must be non- existent; you would be setting up a theology of your own as much as if you were a scholastic philosopher. to this extent, to the extent of disbelieving peremptorily in certain types of deity, i frankly confess that we must be theologians. if disbeliefs can be said to constitute a theology, then the prejudices, instincts, and common sense which i chose as our guides make theological partisans of us whenever they make certain beliefs abhorrent. but such common-sense prejudices and instincts are themselves the fruit of an empirical evolution. nothing is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on in the moral and religious tone of men, as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop. after an interval of a few generations the mental climate proves unfavorable to notions of the deity which at an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen below the common secular level, and can no longer be believed in. to-day a deity who should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to be taken seriously. even if powerful historical credentials were put forward in his favor, we would not look at them. once, on the contrary, his cruel appetites were of themselves credentials. they positively recommended him to men's imaginations in ages when such coarse signs of power were respected and no others could be understood. such deities then were worshiped because such fruits were relished. doubtless historic accidents always played some later part, but the original factor in fixing the figure of the gods must always have been psychological. the deity to whom the prophets, seers, and devotees who founded the particular cult bore witness was worth something to them personally. they could use him. he guided their imagination, warranted their hopes, and controlled their will,--or else they required him as a safeguard against the demon and a curber of other people's crimes. in any case, they chose him for the value of the fruits he seemed to them to yield. so soon as the fruits began to seem quite worthless; so soon as they conflicted with indispensable human ideals, or thwarted too extensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible, or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited, and was erelong neglected and forgotten. it was in this way that the greek and roman gods ceased to be believed in by educated pagans; it is thus that we ourselves judge of the hindu, buddhist, and mohammedan theologies; protestants have so dealt with the catholic notions of deity, and liberal protestants with older protestant notions; it is thus that chinamen judge of us, and that all of us now living will be judged by our descendants. when we cease to admire or approve what the definition of a deity implies, we end by deeming that deity incredible. few historic changes are more curious than these mutations of theological opinion. the monarchical type of sovereignty was, for example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our own forefathers that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their deity seems positively to have been required by their imagination. they called the cruelty "retributive justice," and a god without it would certainly have struck them as not "sovereign" enough. but to-day we abhor the very notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing-out of salvation and damnation to selected individuals, of which jonathan edwards could persuade himself that he had not only a conviction, but a "delightful conviction," as of a doctrine "exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet," appears to us, if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean. not only the cruelty, but the paltriness of character of the gods believed in by earlier centuries also strikes later centuries with surprise. we shall see examples of it from the annals of catholic saintship which make us rub our protestant eyes. ritual worship in general appears to the modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra-puritanic type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost absurdly childish character, taking delight in toy-shop furniture, tapers and tinsel, costume and mumbling and mummery, and finding his "glory" incomprehensibly enhanced thereby;--just as on the other hand the formless spaciousness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism of evangelical sects seems intolerably bald and chalky and bleak. luther, says emerson, would have cut off his right hand rather than nail his theses to the door at wittenberg, if he had supposed that they were destined to lead to the pale negations of boston unitarianism. so far, then, although we are compelled, whatever may be our pretensions to empiricism, to employ some sort of a standard of theological probability of our own whenever we assume to estimate the fruits of other men's religion, yet this very standard has been begotten out of the drift of common life. it is the voice of human experience within us, judging and condemning all gods that stand athwart the pathway along which it feels itself to be advancing. experience, if we take it in the largest sense, is thus the parent of those disbeliefs which, it was charged, were inconsistent with the experiential method. the inconsistency, you see, is immaterial, and the charge may be neglected. if we pass from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, it seems to me that there is not even a formal inconsistency to be laid against our method. the gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. what i then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. if it commends itself, then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so far forth will stand accredited. if not, then they will be discredited, and all without reference to anything but human working principles. it is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. religions have _approved_ themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. when they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted. the needs were always many, and the tests were never sharp. so the reproach of vagueness and subjectivity and "on the whole"-ness, which can with perfect legitimacy be addressed to the empirical method as we are forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life of man in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. no religion has ever yet owed its prevalence to "apodictic certainty." in a later lecture i will ask whether objective certainty can ever be added by theological reasoning to a religion that already empirically prevails. ------------------------------------- one word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an empirical method we are handing ourselves over to systematic skepticism. since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by the next age. skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from this universal liability. but to admit one's liability to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. he who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible. or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? and if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? if _we_ claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err. nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this confession. the mere outward form of inalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the question. they will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce its folly. but the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights of creatures of a day like ourselves must be provisional. the wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only "up to date" and "on the whole." when larger ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions. "heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive." the fact of diverse judgments about religious phenomena is therefore entirely unescapable, whatever may be one's own desire to attain the irreversible. but apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us, the question whether men's opinions ought to be expected to be absolutely uniform in this field. ought all men to have the same religion? ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings? are they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-minded and despairing, exactly the same religious incentives are required? or are different functions in the organism of humanity allotted to different types of man, so that some may really be the better for a religion of consolation and reassurance, whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof? it might conceivably be so; and we shall, i think, more and more suspect it to be so as we go on. and if it be so, how can any possible judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met? he aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste most good and prove most nourishing to _him_. i am well aware of how anarchic much of what i say may sound. expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, i may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. but i beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. i do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. but i reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. i am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. rather do i fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. that we can gain more and more of it by moving always in the right direction, i believe as much as any one, and i hope to bring you all to my way of thinking before the termination of these lectures. till then, do not, i pray you, harden your minds irrevocably against the empiricism which i profess. i will waste no more words, then, in abstract justification of my method, but seek immediately to use it upon the facts. ------------------------------------- in critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very important to insist on the distinction between religion as an individual personal function, and religion as an institutional, corporate, or tribal product. i drew this distinction, you may remember, in my second lecture. the word "religion," as ordinarily used, is equivocal. a survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. when these groups get strong enough to "organize" themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. the spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word "religion" nowadays, we think inevitably of some "church" or other; and to some persons the word "church" suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they glory in saying that they are "down" on religion altogether. even we who belong to churches do not exempt other churches than our own from the general condemnation. but in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions hardly concern us at all. the religious experience which we are studying is that which lives itself out within the private breast. first-hand individual experience of this kind has always appeared as a heretical sort of innovation to those who witnessed its birth. naked comes it into the world and lonely; and it has always, for a time at least, driven him who had it into the wilderness, often into the literal wilderness out of doors, where the buddha, jesus, mohammed, st. francis, george fox, and so many others had to go. george fox expresses well this isolation; and i can do no better at this point than read to you a page from his journal, referring to the period of his youth when religion began to ferment within him seriously. "i fasted much," fox says, "walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night walked mournfully about by myself; for i was a man of sorrows in the time of the first workings of the lord in me. "during all this time i was never joined in profession of religion with any, but gave up myself to the lord, having forsaken all evil company, taking leave of father and mother, and all other relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth, which way the lord inclined my heart; taking a chamber to myself in the town where i came, and tarrying sometimes more, sometimes less in a place: for i durst not stay long in a place, being afraid both of professor and profane, lest, being a tender young man, i should be hurt by conversing much with either. for which reason i kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and getting knowledge from the lord; and was brought off from outward things, to rely on the lord alone. as i had forsaken the priests, so i left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for i saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. and when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone so that i had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do; then, oh then, i heard a voice which said, 'there is one, even jesus christ, that can speak to thy condition.' when i heard it, my heart did leap for joy. then the lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition. i had not fellowship with any people, priests, nor professors, nor any sort of separated people. i was afraid of all carnal talk and talkers, for i could see nothing but corruptions. when i was in the deep, under all shut up, i could not believe that i should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so great that i often thought i should have despaired, i was so tempted. but when christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same devil, and had overcome him, and had bruised his head; and that through him and his power, life, grace, and spirit, i should overcome also, i had confidence in him. if i had had a king's diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been as nothing; for nothing gave me comfort but the lord by his power. i saw professors, priests, and people were whole and at ease in that condition which was my misery, and they loved that which i would have been rid of. but the lord did stay my desires upon himself, and my care was cast upon him alone."( ) a genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. if his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. but if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. the new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. unless, indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate designs! of protective action of this politic sort, promptly or tardily decided on, the dealings of the roman ecclesiasticism with many individual saints and prophets yield examples enough for our instruction. the plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. the basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. and the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. the ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and i beseech you never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology which it presents with those manifestations of the purely interior life which are the exclusive object of our study. the baiting of jews, the hunting of albigenses and waldenses, the stoning of quakers and ducking of methodists, the murdering of mormons and the massacring of armenians, express much rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pugnacity of which we all share the vestiges, and that inborn hatred of the alien and of eccentric and non-conforming men as aliens, than they express the positive piety of the various perpetrators. piety is the mask, the inner force is tribal instinct. you believe as little as i do, in spite of the christian unction with which the german emperor addressed his troops upon their way to china, that the conduct which he suggested, and in which other christian armies went beyond them, had anything whatever to do with the interior religious life of those concerned in the performance. well, no more for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make piety responsible. at most we may blame piety for not availing to check our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical pretexts. but hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretext usually couples some restriction; and when the passion gust is over, the piety may bring a reaction of repentance which the irreligious natural man would not have shown. for many of the historic aberrations which have been laid to her charge, religion as such, then, is not to blame. yet of the charge that over- zealousness or fanaticism is one of her liabilities we cannot wholly acquit her, so i will next make a remark upon that point. but i will preface it by a preliminary remark which connects itself with much that follows. ------------------------------------- our survey of the phenomena of saintliness has unquestionably produced in your minds an impression of extravagance. is it necessary, some of you have asked, as one example after another came before us, to be quite so fantastically good as that? we who have no vocation for the extremer ranges of sanctity will surely be let off at the last day if our humility, asceticism, and devoutness prove of a less convulsive sort. this practically amounts to saying that much that it is legitimate to admire in this field need nevertheless not be imitated, and that religious phenomena, like all other human phenomena, are subject to the law of the golden mean. political reformers accomplish their successive tasks in the history of nations by being blind for the time to other causes. great schools of art work out the effects which it is their mission to reveal, at the cost of a one-sidedness for which other schools must make amends. we accept a john howard, a mazzini, a botticelli, a michael angelo, with a kind of indulgence. we are glad they existed to show us that way, but we are glad there are also other ways of seeing and taking life. so of many of the saints whom we have looked at. we are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example. the conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies nearer to the middle line of human effort. it is less dependent on particular beliefs and doctrines. it is such as wears well in different ages, such as under different skies all judges are able to commend. the fruits of religion, in other words, are, like all human products, liable to corruption by excess. common sense must judge them. it need not blame the votary; but it may be able to praise him only conditionally, as one who acts faithfully according to his lights. he shows us heroism in one way, but the unconditionally good way is that for which no indulgence need be asked. we find that error by excess is exemplified by every saintly virtue. excess, in human faculties, means usually one-sidedness or want of balance; for it is hard to imagine an essential faculty too strong, if only other faculties equally strong be there to coöperate with it in action. strong affections need a strong will; strong active powers need a strong intellect; strong intellect needs strong sympathies, to keep life steady. if the balance exist, no one faculty can possibly be too strong--we only get the stronger all-round character. in the life of saints, technically so called, the spiritual faculties are strong, but what gives the impression of extravagance proves usually on examination to be a relative deficiency of intellect. spiritual excitement takes pathological forms whenever other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow. we find this exemplified by all the saintly attributes in turn--devout love of god, purity, charity, asceticism, all may lead astray. i will run over these virtues in succession. ------------------------------------- first of all let us take devoutness. when unbalanced, one of its vices is called fanaticism. fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme. when an intensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the feeling that a certain superhuman person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one of the first things that happens is that it idealizes the devotion itself. to adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to be considered the one great merit of the worshiper; and the sacrifices and servilities by which savage tribesmen have from time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to chieftains are now outbid in favor of the deity. vocabularies are exhausted and languages altered in the attempt to praise him enough; death is looked on as gain if it attract his grateful notice; and the personal attitude of being his devotee becomes what one might almost call a new and exalted kind of professional specialty within the tribe.( ) the legends that gather round the lives of holy persons are fruits of this impulse to celebrate and glorify. the buddha( ) and mohammed( ) and their companions and many christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply _abgeschmackt_ and silly, and form a touching expression of man's misguided propensity to praise. an immediate consequence of this condition of mind is jealousy for the deity's honor. how can the devotee show his loyalty better than by sensitiveness in this regard? the slightest affront or neglect must be resented, the deity's enemies must be put to shame. in exceedingly narrow minds and active wills, such a care may become an engrossing preoccupation; and crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the god. theologies representing the gods as mindful of their glory, and churches with imperialistic policies, have conspired to fan this temper to a glow, so that intolerance and persecution have come to be vices associated by some of us inseparably with the saintly mind. they are unquestionably its besetting sins. the saintly temper is a moral temper, and a moral temper has often to be cruel. it is a partisan temper, and that is cruel. between his own and jehovah's enemies a david knows no difference; a catherine of siena, panting to stop the warfare among christians which was the scandal of her epoch, can think of no better method of union among them than a crusade to massacre the turks; luther finds no word of protest or regret over the atrocious tortures with which the anabaptist leaders were put to death; and a cromwell praises the lord for delivering his enemies into his hands for "execution." politics come in in all such cases; but piety finds the partnership not quite unnatural. so, when "freethinkers" tell us that religion and fanaticism are twins, we cannot make an unqualified denial of the charge. fanaticism must then be inscribed on the wrong side of religion's account, so long as the religious person's intellect is on the stage which the despotic kind of god satisfies. but as soon as the god is represented as less intent on his own honor and glory, it ceases to be a danger. fanaticism is found only where the character is masterful and aggressive. in gentle characters, where devoutness is intense and the intellect feeble, we have an imaginative absorption in the love of god to the exclusion of all practical human interests, which, though innocent enough, is too one-sided to be admirable. a mind too narrow has room but for one kind of affection. when the love of god takes possession of such a mind, it expels all human loves and human uses. there is no english name for such a sweet excess of devotion, so i will refer to it as a _theopathic_ condition. the blessed margaret mary alacoque may serve as an example. "to be loved here upon the earth," her recent biographer exclaims: "to be loved by a noble, elevated, distinguished being; to be loved with fidelity, with devotion,--what enchantment! but to be loved by god! and loved by him to distraction [aimé jusqù'à la folie]!--margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a thing. like saint philip of neri in former times, or like saint francis xavier, she said to god: 'hold back, o my god, these torrents which overwhelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception.' "( ) the most signal proofs of god's love which margaret mary received were her hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing, and the most signal in turn of these were the revelations of christ's sacred heart, "surrounded with rays more brilliant than the sun, and transparent like a crystal. the wound which he received on the cross visibly appeared upon it. there was a crown of thorns round about this divine heart, and a cross above it." at the same time christ's voice told her that, unable longer to contain the flames of his love for mankind, he had chosen her by a miracle to spread the knowledge of them. he thereupon took out her mortal heart, placed it inside of his own and inflamed it, and then replaced it in her breast, adding: "hitherto thou hast taken the name of my slave, hereafter thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of my sacred heart." in a later vision the saviour revealed to her in detail the "great design" which he wished to establish through her instrumentality. "i ask of thee to bring it about that every first friday after the week of holy sacrament shall be made into a special holy day for honoring my heart by a general communion and by services intended to make honorable amends for the indignities which it has received. and i promise thee that my heart will dilate to shed with abundance the influences of its love upon all those who pay to it these honors, or who bring it about that others do the same." "this revelation," says mgr. bougaud, "is unquestionably the most important of all the revelations which have illumined the church since that of the incarnation and of the lord's supper.... after the eucharist, the supreme effort of the sacred heart."( ) well, what were its good fruits for margaret mary's life? apparently little else but sufferings and prayers and absences of mind and swoons and ecstasies. she became increasingly useless about the convent, her absorption in christ's love,-- "which grew upon her daily, rendering her more and more incapable of attending to external duties. they tried her in the infirmary, but without much success, although her kindness, zeal, and devotion were without bounds, and her charity rose to acts of such a heroism that our readers would not bear the recital of them. they tried her in the kitchen, but were forced to give it up as hopeless--everything dropped out of her hands. the admirable humility with which she made amends for her clumsiness could not prevent this from being prejudicial to the order and regularity which must always reign in a community. they put her in the school, where the little girls cherished her, and cut pieces out of her clothes [for relics] as if she were already a saint, but where she was too absorbed inwardly to pay the necessary attention. poor dear sister, even less after her visions than before them was she a denizen of earth, and they had to leave her in her heaven."( ) poor dear sister, indeed! amiable and good, but so feeble of intellectual outlook that it would be too much to ask of us, with our protestant and modern education, to feel anything but indulgent pity for the kind of saintship which she embodies. a lower example still of theopathic saintliness is that of saint gertrude, a benedictine nun of the thirteenth century, whose "revelations," a well-known mystical authority, consist mainly of proofs of christ's partiality for her undeserving person. assurances of his love, intimacies and caresses and compliments of the most absurd and puerile sort, addressed by christ to gertrude as an individual, form the tissue of this paltry-minded recital.( ) in reading such a narrative, we realize the gap between the thirteenth and the twentieth century, and we feel that saintliness of character may yield almost absolutely worthless fruits if it be associated with such inferior intellectual sympathies. what with science, idealism, and democracy, our own imagination has grown to need a god of an entirely different temperament from that being interested exclusively in dealing out personal favors, with whom our ancestors were so contented. smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a god indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness; and even the best professional sainthood of former centuries, pent in as it is to such a conception, seems to us curiously shallow and unedifying. take saint teresa, for example, one of the ablest women, in many respects, of whose life we have the record. she had a powerful intellect of the practical order. she wrote admirable descriptive psychology, possessed a will equal to any emergency, great talent for politics and business, a buoyant disposition, and a first-rate literary style. she was tenaciously aspiring, and put her whole life at the service of her religious ideals. yet so paltry were these, according to our present way of thinking, that (although i know that others have been moved differently) i confess that my only feeling in reading her has been pity that so much vitality of soul should have found such poor employment. in spite of the sufferings which she endured, there is a curious flavor of superficiality about her genius. a birmingham anthropologist, dr. jordan, has divided the human race into two types, whom he calls "shrews" and "non-shrews" respectively.( ) the shrew-type is defined as possessing an "active unimpassioned temperament." in other words, shrews are the "motors," rather than the "sensories,"( ) and their expressions are as a rule more energetic than the feelings which appear to prompt them. saint teresa, paradoxical as such a judgment may sound, was a typical shrew, in this sense of the term. the bustle of her style, as well as of her life, proves it. not only must she receive unheard-of personal favors and spiritual graces from her saviour, but she must immediately write about them and _exploiter_ them professionally, and use her expertness to give instruction to those less privileged. her voluble egotism; her sense, not of radical bad being, as the really contrite have it, but of her "faults" and "imperfections" in the plural; her stereotyped humility and return upon herself, as covered with "confusion" at each new manifestation of god's singular partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of shrewdom: a paramountly feeling nature would be objectively lost in gratitude, and silent. she had some public instincts, it is true; she hated the lutherans, and longed for the church's triumph over them; but in the main her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation--if one may say so without irreverence--between the devotee and the deity; and apart from helping younger nuns to go in this direction by the inspiration of her example and instruction, there is absolutely no human use in her, or sign of any general human interest. yet the spirit of her age, far from rebuking her, exalted her as superhuman. we have to pass a similar judgment on the whole notion of saintship based on merits. any god who, on the one hand, can care to keep a pedantically minute account of individual shortcomings, and on the other can feel such partialities, and load particular creatures with such insipid marks of favor, is too small-minded a god for our credence. when luther, in his immense manly way, swept off by a stroke of his hand the very notion of a debit and credit account kept with individuals by the almighty, he stretched the soul's imagination and saved theology from puerility. so much for mere devotion, divorced from the intellectual conceptions which might guide it towards bearing useful human fruit. ------------------------------------- the next saintly virtue in which we find excess is purity. in theopathic characters, like those whom we have just considered, the love of god must not be mixed with any other love. father and mother, sisters, brothers, and friends are felt as interfering distractions; for sensitiveness and narrowness, when they occur together, as they often do, require above all things a simplified world to dwell in. variety and confusion are too much for their powers of comfortable adaptation. but whereas your aggressive pietist reaches his unity objectively, by forcibly stamping disorder and divergence out, your retiring pietist reaches his subjectively, leaving disorder in the world at large, but making a smaller world in which he dwells himself and from which he eliminates it altogether. thus, alongside of the church militant with its prisons, dragonnades, and inquisition methods, we have the church _fugient_, as one might call it, with its hermitages, monasteries, and sectarian organizations, both churches pursuing the same object--to unify the life,( ) and simplify the spectacle presented to the soul. a mind extremely sensitive to inner discords will drop one external relation after another, as interfering with the absorption of consciousness in spiritual things. amusements must go first, then conventional "society," then business, then family duties, until at last seclusion, with a subdivision of the day into hours for stated religious acts, is the only thing that can be borne. the lives of saints are a history of successive renunciations of complication, one form of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to save the purity of inner tone.( ) "is it not better," a young sister asks her superior, "that i should not speak at all during the hour of recreation, so as not to run the risk, by speaking, of falling into some sin of which i might not be conscious?"( ) if the life remains a social one at all, those who take part in it must follow one identical rule. embosomed in this monotony, the zealot for purity feels clean and free once more. the minuteness of uniformity maintained in certain sectarian communities, whether monastic or not, is something almost inconceivable to a man of the world. costume, phraseology, hours, and habits are absolutely stereotyped, and there is no doubt that some persons are so made as to find in this stability an incomparable kind of mental rest. we have no time to multiply examples, so i will let the case of saint louis of gonzaga serve as a type of excess in purification. i think you will agree that this youth carried the elimination of the external and discordant to a point which we cannot unreservedly admire. at the age of ten, his biographer says:-- "the inspiration came to him to consecrate to the mother of god his own virginity--that being to her the most agreeable of possible presents. without delay, then, and with all the fervor there was in him, joyous of heart, and burning with love, he made his vow of perpetual chastity. mary accepted the offering of his innocent heart, and obtained for him from god, as a recompense, the extraordinary grace of never feeling during his entire life the slightest touch of temptation against the virtue of purity. this was an altogether exceptional favor, rarely accorded even to saints themselves, and all the more marvelous in that louis dwelt always in courts and among great folks, where danger and opportunity are so unusually frequent. it is true that louis from his earliest childhood had shown a natural repugnance for whatever might be impure or unvirginal, and even for relations of any sort whatever between persons of opposite sex. but this made it all the more surprising that he should, especially since this vow, feel it necessary to have recourse to such a number of expedients for protecting against even the shadow of danger the virginity which he had thus consecrated. one might suppose that if any one could have contented himself with the ordinary precautions, prescribed for all christians, it would assuredly have been he. but no! in the use of preservatives and means of defense, in flight from the most insignificant occasions, from every possibility of peril, just as in the mortification of his flesh, he went farther than the majority of saints. he, who by an extraordinary protection of god's grace was never tempted, measured all his steps as if he were threatened on every side by particular dangers. thenceforward he never raised his eyes, either when walking in the streets, or when in society. not only did he avoid all business with females even more scrupulously than before, but he renounced all conversation and every kind of social recreation with them, although his father tried to make him take part; and he commenced only too early to deliver his innocent body to austerities of every kind."( ) at the age of twelve, we read of this young man that "if by chance his mother sent one of her maids of honor to him with a message, he never allowed her to come in, but listened to her through the barely opened door, and dismissed her immediately. he did not like to be alone with his own mother, whether at table or in conversation; and when the rest of the company withdrew, he sought also a pretext for retiring.... several great ladies, relatives of his, he avoided learning to know even by sight; and he made a sort of treaty with his father, engaging promptly and readily to accede to all his wishes, if he might only be excused from all visits to ladies." (ibid., p. .) when he was seventeen years old louis joined the jesuit order( ) against his father's passionate entreaties, for he was heir of a princely house; and when a year later the father died, he took the loss as a "particular attention" to himself on god's part, and wrote letters of stilted good advice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving mother. he soon became so good a monk that if any one asked him the number of his brothers and sisters, he had to reflect and count them over before replying. a father asked him one day if he were never troubled by the thought of his family, to which, "i never think of them except when praying for them," was his only answer. never was he seen to hold in his hand a flower or anything perfumed, that he might take pleasure in it. on the contrary, in the hospital, he used to seek for whatever was most disgusting, and eagerly snatch the bandages of ulcers, etc., from the hands of his companions. he avoided worldly talk, and immediately tried to turn every conversation on to pious subjects, or else he remained silent. he systematically refused to notice his surroundings. being ordered one day to bring a book from the rector's seat in the refectory, he had to ask where the rector sat, for in the three months he had eaten bread there, so carefully did he guard his eyes that he had not noticed the place. one day, during recess, having looked by chance on one of his companions, he reproached himself as for a grave sin against modesty. he cultivated silence, as preserving from sins of the tongue; and his greatest penance was the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. he sought after false accusations and unjust reprimands as opportunities of humility; and such was his obedience that, when a room-mate, having no more paper, asked him for a sheet, he did not feel free to give it to him without first obtaining the permission of the superior, who, as such, stood in the place of god, and transmitted his orders. i can find no other sorts of fruit than these of louis's saintship. he died in , in his twenty-ninth year, and is known in the church as the patron of all young people. on his festival, the altar in the chapel devoted to him in a certain church in rome "is embosomed in flowers, arranged with exquisite taste; and a pile of letters may be seen at its foot, written to the saint by young men and women, and directed to 'paradiso.' they are supposed to be burnt unread except by san luigi, who must find singular petitions in these pretty little missives, tied up now with a green ribbon, expressive of hope, now with a red one, emblematic of love," etc.( ) our final judgment of the worth of such a life as this will depend largely on our conception of god, and of the sort of conduct he is best pleased with in his creatures. the catholicism of the sixteenth century paid little heed to social righteousness; and to leave the world to the devil whilst saving one's own soul was then accounted no discreditable scheme. to-day, rightly or wrongly, helpfulness in general human affairs is, in consequence of one of those secular mutations in moral sentiment of which i spoke, deemed an essential element of worth in character; and to be of some public or private use is also reckoned as a species of divine service. other early jesuits, especially the missionaries among them, the xaviers, brébeufs, jogues, were objective minds, and fought in their way for the world's welfare; so their lives to-day inspire us. but when the intellect, as in this louis, is originally no larger than a pin's head, and cherishes ideas of god of corresponding smallness, the result, notwithstanding the heroism put forth, is on the whole repulsive. purity, we see in the object-lesson, is _not_ the one thing needful; and it is better that a life should contract many a dirt-mark, than forfeit usefulness in its efforts to remain unspotted. proceeding onwards in our search of religious extravagance, we next come upon excesses of tenderness and charity. here saintliness has to face the charge of preserving the unfit, and breeding parasites and beggars. "resist not evil," "love your enemies," these are saintly maxims of which men of this world find it hard to speak without impatience. are the men of this world right, or are the saints in possession of the deeper range of truth? no simple answer is possible. here, if anywhere, one feels the complexity of the moral life, and the mysteriousness of the way in which facts and ideals are interwoven. perfect conduct is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and the recipients of the action. in order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms, intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another. the best intention will fail if it either work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient. thus no critic or estimator of the value of conduct can confine himself to the actor's animus alone, apart from the other elements of the performance. as there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. the saint may simply give the universe into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. he may by non-resistance cut off his own survival. herbert spencer tells us that the perfect man's conduct will appear perfect only when the environment is perfect: to no inferior environment is it suitably adapted. we may paraphrase this by cordially admitting that saintly conduct would be the most perfect conduct conceivable in an environment where all were saints already; but by adding that in an environment where few are saints, and many the exact reverse of saints, it must be ill adapted. we must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. the powers of darkness have systematically taken advantage of them. the whole modern scientific organization of charity is a consequence of the failure of simply giving alms. the whole history of constitutional government is a commentary on the excellence of resisting evil, and when one cheek is smitten, of smiting back and not turning the other cheek also. you will agree to this in general, for in spite of the gospel, in spite of quakerism, in spite of tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers. and yet you are sure, as i am sure, that were the world confined to these hard-headed, hard-hearted, and hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the wronger's person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in. the tender grace, not of a day that is dead, but of a day yet to be born somehow, with the golden rule grown natural, would be cut out from the perspective of our imaginations. the saints, existing in this way, may, with their extravagances of human tenderness, be prophetic. nay, innumerable times they have proved themselves prophetic. treating those whom they met, in spite of the past, in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have stimulated them to _be_ worthy, miraculously transformed them by their radiant example and by the challenge of their expectation. from this point of view we may admit the human charity which we find in all saints, and the great excess of it which we find in some saints, to be a genuinely creative social force, tending to make real a degree of virtue which it alone is ready to assume as possible. the saints are authors, _auctores_, increasers, of goodness. the potentialities of development in human souls are unfathomable. so many who seemed irretrievably hardened have in point of fact been softened, converted, regenerated, in ways that amazed the subjects even more than they surprised the spectators, that we never can be sure in advance of any man that his salvation by the way of love is hopeless. we have no right to speak of human crocodiles and boa- constrictors as of fixedly incurable beings. we know not the complexities of personality, the smouldering emotional fires, the other facets of the character-polyhedron, the resources of the subliminal region. st. paul long ago made our ancestors familiar with the idea that every soul is virtually sacred. since christ died for us all without exception, st. paul said, we must despair of no one. this belief in the essential sacredness of every one expresses itself to-day in all sorts of humane customs and reformatory institutions, and in a growing aversion to the death penalty and to brutality in punishment. the saints, with their extravagance of human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this belief, the tip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness. like the single drops which sparkle in the sun as they are flung far ahead of the advancing edge of a wave-crest or of a flood, they show the way and are forerunners. the world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world's affairs to be preposterous. yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. it is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed before us. one fire kindles another; and without that over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritual stagnancy. momentarily considered, then, the saint may waste his tenderness and be the dupe and victim of his charitable fever, but the general function of his charity in social evolution is vital and essential. if things are ever to move upward, some one must be ready to take the first step, and assume the risk of it. no one who is not willing to try charity, to try non- resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. when they do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. force destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. but non-resistance, when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects. these saintly methods are, as i said, creative energies; and genuine saints find in the elevated excitement with which their faith endows them an authority and impressiveness which makes them irresistible in situations where men of shallower nature cannot get on at all without the use of worldly prudence. this practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint's magic gift to mankind.( ) not only does his vision of a better world console us for the generally prevailing prose and barrenness; but even when on the whole we have to confess him ill adapted, he makes some converts, and the environment gets better for his ministry. he is an effective ferment of goodness, a slow transmuter of the earthly into a more heavenly order. in this respect the utopian dreams of social justice in which many contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation to present environmental conditions, analogous to the saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. they help to break the edge of the general reign of hardness, and are slow leavens of a better order. ------------------------------------- the next topic in order is asceticism, which i fancy you are all ready to consider without argument a virtue liable to extravagance and excess. the optimism and refinement of the modern imagination has, as i have already said elsewhere, changed the attitude of the church towards corporeal mortification, and a suso or a saint peter of alcantara( ) appear to us to-day rather in the light of tragic mountebanks than of sane men inspiring us with respect. if the inner dispositions are right, we ask, what need of all this torment, this violation of the outer nature? it keeps the outer nature too important. any one who is genuinely emancipated from the flesh will look on pleasures and pains, abundance and privation, as alike irrelevant and indifferent. he can engage in actions and experience enjoyments without fear of corruption or enslavement. as the bhagavad-gita says, only those need renounce worldly actions who are still inwardly attached thereto. if one be really unattached to the fruits of action, one may mix in the world with equanimity. i quoted in a former lecture saint augustine's antinomian saying: if you only love god enough, you may safely follow all your inclinations. "he needs no devotional practices," is one of ramakrishna's maxims, "whose heart is moved to tears at the mere mention of the name of hari."( ) and the buddha, in pointing out what he called "the middle way" to his disciples, told them to abstain from both extremes, excessive mortification being as unreal and unworthy as mere desire and pleasure. the only perfect life, he said, is that of inner wisdom, which makes one thing as indifferent to us as another, and thus leads to rest, to peace, and to nirvâna.( ) we find accordingly that as ascetic saints have grown older, and directors of conscience more experienced, they usually have shown a tendency to lay less stress on special bodily mortifications. catholic teachers have always professed the rule that, since health is needed for efficiency in god's service, health must not be sacrificed to mortification. the general optimism and healthy-mindedness of liberal protestant circles to-day makes mortification for mortification's sake repugnant to us. we can no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that god can take delight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in his honor is abhorrent. in consequence of all these motives you probably are disposed, unless some special utility can be shown in some individual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to asceticism as pathological. yet i believe that a more careful consideration of the whole matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of which it may be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. for in its spiritual meaning asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. it symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal to the soul's heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering. as against this view, the ultra-optimistic form of the once-born philosophy thinks we may treat evil by the method of ignoring. let a man who, by fortunate health and circumstances, escapes the suffering of any great amount of evil in his own person, also close his eyes to it as it exists in the wider universe outside his private experience, and he will be quit of it altogether, and can sail through life happily on a healthy-minded basis. but we saw in our lectures on melancholy how precarious this attempt necessarily is. moreover it is but for the individual; and leaves the evil outside of him, unredeemed and unprovided for in his philosophy. no such attempt can be a _general_ solution of the problem; and to minds of sombre tinge, who naturally feel life as a tragic mystery, such optimism is a shallow dodge or mean evasion. it accepts, in lieu of a real deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely, a cranny to escape by. it leaves the general world unhelped and still in the clutch of satan. the real deliverance, the twice-born folk insist, must be of universal application. pain and wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in higher excitement, or else their sting remains essentially unbroken. if one has ever taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world's history fairly into his mind,--freezing, drowning, entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous diseases,--he can with difficulty, it seems to me, continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that he may all the while not be really inside the game, that he may lack the great initiation. well, this is exactly what asceticism thinks; and it voluntarily takes the initiation. life is neither farce nor genteel comedy, it says, but something we must sit at in mourning garments, hoping its bitter taste will purge us of our folly. the wild and the heroic are indeed such rooted parts of it that healthy-mindedness pure and simple, with its sentimental optimism, can hardly be regarded by any thinking man as a serious solution. phrases of neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never be an answer to the sphinx's riddle. in these remarks i am leaning only upon mankind's common instinct for reality, which in point of fact has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. in heroism, we feel, life's supreme mystery is hidden. we tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. on the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever. inferior to ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to life, and he is able "to fling it away like a flower" as caring nothing for it, we account him in the deepest way our born superior. each of us in his own person feels that a high-hearted indifference to life would expiate all his shortcomings. the metaphysical mystery, thus recognized by common sense, that he who feeds on death that feeds on men possesses life supereminently and excellently, and meets best the secret demands of the universe, is the truth of which asceticism has been the faithful champion. the folly of the cross, so inexplicable by the intellect, has yet its indestructible vital meaning. representatively, then, and symbolically, and apart from the vagaries into which the unenlightened intellect of former times may have let it wander, asceticism must, i believe, be acknowledged to go with the profounder way of handling the gift of existence. naturalistic optimism is mere syllabub and flattery and sponge-cake in comparison. the practical course of action for us, as religious men, would therefore, it seems to me, not be simply to turn our backs upon the ascetic impulse, as most of us to-day turn them, but rather to discover some outlet for it of which the fruits in the way of privation and hardship might be objectively useful. the older monastic asceticism occupied itself with pathetic futilities, or terminated in the mere egotism of the individual, increasing his own perfection.( ) but is it not possible for us to discard most of these older forms of mortification, and yet find saner channels for the heroism which inspired them? does not, for example, the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large a portion of the "spirit" of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? is not the exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up to-day--so different from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles--in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre? are there not hereabouts some points of application for a renovated and revised ascetic discipline? many of you would recognize such dangers, but would point to athletics, militarism, and individual and national enterprise and adventure as the remedies. these contemporary ideals are quite as remarkable for the energy with which they make for heroic standards of life, as contemporary religion is remarkable for the way in which it neglects them.( ) war and adventure assuredly keep all who engage in them from treating themselves too tenderly. they demand such incredible efforts, depth beyond depth of exertion, both in degree and in duration, that the whole scale of motivation alters. discomfort and annoyance, hunger and wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent operation whatever. death turns into a commonplace matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. with the annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane of power. the beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with ordinary human nature. ancestral evolution has made us all potential warriors; so the most insignificant individual, when thrown into an army in the field, is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness towards his precious person he may bring with him, and may easily develop into a monster of insensibility. but when we compare the military type of self-severity with that of the ascetic saint, we find a world-wide difference in all their spiritual concomitants. " 'live and let live,' " writes a clear-headed austrian officer, "is no device for an army. contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. if the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. the measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war. war, and even peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. the recruit brings with him common moral notions, of which he must seek immediately to get rid. for him victory, success, must be _everything_. the most barbaric tendencies in men come to life again in war, and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."( ) these words are of course literally true. the immediate aim of the soldier's life is, as moltke said, destruction, and nothing but destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in are remote and non- military. consequently the soldier cannot train himself to be too feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for things, that make for conservation. yet the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally available. but when we gravely ask ourselves whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and crime be our only bulwark against effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of ascetic religion. one hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. what we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. i have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. may not voluntarily accepted poverty be "the strenuous life," without the need of crushing weaker peoples? poverty indeed _is_ the strenuous life,--without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees the way in which wealth-getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be "the transformation of military courage," and the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of. among us english-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. we have grown literally afraid to be poor. we despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. if he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. we have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly,--the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. when we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. it is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. but wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. there are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. we need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our generation. the cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty. i recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. ------------------------------------- i have now said all that i can usefully say about the several fruits of religion as they are manifested in saintly lives, so i will make a brief review and pass to my more general conclusions. our question, you will remember, is as to whether religion stands approved by its fruits, as these are exhibited in the saintly type of character. single attributes of saintliness may, it is true, be temperamental endowments, found in non-religious individuals. but the whole group of them forms a combination which, as such, is religious, for it seems to flow from the sense of the divine as from its psychological centre. whoever possesses strongly this sense comes naturally to think that the smallest details of this world derive infinite significance from their relation to an unseen divine order. the thought of this order yields him a superior denomination of happiness, and a steadfastness of soul with which no other can compare. in social relations his serviceability is exemplary; he abounds in impulses to help. his help is inward as well as outward, for his sympathy reaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected faculties therein. instead of placing happiness where common men place it, in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of inner excitement, which converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness. so he turns his back upon no duty, however thankless; and when we are in need of assistance, we can count upon the saint lending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon any other person. finally, his humble- mindedness and his ascetic tendencies save him from the petty personal pretensions which so obstruct our ordinary social intercourse, and his purity gives us in him a clean man for a companion. felicity, purity, charity, patience, self-severity,--these are splendid excellencies, and the saint of all men shows them in the completest possible measure. but, as we saw, all these things together do not make saints infallible. when their intellectual outlook is narrow, they fall into all sorts of holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self-torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet the world. by the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the same situation. we must judge him not sentimentally only, and not in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards, placing him in his environment, and estimating his total function. now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mind that it is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to impute it as a vice to the individual, for in religious and theological matters he probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation. moreover, we must not confound the essentials of saintliness, which are those general passions of which i have spoken, with its accidents, which are the special determinations of these passions at any historical moment. in these determinations the saints will usually be loyal to the temporary idols of their tribe. taking refuge in monasteries was as much an idol of the tribe in the middle ages, as bearing a hand in the world's work is to-day. saint francis or saint bernard, were they living to-day, would undoubtedly be leading consecrated lives of some sort, but quite as undoubtedly they would not lead them in retirement. our animosity to special historic manifestations must not lead us to give away the saintly impulses in their essential nature to the tender mercies of inimical critics. the most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom i know is nietzsche. he contrasts them with the worldly passions as we find these embodied in the predaceous military character, altogether to the advantage of the latter. your born saint, it must be confessed, has something about him which often makes the gorge of a carnal man rise, so it will be worth while to consider the contrast in question more fully. dislike of the saintly nature seems to be a negative result of the biologically useful instinct of welcoming leadership, and glorifying the chief of the tribe. the chief is the potential, if not the actual tyrant, the masterful, overpowering man of prey. we confess our inferiority and grovel before him. we quail under his glance, and are at the same time proud of owning so dangerous a lord. such instinctive and submissive hero- worship must have been indispensable in primeval tribal life. in the endless wars of those times, leaders were absolutely needed for the tribe's survival. if there were any tribes who owned no leaders, they can have left no issue to narrate their doom. the leaders always had good consciences, for conscience in them coalesced with will, and those who looked on their face were as much smitten with wonder at their freedom from inner restraint as with awe at the energy of their outward performances. compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints are herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn-yard poultry. there are saints whose beard you may, if you ever care to, pull with impunity. such a man excites no thrills of wonder veiled in terror; his conscience is full of scruples and returns; he stuns us neither by his inward freedom nor his outward power; and unless he found within us an altogether different faculty of admiration to appeal to, we should pass him by with contempt. in point of fact, he does appeal to a different faculty. reënacted in human nature is the fable of the wind, the sun, and the traveler. the sexes embody the discrepancy. the woman loves the man the more admiringly the stormier he shows himself, and the world deifies its rulers the more for being willful and unaccountable. but the woman in turn subjugates the man by the mystery of gentleness in beauty, and the saint has always charmed the world by something similar. mankind is susceptible and suggestible in opposite directions, and the rivalry of influences is unsleeping. the saintly and the worldly ideal pursue their feud in literature as much as in real life. for nietzsche the saint represents little but sneakingness and slavishness. he is the sophisticated invalid, the degenerate _par excellence_, the man of insufficient vitality. his prevalence would put the human type in danger. "the sick are the greatest danger for the well. the weaker, not the stronger, are the strong's undoing. it is not _fear_ of our fellow-man, which we should wish to see diminished; for fear rouses those who are strong to become terrible in turn themselves, and preserves the hard-earned and successful type of humanity. what is to be dreaded by us more than any other doom is not fear, but rather the great disgust, not fear, but rather the great pity--disgust and pity for our human fellows.... the _morbid_ are our greatest peril--not the 'bad' men, not the predatory beings. those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken--they it is, the _weakest_, who are undermining the vitality of the race, poisoning our trust in life, and putting humanity in question. every look of them is a sigh,--'would i were something other! i am sick and tired of what i am.' in this swamp-soil of self-contempt, every poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. here swarm the worms of sensitiveness and resentment; here the air smells odious with secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy of those who suffer against those who succeed and are victorious; here the very aspect of the victorious is hated--as if health, success, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in themselves things vicious, for which one ought eventually to make bitter expiation. oh, how these people would themselves like to inflict the expiation, how they thirst to be the hangmen! and all the while their duplicity never confesses their hatred to be hatred."( ) poor nietzsche's antipathy is itself sickly enough, but we all know what he means, and he expresses well the clash between the two ideals. the carnivorous-minded "strong man," the adult male and cannibal, can see nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint's gentleness and self- severity, and regards him with pure loathing. the whole feud revolves essentially upon two pivots: shall the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this seen world be aggressiveness or non-resistance? the debate is serious. in some sense and to some degree both worlds must be acknowledged and taken account of; and in the seen world both aggressiveness and non-resistance are needful. it is a question of emphasis, of more or less. is the saint's type or the strong-man's type the more ideal? it has often been supposed, and even now, i think, it is supposed by most persons, that there can be one intrinsically ideal type of human character. a certain kind of man, it is imagined, must be the best man absolutely and apart from the utility of his function, apart from economical considerations. the saint's type, and the knight's or gentleman's type, have always been rival claimants of this absolute ideality; and in the ideal of military religious orders both types were in a manner blended. according to the empirical philosophy, however, all ideals are matters of relation. it would be absurd, for example, to ask for a definition of "the ideal horse," so long as dragging drays and running races, bearing children, and jogging about with tradesmen's packages all remain as indispensable differentiations of equine function. you may take what you call a general all-round animal as a compromise, but he will be inferior to any horse of a more specialized type, in some one particular direction. we must not forget this now when, in discussing saintliness, we ask if it be an ideal type of manhood. we must test it by its economical relations. i think that the method which mr. spencer uses in his data of ethics will help to fix our opinion. ideality in conduct is altogether a matter of adaptation. a society where all were invariably aggressive would destroy itself by inner friction, and in a society where some are aggressive, others must be non-resistant, if there is to be any kind of order. this is the present constitution of society, and to the mixture we owe many of our blessings. but the aggressive members of society are always tending to become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a state of things as we now live in is the millennium. it is meanwhile quite possible to conceive an imaginary society in which there should be no aggressiveness, but only sympathy and fairness,--any small community of true friends now realizes such a society. abstractly considered, such a society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing might be realized there with no expense of friction. to such a millennial society the saint would be entirely adapted. his peaceful modes of appeal would be efficacious over his companions, and there would be no one extant to take advantage of his non-resistance. the saint is therefore abstractly a higher type of man than the "strong man," because he is adapted to the highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely possible or not. the strong man would immediately tend by his presence to make that society deteriorate. it would become inferior in everything save in a certain kind of bellicose excitement, dear to men as they now are. but if we turn from the abstract question to the actual situation, we find that the individual saint may be well or ill adapted, according to particular circumstances. there is, in short, no absoluteness in the excellence of sainthood. it must be confessed that as far as this world goes, any one who makes an out-and-out saint of himself does so at his peril. if he is not a large enough man, he may appear more insignificant and contemptible, for all his saintship, than if he had remained a worldling.( ) accordingly religion has seldom been so radically taken in our western world that the devotee could not mix it with some worldly temper. it has always found good men who could follow most of its impulses, but who stopped short when it came to non-resistance. christ himself was fierce upon occasion. cromwells, stonewall jacksons, gordons, show that christians can be strong men also. how is success to be absolutely measured when there are so many environments and so many ways of looking at the adaptation? it cannot be measured absolutely; the verdict will vary according to the point of view adopted. from the biological point of view saint paul was a failure, because he was beheaded. yet he was magnificently adapted to the larger environment of history; and so far as any saint's example is a leaven of righteousness in the world, and draws it in the direction of more prevalent habits of saintliness, he is a success, no matter what his immediate bad fortune may be. the greatest saints, the spiritual heroes whom every one acknowledges, the francises, bernards, luthers, loyolas, wesleys, channings, moodys, gratrys, the phillips brookses, the agnes joneses, margaret hallahans, and dora pattisons, are successes from the outset. they show themselves, and there is no question; every one perceives their strength and stature. their sense of mystery in things, their passion, their goodness, irradiate about them and enlarge their outlines while they soften them. they are like pictures with an atmosphere and background; and, placed alongside of them, the strong men of this world and no other seem as dry as sticks, as hard and crude as blocks of stone or brickbats. in a general way, then, and "on the whole,"( ) our abandonment of theological criteria, and our testing of religion by practical common sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering place in history. economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world's welfare. the great saints are immediate successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and they may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. let us be saints, then, if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. but in our father's house are many mansions, and each of us must discover for himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and vocation. there are no successes to be guaranteed and no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we follow the methods of empirical philosophy. ------------------------------------- this is my conclusion so far. i know that on some of your minds it leaves a feeling of wonder that such a method should have been applied to such a subject, and this in spite of all those remarks about empiricism which i made at the beginning of lecture xiii.( ) how, you say, can religion, which believes in two worlds and an invisible order, be estimated by the adaptation of its fruits to this world's order alone? it is its _truth_, not its utility, you insist, upon which our verdict ought to depend. if religion is true, its fruits are good fruits, even though in this world they should prove uniformly ill adapted and full of naught but pathos. it goes back, then, after all, to the question of the truth of theology. the plot inevitably thickens upon us; we cannot escape theoretical considerations. i propose, then, that to some degree we face the responsibility. religious persons have often, though not uniformly, professed to see truth in a special manner. that manner is known as mysticism. i will consequently now proceed to treat at some length of mystical phenomena, and after that, though more briefly, i will consider religious philosophy. lectures xvi and xvii. mysticism. over and over again in these lectures i have raised points and left them open and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of mysticism. some of you, i fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiterated postponements. but now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced in good earnest, and those broken threads wound up together. one may say truly, i think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness; so for us, who in these lectures are treating personal experience as the exclusive subject of our study, such states of consciousness ought to form the vital chapter from which the other chapters get their light. whether my treatment of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, i do not know, for my own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and i can speak of them only at second hand. but though forced to look upon the subject so externally, i will be as objective and receptive as i can; and i think i shall at least succeed in convincing you of the reality of the states in question, and of the paramount importance of their function. first of all, then, i ask, what does the expression "mystical states of consciousness" mean? how do we part off mystical states from other states? the words "mysticism" and "mystical" are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. for some writers a "mystic" is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit- return. employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. so, to keep it useful by restricting it, i will do what i did in the case of the word "religion," and simply propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. in this way we shall save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith. . _ineffability._--the handiest of the marks by which i classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. the subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. it follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. in this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. no one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. one must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. the mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment. . _noetic quality._--although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. they are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. they are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time. these two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which i use the word. two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. these are:-- . _transiency._--mystical states cannot be sustained for long. except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance. . _passivity._--although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. this latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. when these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. they modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures. these four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. let it then be called the mystical group. ------------------------------------- our next step should be to gain acquaintance with some typical examples. professional mystics at the height of their development have often elaborately organized experiences and a philosophy based thereupon. but you remember what i said in my first lecture: phenomena are best understood when placed within their series, studied in their germ and in their over-ripe decay, and compared with their exaggerated and degenerated kindred. the range of mystical experience is very wide, much too wide for us to cover in the time at our disposal. yet the method of serial study is so essential for interpretation that if we really wish to reach conclusions we must use it. i will begin, therefore, with phenomena which claim no special religious significance, and end with those of which the religious pretensions are extreme. the simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. "i've heard that said all my life," we exclaim, "but i never realized its full meaning until now." "when a fellow-monk," said luther, "one day repeated the words of the creed: 'i believe in the forgiveness of sins,' i saw the scripture in an entirely new light; and straightway i felt as if i were born anew. it was as if i had found the door of paradise thrown wide open."( ) this sense of deeper significance is not confined to rational propositions. single words,( ) and conjunctions of words, effects of light on land and sea, odors and musical sounds, all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. most of us can remember the strangely moving power of passages in certain poems read when we were young, irrational doorways as they were through which the mystery of fact, the wildness and the pang of life, stole into our hearts and thrilled them. the words have now perhaps become mere polished surfaces for us; but lyric poetry and music are alive and significant only in proportion as they fetch these vague vistas of a life continuous with our own, beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding our pursuit. we are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we have kept or lost this mystical susceptibility. a more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweeps over us, of having "been here before," as if at some indefinite past time, in just this place, with just these people, we were already saying just these things. as tennyson writes: "moreover, something is or seems, that touches me with mystic gleams, like glimpses of forgotten dreams-- "of something felt, like something here; of something done, i know not where; such as no language may declare."( ) sir james crichton-browne has given the technical name of "dreamy states" to these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness.( ) they bring a sense of mystery and of the metaphysical duality of things, and the feeling of an enlargement of perception which seems imminent but which never completes itself. in dr. crichton-browne's opinion they connect themselves with the perplexed and scared disturbances of self- consciousness which occasionally precede epileptic attacks. i think that this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist view of an intrinsically insignificant phenomenon. he follows it along the downward ladder, to insanity; our path pursues the upward ladder chiefly. the divergence shows how important it is to neglect no part of a phenomenon's connections, for we make it appear admirable or dreadful according to the context by which we set it off. somewhat deeper plunges into mystical consciousness are met with in yet other dreamy states. such feelings as these which charles kingsley describes are surely far from being uncommon, especially in youth:-- "when i walk the fields, i am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything i see has a meaning, if i could but understand it. and this feeling of being surrounded with truths which i cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes.... have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your mental vision, except in a few hallowed moments?"( ) a much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described by j. a. symonds; and probably more persons than we suspect could give parallels to it from their own experience. "suddenly," writes symonds, "at church, or in company, or when i was reading, and always, i think, when my muscles were at rest, i felt the approach of the mood. irresistibly it took possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapid sensations which resembled the awakening from anæsthetic influence. one reason why i disliked this kind of trance was that i could not describe it to myself. i cannot even now find words to render it intelligible. it consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our self. in proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. at last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract self. the universe became without form and void of content. but self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. and what then? the apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of the conscious self, the sense that i had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal maya or illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. the return to ordinary conditions of sentient existence began by my first recovering the power of touch, and then by the gradual though rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal interests. at last i felt myself once more a human being; and though the riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved, i was thankful for this return from the abyss--this deliverance from so awful an initiation into the mysteries of skepticism. "this trance recurred with diminishing frequency until i reached the age of twenty-eight. it served to impress upon my growing nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness. often have i asked myself with anguish, on waking from that formless state of denuded, keenly sentient being, which is the unreality?--the trance of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical self from which i issue, or these surrounding phenomena and habits which veil that inner self and build a self of flesh-and-blood conventionality? again, are men the factors of some dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality of which they comprehend at such eventful moments? what would happen if the final stage of the trance were reached?"( ) in a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of pathology.( ) the next step into mystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality. i refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anæsthetics, especially by alcohol. the sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. it is in fact the great exciter of the _yes_ function in man. it brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. it makes him for the moment one with truth. not through mere perversity do men run after it. to the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning. the drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole. nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree. depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler. this truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if any words remain over in which it seemed to clothe itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. nevertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having been there persists; and i know more than one person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical revelation. some years ago i myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. one conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. it is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. we may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. no account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. how to regard them is the question,--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. at any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which i cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. the keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. it is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but _one of the species_, the nobler and better one, _is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself_. this is a dark saying, i know, when thus expressed in terms of common logic, but i cannot wholly escape from its authority. i feel as if it must mean something, something like what the hegelian philosophy means, if one could only lay hold of it more clearly. those who have ears to hear, let them hear; to me the living sense of its reality only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind.( ) i just now spoke of friends who believe in the anæsthetic revelation. for them too it is a monistic insight, in which the _other_ in its various forms appears absorbed into the one. "into this pervading genius," writes one of them, "we pass, forgetting and forgotten, and thenceforth each is all, in god. there is no higher, no deeper, no other, than the life in which we are founded. 'the one remains, the many change and pass;' and each and every one of us _is_ the one that remains.... this is the ultimatum.... as sure as being--whence is all our care--so sure is content, beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble, where i have triumphed in a solitude that god is not above."( ) this has the genuine religious mystic ring! i just now quoted j. a. symonds. he also records a mystical experience with chloroform, as follows:-- "after the choking and stifling had passed away, i seemed at first in a state of utter blankness; then came flashes of intense light, alternating with blackness, and with a keen vision of what was going on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. i thought that i was near death; when, suddenly, my soul became aware of god, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. i felt him streaming in like light upon me.... i cannot describe the ecstasy i felt. then, as i gradually awoke from the influence of the anæsthetics, the old sense of my relation to the world began to return, the new sense of my relation to god began to fade. i suddenly leapt to my feet on the chair where i was sitting, and shrieked out, 'it is too horrible, it is too horrible, it is too horrible,' meaning that i could not bear this disillusionment. then i flung myself on the ground, and at last awoke covered with blood, calling to the two surgeons (who were frightened), 'why did you not kill me? why would you not let me die?' only think of it. to have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very god, in all purity and tenderness and truth and absolute love, and then to find that i had after all had no revelation, but that i had been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain. "yet, this question remains, is it possible that the inner sense of reality which succeeded, when my flesh was dead to impressions from without, to the ordinary sense of physical relations, was not a delusion but an actual experience? is it possible that i, in that moment, felt what some of the saints have said they always felt, the undemonstrable but irrefragable certainty of god?"( ) with this we make connection with religious mysticism pure and simple. symonds's question takes us back to those examples which you will remember my quoting in the lecture on the reality of the unseen, of sudden realization of the immediate presence of god. the phenomenon in one shape or another is not uncommon. "i know," writes mr. trine, "an officer on our police force who has told me that many times when off duty, and on his way home in the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and vital realization of his oneness with this infinite power, and this spirit of infinite peace so takes hold of and so fills him, that it seems as if his feet could hardly keep to the pavement, so buoyant and so exhilarated does he become by reason of this inflowing tide."( ) certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar power of awakening such mystical moods.( ) most of the striking cases which i have collected have occurred out of doors. literature has commemorated this fact in many passages of great beauty--this extract, for example, from amiel's journal intime:-- "shall i ever again have any of those prodigious reveries which sometimes came to me in former days? one day, in youth, at sunrise, sitting in the ruins of the castle of faucigny; and again in the mountains, under the noonday sun, above lavey, lying at the foot of a tree and visited by three butterflies; once more at night upon the shingly shore of the northern ocean, my back upon the sand and my vision ranging through the milky way;--such grand and spacious, immortal, cosmogonic reveries, when one reaches to the stars, when one owns the infinite! moments divine, ecstatic hours; in which our thought flies from world to world, pierces the great enigma, breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless as the blue firmament; ... instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels one's self great as the universe, and calm as a god.... what hours, what memories! the vestiges they leave behind are enough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were visits of the holy ghost."( ) here is a similar record from the memoirs of that interesting german idealist, malwida von meysenbug:-- "i was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling; and now again, as once before in distant days in the alps of dauphiné, i was impelled to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the infinite. i felt that i prayed as i had never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable. earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world-encircling harmony. it was as if the chorus of all the great who had ever lived were about me. i felt myself one with them, and it appeared as if i heard their greeting: 'thou too belongest to the company of those who overcome.' "( ) the well-known passage from walt whitman is a classical expression of this sporadic type of mystical experience. "i believe in you, my soul ... loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat;... only the lull i like, the hum of your valved voice. i mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning. swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, and i know that the hand of god is the promise of my own, and i know that the spirit of god is the brother of my own, and that all the men ever born are also my brothers and the women my sisters and lovers, and that a kelson of the creation is love."( ) i could easily give more instances, but one will suffice. i take it from the autobiography of j. trevor.( ) "one brilliant sunday morning, my wife and boys went to the unitarian chapel in macclesfield. i felt it impossible to accompany them--as though to leave the sunshine on the hills, and go down there to the chapel, would be for the time an act of spiritual suicide. and i felt such need for new inspiration and expansion in my life. so, very reluctantly and sadly, i left my wife and boys to go down into the town, while i went further up into the hills with my stick and my dog. in the loveliness of the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, i soon lost my sense of sadness and regret. for nearly an hour i walked along the road to the 'cat and fiddle,' and then returned. on the way back, suddenly, without warning, i felt that i was in heaven--an inward state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external condition had brought about the internal effect--a feeling of having passed beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as if nearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in the midst of which i seemed to be placed. this deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing strength, until i reached home, and for some time after, only gradually passing away." the writer adds that having had further experiences of a similar sort, he now knows them well. "the spiritual life," he writes, "justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand? this, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life. dreams cannot stand this test. we wake from them to find that they are but dreams. wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. these highest experiences that i have had of god's presence have been rare and brief--flashes of consciousness which have compelled me to exclaim with surprise--god is _here_!--or conditions of exaltation and insight, less intense, and only gradually passing away. i have severely questioned the worth of these moments. to no soul have i named them, lest i should be building my life and work on mere phantasies of the brain. but i find that, after every questioning and test, they stand out to-day as the most real experiences of my life, and experiences which have explained and justified and unified all past experiences and all past growth. indeed, their reality and their far-reaching significance are ever becoming more clear and evident. when they came, i was living the fullest, strongest, sanest, deepest life. i was not seeking them. what i was seeking, with resolute determination, was to live more intensely my own life, as against what i knew would be the adverse judgment of the world. it was in the most real seasons that the real presence came, and i was aware that i was immersed in the infinite ocean of god."( ) even the least mystical of you must by this time be convinced of the existence of mystical moments as states of consciousness of an entirely specific quality, and of the deep impression which they make on those who have them. a canadian psychiatrist, dr. r. m. bucke, gives to the more distinctly characterized of these phenomena the name of cosmic consciousness. "cosmic consciousness in its more striking instances is not," dr. bucke says, "simply an expansion or extension of the self- conscious mind with which we are all familiar, but the superaddition of a function as distinct from any possessed by the average man as _self_-consciousness is distinct from any function possessed by one of the higher animals." "the prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe. along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs an intellectual enlightenment which alone would place the individual on a new plane of existence--would make him almost a member of a new species. to this is added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense, which is fully as striking, and more important than is the enhanced intellectual power. with these come what may be called a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall have this, but the consciousness that he has it already."( ) it was dr. bucke's own experience of a typical onset of cosmic consciousness in his own person which led him to investigate it in others. he has printed his conclusions in a highly interesting volume, from which i take the following account of what occurred to him:-- "i had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. we parted at midnight. i had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. my mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. i was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. all at once, without warning of any kind, i found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. for an instant i thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, i knew that the fire was within myself. directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. among other things, i did not merely come to believe, but i saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living presence; i became conscious in myself of eternal life. it was not a conviction that i would have eternal life, but a consciousness that i possessed eternal life then; i saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain. the vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed. i knew that what the vision showed was true. i had attained to a point of view from which i saw that it must be true. that view, that conviction, i may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepest depression, been lost."( ) we have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic consciousness, as it comes sporadically. we must next pass to its methodical cultivation as an element of the religious life. hindus, buddhists, mohammedans, and christians all have cultivated it methodically. in india, training in mystical insight has been known from time immemorial under the name of yoga. yoga means the experimental union of the individual with the divine. it is based on persevering exercise; and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and moral discipline vary slightly in the different systems which teach it. the yogi, or disciple, who has by these means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature sufficiently, enters into the condition termed _samâdhi_, "and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know." he learns-- "that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and that when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes.... all the different steps in yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state or samâdhi.... just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism.... there is no feeling of _i_, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless. then the truth shines in its full effulgence, and we know ourselves--for samâdhi lies potential in us all--for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent, loosed from the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil altogether, and identical with the atman or universal soul."( ) the vedantists say that one may stumble into superconsciousness sporadically, without the previous discipline, but it is then impure. their test of its purity, like our test of religion's value, is empirical: its fruits must be good for life. when a man comes out of samâdhi, they assure us that he remains "enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his life changed, illumined."( ) the buddhists use the word "samâdhi" as well as the hindus; but "dhyâna" is their special word for higher states of contemplation. there seem to be four stages recognized in dhyâna. the first stage comes through concentration of the mind upon one point. it excludes desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. in the second stage the intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. in the third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins, along with memory and self-consciousness. in the fourth stage the indifference, memory, and self-consciousness are perfected. [just what "memory" and "self-consciousness" mean in this connection is doubtful. they cannot be the faculties familiar to us in the lower life.] higher stages still of contemplation are mentioned--a region where there exists nothing, and where the meditator says: "there exists absolutely nothing," and stops. then he reaches another region where he says: "there are neither ideas nor absence of ideas," and stops again. then another region where, "having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops finally." this would seem to be, not yet nirvâna, but as close an approach to it as this life affords.( ) in the mohammedan world the sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradition. the sufis have existed in persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the arab mind, it has been suggested that sufism must have been inoculated into islam by hindu influences. we christians know little of sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. to give its existence a certain liveliness in your minds, i will quote a moslem document, and pass away from the subject. al-ghazzali, a persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished in the eleventh century, and ranks as one of the greatest doctors of the moslem church, has left us one of the few autobiographies to be found outside of christian literature. strange that a species of book so abundant among ourselves should be so little represented elsewhere--the absence of strictly personal confessions is the chief difficulty to the purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the christian. m. schmölders has translated a part of al-ghazzali's autobiography into french:( )-- "the science of the sufis," says the moslem author, "aims at detaching the heart from all that is not god, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. theory being more easy for me than practice, i read [certain books] until i understood all that can be learned by study and hearsay. then i recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul. how great, for example, is the difference between knowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with their causes and conditions, and being really healthy or filled. how different to know in what drunkenness consists,--as being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the stomach,--and _being_ drunk effectively. without doubt, the drunken man knows neither the definition of drunkenness nor what makes it interesting for science. being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst the physician, although not drunk, knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what are its predisposing conditions. similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence, and _being_ abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world.--thus i had learned what words could teach of sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life. "reflecting on my situation, i found myself tied down by a multitude of bonds--temptations on every side. considering my teaching, i found it was impure before god. i saw myself struggling with all my might to achieve glory and to spread my name. [here follows an account of his six months' hesitation to break away from the conditions of his life at bagdad, at the end of which he fell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] then, feeling my own weakness, and having entirely given up my own will, i repaired to god like a man in distress who has no more resources. he answered, as he answers the wretch who invokes him. my heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncing glory, wealth, and my children. so i quitted bagdad, and reserving from my fortune only what was indispensable for my subsistence, i distributed the rest. i went to syria, where i remained about two years, with no other occupation than living in retreat and solitude, conquering my desires, combating my passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my character perfect, to prepare my heart for meditating on god--all according to the methods of the sufis, as i had read of them. "this retreat only increased my desire to live in solitude, and to complete the purification of my heart and fit it for meditation. but the vicissitudes of the times, the affairs of the family, the need of subsistence, changed in some respects my primitive resolve, and interfered with my plans for a purely solitary life. i had never yet found myself completely in ecstasy, save in a few single hours; nevertheless, i kept the hope of attaining this state. every time that the accidents led me astray, i sought to return; and in this situation i spent ten years. during this solitary state things were revealed to me which it is impossible either to describe or to point out. i recognized for certain that the sufis are assuredly walking in the path of god. both in their acts and in their inaction, whether internal or external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source. the first condition for a sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not god. the next key of the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on god in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. but in reality this is only the beginning of the sufi life, the end of sufism being total absorption in god. the intuitions and all that precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. from the beginning, revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. they hear their voices and obtain their favors. then the transport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression, and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin. "whoever has had no experience of the transport knows of the true nature of prophetism nothing but the name. he may meanwhile be sure of its existence, both by experience and by what he hears the sufis say. as there are men endowed only with the sensitive faculty who reject what is offered them in the way of objects of the pure understanding, so there are intellectual men who reject and avoid the things perceived by the prophetic faculty. a blind man can understand nothing of colors save what he has learned by narration and hearsay. yet god has brought prophetism near to men in giving them all a state analogous to it in its principal characters. this state is sleep. if you were to tell a man who was himself without experience of such a phenomenon that there are people who at times swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] yet perceive things that are hidden, he would deny it [and give his reasons]. nevertheless, his arguments would be refuted by actual experience. wherefore, just as the understanding is a stage of human life in which an eye opens to discern various intellectual objects uncomprehended by sensation; just so in the prophetic the sight is illumined by a light which uncovers hidden things and objects which the intellect fails to reach. the chief properties of prophetism are perceptible only during the transport, by those who embrace the sufi life. the prophet is endowed with qualities to which you possess nothing analogous, and which consequently you cannot possibly understand. how should you know their true nature, since one knows only what one can comprehend? but the transport which one attains by the method of the sufis is like an immediate perception, as if one touched the objects with one's hand."( ) this incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism. mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport, but for no one else. in this, as i have said, it resembles the knowledge given to us in sensations more than that given by conceptual thought. thought, with its remoteness and abstractness, has often enough in the history of philosophy been contrasted unfavorably with sensation. it is a commonplace of metaphysics that god's knowledge cannot be discursive but must be intuitive, that is, must be constructed more after the pattern of what in ourselves is called immediate feeling, than after that of proposition and judgment. but _our_ immediate feelings have no content but what the five senses supply; and we have seen and shall see again that mystics may emphatically deny that the senses play any part in the very highest type of knowledge which their transports yield. ------------------------------------- in the christian church there have always been mystics. although many of them have been viewed with suspicion, some have gained favor in the eyes of the authorities. the experiences of these have been treated as precedents, and a codified system of mystical theology has been based upon them, in which everything legitimate finds its place.( ) the basis of the system is "orison" or meditation, the methodical elevation of the soul towards god. through the practice of orison the higher levels of mystical experience may be attained. it is odd that protestantism, especially evangelical protestantism, should seemingly have abandoned everything methodical in this line. apart from what prayer may lead to, protestant mystical experience appears to have been almost exclusively sporadic. it has been left to our mind-curers to reintroduce methodical meditation into our religious life. the first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind's detachment from outer sensations, for these interfere with its concentration upon ideal things. such manuals as saint ignatius's spiritual exercises recommend the disciple to expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts to imagine holy scenes. the acme of this kind of discipline would be a semi- hallucinatory mono-ideism--an imaginary figure of christ, for example, coming fully to occupy the mind. sensorial images of this sort, whether literal or symbolic, play an enormous part in mysticism.( ) but in certain cases imagery may fall away entirely, and in the very highest raptures it tends to do so. the state of consciousness becomes then insusceptible of any verbal description. mystical teachers are unanimous as to this. saint john of the cross, for instance, one of the best of them, thus describes the condition called the "union of love," which, he says, is reached by "dark contemplation." in this the deity compenetrates the soul, but in such a hidden way that the soul-- "finds no terms, no means, no comparison whereby to render the sublimity of the wisdom and the delicacy of the spiritual feeling with which she is filled.... we receive this mystical knowledge of god clothed in none of the kinds of images, in none of the sensible representations, which our mind makes use of in other circumstances. accordingly in this knowledge, since the senses and the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor impression, nor can we give any account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of our soul. fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time in his life. he can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a name to it, nor communicate any idea of it, even though all the while it be a mere thing of sense. how much greater will be his powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses! this is the peculiarity of the divine language. the more infused, intimate, spiritual, and supersensible it is, the more does it exceed the senses, both inner and outer, and impose silence upon them.... the soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the more solitary it is. there, in this abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of the comprehension of love, ... and recognizes, however sublime and learned may be the terms we employ, how utterly vile, insignificant, and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divine things by their means."( ) i cannot pretend to detail to you the sundry stages of the christian mystical life.( ) our time would not suffice, for one thing; and moreover, i confess that the subdivisions and names which we find in the catholic books seem to me to represent nothing objectively distinct. so many men, so many minds: i imagine that these experiences can be as infinitely varied as are the idiosyncrasies of individuals. the cognitive aspects of them, their value in the way of revelation, is what we are directly concerned with, and it is easy to show by citation how strong an impression they leave of being revelations of new depths of truth. saint teresa is the expert of experts in describing such conditions, so i will turn immediately to what she says of one of the highest of them, the "orison of union." "in the orison of union," says saint teresa, "the soul is fully awake as regards god, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. during the short time the union lasts, she is as it were deprived of every feeling, and even if she would, she could not think of any single thing. thus she needs to employ no artifice in order to arrest the use of her understanding: it remains so stricken with inactivity that she neither knows what she loves, nor in what manner she loves, nor what she wills. in short, she is utterly dead to the things of the world and lives solely in god.... i do not even know whether in this state she has enough life left to breathe. it seems to me she has not; or at least that if she does breathe, she is unaware of it. her intellect would fain understand something of what is going on within her, but it has so little force now that it can act in no way whatsoever. so a person who falls into a deep faint appears as if dead.... "thus does god, when he raises a soul to union with himself, suspend the natural action of all her faculties. she neither sees, hears, nor understands, so long as she is united with god. but this time is always short, and it seems even shorter than it is. god establishes himself in the interior of this soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in god, and god in her. this truth remains so strongly impressed on her that, even though many years should pass without the condition returning, she can neither forget the favor she received, nor doubt of its reality. if you, nevertheless, ask how it is possible that the soul can see and understand that she has been in god, since during the union she has neither sight nor understanding, i reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which god alone can give her. i knew a person who was ignorant of the truth that god's mode of being in everything must be either by presence, by power, or by essence, but who, after having received the grace of which i am speaking, believed this truth in the most unshakable manner. so much so that, having consulted a half-learned man who was as ignorant on this point as she had been before she was enlightened, when he replied that god is in us only by 'grace,' she disbelieved his reply, so sure she was of the true answer; and when she came to ask wiser doctors, they confirmed her in her belief, which much consoled her.... "but how, you will repeat, _can_ one have such certainty in respect to what one does not see? this question, i am powerless to answer. these are secrets of god's omnipotence which it does not appertain to me to penetrate. all that i know is that i tell the truth; and i shall never believe that any soul who does not possess this certainty has ever been really united to god."( ) the kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether these be sensible or supersensible, are various. some of them relate to this world,--visions of the future, the reading of hearts, the sudden understanding of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example; but the most important revelations are theological or metaphysical. "saint ignatius confessed one day to father laynez that a single hour of meditation at manresa had taught him more truths about heavenly things than all the teachings of all the doctors put together could have taught him.... one day in orison, on the steps of the choir of the dominican church, he saw in a distinct manner the plan of divine wisdom in the creation of the world. on another occasion, during a procession, his spirit was ravished in god, and it was given him to contemplate, in a form and images fitted to the weak understanding of a dweller on the earth, the deep mystery of the holy trinity. this last vision flooded his heart with such sweetness, that the mere memory of it in after times made him shed abundant tears."( ) similarly with saint teresa. "one day, being in orison," she writes, "it was granted me to perceive in one instant how all things are seen and contained in god. i did not perceive them in their proper form, and nevertheless the view i had of them was of a sovereign clearness, and has remained vividly impressed upon my soul. it is one of the most signal of all the graces which the lord has granted me.... the view was so subtile and delicate that the understanding cannot grasp it."( ) she goes on to tell how it was as if the deity were an enormous and sovereignly limpid diamond, in which all our actions were contained in such a way that their full sinfulness appeared evident as never before. on another day, she relates, while she was reciting the athanasian creed,-- "our lord made me comprehend in what way it is that one god can be in three persons. he made me see it so clearly that i remained as extremely surprised as i was comforted, ... and now, when i think of the holy trinity, or hear it spoken of, i understand how the three adorable persons form only one god and i experience an unspeakable happiness." on still another occasion, it was given to saint teresa to see and understand in what wise the mother of god had been assumed into her place in heaven.( ) the deliciousness of some of these states seems to be beyond anything known in ordinary consciousness. it evidently involves organic sensibilities, for it is spoken of as something too extreme to be borne, and as verging on bodily pain.( ) but it is too subtle and piercing a delight for ordinary words to denote. god's touches, the wounds of his spear, references to ebriety and to nuptial union have to figure in the phraseology by which it is shadowed forth. intellect and senses both swoon away in these highest states of ecstasy. "if our understanding comprehends," says saint teresa, "it is in a mode which remains unknown to it, and it can understand nothing of what it comprehends. for my own part, i do not believe that it does comprehend, because, as i said, it does not understand itself to do so. i confess that it is all a mystery in which i am lost."( ) in the condition called _raptus_ or ravishment by theologians, breathing and circulation are so depressed that it is a question among the doctors whether the soul be or be not temporarily dissevered from the body. one must read saint teresa's descriptions and the very exact distinctions which she makes, to persuade one's self that one is dealing, not with imaginary experiences, but with phenomena which, however rare, follow perfectly definite psychological types. ------------------------------------- to the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. to pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but inquire into their fruits for life. their fruits appear to have been various. stupefaction, for one thing, seems not to have been altogether absent as a result. you may remember the helplessness in the kitchen and schoolroom of poor margaret mary alacoque. many other ecstatics would have perished but for the care taken of them by admiring followers. the "other-worldliness" encouraged by the mystical consciousness makes this over-abstraction from practical life peculiarly liable to befall mystics in whom the character is naturally passive and the intellect feeble; but in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite results. the great spanish mystics, who carried the habit of ecstasy as far as it has often been carried, appear for the most part to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, and all the more so for the trances in which they indulged. saint ignatius was a mystic, but his mysticism made him assuredly one of the most powerfully practical human engines that ever lived. saint john of the cross, writing of the intuitions and "touches" by which god reaches the substance of the soul, tells us that-- "they enrich it marvelously. a single one of them may be sufficient to abolish at a stroke certain imperfections of which the soul during its whole life had vainly tried to rid itself, and to leave it adorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural gifts. a single one of these intoxicating consolations may reward it for all the labors undergone in its life--even were they numberless. invested with an invincible courage, filled with an impassioned desire to suffer for its god, the soul then is seized with a strange torment--that of not being allowed to suffer enough."( ) saint teresa is as emphatic, and much more detailed. you may perhaps remember a passage i quoted from her in my first lecture.( ) there are many similar pages in her autobiography. where in literature is a more evidently veracious account of the formation of a new centre of spiritual energy, than is given in her description of the effects of certain ecstasies which in departing leave the soul upon a higher level of emotional excitement? "often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before the ecstasy, the soul emerges from it full of health and admirably disposed for action ... as if god had willed that the body itself, already obedient to the soul's desires, should share in the soul's happiness.... the soul after such a favor is animated with a degree of courage so great that if at that moment its body should be torn to pieces for the cause of god, it would feel nothing but the liveliest comfort. then it is that promises and heroic resolutions spring up in profusion in us, soaring desires, horror of the world, and the clear perception of our proper nothingness.... what empire is comparable to that of a soul who, from this sublime summit to which god has raised her, sees all the things of earth beneath her feet, and is captivated by no one of them? how ashamed she is of her former attachments! how amazed at her blindness! what lively pity she feels for those whom she recognizes still shrouded in the darkness!... she groans at having ever been sensitive to points of honor, at the illusion that made her ever see as honor what the world calls by that name. now she sees in this name nothing more than an immense lie of which the world remains a victim. she discovers, in the new light from above, that in genuine honor there is nothing spurious, that to be faithful to this honor is to give our respect to what deserves to be respected really, and to consider as nothing, or as less than nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not agreeable to god.... she laughs when she sees grave persons, persons of orison, caring for points of honor for which she now feels profoundest contempt. it is suitable to the dignity of their rank to act thus, they pretend, and it makes them more useful to others. but she knows that in despising the dignity of their rank for the pure love of god they would do more good in a single day than they would effect in ten years by preserving it.... she laughs at herself that there should ever have been a time in her life when she made any case of money, when she ever desired it.... oh! if human beings might only agree together to regard it as so much useless mud, what harmony would then reign in the world! with what friendship we would all treat each other if our interest in honor and in money could but disappear from earth! for my own part, i feel as if it would be a remedy for all our ills."( ) mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul more energetic in the lines which their inspiration favors. but this could be reckoned an advantage only in case the inspiration were a true one. if the inspiration were erroneous, the energy would be all the more mistaken and misbegotten. so we stand once more before that problem of truth which confronted us at the end of the lectures on saintliness. you will remember that we turned to mysticism precisely to get some light on truth. do mystical states establish the truth of those theological affections in which the saintly life has its root? in spite of their repudiation of articulate self-description, mystical states in general assert a pretty distinct theoretic drift. it is possible to give the outcome of the majority of them in terms that point in definite philosophical directions. one of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism. we pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. we feel them as reconciling, unifying states. they appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. in them the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account. their very denial of every adjective you may propose as applicable to the ultimate truth,--he, the self, the atman, is to be described by "no! no!" only, say the upanishads,( )--though it seems on the surface to be a no-function, is a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes. whoso calls the absolute anything in particular, or says that it is _this_, seems implicitly to shut it off from being _that_--it is as if he lessened it. so we deny the "this," negating the negation which it seems to us to imply, in the interests of the higher affirmative attitude by which we are possessed. the fountain-head of christian mysticism is dionysius the areopagite. he describes the absolute truth by negatives exclusively. "the cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. it is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. it neither stands, nor moves, nor rests.... it is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. even intellectual contact does not belong to it. it is neither science nor truth. it is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it," etc., _ad libitum_.( ) but these qualifications are denied by dionysius, not because the truth falls short of them, but because it so infinitely excels them. it is above them. it is _super_-lucent, _super_-splendent, _super_-essential, _super_-sublime, _super_ everything that can be named. like hegel in his logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the "methode der absoluten negativität."( ) thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound in mystical writings. as when eckhart tells of the still desert of the godhead, "where never was seen difference, neither father, son, nor holy ghost, where there is no one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at peace than in itself."( ) as when boehme writes of the primal love, that "it may fitly be compared to nothing, for it is deeper than any thing, and is as nothing with respect to all things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any of them. and because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore free from all things, and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there being nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by."( ) or as when angelus silesius sings:-- "gott ist ein lauter nichts, ihn rührt kein nun noch hier; je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr entwind er dir."( ) to this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of passage towards a higher kind of affirmation, there is correlated the subtlest of moral counterparts in the sphere of the personal will. since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings. "love," continues behmen, is nothing, for "when thou art gone forth wholly from the creature and from that which is visible, and art become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that eternal one, which is god himself, and then thou shalt feel within thee the highest virtue of love.... the treasure of treasures for the soul is where she goeth out of the somewhat into that nothing out of which all things may be made. the soul here saith, _i have nothing_, for i am utterly stripped and naked; _i can do nothing_, for i have no manner of power, but am as water poured out; _i am nothing_, for all that i am is no more than an image of being, and only god is to me i am; and so, sitting down in my own nothingness, i give glory to the eternal being, and _will nothing_ of myself, that so god may will all in me, being unto me my god and all things."( ) in paul's language, i live, yet not i, but christ liveth in me. only when i become as nothing can god enter in and no difference between his life and mine remain outstanding.( ) this overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the absolute is the great mystic achievement. in mystic states we both become one with the absolute and we become aware of our oneness. this is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. in hinduism, in neoplatonism, in sufism, in christian mysticism, in whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. perpetually telling of the unity of man with god, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.( ) "that art thou!" say the upanishads, and the vedantists add: "not a part, not a mode of that, but identically that, that absolute spirit of the world." "as pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, o gautama, is the self of a thinker who knows. water in water, fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can distinguish them; likewise a man whose mind has entered into the self."( ) " 'every man,' says the sufi gulshan-râz, 'whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that there is no being save only one.... in his divine majesty the _me_, the _we_, the _thou_, are not found, for in the one there can be no distinction. every being who is annulled and entirely separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and this echo: _i am god_: he has an eternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to death.' "( ) in the vision of god, says plotinus, "what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our reason.... he who thus sees does not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things. he changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. absorbed in god, he makes but one with him, like a centre of a circle coinciding with another centre."( ) "here," writes suso, "the spirit dies, and yet is all alive in the marvels of the godhead ... and is lost in the stillness of the glorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked simple unity. it is in this modeless _where_ that the highest bliss is to be found."( ) "ich bin so gross als gott," sings angelus silesius again, "er ist als ich so klein; er kann nicht über mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein."( ) in mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling obscurity," "whispering silence," "teeming desert," are continually met with. they prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions. "he who would hear the voice of nada, 'the soundless sound,' and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of dhâranâ.... when to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams; when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the one--the inner sound which kills the outer.... for then the soul will hear, and will remember. and then to the inner ear will speak the voice of the silence.... and now thy _self_ is lost in self, _thyself_ unto thyself, merged in that self from which thou first didst radiate.... behold! thou hast become the light, thou hast become the sound, thou art thy master and thy god. thou art thyself the object of thy search: the voice unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the voice of the silence. _om tat sat._"( ) these words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. there is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores. "here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. where we stand, could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam, we should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.... ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with venturous glee, from the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all the sea."( ) that doctrine, for example, that eternity is timeless, that our "immortality," if we live in the eternal, is not so much future as already now and here, which we find so often expressed to-day in certain philosophic circles, finds its support in a "hear, hear!" or an "amen," which floats up from that mysteriously deeper level.( ) we recognize the passwords to the mystical region as we hear them, but we cannot use them ourselves; it alone has the keeping of "the password primeval."( ) i have now sketched with extreme brevity and insufficiency, but as fairly as i am able in the time allowed, the general traits of the mystic range of consciousness. _it is on the whole pantheistic and optimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. it is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and so-called other-worldly states of mind._ ------------------------------------- my next task is to inquire whether we can invoke it as authoritative. does it furnish any _warrant for the truth_ of the twice-bornness and supernaturality and pantheism which it favors? i must give my answer to this question as concisely as i can. in brief my answer is this,--and i will divide it into three parts:-- ( ) mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come. ( ) no authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically. ( ) they break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. they show it to be only one kind of consciousness. they open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith. i will take up these points one by one. . as a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of a well-pronounced and emphatic sort _are_ usually authoritative over those who have them.( ) they have been "there," and know. it is vain for rationalism to grumble about this. if the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate have we of the majority to order him to live in another way? we can throw him into a prison or a madhouse, but we cannot change his mind--we commonly attach it only the more stubbornly to its beliefs.( ) it mocks our utmost efforts, as a matter of fact, and in point of logic it absolutely escapes our jurisdiction. our own more "rational" beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs. our senses, namely, have assured us of certain states of fact; but mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us. the records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if i may be pardoned the barbarous expression,--that is, they are face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist. the mystic is, in short, _invulnerable_, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. faith, says tolstoy, is that by which men live. and faith-state and mystic state are practically convertible terms. . but i now proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we ought to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we are ourselves outsiders and feel no private call thereto. the utmost they can ever ask of us in this life is to admit that they establish a presumption. they form a consensus and have an unequivocal outcome; and it would be odd, mystics might say, if such a unanimous type of experience should prove to be altogether wrong. at bottom, however, this would only be an appeal to numbers, like the appeal of rationalism the other way; and the appeal to numbers has no logical force. if we acknowledge it, it is for "suggestive," not for logical reasons: we follow the majority because to do so suits our life. but even this presumption from the unanimity of mystics is far from being strong. in characterizing mystic states as pantheistic, optimistic, etc., i am afraid i over-simplified the truth. i did so for expository reasons, and to keep the closer to the classic mystical tradition. the classic religious mysticism, it now must be confessed, is only a "privileged case." it is an _extract_, kept true to type by the selection of the fittest specimens and their preservation in "schools." it is carved out from a much larger mass; and if we take the larger mass as seriously as religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the supposed unanimity largely disappears. to begin with, even religious mysticism itself, the kind that accumulates traditions and makes schools, is much less unanimous than i have allowed. it has been both ascetic and antinomianly self-indulgent within the christian church.( ) it is dualistic in sankhya, and monistic in vedanta philosophy. i called it pantheistic; but the great spanish mystics are anything but pantheists. they are with few exceptions non-metaphysical minds, for whom "the category of personality" is absolute. the "union" of man with god is for them much more like an occasional miracle than like an original identity.( ) how different again, apart from the happiness common to all, is the mysticism of walt whitman, edward carpenter, richard jefferies, and other naturalistic pantheists, from the more distinctively christian sort.( ) the fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of its own. it is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood. we have no right, therefore, to invoke its prestige as distinctively in favor of any special belief, such as that in absolute idealism, or in the absolute monistic identity, or in the absolute goodness, of the world. it is only relatively in favor of all these things--it passes out of common human consciousness in the direction in which they lie. so much for religious mysticism proper. but more remains to be told, for religious mysticism is only one half of mysticism. the other half has no accumulated traditions except those which the text-books on insanity supply. open any one of these, and you will find abundant cases in which "mystical ideas" are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. in delusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it, we may have a _diabolical_ mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. the same sense of ineffable importance in the smallest events, the same texts and words coming with new meanings, the same voices and visions and leadings and missions, the same controlling by extraneous powers; only this time the emotion is pessimistic: instead of consolations we have desolations; the meanings are dreadful; and the powers are enemies to life. it is evident that from the point of view of their psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit the existence, but of which so little is really known. that region contains every kind of matter: "seraph and snake" abide there side by side. to come from thence is no infallible credential. what comes must be sifted and tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation with the total context of experience, just like what comes from the outer world of sense. its value must be ascertained by empirical methods, so long as we are not mystics ourselves. once more, then, i repeat that non-mystics are under no obligation to acknowledge in mystical states a superior authority conferred on them by their intrinsic nature.( ) . yet, i repeat once more, the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. as a rule, mystical states merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness. they are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life. they do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything that our senses have immediately seized.( ) it is the rationalistic critic rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more enveloping point of view. it must always remain an open question whether mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world. the difference of the views seen from the different mystical windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. the wider world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of this world, that is all. it would have its celestial and its infernal regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and its counterfeit ones, just as our world has them; but it would be a wider world all the same. we should have to use its experiences by selecting and subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary naturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth. ------------------------------------- in this shape, i think, we have to leave the subject. mystical states indeed wield no authority due simply to their being mystical states. but the higher ones among them point in directions to which the religious sentiments even of non-mystical men incline. they tell of the supremacy of the ideal, of vastness, of union, of safety, and of rest. they offer us _hypotheses_, hypotheses which we may voluntarily ignore, but which as thinkers we cannot possibly upset. the supernaturalism and optimism to which they would persuade us may, interpreted in one way or another, be after all the truest of insights into the meaning of this life. "oh, the little more, and how much it is; and the little less, and what worlds away!" it may be that possibility and permission of this sort are all that the religious consciousness requires to live on. in my last lecture i shall have to try to persuade you that this is the case. meanwhile, however, i am sure that for many of my readers this diet is too slender. if supernaturalism and inner union with the divine are true, you think, then not so much permission, as compulsion to believe, ought to be found. philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by coercive argument; and the construction of philosophies of this kind has always been one favorite function of the religious life, if we use this term in the large historic sense. but religious philosophy is an enormous subject, and in my next lecture i can only give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow. lecture xviii. philosophy. the subject of saintliness left us face to face with the question, is the sense of divine presence a sense of anything objectively true? we turned first to mysticism for an answer, and found that although mysticism is entirely willing to corroborate religion, it is too private (and also too various) in its utterances to be able to claim a universal authority. but philosophy publishes results which claim to be universally valid if they are valid at all, so we now turn with our question to philosophy. can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity upon the religious man's sense of the divine? i imagine that many of you at this point begin to indulge in guesses at the goal to which i am tending. i have undermined the authority of mysticism, you say, and the next thing i shall probably do is to seek to discredit that of philosophy. religion, you expect to hear me conclude, is nothing but an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the reality of things unseen of which in my second lecture and in the lecture on mysticism i gave so many examples. it is essentially private and individualistic; it always exceeds our powers of formulation; and although attempts to pour its contents into a philosophic mould will probably always go on, men being what they are, yet these attempts are always secondary processes which in no way add to the authority, or warrant the veracity, of the sentiments from which they derive their own stimulus and borrow whatever glow of conviction they may themselves possess. in short, you suspect that i am planning to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitate the primitive and unreflective, and to dissuade you from the hope of any theology worthy of the name. to a certain extent i have to admit that you guess rightly. i do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue. but all such statements are misleading from their brevity, and it will take the whole hour for me to explain to you exactly what i mean. when i call theological formulas secondary products, i mean that in a world in which no religious feeling had ever existed, i doubt whether any philosophic theology could ever have been framed. i doubt if dispassionate intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from inner unhappiness and need of deliverance on the one hand and mystical emotion on the other, would ever have resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess. men would have begun with animistic explanations of natural fact, and criticised these away into scientific ones, as they actually have done. in the science they would have left a certain amount of "psychical research," even as they now will probably have to re-admit a certain amount. but high-flying speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic theology, these they would have had no motive to venture on, feeling no need of commerce with such deities. these speculations must, it seems to me, be classed as over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of which feeling originally supplied the hint. but even if religious philosophy had to have its first hint supplied by feeling, may it not have dealt in a superior way with the matter which feeling suggested? feeling is private and dumb, and unable to give an account of itself. it allows that its results are mysteries and enigmas, declines to justify them rationally, and on occasion is willing that they should even pass for paradoxical and absurd. philosophy takes just the opposite attitude. her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery and paradox whatever territory she touches. to find an escape from obscure and wayward personal persuasion to truth objectively valid for all thinking men has ever been the intellect's most cherished ideal. to redeem religion from unwholesome privacy, and to give public status and universal right of way to its deliverances, has been reason's task. i believe that philosophy will always have opportunity to labor at this task.( ) we are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. even in soliloquizing with ourselves, we construe our feelings intellectually. both our personal ideals and our religious and mystical experiences must be interpreted congruously with the kind of scenery which our thinking mind inhabits. the philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us. moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one another, and in doing so we have to speak, and to use general and abstract verbal formulas. conceptions and constructions are thus a necessary part of our religion; and as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses, and mediator among the criticisms of one man's constructions by another, philosophy will always have much to do. it would be strange if i disputed this, when these very lectures which i am giving are (as you will see more clearly from now onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from the privacies of religious experience some general facts which can be defined in formulas upon which everybody may agree. religious experience, in other words, spontaneously and inevitably engenders myths, superstitions, dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical theologies, and criticisms of one set of these by the adherents of another. of late, impartial classifications and comparisons have become possible, alongside of the denunciations and anathemas by which the commerce between creeds used exclusively to be carried on. we have the beginnings of a "science of religions," so-called; and if these lectures could ever be accounted a crumb-like contribution to such a science, i should be made very happy. but all these intellectual operations, whether they be constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences as their subject-matter. they are interpretative and inductive operations, operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coördinate with it, not independent of what it ascertains. ------------------------------------- the intellectualism in religion which i wish to discredit pretends to be something altogether different from this. it assumes to construct religious objects out of the resources of logical reason alone, or of logical reason drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. it calls its conclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not call them science of religions. it reaches them in an a priori way, and warrants their veracity. warranted systems have ever been the idols of aspiring souls. all- inclusive, yet simple; noble, clean, luminous, stable, rigorous, true;--what more ideal refuge could there be than such a system would offer to spirits vexed by the muddiness and accidentality of the world of sensible things? accordingly, we find inculcated in the theological schools of to-day, almost as much as in those of the fore-time, a disdain for merely possible or probable truth, and of results that only private assurance can grasp. scholastics and idealists both express this disdain. principal john caird, for example, writes as follows in his introduction to the philosophy of religion:-- "religion must indeed be a thing of the heart; but in order to elevate it from the region of subjective caprice and waywardness, and to distinguish between that which is true and false in religion, we must appeal to an objective standard. that which enters the heart must first be discerned by the intelligence to be _true_. it must be seen as having in its own nature a _right_ to dominate feeling, and as constituting the principle by which feeling must be judged.( ) in estimating the religious character of individuals, nations, or races, the first question is, not how they feel, but what they think and believe--not whether their religion is one which manifests itself in emotions, more or less vehement and enthusiastic, but what are the _conceptions_ of god and divine things by which these emotions are called forth. feeling is necessary in religion, but it is by the _content_ or intelligent basis of a religion, and not by feeling, that its character and worth are to be determined."( ) cardinal newman, in his work, the idea of a university, gives more emphatic expression still to this disdain for sentiment.( ) theology, he says, is a science in the strictest sense of the word. i will tell you, he says, what it is not--not "physical evidences" for god, not "natural religion," for these are but vague subjective interpretations:-- "if," he continues, "the supreme being is powerful or skillful, just so far as the telescope shows power, or the microscope shows skill, if his moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the animal frame, or his will gathered from the immediate issues of human affairs, if his essence is just as high and deep and broad as the universe and no more; if this be the fact, then will i confess that there is no specific science about god, that theology is but a name, and a protest in its behalf an hypocrisy. then, pious as it is to think of him, while the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning passes by, still such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought, or an ornament of language, a certain view taken of nature which one man has and another has not, which gifted minds strike out, which others see to be admirable and ingenious, and which all would be the better for adopting. it is but the theology of nature, just as we talk of the _philosophy_ or the _romance_ of history, or the _poetry_ of childhood, or the picturesque or the sentimental or the humorous, or any other abstract quality which the genius or the caprice of the individual, or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world, recognizes in any set of objects which are subjected to its contemplation. i do not see much difference between avowing that there is no god, and implying that nothing definite can be known for certain about him." what i mean by theology, continues newman, is none of these things: "i simply mean the _science of god_, or the truths we know about god, put into a system, just as we have a science of the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology." in both these extracts we have the issue clearly set before us: feeling valid only for the individual is pitted against reason valid universally. the test is a perfectly plain one of fact. theology based on pure reason must in point of fact convince men universally. if it did not, wherein would its superiority consist? if it only formed sects and schools, even as sentiment and mysticism form them, how would it fulfill its programme of freeing us from personal caprice and waywardness? this perfectly definite practical test of the pretensions of philosophy to found religion on universal reason simplifies my procedure to-day. i need not discredit philosophy by laborious criticism of its arguments. it will suffice if i show that as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension to be "objectively" convincing. in fact, philosophy does so fail. it does not banish differences; it founds schools and sects just as feeling does. i believe, in fact, that the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. it finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed it _has_ to find them. it amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and plausibility. it hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it.( ) ------------------------------------- lend me your attention while i run through some of the points of the older systematic theology. you find them in both protestant and catholic manuals, best of all in the innumerable text-books published since pope leo's encyclical recommending the study of saint thomas. i glance first at the arguments by which dogmatic theology establishes god's existence, after that at those by which it establishes his nature.( ) the arguments for god's existence have stood for hundreds of years with the waves of unbelieving criticism breaking against them, never totally discrediting them in the ears of the faithful, but on the whole slowly and surely washing out the mortar from between their joints. if you have a god already whom you believe in, these arguments confirm you. if you are atheistic, they fail to set you right. the proofs are various. the "cosmological" one, so-called, reasons from the contingence of the world to a first cause which must contain whatever perfections the world itself contains. the "argument from design" reasons, from the fact that nature's laws are mathematical, and her parts benevolently adapted to each other, that this cause is both intellectual and benevolent. the "moral argument" is that the moral law presupposes a lawgiver. the "argument _ex consensu gentium_" is that the belief in god is so widespread as to be grounded in the rational nature of man, and should therefore carry authority with it. as i just said, i will not discuss these arguments technically. the bare fact that all idealists since kant have felt entitled either to scout or to neglect them shows that they are not solid enough to serve as religion's all-sufficient foundation. absolutely impersonal reasons would be in duty bound to show more general convincingness. causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of theology. as for the argument from design, see how darwinian ideas have revolutionized it. conceived as we now conceive them, as so many fortunate escapes from almost limitless processes of destruction, the benevolent adaptations which we find in nature suggest a deity very different from the one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.( ) the fact is that these arguments do but follow the combined suggestions of the facts and of our feeling. they prove nothing rigorously. they only corroborate our pre-existent partialities. ------------------------------------- if philosophy can do so little to establish god's existence, how stands it with her efforts to define his attributes? it is worth while to look at the attempts of systematic theology in this direction. since god is first cause, this science of sciences says, he differs from all his creatures in possessing existence _a se_. from this "a-se-ity" on god's part, theology deduces by mere logic most of his other perfections. for instance, he must be both _necessary_ and _absolute_, cannot not be, and cannot in any way be determined by anything else. this makes him absolutely unlimited from without, and unlimited also from within; for limitation is non-being; and god is being itself. this unlimitedness makes god infinitely perfect. moreover, god is _one_, and _only_, for the infinitely perfect can admit no peer. he is _spiritual_, for were he composed of physical parts, some other power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus be contradicted. he is therefore both simple and non-physical in nature. he is _simple metaphysically_ also, that is to say, his nature and his existence cannot be distinct, as they are in finite substances which share their formal natures with one another, and are individual only in their material aspect. since god is one and only, his _essentia_ and his _esse_ must be given at one stroke. this excludes from his being all those distinctions, so familiar in the world of finite things, between potentiality and actuality, substance and accidents, being and activity, existence and attributes. we can talk, it is true, of god's powers, acts, and attributes, but these discriminations are only "virtual," and made from the human point of view. in god all these points of view fall into an absolute identity of being. this absence of all potentiality in god obliges him to be _immutable_. he is actuality, through and through. were there anything potential about him, he would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. he cannot, therefore, change. furthermore, he is _immense_, _boundless_; for could he be outlined in space, he would be composite, and this would contradict his indivisibility. he is therefore _omnipresent_, indivisibly there, at every point of space. he is similarly wholly present at every point of time,--in other words _eternal_. for if he began in time, he would need a prior cause, and that would contradict his aseity. if he ended, it would contradict his necessity. if he went through any succession, it would contradict his immutability. he has _intelligence_ and _will_ and every other creature- perfection, for _we_ have them, and _effectus nequit superare causam_. in him, however, they are absolutely and eternally in act, and their _object_, since god can be bounded by naught that is external, can primarily be nothing else than god himself. he knows himself, then, in one eternal indivisible act, and wills himself with an infinite self-pleasure.( ) since he must of logical necessity thus love and will himself, he cannot be called "free" _ad intra_, with the freedom of contrarieties that characterizes finite creatures. _ad extra_, however, or with respect to his creation, god is free. he cannot _need_ to create, being perfect in being and in happiness already. he _wills_ to create, then, by an absolute freedom. being thus a substance endowed with intellect and will and freedom, god is a _person_; and a _living_ person also, for he is both object and subject of his own activity, and to be this distinguishes the living from the lifeless. he is thus absolutely _self-sufficient_: his _self-knowledge_ and _self-love_ are both of them infinite and adequate, and need no extraneous conditions to perfect them. he is _omniscient_, for in knowing himself as cause he knows all creature things and events by implication. his knowledge is _previsive_, for he is present to all time. even our free acts are known beforehand to him, for otherwise his wisdom would admit of successive moments of enrichment, and this would contradict his immutability. he is _omnipotent_ for everything that does not involve logical contradiction. he can make _being_--in other words his power includes _creation_. if what he creates were made of his own substance, it would have to be infinite in essence, as that substance is; but it is finite; so it must be non-divine in substance. if it were made of a substance, an eternally existing matter, for example, which god found there to his hand, and to which he simply gave its form, that would contradict god's definition as first cause, and make him a mere mover of something caused already. the things he creates, then, he creates _ex nihilo_, and gives them absolute being as so many finite substances additional to himself. the forms which he imprints upon them have their prototypes in his ideas. but as in god there is no such thing as multiplicity, and as these ideas for us are manifold, we must distinguish the ideas as they are in god and the way in which our minds externally imitate them. we must attribute them to him only in a _terminative_ sense, as differing aspects, from the finite point of view, of his unique essence. god of course is holy, good, and just. he can do no evil, for he is positive being's fullness, and evil is negation. it is true that he has created physical evil in places, but only as a means of wider good, for _bonum totius præeminet bonum partis_. moral evil he cannot will, either as end or means, for that would contradict his holiness. by creating free beings he _permits_ it only, neither his justice nor his goodness obliging him to prevent the recipients of freedom from misusing the gift. as regards god's purpose in creating, primarily it can only have been to exercise his absolute freedom by the manifestation to others of his glory. from this it follows that the others must be rational beings, capable in the first place of knowledge, love, and honor, and in the second place of happiness, for the knowledge and love of god is the mainspring of felicity. in so far forth one may say that god's secondary purpose in creating is _love_. i will not weary you by pursuing these metaphysical determinations farther, into the mysteries of god's trinity, for example. what i have given will serve as a specimen of the orthodox philosophical theology of both catholics and protestants. newman, filled with enthusiasm at god's list of perfections, continues the passage which i began to quote to you by a couple of pages of a rhetoric so magnificent that i can hardly refrain from adding them, in spite of the inroad they would make upon our time.( ) he first enumerates god's attributes sonorously, then celebrates his ownership of everything in earth and heaven, and the dependence of all that happens upon his permissive will. he gives us scholastic philosophy "touched with emotion," and every philosophy should be touched with emotion to be rightly understood. emotionally, then, dogmatic theology is worth something to minds of the type of newman's. it will aid us to estimate what it is worth intellectually, if at this point i make a short digression. ------------------------------------- what god hath joined together, let no man put asunder. the continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct. it seems to me to be the chief glory of english and scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view. the guiding principle of british philosophy has in fact been that every difference must _make_ a difference, every theoretical difference somewhere issue in a practical difference, and that the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining what practical difference would result from one alternative or the other being true. what is the particular truth in question _known as_? in what facts does it result? what is its cash-value in terms of particular experience? this is the characteristic english way of taking up a question. in this way, you remember, locke takes up the question of personal identity. what you mean by it is just your chain of particular memories, says he. that is the only concretely verifiable part of its significance. all further ideas about it, such as the oneness or manyness of the spiritual substance on which it is based, are therefore void of intelligible meaning; and propositions touching such ideas may be indifferently affirmed or denied. so berkeley with his "matter." the cash- value of matter is our physical sensations. that is what it is known as, all that we concretely verify of its conception. that, therefore, is the whole meaning of the term "matter"--any other pretended meaning is mere wind of words. hume does the same thing with causation. it is known as habitual antecedence, and as tendency on our part to look for something definite to come. apart from this practical meaning it has no significance whatever, and books about it may be committed to the flames, says hume. dugald stewart and thomas brown, james mill, john mill, and professor bain, have followed more or less consistently the same method; and shadworth hodgson has used the principle with full explicitness. when all is said and done, it was english and scotch writers, and not kant, who introduced "the critical method" into philosophy, the one method fitted to make philosophy a study worthy of serious men. for what seriousness can possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will never make an appreciable difference to us in action? and what could it matter, if all propositions were practically indifferent, which of them we should agree to call true or which false? an american philosopher of eminent originality, mr. charles sanders peirce, has rendered thought a service by disentangling from the particulars of its application the principle by which these men were instinctively guided, and by singling it out as fundamental and giving to it a greek name. he calls it the principle of _pragmatism_, and he defends it somewhat as follows:( )-- thought in movement has for its only conceivable motive the attainment of belief, or thought at rest. only when our thought about a subject has found its rest in belief can our action on the subject firmly and safely begin. beliefs, in short, are rules for action; and the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of active habits. if there were any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought's practical consequences, then that part would be no proper element of the thought's significance. to develop a thought's meaning we need therefore only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance; and the tangible fact at the root of all our thought- distinctions is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. to attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object should be true. our conception of these practical consequences is for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all. this is the principle of peirce, the principle of pragmatism. such a principle will help us on this occasion to decide, among the various attributes set down in the scholastic inventory of god's perfections, whether some be not far less significant than others. if, namely, we apply the principle of pragmatism to god's metaphysical attributes, strictly so called, as distinguished from his moral attributes, i think that, even were we forced by a coercive logic to believe them, we still should have to confess them to be destitute of all intelligible significance. take god's aseity, for example; or his necessariness; his immateriality; his "simplicity" or superiority to the kind of inner variety and succession which we find in finite beings, his indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his "personality," apart from the moral qualities which it may comport; his relations to evil being permissive and not positive; his self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in himself:--candidly speaking, how do such qualities as these make any definite connection with our life? and if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what vital difference can it possibly make to a man's religion whether they be true or false? for my own part, although i dislike to say aught that may grate upon tender associations, i must frankly confess that even though these attributes were faultlessly deduced, i cannot conceive of its being of the smallest consequence to us religiously that any one of them should be true. pray, what specific act can i perform in order to adapt myself the better to god's simplicity? or how does it assist me to plan my behavior, to know that his happiness is anyhow absolutely complete? in the middle of the century just past, mayne reid was the great writer of books of out-of- door adventure. he was forever extolling the hunters and field-observers of living animals' habits, and keeping up a fire of invective against the "closet-naturalists," as he called them, the collectors and classifiers, and handlers of skeletons and skins. when i was a boy, i used to think that a closet-naturalist must be the vilest type of wretch under the sun. but surely the systematic theologians are the closet-naturalists of the deity, even in captain mayne reid's sense. what is their deduction of metaphysical attributes but a shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary-adjectives, aloof from morals, aloof from human needs, something that might be worked out from the mere word "god" by one of those logical machines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived as well as by a man of flesh and blood. they have the trail of the serpent over them. one feels that in the theologians' hands, they are only a set of titles obtained by a mechanical manipulation of synonyms; verbality has stepped into the place of vision, professionalism into that of life. instead of bread we have a stone; instead of a fish, a serpent. did such a conglomeration of abstract terms give really the gist of our knowledge of the deity, schools of theology might indeed continue to flourish, but religion, vital religion, would have taken its flight from this world. what keeps religion going is something else than abstract definitions and systems of concatenated adjectives, and something different from faculties of theology and their professors. all these things are after-effects, secondary accretions upon those phenomena of vital conversation with the unseen divine, of which i have shown you so many instances, renewing themselves _in sæcula sæculorum_ in the lives of humble private men. so much for the metaphysical attributes of god! from the point of view of practical religion, the metaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is an absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind. ------------------------------------- what shall we now say of the attributes called moral? pragmatically, they stand on an entirely different footing. they positively determine fear and hope and expectation, and are foundations for the saintly life. it needs but a glance at them to show how great is their significance. god's holiness, for example: being holy, god can will nothing but the good. being omnipotent, he can secure its triumph. being omniscient, he can see us in the dark. being just, he can punish us for what he sees. being loving, he can pardon too. being unalterable, we can count on him securely. these qualities enter into connection with our life, it is highly important that we should be informed concerning them. that god's purpose in creation should be the manifestation of his glory is also an attribute which has definite relations to our practical life. among other things it has given a definite character to worship in all christian countries. if dogmatic theology really does prove beyond dispute that a god with characters like these exists, she may well claim to give a solid basis to religious sentiment. but verily, how stands it with her arguments? it stands with them as ill as with the arguments for his existence. not only do post-kantian idealists reject them root and branch, but it is a plain historic fact that they never have converted any one who has found in the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it, reasons for doubting that a good god can have framed it. to prove god's goodness by the scholastic argument that there is no non-being in his essence would sound to such a witness simply silly. no! the book of job went over this whole matter once for all and definitively. ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal path to the deity: "i will lay mine hand upon my mouth; i have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee." an intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense of presence--such is the situation of the man who is sincere with himself and with the facts, but who remains religious still.( ) we must therefore, i think, bid a definitive good-by to dogmatic theology. in all sincerity our faith must do without that warrant. modern idealism, i repeat, has said good-by to this theology forever. can modern idealism give faith a better warrant, or must she still rely on her poor self for witness? ------------------------------------- the basis of modern idealism is kant's doctrine of the transcendental ego of apperception. by this formidable term kant merely meant the fact that the consciousness "i think them" must (potentially or actually) accompany all our objects. former skeptics had said as much, but the "i" in question had remained for them identified with the personal individual. kant abstracted and depersonalized it, and made it the most universal of all his categories, although for kant himself the transcendental ego had no theological implications. it was reserved for his successors to convert kant's notion of _bewusstsein überhaupt_, or abstract consciousness, into an infinite concrete self-consciousness which is the soul of the world, and in which our sundry personal self-consciousnesses have their being. it would lead me into technicalities to show you even briefly how this transformation was in point of fact effected. suffice it to say that in the hegelian school, which to-day so deeply influences both british and american thinking, two principles have borne the brunt of the operation. the first of these principles is that the old logic of identity never gives us more than a post-mortem dissection of _disjecta membra_, and that the fullness of life can be construed to thought only by recognizing that every object which our thought may propose to itself involves the notion of some other object which seems at first to negate the first one. the second principle is that to be conscious of a negation is already virtually to be beyond it. the mere asking of a question or expression of a dissatisfaction proves that the answer or the satisfaction is already imminent; the finite, realized as such, is already the infinite _in posse_. applying these principles, we seem to get a propulsive force into our logic which the ordinary logic of a bare, stark self-identity in each thing never attains to. the objects of our thought now _act_ within our thought, act as objects act when given in experience. they change and develop. they introduce something other than themselves along with them; and this other, at first only ideal or potential, presently proves itself also to be actual. it supersedes the thing at first supposed, and both verifies and corrects it, in developing the fullness of its meaning. the program is excellent; the universe _is_ a place where things are followed by other things that both correct and fulfill them; and a logic which gave us something like this movement of fact would express truth far better than the traditional school-logic, which never gets of its own accord from anything to anything else, and registers only predictions and subsumptions, or static resemblances and differences. nothing could be more unlike the methods of dogmatic theology than those of this new logic. let me quote in illustration some passages from the scottish transcendentalist whom i have already named. "how are we to conceive," principal caird writes, "of the reality in which all intelligence rests?" he replies: "two things may without difficulty be proved, viz., that this reality is an absolute spirit, and conversely that it is only in communion with this absolute spirit or intelligence that the finite spirit can realize itself. it is absolute; for the faintest movement of human intelligence would be arrested, if it did not presuppose the absolute reality of intelligence, of thought itself. doubt or denial themselves presuppose and indirectly affirm it. when i pronounce anything to be true, i pronounce it, indeed, to be relative to thought, but not to be relative to my thought, or to the thought of any other individual mind. from the existence of all individual minds as such i can abstract; i can think them away. but that which i cannot think away is thought or self- consciousness itself, in its independence and absoluteness, or, in other words, an absolute thought or self-consciousness." here, you see, principal caird makes the transition which kant did not make: he converts the omnipresence of consciousness in general as a condition of "truth" being anywhere possible, into an omnipresent universal consciousness, which he identifies with god in his concreteness. he next proceeds to use the principle that to acknowledge your limits is in essence to be beyond them; and makes the transition to the religious experience of individuals in the following words:-- "if [man] were only a creature of transient sensations and impulses, of an ever coming and going succession of intuitions, fancies, feelings, then nothing could ever have for him the character of objective truth or reality. but it is the prerogative of man's spiritual nature that he can yield himself up to a thought and will that are infinitely larger than his own. as a thinking, self-conscious being, indeed, he may be said, by his very nature, to live in the atmosphere of the universal life. as a thinking being, it is possible for me to suppress and quell in my consciousness every movement of self-assertion, every notion and opinion that is merely mine, every desire that belongs to me as this particular self, and to become the pure medium of a thought that is universal--in one word, to live no more my own life, but let my consciousness be possessed and suffused by the infinite and eternal life of spirit. and yet it is just in this renunciation of self that i truly gain myself, or realize the highest possibilities of my own nature. for whilst in one sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self. the life of absolute reason is not a life that is foreign to us." nevertheless, principal caird goes on to say, so far as we are able outwardly to realize this doctrine, the balm it offers remains incomplete. whatever we may be _in posse_, the very best of us _in actu_ falls very short of being absolutely divine. social morality, love, and self- sacrifice even, merge our self only in some other finite self or selves. they do not quite identify it with the infinite. man's ideal destiny, infinite in abstract logic, might thus seem in practice forever unrealizable. "is there, then," our author continues, "no solution of the contradiction between the ideal and the actual? we answer, there is such a solution, but in order to reach it we are carried beyond the sphere of morality into that of religion. it may be said to be the essential characteristic of religion as contrasted with morality, that it changes aspiration into fruition, anticipation into realization; that instead of leaving man in the interminable pursuit of a vanishing ideal, it makes him the actual partaker of a divine or infinite life. whether we view religion from the human side or the divine--as the surrender of the soul to god, or as the life of god in the soul--in either aspect it is of its very essence that the infinite has ceased to be a far-off vision, and has become a present reality. the very first pulsation of the spiritual life, when we rightly apprehend its significance, is the indication that the division between the spirit and its object has vanished, that the ideal has become real, that the finite has reached its goal and become suffused with the presence and life of the infinite. "oneness of mind and will with the divine mind and will is not the future hope and aim of religion, but its very beginning and birth in the soul. to enter on the religious life is to terminate the struggle. in that act which constitutes the beginning of the religious life--call it faith, or trust, or self-surrender, or by whatever name you will--there is involved the identification of the finite with a life which is eternally realized. it is true indeed that the religious life is progressive; but understood in the light of the foregoing idea, religious progress is not progress _towards_, but _within_ the sphere of the infinite. it is not the vain attempt by endless finite additions or increments to become possessed of infinite wealth, but it is the endeavor, by the constant exercise of spiritual activity, to appropriate that infinite inheritance of which we are already in possession. the whole future of the religious life is given in its beginning, but it is given implicitly. the position of the man who has entered on the religious life is that evil, error, imperfection, do not really belong to him: they are excrescences which have no organic relation to his true nature: they are already virtually, as they will be actually, suppressed and annulled, and in the very process of being annulled they become the means of spiritual progress. though he is not exempt from temptation and conflict, [yet] in that inner sphere in which his true life lies, the struggle is over, the victory already achieved. it is not a finite but an infinite life which the spirit lives. every pulse-beat of its [existence] is the expression and realization of the life of god."( ) you will readily admit that no description of the phenomena of the religious consciousness could be better than these words of your lamented preacher and philosopher. they reproduce the very rapture of those crises of conversion of which we have been hearing; they utter what the mystic felt but was unable to communicate; and the saint, in hearing them, recognizes his own experience. it is indeed gratifying to find the content of religion reported so unanimously. but when all is said and done, has principal caird--and i only use him as an example of that whole mode of thinking--transcended the sphere of feeling and of the direct experience of the individual, and laid the foundations of religion in impartial reason? has he made religion universal by coercive reasoning, transformed it from a private faith into a public certainty? has he rescued its affirmations from obscurity and mystery? i believe that he has done nothing of the kind, but that he has simply reaffirmed the individual's experiences in a more generalized vocabulary. and again, i can be excused from proving technically that the transcendentalist reasonings fail to make religion universal, for i can point to the plain fact that a majority of scholars, even religiously disposed ones, stubbornly refuse to treat them as convincing. the whole of germany, one may say, has positively rejected the hegelian argumentation. as for scotland, i need only mention professor fraser's and professor pringle-pattison's memorable criticisms, with which so many of you are familiar.( ) once more, i ask, if transcendental idealism were as objectively and absolutely rational as it pretends to be, could it possibly fail so egregiously to be persuasive? what religion reports, you must remember, always purports to be a fact of experience: the divine is actually present, religion says, and between it and ourselves relations of give and take are actual. if definite perceptions of fact like this cannot stand upon their own feet, surely abstract reasoning cannot give them the support they are in need of. conceptual processes can class facts, define them, interpret them; but they do not produce them, nor can they reproduce their individuality. there is always a _plus_, a _thisness_, which feeling alone can answer for. philosophy in this sphere is thus a secondary function, unable to warrant faith's veracity, and so i revert to the thesis which i announced at the beginning of this lecture. in all sad sincerity i think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless. ------------------------------------- it would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave her under this negative sentence. let me close, then, by briefly enumerating what she _can_ do for religion. if she will abandon metaphysics and deduction for criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into science of religions, she can make herself enormously useful. the spontaneous intellect of man always defines the divine which it feels in ways that harmonize with its temporary intellectual prepossessions. philosophy can by comparison eliminate the local and the accidental from these definitions. both from dogma and from worship she can remove historic incrustations. by confronting the spontaneous religious constructions with the results of natural science, philosophy can also eliminate doctrines that are now known to be scientifically absurd or incongruous. sifting out in this way unworthy formulations, she can leave a residuum of conceptions that at least are possible. with these she can deal as _hypotheses_, testing them in all the manners, whether negative or positive, by which hypotheses are ever tested. she can reduce their number, as some are found more open to objection. she can perhaps become the champion of one which she picks out as being the most closely verified or verifiable. she can refine upon the definition of this hypothesis, distinguishing between what is innocent over-belief and symbolism in the expression of it, and what is to be literally taken. as a result, she can offer mediation between different believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion. she can do this the more successfully, the better she discriminates the common and essential from the individual and local elements of the religious beliefs which she compares. i do not see why a critical science of religions of this sort might not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics--it might appear as foolish to refuse them. yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend for its original material on facts of personal experience, and would have to square itself with personal experience through all its critical reconstructions. it could never get away from concrete life, or work in a conceptual vacuum. it would forever have to confess, as every science confesses, that the subtlety of nature flies beyond it, and that its formulas are but approximations. philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. there is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. no one knows this as well as the philosopher. he must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and irrelevancy. his formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic photographs seen outside the instrument; they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. in the religious sphere, in particular, belief that formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience. in my next lecture i will try to complete my rough description of religious experience; and in the lecture after that, which is the last one, i will try my own hand at formulating conceptually the truth to which it is a witness. lecture xix. other characteristics. we have wound our way back, after our excursion through mysticism and philosophy, to where we were before: the uses of religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of the individual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in it. we return to the empirical philosophy: the true is what works well, even though the qualification "on the whole" may always have to be added. in this lecture we must revert to description again, and finish our picture of the religious consciousness by a word about some of its other characteristic elements. then, in a final lecture, we shall be free to make a general review and draw our independent conclusions. the first point i will speak of is the part which the æsthetic life plays in determining one's choice of a religion. men, i said awhile ago, involuntarily intellectualize their religious experience. they need formulas, just as they need fellowship in worship. i spoke, therefore, too contemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of the famous scholastic list of attributes of the deity, for they have one use which i neglected to consider. the eloquent passage in which newman enumerates them( ) puts us on the track of it. intoning them as he would intone a cathedral service, he shows how high is their æsthetic value. it enriches our bare piety to carry these exalted and mysterious verbal additions just as it enriches a church to have an organ and old brasses, marbles and frescoes and stained windows. epithets lend an atmosphere and overtones to our devotion. they are like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may sound the more sublime for being incomprehensible. minds like newman's( ) grow as jealous of their credit as heathen priests are of that of the jewelry and ornaments that blaze upon their idols. among the buildings-out of religion which the mind spontaneously indulges in, the æsthetic motive must never be forgotten. i promised to say nothing of ecclesiastical systems in these lectures. i may be allowed, however, to put in a word at this point on the way in which their satisfaction of certain æsthetic needs contributes to their hold on human nature. although some persons aim most at intellectual purity and simplification, for others _richness_ is the supreme imaginative requirement.( ) when one's mind is strongly of this type, an individual religion will hardly serve the purpose. the inner need is rather of something institutional and complex, majestic in the hierarchic interrelatedness of its parts, with authority descending from stage to stage, and at every stage objects for adjectives of mystery and splendor, derived in the last resort from the godhead who is the fountain and culmination of the system. one feels then as if in presence of some vast incrusted work of jewelry or architecture; one hears the multitudinous liturgical appeal; one gets the honorific vibration coming from every quarter. compared with such a noble complexity, in which ascending and descending movements seem in no way to jar upon stability, in which no single item, however humble, is insignificant, because so many august institutions hold it in its place, how flat does evangelical protestantism appear, how bare the atmosphere of those isolated religious lives whose boast it is that "man in the bush with god may meet."( ) what a pulverization and leveling of what a gloriously piled-up structure! to an imagination used to the perspectives of dignity and glory, the naked gospel scheme seems to offer an almshouse for a palace. it is much like the patriotic sentiment of those brought up in ancient empires. how many emotions must be frustrated of their object, when one gives up the titles of dignity, the crimson lights and blare of brass, the gold embroidery, the plumed troops, the fear and trembling, and puts up with a president in a black coat who shakes hands with you, and comes, it may be, from a "home" upon a veldt or prairie with one sitting-room and a bible on its centre-table. it pauperizes the monarchical imagination! the strength of these æsthetic sentiments makes it rigorously impossible, it seems to me, that protestantism, however superior in spiritual profundity it may be to catholicism, should at the present day succeed in making many converts from the more venerable ecclesiasticism. the latter offers a so much richer pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different kinds of honey, is so indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature, that protestantism will always show to catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. the bitter negativity of it is to the catholic mind incomprehensible. to intellectual catholics many of the antiquated beliefs and practices to which the church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish as they are to protestants. but they are childish in the pleasing sense of "childlike"--innocent and amiable, and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition of the dear people's intellects. to the protestant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. he must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the catholic to shudder at his literalness. he appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. the two will never understand each other--their centres of emotional energy are too different. rigorous truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of a mutual interpreter.( ) so much for the æsthetic diversities in the religious consciousness. in most books on religion, three things are represented as its most essential elements. these are sacrifice, confession, and prayer. i must say a word in turn of each of these elements, though briefly. first of sacrifice. sacrifices to gods are omnipresent in primeval worship; but, as cults have grown refined, burnt offerings and the blood of he-goats have been superseded by sacrifices more spiritual in their nature. judaism, islam, and buddhism get along without ritual sacrifice; so does christianity, save in so far as the notion is preserved in transfigured form in the mystery of christ's atonement. these religions substitute offerings of the heart, renunciations of the inner self, for all those vain oblations. in the ascetic practices which islam, buddhism, and the older christianity encourage we see how indestructible is the idea that sacrifice of some sort is a religious exercise. in lecturing on asceticism i spoke of its significance as symbolic of the sacrifices which life, whenever it is taken strenuously, calls for.( ) but, as i said my say about those, and as these lectures expressly avoid earlier religious usages and questions of derivation, i will pass from the subject of sacrifice altogether and turn to that of confession. ------------------------------------- in regard to confession i will also be most brief, saying my word about it psychologically, not historically. not nearly as widespread as sacrifice, it corresponds to a more inward and moral stage of sentiment. it is part of the general system of purgation and cleansing which one feels one's self in need of, in order to be in right relations to one's deity. for him who confesses, shams are over and realities have begun; he has exteriorized his rottenness. if he has not actually got rid of it, he at least no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of virtue--he lives at least upon a basis of veracity. the complete decay of the practice of confession in anglo-saxon communities is a little hard to account for. reaction against popery is of course the historic explanation, for in popery confession went with penances and absolution, and other inadmissible practices. but on the side of the sinner himself it seems as if the need ought to have been too great to accept so summary a refusal of its satisfaction. one would think that in more men the shell of secrecy would have had to open, the pent-in abscess to burst and gain relief, even though the ear that heard the confession were unworthy. the catholic church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted auricular confession to one priest for the more radical act of public confession. we english-speaking protestants, in the general self-reliance and unsociability of our nature, seem to find it enough if we take god alone into our confidence.( ) ------------------------------------- the next topic on which i must comment is prayer,--and this time it must be less briefly. we have heard much talk of late against prayer, especially against prayers for better weather and for the recovery of sick people. as regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can be considered to stand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery, and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure. being a normal factor of moral health in the person, its omission would be deleterious. the case of the weather is different. notwithstanding the recency of the opposite belief,( ) every one now knows that droughts and storms follow from physical antecedents, and that moral appeals cannot avert them. but petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion. "religion," says a liberal french theologian, "is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul in distress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which its fate is contingent. this intercourse with god is realized by prayer. prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. it is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or neighboring phenomena as purely moral or æsthetic sentiment. religion is nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. this act is prayer, by which term i understand no vain exercise of words, no mere repetition of certain sacred formulæ, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence,--it may be even before it has a name by which to call it. wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence of forms or of doctrines, we have living religion. one sees from this why 'natural religion,' so-called, is not properly a religion. it cuts man off from prayer. it leaves him and god in mutual remoteness, with no intimate commerce, no interior dialogue, no interchange, no action of god in man, no return of man to god. at bottom this pretended religion is only a philosophy. born at epochs of rationalism, of critical investigations, it never was anything but an abstraction. an artificial and dead creation, it reveals to its examiner hardly one of the characters proper to religion."( ) it seems to me that the entire series of our lectures proves the truth of m. sabatier's contention. the religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. this intercourse is realized at the time as being both active and mutual. if it be not effective; if it be not a give and take relation; if nothing be really transacted while it lasts; if the world is in no whit different for its having taken place; then prayer, taken in this wide meaning of a sense that _something is transacting_, is of course a feeling of what is illusory, and religion must on the whole be classed, not simply as containing elements of delusion,--these undoubtedly everywhere exist,--but as being rooted in delusion altogether, just as materialists and atheists have always said it was. at most there might remain, when the direct experiences of prayer were ruled out as false witnesses, some inferential belief that the whole order of existence must have a divine cause. but this way of contemplating nature, pleasing as it would doubtless be to persons of a pious taste, would leave to them but the spectators' part at a play, whereas in experimental religion and the prayerful life, we seem ourselves to be actors, and not in a play, but in a very serious reality. the genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound up with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful. the conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is the very core of living religion. as to what is transacted, great differences of opinion have prevailed. the unseen powers have been supposed, and are yet supposed, to do things which no enlightened man can nowadays believe in. it may well prove that the sphere of influence in prayer is subjective exclusively, and that what is immediately changed is only the mind of the praying person. but however our opinion of prayer's effects may come to be limited by criticism, religion, in the vital sense in which these lectures study it, must stand or fall by the persuasion that effects of some sort genuinely do occur. through prayer, religion insists, things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts. this postulate is strikingly expressed in a letter written by the late frederic w. h. myers to a friend, who allows me to quote from it. it shows how independent the prayer-instinct is of usual doctrinal complications. mr. myers writes:-- "i am glad that you have asked me about prayer, because i have rather strong ideas on the subject. first consider what are the facts. there exists around us a spiritual universe, and that universe is in actual relation with the material. from the spiritual universe comes the energy which maintains the material; the energy which makes the life of each individual spirit. our spirits are supported by a perpetual indrawal of this energy, and the vigor of that indrawal is perpetually changing, much as the vigor of our absorption of material nutriment changes from hour to hour. "i call these 'facts' because i think that some scheme of this kind is the only one consistent with our actual evidence; too complex to summarize here. how, then, should we _act_ on these facts? plainly we must endeavor to draw in as much spiritual life as possible, and we must place our minds in any attitude which experience shows to be favorable to such indrawal. _prayer_ is the general name for that attitude of open and earnest expectancy. if we then ask to _whom_ to pray, the answer (strangely enough) must be that _that_ does not much matter. the prayer is not indeed a purely subjective thing;--it means a real increase in intensity of absorption of spiritual power or grace;--but we do not know enough of what takes place in the spiritual world to know how the prayer operates;--_who_ is cognizant of it, or through what channel the grace is given. better let children pray to christ, who is at any rate the highest individual spirit of whom we have any knowledge. but it would be rash to say that christ himself _hears us_; while to say that _god_ hears us is merely to restate the first principle,--that grace flows in from the infinite spiritual world." let us reserve the question of the truth or falsehood of the belief that power is absorbed until the next lecture, when our dogmatic conclusions, if we have any, must be reached. let this lecture still confine itself to the description of phenomena; and as a concrete example of an extreme sort, of the way in which the prayerful life may still be led, let me take a case with which most of you must be acquainted, that of george müller of bristol, who died in . müller's prayers were of the crassest petitional order. early in life he resolved on taking certain bible promises in literal sincerity, and on letting himself be fed, not by his own worldly foresight, but by the lord's hand. he had an extraordinarily active and successful career, among the fruits of which were the distribution of over two million copies of the scripture text, in different languages; the equipment of several hundred missionaries; the circulation of more than a hundred and eleven million of scriptural books, pamphlets, and tracts; the building of five large orphanages, and the keeping and educating of thousands of orphans; finally, the establishment of schools in which over a hundred and twenty-one thousand youthful and adult pupils were taught. in the course of this work mr. müller received and administered nearly a million and a half of pounds sterling, and traveled over two hundred thousand miles of sea and land.( ) during the sixty-eight years of his ministry, he never owned any property except his clothes and furniture, and cash in hand; and he left, at the age of eighty-six, an estate worth only a hundred and sixty pounds. his method was to let his general wants be publicly known, but not to acquaint other people with the details of his temporary necessities. for the relief of the latter, he prayed directly to the lord, believing that sooner or later prayers are always answered if one have trust enough. "when i lose such a thing as a key," he writes, "i ask the lord to direct me to it, and i look for an answer to my prayer; when a person with whom i have made an appointment does not come, according to the fixed time, and i begin to be inconvenienced by it, i ask the lord to be pleased to hasten him to me, and i look for an answer; when i do not understand a passage of the word of god, i lift up my heart to the lord that he would be pleased by his holy spirit to instruct me, and i expect to be taught, though i do not fix the time when, and the manner how it should be; when i am going to minister in the word, i seek help from the lord, and ... am not cast down, but of good cheer because i look for his assistance." müller's custom was to never run up bills, not even for a week. "as the lord deals out to us by the day, ... the week's payment might become due and we have no money to meet it; and thus those with whom we deal might be inconvenienced by us, and we be found acting against the commandment of the lord: 'owe no man anything.' from this day and henceforward whilst the lord gives to us our supplies by the day, we purpose to pay at once for every article as it is purchased, and never to buy anything except we can pay for it at once, however much it may seem to be needed, and however much those with whom we deal may wish to be paid only by the week." the articles needed of which müller speaks were the food, fuel, etc., of his orphanages. somehow, near as they often come to going without a meal, they hardly ever seem actually to have done so. "greater and more manifest nearness of the lord's presence i have never had than when after breakfast there were no means for dinner for more than a hundred persons; or when after dinner there were no means for the tea, and yet the lord provided the tea; and all this without one single human being having been informed about our need.... through grace my mind is so fully assured of the faithfulness of the lord, that in the midst of the greatest need, i am enabled in peace to go about my other work. indeed, did not the lord give me this, which is the result of trusting in him, i should scarcely be able to work at all; for it is now comparatively a rare thing that a day comes when i am not in need for one or another part of the work."( ) in building his orphanages simply by prayer and faith, müller affirms that his prime motive was "to have something to point to as a visible proof that our god and father is the same faithful god that he ever was,--as willing as ever to prove himself the living god, in our day as formerly, to all that put their trust in him."( ) for this reason he refused to borrow money for any of his enterprises. "how does it work when we thus anticipate god by going our own way? we certainly weaken faith instead of increasing it; and each time we work thus a deliverance of our own we find it more and more difficult to trust in god, till at last we give way entirely to our natural fallen reason and unbelief prevails. how different if one is enabled to wait god's own time, and to look alone to him for help and deliverance! when at last help comes, after many seasons of prayer it may be, how sweet it is, and what a present recompense! dear christian reader, if you have never walked in this path of obedience before, do so now, and you will then know experimentally the sweetness of the joy which results from it."( ) when the supplies came in but slowly, müller always considered that this was for the trial of his faith and patience. when his faith and patience had been sufficiently tried, the lord would send more means. "and thus it has proved,"--i quote from his diary,--"for to-day was given me the sum of pounds, of which are for the building fund [of a certain house], and for present necessities. it is impossible to describe my joy in god when i received this donation. i was neither excited nor surprised; for i _look out_ for answers to my prayers. _i believe that god hears me._ yet my heart was so full of joy that i could only _sit_ before god, and admire him, like david in samuel vii. at last i cast myself flat down upon my face and burst forth in thanksgiving to god and in surrendering my heart afresh to him for his blessed service."( ) george müller's is a case extreme in every respect, and in no respect more so than in the extraordinary narrowness of the man's intellectual horizon. his god was, as he often said, his business partner. he seems to have been for müller little more than a sort of supernatural clergyman interested in the congregation of tradesmen and others in bristol who were his saints, and in the orphanages and other enterprises, but unpossessed of any of those vaster and wilder and more ideal attributes with which the human imagination elsewhere has invested him. müller, in short, was absolutely unphilosophical. his intensely private and practical conception of his relations with the deity continued the traditions of the most primitive human thought.( ) when we compare a mind like his with such a mind as, for example, emerson's or phillips brooks's, we see the range which the religions consciousness covers. there is an immense literature relating to answers to petitional prayer. the evangelical journals are filled with such answers, and books are devoted to the subject,( ) but for us müller's case will suffice. ------------------------------------- a less sturdy beggar-like fashion of leading the prayerful life is followed by innumerable other christians. persistence in leaning on the almighty for support and guidance will, such persons say, bring with it proofs, palpable but much more subtle, of his presence and active influence. the following description of a "led" life, by a german writer whom i have already quoted, would no doubt appear to countless christians in every country as if transcribed from their own personal experience. one finds in this guided sort of life, says dr. hilty,-- "that books and words (and sometimes people) come to one's cognizance just at the very moment in which one needs them; that one glides over great dangers as if with shut eyes, remaining ignorant of what would have terrified one or led one astray, until the peril is past--this being especially the case with temptations to vanity and sensuality; that paths on which one ought not to wander are, as it were, hedged off with thorns; but that on the other side great obstacles are suddenly removed; that when the time has come for something, one suddenly receives a courage that formerly failed, or perceives the root of a matter that until then was concealed, or discovers thoughts, talents, yea, even pieces of knowledge and insight, in one's self, of which it is impossible to say whence they come; finally, that persons help us or decline to help us, favor us or refuse us, as if they had to do so against their will, so that often those indifferent or even unfriendly to us yield us the greatest service and furtherance. (god takes often their worldly goods, from those whom he leads, at just the right moment, when they threaten to impede the effort after higher interests.) "besides all this, other noteworthy things come to pass, of which it is not easy to give account. there is no doubt whatever that now one walks continually through 'open doors' and on the easiest roads, with as little care and trouble as it is possible to imagine. "furthermore one finds one's self settling one's affairs neither too early nor too late, whereas they were wont to be spoiled by untimeliness, even when the preparations had been well laid. in addition to this, one does them with perfect tranquillity of mind, almost as if they were matters of no consequence, like errands done by us for another person, in which case we usually act more calmly than when we act in our own concerns. again, one finds that one can _wait_ for everything patiently, and that is one of life's great arts. one finds also that each thing comes duly, one thing after the other, so that one gains time to make one's footing sure before advancing farther. and then everything occurs to us at the right moment, just what we ought to do, etc., and often in a very striking way, just as if a third person were keeping watch over those things which we are in easy danger of forgetting. "often, too, persons are sent to us at the right time, to offer or ask for what is needed, and what we should never have had the courage or resolution to undertake of our own accord. "through all these experiences one finds that one is kindly and tolerant of other people, even of such as are repulsive, negligent, or ill-willed, for they also are instruments of good in god's hand, and often most efficient ones. without these thoughts it would be hard for even the best of us always to keep our equanimity. but with the consciousness of divine guidance, one sees many a thing in life quite differently from what would otherwise be possible. "all these are things that every human being _knows_, who has had experience of them; and of which the most speaking examples could be brought forward. the highest resources of worldly wisdom are unable to attain that which, under divine leading, comes to us of its own accord."( ) such accounts as this shade away into others where the belief is, not that particular events are tempered more towardly to us by a superintending providence, as a reward for our reliance, but that by cultivating the continuous sense of our connection with the power that made things as they are, we are tempered more towardly for their reception. the outward face of nature need not alter, but the expressions of meaning in it alter. it was dead and is alive again. it is like the difference between looking on a person without love, or upon the same person with love. in the latter case intercourse springs into new vitality. so when one's affections keep in touch with the divinity of the world's authorship, fear and egotism fall away; and in the equanimity that follows, one finds in the hours, as they succeed each other, a series of purely benignant opportunities. it is as if all doors were opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. we meet a new world when we meet the old world in the spirit which this kind of prayer infuses. such a spirit was that of marcus aurelius and epictetus.( ) it is that of mind-curers, of the transcendentalists, and of the so-called "liberal" christians. as an expression of it, i will quote a page from one of martineau's sermons:-- "the universe, open to the eye to-day, looks as it did a thousand years ago: and the morning hymn of milton does but tell the beauty with which our own familiar sun dressed the earliest fields and gardens of the world. we see what all our fathers saw. and if we cannot find god in your house or in mine, upon the roadside or the margin of the sea; in the bursting seed or opening flower; in the day duty or the night musing; in the general laugh and the secret grief; in the procession of life, ever entering afresh, and solemnly passing by and dropping off; i do not think we should discern him any more on the grass of eden, or beneath the moonlight of gethsemane. depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. the devout feel that wherever god's hand is, _there_ is miracle: and it is simply an indevoutness which imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of god. the customs of heaven ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its anomalies; the dear old ways, of which the most high is never tired, than the strange things which he does not love well enough ever to repeat. and he who will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting finger of the almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with which adam gazed on the first dawn in paradise. it is no outward change, no shifting in time or place; but only the loving meditation of the pure in heart, that can reawaken the eternal from the sleep within our souls: that can render him a reality again, and reassert for him once more his ancient name of 'the living god.' "( ) when we see all things in god, and refer all things to him, we read in common matters superior expressions of meaning. the deadness with which custom invests the familiar vanishes, and existence as a whole appears transfigured. the state of a mind thus awakened from torpor is well expressed in these words, which i take from a friend's letter:-- "if we occupy ourselves in summing up all the mercies and bounties we are privileged to have, we are overwhelmed by their number (so great that we can imagine ourselves unable to give ourselves time even to begin to review the things we may imagine _we have not_). we sum them and realize that _we are actually killed with god's kindness_; that we are surrounded by bounties upon bounties, without which all would fall. should we not love it; should we not feel buoyed up by the eternal arms?" sometimes this realization that facts are of divine sending, instead of being habitual, is casual, like a mystical experience. father gratry gives this instance from his youthful melancholy period:-- "one day i had a moment of consolation, because i met with something which seemed to me ideally perfect. it was a poor drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of paris. i walked behind him in returning to the school on the evening of a holiday. his drum gave out the tattoo in such a way that, at that moment at least, however peevish i were, i could find no pretext for fault- finding. it was impossible to conceive more nerve or spirit, better time or measure, more clearness or richness, than were in this drumming. ideal desire could go no farther in that direction. i was enchanted and consoled; the perfection of this wretched act did me good. good is at least possible, i said, since the ideal can thus sometimes get embodied."( ) in sénancour's novel of obermann a similar transient lifting of the veil is recorded. in paris streets, on a march day, he comes across a flower in bloom, a jonquil: "it was the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. i felt all the happiness destined for man. this unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world, arose in me complete. i never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. i know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty.... i shall never inclose in a conception this power, this immensity that nothing will express; this form that nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which, it seems, nature has not made actual."( ) we heard in previous lectures of the vivified face of the world as it may appear to converts after their awakening.( ) as a rule, religious persons generally assume that whatever natural facts connect themselves in any way with their destiny are significant of the divine purposes with them. through prayer the purpose, often far from obvious, comes home to them, and if it be "trial," strength to endure the trial is given. thus at all stages of the prayerful life we find the persuasion that in the process of communion energy from on high flows in to meet demand, and becomes operative within the phenomenal world. so long as this operativeness is admitted to be real, it makes no essential difference whether its immediate effects be subjective or objective. the fundamental religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy, which otherwise would slumber, does become active, and spiritual work of some kind is effected really. so much for prayer, taken in the wide sense of any kind of communion. as the core of religion, we must return to it in the next lecture. ------------------------------------- the last aspect of the religious life which remains for me to touch upon is the fact that its manifestations so frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. you may remember what i said in my opening lecture( ) about the prevalence of the psychopathic temperament in religious biography. you will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. i speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, i speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. saint paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter. the whole array of christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the bernards, the loyolas, the luthers, the foxes, the wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding impressions, and "openings." they had these things, because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. in such liability there lie, however, consequences for theology. beliefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. the inchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. saints who actually see or hear their saviour reach the acme of assurance. motor automatisms, though rarer, are, if possible, even more convincing than sensations. the subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. the evidence is dynamic; the god or spirit moves the very organs of their body.( ) the great field for this sense of being the instrument of a higher power is of course "inspiration." it is easy to discriminate between the religious leaders who have been habitually subject to inspiration and those who have not. in the teachings of the buddha, of jesus, of saint paul (apart from his gift of tongues), of saint augustine, of huss, of luther, of wesley, automatic or semi-automatic composition appears to have been only occasional. in the hebrew prophets, on the contrary, in mohammed, in some of the alexandrians, in many minor catholic saints, in fox, in joseph smith, something like it appears to have been frequent, sometimes habitual. we have distinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece. as regards the hebrew prophets, it is extraordinary, writes an author who has made a careful study of them, to see-- "how, one after another, the same features are reproduced in the prophetic books. the process is always extremely different from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own genius. there is something sharp and sudden about it. he can lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came. and it always comes in the form of an overpowering force from without, against which he struggles, but in vain. listen, for instance, [to] the opening of the book of jeremiah. read through in like manner the first two chapters of the prophecy of ezekiel. "it is not, however, only at the beginning of his career that the prophet passes through a crisis which is clearly not self-caused. scattered all through the prophetic writings are expressions which speak of some strong and irresistible impulse coming down upon the prophet, determining his attitude to the events of his time, constraining his utterance, making his words the vehicle of a higher meaning than their own. for instance, this of isaiah's: 'the lord spake thus to me with a strong hand,'--an emphatic phrase which denotes the overmastering nature of the impulse,--'and instructed me that i should not walk in the way of this people.' ... or passages like this from ezekiel: 'the hand of the lord god fell upon me,' 'the hand of the lord was strong upon me.' the one standing characteristic of the prophet is that he speaks with the authority of jehovah himself. hence it is that the prophets one and all preface their addresses so confidently, 'the word of the lord,' or 'thus saith the lord.' they have even the audacity to speak in the first person, as if jehovah himself were speaking. as in isaiah: 'hearken unto me, o jacob, and israel my called; i am he, i am the first, i also am the last,'--and so on. the personality of the prophet sinks entirely into the background; he feels himself for the time being the mouthpiece of the almighty."( ) "we need to remember that prophecy was a profession, and that the prophets formed a professional class. there were schools of the prophets, in which the gift was regularly cultivated. a group of young men would gather round some commanding figure--a samuel or an elisha--and would not only record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and doings, but seek to catch themselves something of his inspiration. it seems that music played its part in their exercises.... it is perfectly clear that by no means all of these sons of the prophets ever succeeded in acquiring more than a very small share in the gift which they sought. it was clearly possible to 'counterfeit' prophecy. sometimes this was done deliberately.... but it by no means follows that in all cases where a false message was given, the giver of it was altogether conscious of what he was doing."( ) here, to take another jewish case, is the way in which philo of alexandria describes his inspiration:-- "sometimes, when i have come to my work empty, i have suddenly become full; ideas being in an invisible manner showered upon me, and implanted in me from on high; so that through the influence of divine inspiration, i have become greatly excited, and have known neither the place in which i was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what i was saying, nor what i was writing; for then i have been conscious of a richness of interpretation, an enjoyment of light, a most penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in all that was to be done; having such effect on my mind as the clearest ocular demonstration would have on the eyes."( ) if we turn to islam, we find that mohammed's revelations all came from the subconscious sphere. to the question in what way he got them,-- "mohammed is said to have answered that sometimes he heard a knell as from a bell, and that this had the strongest effect on him; and when the angel went away, he had received the revelation. sometimes again he held converse with the angel as with a man, so as easily to understand his words. the later authorities, however, ... distinguish still other kinds. in the itgân ( ) the following are enumerated: , revelations with sound of bell, , by inspiration of the holy spirit in m.'s heart, , by gabriel in human form, , by god immediately, either when awake (as in his journey to heaven) or in dream.... in almawâhib alladunîya the kinds are thus given: , dream, , inspiration of gabriel in the prophet's heart, , gabriel taking dahya's form, , with the bell- sound, etc., , gabriel in propriâ personâ (only twice), , revelation in heaven, , god appearing in person, but veiled, , god revealing himself immediately without veil. others add two other stages, namely: , gabriel in the form of still another man, , god showing himself personally in dream."( ) in none of these cases is the revelation distinctly motor. in the case of joseph smith (who had prophetic revelations innumerable in addition to the revealed translation of the gold plates which resulted in the book of mormon), although there may have been a motor element, the inspiration seems to have been predominantly sensorial. he began his translation by the aid of the "peep-stones" which he found, or thought or said that he found, with the gold plates,--apparently a case of "crystal gazing." for some of the other revelations he used the peep-stones, but seems generally to have asked the lord for more direct instruction.( ) other revelations are described as "openings"--fox's, for example, were evidently of the kind known in spiritistic circles of to-day as "impressions." as all effective initiators of change must needs live to some degree upon this psychopathic level of sudden perception or conviction of new truth, or of impulse to action so obsessive that it must be worked off, i will say nothing more about so very common a phenomenon. when, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration, we take religious mysticism into the account, when we recall the striking and sudden unifications of a discordant self which we saw in conversion, and when we review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity, and self-severity met with in saintliness, we cannot, i think, avoid the conclusion that in religion we have a department of human nature with unusually close relations to the trans-marginal or subliminal region. if the word "subliminal" is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical research or other aberrations, call it by any other name you please, to distinguish it from the level of full sunlit consciousness. call this latter the a-region of personality, if you care to, and call the other the b-region. the b-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. it contains, for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motived passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. our intuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general all our non-rational operations, come from it. it is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may return to it. in it arise whatever mystical experiences we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor; our life in hypnotic and "hypnoid" conditions, if we are subjects to such conditions; our delusions, fixed ideas, and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects; our supra- normal cognitions, if such there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. it is also the fountain-head of much that feeds our religion. in persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen,--and this is my conclusion,--the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history. with this conclusion i turn back and close the circle which i opened in my first lecture, terminating thus the review which i then announced of inner religious phenomena as we find them in developed and articulate human individuals. i might easily, if the time allowed, multiply both my documents and my discriminations, but a broad treatment is, i believe, in itself better, and the most important characteristics of the subject lie, i think, before us already. in the next lecture, which is also the last one, we must try to draw the critical conclusions which so much material may suggest. lecture xx. conclusions. the material of our study of human nature is now spread before us; and in this parting hour, set free from the duty of description, we can draw our theoretical and practical conclusions. in my first lecture, defending the empirical method, i foretold that whatever conclusions we might come to could be reached by spiritual judgments only, appreciations of the significance for life of religion, taken "on the whole." our conclusions cannot be as sharp as dogmatic conclusions would be, but i will formulate them, when the time comes, as sharply as i can. summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs:-- . that the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance; . that union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end; . that prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof--be that spirit "god" or "law"--is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world. religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:-- . a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. . an assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections. in illustrating these characteristics by documents, we have been literally bathed in sentiment. in re-reading my manuscript, i am almost appalled at the amount of emotionality which i find in it. after so much of this, we can afford to be dryer and less sympathetic in the rest of the work that lies before us. the sentimentality of many of my documents is a consequence of the fact that i sought them among the extravagances of the subject. if any of you are enemies of what our ancestors used to brand as enthusiasm, and are, nevertheless, still listening to me now, you have probably felt my selection to have been sometimes almost perverse, and have wished i might have stuck to soberer examples. i reply that i took these extremer examples as yielding the profounder information. to learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils. we combine what they tell us with the rest of our wisdom, and form our final judgment independently. even so with religion. we who have pursued such radical expressions of it may now be sure that we know its secrets as authentically as any one can know them who learns them from another; and we have next to answer, each of us for himself, the practical question: what are the dangers in this element of life? and in what proportion may it need to be restrained by other elements, to give the proper balance? ------------------------------------- but this question suggests another one which i will answer immediately and get it out of the way, for it has more than once already vexed us.( ) ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other elements should be identical? ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious elements? in other words, is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable? to these questions i answer "no" emphatically. and my reason is that i do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. no two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. one of us must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point, another must stand firm,--in order the better to defend the position assigned him. if an emerson were forced to be a wesley, or a moody forced to be a whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions. each attitude being a syllable in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely. so a "god of battles" must be allowed to be the god for one kind of person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the god for another. we must frankly recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. if we are peevish and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element of our religion; why need it be one if we are good and sympathetic from the outset? if we are sick souls, we require a religion of deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if we are healthy-minded?( ) unquestionably, some men have the completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience, whate'er it be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best. ------------------------------------- but, you may now ask, would not this one-sidedness be cured if we should all espouse the science of religions as our own religion? in answering this question i must open again the general relations of the theoretic to the active life. knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. you remember what al- ghazzali told us in the lecture on mysticism,--that to understand the causes of drunkenness, as a physician understands them, is not to be drunk. a science might come to understand everything about the causes and elements of religion, and might even decide which elements were qualified, by their general harmony with other branches of knowledge, to be considered true; and yet the best man at this science might be the man who found it hardest to be personally devout. _tout savoir c'est tout pardonner._ the name of renan would doubtless occur to many persons as an example of the way in which breadth of knowledge may make one only a dilettante in possibilities, and blunt the acuteness of one's living faith.( ) if religion be a function by which either god's cause or man's cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however much. knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another. for this reason, the science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. to see this, suppose that we have our science of religions constituted as a matter of fact. suppose that she has assimilated all the necessary historical material and distilled out of it as its essence the same conclusions which i myself a few moments ago pronounced. suppose that she agrees that religion, wherever it is an active thing, involves a belief in ideal presences, and a belief that in our prayerful communion with them,( ) work is done, and something real comes to pass. she has now to exert her critical activity, and to decide how far, in the light of other sciences and in that of general philosophy, such beliefs can be considered _true_. dogmatically to decide this is an impossible task. not only are the other sciences and the philosophy still far from being completed, but in their present state we find them full of conflicts. the sciences of nature know nothing of spiritual presences, and on the whole hold no practical commerce whatever with the idealistic conceptions towards which general philosophy inclines. the scientist, so-called, is, during his scientific hours at least, so materialistic that one may well say that on the whole the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should be recognized at all. and this antipathy to religion finds an echo within the very science of religions itself. the cultivator of this science has to become acquainted with so many groveling and horrible superstitions that a presumption easily arises in his mind that any belief that is religious probably is false. in the "prayerful communion" of savages with such mumbo-jumbos of deities as they acknowledge, it is hard for us to see what genuine spiritual work--even though it were work relative only to their dark savage obligations--can possibly be done. the consequence is that the conclusions of the science of religions are as likely to be adverse as they are to be favorable to the claim that the essence of religion is true. there is a notion in the air about us that religion is probably only an anachronism, a case of "survival," an atavistic relapse into a mode of thought which humanity in its more enlightened examples has outgrown; and this notion our religious anthropologists at present do little to counteract. this view is so widespread at the present day that i must consider it with some explicitness before i pass to my own conclusions. let me call it the "survival theory," for brevity's sake. the pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. the gods believed in--whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually--agree with each other in recognizing personal calls. religious thought is carried on in terms of personality, this being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. to-day, quite as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns. science, on the other hand, has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. she catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for science herself the heavens declare the glory of god and the firmament showeth his handiwork. our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. in a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. the darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. it is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. in the vast rhythm of her processes, as the scientific mind now follows them, she appears to cancel herself. the books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque,( ) representing, as they did, a god who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. the god whom science recognizes must be a god of universal laws exclusively, a god who does a wholesale, not a retail business. he cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. the bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. our private selves are like those bubbles,--epiphenomena, as clifford, i believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events. you see how natural it is, from this point of view, to treat religion as a mere survival, for religion does in fact perpetuate the traditions of the most primeval thought. to coerce the spiritual powers, or to square them and get them on our side, was, during enormous tracts of time, the one great object in our dealings with the natural world. for our ancestors, dreams, hallucinations, revelations, and cock-and-bull stories were inextricably mixed with facts. up to a comparatively recent date such distinctions as those between what has been verified and what is only conjectured, between the impersonal and the personal aspects of existence, were hardly suspected or conceived. whatever you imagined in a lively manner, whatever you thought fit to be true, you affirmed confidently; and whatever you affirmed, your comrades believed. truth was what had not yet been contradicted, most things were taken into the mind from the point of view of their human suggestiveness, and the attention confined itself exclusively to the æsthetic and dramatic aspects of events.( ) how indeed could it be otherwise? the extraordinary value, for explanation and prevision, of those mathematical and mechanical modes of conception which science uses, was a result that could not possibly have been expected in advance. weight, movement, velocity, direction, position, what thin, pallid, uninteresting ideas! how could the richer animistic aspects of nature, the peculiarities and oddities that make phenomena picturesquely striking or expressive, fail to have been first singled out and followed by philosophy as the more promising avenue to the knowledge of nature's life? well, it is still in these richer animistic and dramatic aspects that religion delights to dwell. it is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the "promise" of the dawn and of the rainbow, the "voice" of the thunder, the "gentleness" of the summer rain, the "sublimity" of the stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind still continues to be most impressed; and just as of yore, the devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or of the fields he still feels the divine presence, that inflowings of help come in reply to his prayers, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with security and peace. pure anachronism! says the survival-theory;--anachronism for which deanthropomorphization of the imagination is the remedy required. the less we mix the private with the cosmic, the more we dwell in universal and impersonal terms, the truer heirs of science we become. in spite of the appeal which this impersonality of the scientific attitude makes to a certain magnanimity of temper, i believe it to be shallow, and i can now state my reason in comparatively few words. that reason is that, so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but _as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term_. i think i can easily make clear what i mean by these words. ------------------------------------- the world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. the objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner "state" in which the thinking comes to pass. what we think of may be enormous,--the cosmic times and spaces, for example,--whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of mind. yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one. a conscious field _plus_ its object as felt or thought of _plus_ an attitude towards the object _plus_ the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs--such a concrete bit of personal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, not a mere abstract element of experience, such as the "object" is when taken all alone. it is a _full_ fact, even though it be an insignificant fact; it is of the _kind_ to which all realities whatsoever must belong; the motor currents of the world run through the like of it; it is on the line connecting real events with real events. that unsharable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune's wheel may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete actuality, and any would-be existent that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue, would be a piece of reality only half made up.( ) if this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the egotistic elements of experience should be suppressed. the axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places,--they are strung upon it like so many beads. to describe the world with all the various feelings of the individual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out from the description--they being as describable as anything else--would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid meal. religion makes no such blunder. the individual's religion may be egotistic, and those private realities which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough; but at any rate it always remains infinitely less hollow and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself on taking no account of anything private at all. a bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the word "raisin," with one real egg instead of the word "egg," might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality. the contention of the survival-theory that we ought to stick to non-personal elements exclusively seems like saying that we ought to be satisfied forever with reading the naked bill of fare. i think, therefore, that however particular questions connected with our individual destinies may be answered, it is only by acknowledging them as genuine questions, and living in the sphere of thought which they open up, that we become profound. but to live thus is to be religious; so i unhesitatingly repudiate the survival-theory of religion, as being founded on an egregious mistake. it does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all.( ) by being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all. you see now why i have been so individualistic throughout these lectures, and why i have seemed so bent on rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectual part. individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.( ) compared with this world of living individualized feelings, the world of generalized objects which the intellect contemplates is without solidity or life. as in stereoscopic or kinetoscopic pictures seen outside the instrument, the third dimension, the movement, the vital element, are not there. we get a beautiful picture of an express train supposed to be moving, but where in the picture, as i have heard a friend say, is the energy or the fifty miles an hour?( ) let us agree, then, that religion, occupying herself with personal destinies and keeping thus in contact with the only absolute realities which we know, must necessarily play an eternal part in human history. the next thing to decide is what she reveals about those destinies, or whether indeed she reveals anything distinct enough to be considered a general message to mankind. we have done as you see, with our preliminaries, and our final summing up can now begin. i am well aware that after all the palpitating documents which i have quoted, and all the perspectives of emotion-inspiring institution and belief that my previous lectures have opened, the dry analysis to which i now advance may appear to many of you like an anti-climax, a tapering-off and flattening out of the subject, instead of a crescendo of interest and result. i said awhile ago that the religious attitude of protestants appears poverty-stricken to the catholic imagination. still more poverty- stricken, i fear, may my final summing up of the subject appear at first to some of you. on which account i pray you now to bear this point in mind, that in the present part of it i am expressly trying to reduce religion to its lowest admissible terms, to that minimum, free from individualistic excrescences, which all religions contain as their nucleus, and on which it may be hoped that all religious persons may agree. that established, we should have a result which might be small, but would at least be solid; and on it and round it the ruddier additional beliefs on which the different individuals make their venture might be grafted, and flourish as richly as you please. i shall add my own over- belief (which will be, i confess, of a somewhat pallid kind, as befits a critical philosopher), and you will, i hope, also add your over-beliefs, and we shall soon be in the varied world of concrete religious constructions once more. for the moment, let me dryly pursue the analytic part of the task. both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determined either by feeling or by thought. when we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for stoic, christian, and buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. the theories which religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements. it is between these two elements that the short circuit exists on which she carries on her principal business, while the ideas and symbols and other institutions form loop-lines which may be perfections and improvements, and may even some day all be united into one harmonious system, but which are not to be regarded as organs with an indispensable function, necessary at all times for religious life to go on. this seems to me the first conclusion which we are entitled to draw from the phenomena we have passed in review. the next step is to characterize the feelings. to what psychological order do they belong? the resultant outcome of them is in any case what kant calls a "sthenic" affection, an excitement of the cheerful, expansive, "dynamogenic" order which, like any tonic, freshens our vital powers. in almost every lecture, but especially in the lectures on conversion and on saintliness, we have seen how this emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy and imparts endurance to the subject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and glory to the common objects of life.( ) the name of "faith-state," by which professor leuba designates it, is a good one.( ) it is a biological as well as a psychological condition, and tolstoy is absolutely accurate in classing faith among the forces _by which men live_.( ) the total absence of it, anhedonia,( ) means collapse. the faith-state may hold a very minimum of intellectual content. we saw examples of this in those sudden raptures of the divine presence, or in such mystical seizures as dr. bucke described.( ) it may be a mere vague enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a feeling that great and wondrous things are in the air.( ) when, however, a positive intellectual content is associated with a faith- state, it gets invincibly stamped in upon belief,( ) and this explains the passionate loyalty of religious persons everywhere to the minutest details of their so widely differing creeds. taking creeds and faith-state together, as forming "religions," and treating these as purely subjective phenomena, without regard to the question of their "truth," we are obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence upon action and endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions of mankind. their stimulant and anæsthetic effect is so great that professor leuba, in a recent article,( ) goes so far as to say that so long as men can _use_ their god, they care very little who he is, or even whether he is at all. "the truth of the matter can be put," says leuba, "in this way: _god is not known, he is not understood; he is used_--sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimes as moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love. if he proves himself useful, the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. does god really exist? how does he exist? what is he? are so many irrelevant questions. not god, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. the love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse."( ) at this purely subjective rating, therefore, religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. it would seem that she cannot be a mere anachronism and survival, but must exert a permanent function, whether she be with or without intellectual content, and whether, if she have any, it be true or false. ------------------------------------- we must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself. first, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously? and second, ought we to consider the testimony true? i will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the affirmative. the warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. it consists of two parts:-- . an uneasiness; and . its solution. . the uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is _something wrong about us_ as we naturally stand. . the solution is a sense that _we are saved from the wrongness_ by making proper connection with the higher powers. in those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. i think we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like these:-- the individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higher exist. along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most helpless germ. with which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious at this stage; but when stage (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives,( ) the man identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. _he becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a _more_ of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck._ it seems to me that all the phenomena are accurately describable in these very simple general terms.( ) they allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping power and yet account for our sense of union with it;( ) and they fully justify our feelings of security and joy. there is probably no autobiographic document, among all those which i have quoted, to which the description will not well apply. one need only add such specific details as will adapt it to various theologies and various personal temperaments, and one will then have the various experiences reconstructed in their individual forms. so far, however, as this analysis goes, the experiences are only psychological phenomena. they possess, it is true, enormous biological worth. spiritual strength really increases in the subject when he has them, a new life opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux where the forces of two universes meet; and yet this may be nothing but his subjective way of feeling things, a mood of his own fancy, in spite of the effects produced. i now turn to my second question: what is the objective "truth" of their content?( ) the part of the content concerning which the question of truth most pertinently arises is that "more of the same quality" with which our own higher self appears in the experience to come into harmonious working relation. is such a "more" merely our own notion, or does it really exist? if so, in what shape does it exist? does it act, as well as exist? and in what form should we conceive of that "union" with it of which religious geniuses are so convinced? it is in answering these questions that the various theologies perform their theoretic work, and that their divergencies most come to light. they all agree that the "more" really exists; though some of them hold it to exist in the shape of a personal god or gods, while others are satisfied to conceive it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded in the eternal structure of the world. they all agree, moreover, that it acts as well as exists, and that something really is effected for the better when you throw your life into its hands. it is when they treat of the experience of "union" with it that their speculative differences appear most clearly. over this point pantheism and theism, nature and second birth, works and grace and karma, immortality and reincarnation, rationalism and mysticism, carry on inveterate disputes. at the end of my lecture on philosophy( ) i held out the notion that an impartial science of religions might sift out from the midst of their discrepancies a common body of doctrine which she might also formulate in terms to which physical science need not object. this, i said, she might adopt as her own reconciling hypothesis, and recommend it for general belief. i also said that in my last lecture i should have to try my own hand at framing such an hypothesis. the time has now come for this attempt. who says "hypothesis" renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. the most i can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true. ------------------------------------- the "more," as we called it, and the meaning of our "union" with it, form the nucleus of our inquiry. into what definite description can these words be translated, and for what definite facts do they stand? it would never do for us to place ourselves offhand at the position of a particular theology, the christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to define the "more" as jehovah, and the "union" as his imputation to us of the righteousness of christ. that would be unfair to other religions, and, from our present standpoint at least, would be an over-belief. we must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since one of the duties of the science of religions is to keep religion in connection with the rest of science, we shall do well to seek first of all a way of describing the "more," which psychologists may also recognize as real. the _subconscious self_ is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity; and i believe that in it we have exactly the mediating term required. apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of. the exploration of the transmarginal field has hardly yet been seriously undertaken, but what mr. myers said in in his essay on the subliminal consciousness( ) is as true as when it was first written: "each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows--an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. the self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the self unmanifested; and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve."( ) much of the content of this larger background against which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant. imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitive timidities, "dissolutive" phenomena of various sorts, as myers calls them, enter into it for a large part. but in it many of the performances of genius seem also to have their origin; and in our study of conversion, of mystical experiences, and of prayer, we have seen how striking a part invasions from this region play in the religious life. let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its _farther_ side, the "more" with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its _hither_ side the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. starting thus with a recognized psychological fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with "science" which the ordinary theologian lacks. at the same time the theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the subject an external control. in the religious life the control is felt as "higher"; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true. this doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of view. yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter side. here the over-beliefs begin: here mysticism and the conversion-rapture and vedantism and transcendental idealism bring in their monistic interpretations( ) and tell us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was always one with god and identical with the soul of the world.( ) here the prophets of all the different religions come with their visions, voices, raptures, and other openings, supposed by each to authenticate his own peculiar faith. those of us who are not personally favored with such specific revelations must stand outside of them altogether and, for the present at least, decide that, since they corroborate incompatible theological doctrines, they neutralize one another and leave no fixed result. if we follow any one of them, or if we follow philosophical theory and embrace monistic pantheism on non-mystical grounds, we do so in the exercise of our individual freedom, and build out our religion in the way most congruous with our personal susceptibilities. among these susceptibilities intellectual ones play a decisive part. although the religious question is primarily a question of life, of living or not living in the higher union which opens itself to us as a gift, yet the spiritual excitement in which the gift appears a real one will often fail to be aroused in an individual until certain particular intellectual beliefs or ideas which, as we say, come home to him, are touched.( ) these ideas will thus be essential to that individual's religion;--which is as much as to say that over-beliefs in various directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves. as i have elsewhere written, the most interesting and valuable things about a man are usually his over-beliefs. disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in _the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come_,( ) a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, _is literally and objectively true as far as it goes_. if i now proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of our personality, i shall be offering my own over-belief--though i know it will appear a sorry under-belief to some of you--for which i can only bespeak the same indulgence which in a converse case i should accord to yours. ------------------------------------- the further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely "understandable" world. name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. so far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. when we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change.( ) but that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so i feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal. god is the natural appellation, for us christians at least, for the supreme reality, so i will call this higher part of the universe by the name of god.( ) we and god have business with each other; and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. the universe, at those parts of it which our personal being constitutes, takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for the better in proportion as each one of us fulfills or evades god's demands. as far as this goes i probably have you with me, for i only translate into schematic language what i may call the instinctive belief of mankind: god is real since he produces real effects. the real effects in question, so far as i have as yet admitted them, are exerted on the personal centres of energy of the various subjects, but the spontaneous faith of most of the subjects is that they embrace a wider sphere than this. most religious men believe (or "know," if they be mystical) that not only they themselves, but the whole universe of beings to whom the god is present, are secure in his parental hands. there is a sense, a dimension, they are sure, in which we are _all_ saved, in spite of the gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances. god's existence is the guarantee of an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. this world may indeed, as science assures us, some day burn up or freeze; but if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where god is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. only when this farther step of faith concerning god is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted, does religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first immediate subjective experience, and bring a _real hypothesis_ into play. a good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough. god, meaning only what enters into the religious man's experience of union, falls short of being an hypothesis of this more useful order. he needs to enter into wider cosmic relations in order to justify the subject's absolute confidence and peace. that the god with whom, starting from the hither side of our own extra- marginal self, we come at its remoter margin into commerce should be the absolute world-ruler, is of course a very considerable over-belief. over- belief as it is, though, it is an article of almost every one's religion. most of us pretend in some way to prop it upon our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is really propped upon this faith. what is this but to say that religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion, like love, which views things in a rosier light. it is indeed that, as we have seen abundantly. but it is something more, namely, a postulator of new _facts_ as well. the world interpreted religiously is not the materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the altered expression, _a natural constitution_ different at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. it must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must be required. this thoroughly "pragmatic" view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men. they have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave. it is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding any concrete details to nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression of absolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it stands. i believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. it gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. what the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, i know not. but the over- belief on which i am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. the whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. by being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, i seem to myself to keep more sane and true. i _can_, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. but whenever i do this, i hear that inward monitor of which w. k. clifford once wrote, whispering the word "bosh!" humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as i view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow "scientific" bounds. assuredly, the real world is of a different temperament,--more intricately built than physical science allows. so my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the over-belief which i express. who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help god in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks? postscript. in writing my concluding lecture i had to aim so much at simplification that i fear that my general philosophic position received so scant a statement as hardly to be intelligible to some of my readers. i therefore add this epilogue, which must also be so brief as possibly to remedy but little the defect. in a later work i may be enabled to state my position more amply and consequently more clearly. originality cannot be expected in a field like this, where all the attitudes and tempers that are possible have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where any new writer can immediately be classed under a familiar head. if one should make a division of all thinkers into naturalists and supernaturalists, i should undoubtedly have to go, along with most philosophers, into the supernaturalist branch. but there is a crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to the refined division that most philosophers at the present day belong. if not regular transcendental idealists, they at least obey the kantian direction enough to bar out ideal entities from interfering causally in the course of phenomenal events. refined supernaturalism is universalistic supernaturalism; for the "crasser" variety "piecemeal" supernaturalism would perhaps be the better name. it went with that older theology which to-day is supposed to reign only among uneducated people, or to be found among the few belated professors of the dualisms which kant is thought to have displaced. it admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and the real worlds together by interpolating influences from the ideal region among the forces that causally determine the real world's details. in this the refined supernaturalists think that it muddles disparate dimensions of existence. for them the world of the ideal has no efficient causality, and never bursts into the world of phenomena at particular points. the ideal world, for them, is not a world of facts, but only of the meaning of facts; it is a point of view for judging facts. it appertains to a different "-ology," and inhabits a different dimension of being altogether from that in which existential propositions obtain. it cannot get down upon the flat level of experience and interpolate itself piecemeal between distinct portions of nature, as those who believe, for example, in divine aid coming in response to prayer, are bound to think it must. notwithstanding my own inability to accept either popular christianity or scholastic theism, i suppose that my belief that in communion with the ideal new force comes into the world, and new departures are made here below, subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of the piecemeal or crasser type. universalistic supernaturalism surrenders, it seems to me, too easily to naturalism. it takes the facts of physical science at their face-value, and leaves the laws of life just as naturalism finds them, with no hope of remedy, in case their fruits are bad. it confines itself to sentiments about life as a whole, sentiments which may be admiring and adoring, but which need not be so, as the existence of systematic pessimism proves. in this universalistic way of taking the ideal world, the essence of practical religion seems to me to evaporate. both instinctively and for logical reasons, i find it hard to believe that principles can exist which make no difference in facts.( ) but all facts are particular facts, and the whole interest of the question of god's existence seems to me to lie in the consequences for particulars which that existence may be expected to entail. that no concrete particular of experience should alter its complexion in consequence of a god being there seems to me an incredible proposition, and yet it is the thesis to which (implicitly at any rate) refined supernaturalism seems to cling. it is only with experience _en bloc_, it says, that the absolute maintains relations. it condescends to no transactions of detail. i am ignorant of buddhism and speak under correction, and merely in order the better to describe my general point of view; but as i apprehend the buddhistic doctrine of karma, i agree in principle with that. all supernaturalists admit that facts are under the judgment of higher law; but for buddhism as i interpret it, and for religion generally so far as it remains unweakened by transcendentalistic metaphysics, the word "judgment" here means no such bare academic verdict or platonic appreciation as it means in vedantic or modern absolutist systems; it carries, on the contrary, _execution_ with it, is _in __ rebus_ as well as _post rem_, and operates "causally" as partial factor in the total fact. the universe becomes a gnosticism( ) pure and simple on any other terms. but this view that judgment and execution go together is that of the crasser supernaturalist way of thinking, so the present volume must on the whole be classed with the other expressions of that creed. i state the matter thus bluntly, because the current of thought in academic circles runs against me, and i feel like a man who must set his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish to see it closed and locked. in spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual tastes, i believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism and a complete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to be the hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements are met. that of course would be a program for other books than this; what i now say sufficiently indicates to the philosophic reader the place where i belong. if asked just where the differences in fact which are due to god's existence come in, i should have to say that in general i have no hypothesis to offer beyond what the phenomenon of "prayerful communion," especially when certain kinds of incursion from the subconscious region take part in it, immediately suggests. the appearance is that in this phenomenon something ideal, which in one sense is part of ourselves and in another sense is not ourselves, actually exerts an influence, raises our centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable in other ways. if, then, there be a wider world of being than that of our every-day consciousness, if in it there be forces whose effects on us are intermittent, if one facilitating condition of the effects be the openness of the "subliminal" door, we have the elements of a theory to which the phenomena of religious life lend plausibility. i am so impressed by the importance of these phenomena that i adopt the hypothesis which they so naturally suggest. at these places at least, i say, it would seem as though transmundane energies, god, if you will, produced immediate effects within the natural world to which the rest of our experience belongs. the difference in natural "fact" which most of us would assign as the first difference which the existence of a god ought to make would, i imagine, be personal immortality. religion, in fact, for the great majority of our own race _means_ immortality, and nothing else. god is the producer of immortality; and whoever has doubts of immortality is written down as an atheist without farther trial. i have said nothing in my lectures about immortality or the belief therein, for to me it seems a secondary point. if our ideals are only cared for in "eternity," i do not see why we might not be willing to resign their care to other hands than ours. yet i sympathize with the urgent impulse to be present ourselves, and in the conflict of impulses, both of them so vague yet both of them noble, i know not how to decide. it seems to me that it is eminently a case for facts to testify. facts, i think, are yet lacking to prove "spirit-return," though i have the highest respect for the patient labors of messrs. myers, hodgson, and hyslop, and am somewhat impressed by their favorable conclusions. i consequently leave the matter open, with this brief word to save the reader from a possible perplexity as to why immortality got no mention in the body of this book. the ideal power with which we feel ourselves in connection, the "god" of ordinary men, is, both by ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with certain of those metaphysical attributes which in the lecture on philosophy i treated with such disrespect. he is assumed as a matter of course to be "one and only" and to be "infinite"; and the notion of many finite gods is one which hardly any one thinks it worth while to consider, and still less to uphold. nevertheless, in the interests of intellectual clearness, i feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. the only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with _something_ larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace. philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its monoideistic bent, both "pass to the limit" and identify the something with a unique god who is the all-inclusive soul of the world. popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which they set. meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. all that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. it need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. it might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.( ) thus would a sort of polytheism return upon us--a polytheism which i do not on this occasion defend, for my only aim at present is to keep the testimony of religious experience clearly within its proper bounds. [compare p. above.] upholders of the monistic view will say to such a polytheism (which, by the way, has always been the real religion of common people, and is so still to-day) that unless there be one all-inclusive god, our guarantee of security is left imperfect. in the absolute, and in the absolute only, _all_ is saved. if there be different gods, each caring for his part, some portion of some of us might not be covered with divine protection, and our religious consolation would thus fail to be complete. it goes back to what was said on pages - , about the possibility of there being portions of the universe that may irretrievably be lost. common sense is less sweeping in its demands than philosophy or mysticism have been wont to be, and can suffer the notion of this world being partly saved and partly lost. the ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvation of the world conditional upon the success with which each unit does its part. partial and conditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion when taken in the abstract, the only difficulty being to determine the details. some men are even disinterested enough to be willing to be in the unsaved remnant as far as their persons go, if only they can be persuaded that their cause will prevail--all of us are willing, whenever our activity- excitement rises sufficiently high. i think, in fact, that a final philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider it. for practical life at any rate, the _chance_ of salvation is enough. no fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. the existence of the chance makes the difference, as edmund gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.( ) but all these statements are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and i can only say that i hope to return to the same questions in another book. index. absolute, oneness with the, . abstractness of religious objects, . achilles, . ackermann, madame, . adaptation to environment, of things, ; of saints, - . Æsthetic elements in religions, . alacoque, , , . alcohol, . al-ghazzali, . ali, . alleine, . alline, , . alternations of personality, . alvarez de paz, . amiel, . anæsthesia, . anæsthetic revelation, - . angelus silesius, . anger, , . "anhedonia," . aristocratic type, . aristotle, . ars, le curé d', . asceticism, , - , - . aseity, god's, , . atman, . attributes of god, ; their æsthetic use, . augustine, saint, , , . aurelius, see marcus. automatic writing, , . automatisms, , , - . baldwin, , . bashkirtseff, . beecher, . behmen, see boehme. belief, due to non-rationalistic impulses, . besant, mrs., , . bhagavad-gita, . blavatsky, madam, . blood, . blumhardt, . boehme, , , . booth, . bougaud, . bourget, . bourignon, . bowne, . brainerd, , . bray, , , . brooks, . brownell, . bucke, . buddhism, , , . buddhist mysticism, . bullen, . bunyan, , . butterworth, . caird, edward, . caird, j., on feeling in religion, ; on absolute self, ; he does not prove, but reaffirms, religion's dicta, . call, . carlyle, , . carpenter, . catharine, saint, of genoa, . catholicism and protestantism compared, , , , . causality of god, , . cause, . cennick, . centres of personal energy, , , . cerebration, unconscious, . chance, . channing, , . chapman, . character, cause of its alterations, ; scheme of its differences of type, , . causes of its diversity, ; balance of, . charity, , , , . chastity, . chiefs of tribes, . christian science, . christ's atonement, , . churches, , . clark, . clissold, . coe, . conduct, perfect, . confession, . consciousness, fields of, ; subliminal, . consistency, . conversion, to avarice, . conversion, fletcher's, ; tolstoy's, ; bunyan's, ; in general, lectures ix and x, passim; bradley's, ; compared with natural moral growth, ; hadley's, ; two types of, ff.; brainerd's, ; alline's, ; oxford graduate's, ; ratisbonne's, ; instantaneous, ; is it a natural phenomenon? ; subliminal action involved, in sudden cases, , ; fruits of, ; its momentousness, ; may be supernatural, ; its concomitants: sense of higher control, , happiness, , automatisms, , luminous phenomena, ; its degree of permanence, . cosmic consciousness, . counter-conversion, . courage, , . crankiness, see psychopathy. crichton-browne, , . criminal character, . criteria of value of spiritual affections, . crump, . cure of bad habits, . daudet, . death, , . derham, . design, argument from, , ff. devoutness, . dionysius areopagiticus, . disease, , . disorder in contents of world, . divided self, lecture viii, passim; cases of: saint augustine, , h. alline, . divine, the, . dog, . dogmatism, , . dowie, . dresser, h. w., , , , . drink, . drummer, . drummond, . drunkenness, , , . "dryness," . dumas, . dyes, on clothing, . earnestness, . ecclesiastical spirit, the, , . eckhart, . eddy, . edwards, jonathan, , , , , , , , . edwards, mrs. j., , . effects of religious states, . effeminacy, . ego of apperception, . ellis, havelock, . elwood, . emerson, , , , , , . emotion, as alterer of life's value, ; of the character, , ff., . empirical method, , ff., . enemies, love your, , . energy, personal, ; mystical states increase it, . environment, , . epictetus, . epicureans, . equanimity, . ether, mystical effects of, . evil, ignored by healthy-mindedness, , , ; due to _things_ or to the _self_, ; its reality, . evolutionist optimism, . excesses of piety, . excitement, its effects, , , , . experience, religious, the essence of, . extravagances of piety, , . extreme cases, why we take them, . failure, . faith, , . faith-state, . fanaticism, ff. fear, , , , , . feeling deeper than intellect in religion, . fielding, . finney, , . fletcher, , . flournoy, , . flower, . foster, , . fox, george, , , , . francis, saint, d'assisi, . francis, saint, de sales, . fraser, . fruits, of conversion, ; of religion, ; of saintliness, . fuller, . gamond, . gardiner, . genius and insanity, . geniuses, see religious leaders. gentleman, character of the, , . gertrude, saint, . "gifts," . glory of god, . god, ; sense of his presence, - , , ff.; historic changes in idea of him, , ff., ; mind-curer's idea of him, ; his honor, ; described by negatives, ; his attributes, scholastic proof of, ; the metaphysical ones are for us meaningless, ; the moral ones are ill-deduced, ; he is not a mere inference, ; is _used_, not known, ; his existence must make a difference among phenomena, , ; his relation to the subconscious region, , ; his tasks, ; may be finite and plural, . goddard, . goerres, . goethe, . gough, . gourdon, . "grace," the operation of, ; the state of, . gratry, , , . greeks, their pessimism, , . guidance, . gurney, . guyon, , . hadley, , . hale, . hamon, . happiness, - , , , . harnack, . healthy-mindedness, lectures iv and v, passim; its philosophy of evil, ; compared with morbid-mindedness, , . heart, softening of, . hegel, , , . helmont, van, . heroism, , , note. heterogeneous personality, , . higher criticism, . hilty, , , . hodgson, r., . homer, . hugo, . hypocrisy, . hypothesis, what make a useful one, . hyslop, . ignatius loyola, , , . illness, . "imitation of christ," the, . immortality, . impulses, . individuality, . inhibitions, ff. insane melancholy and religion, . insanity and genius, ; and happiness, . institutional religion, . intellect a secondary force in religion, , . intellectual weakness of some saints, . intolerance, . irascibility, . jesus, harnack on, . job, , . john, saint, of the cross, , , . johnston, . jonquil, . jordan, . jouffroy, , . judgments, existential and spiritual, . kant, , . karma, . kellner, . kindliness, see charity. kingsley, . lagneau, . leaders, see religious leaders. leaders, of tribes, . lejeune, , . lessing, . leuba, , , , , . life, its significance, . life, the subconscious, , . locker-lampson, . logic, hegelian, . louis, saint, of gonzaga, . love, see charity. love, cases of falling out of, . love of god, . love your enemies, , . lowell, . loyalty, to god, . lutfullah, . luther, , , , , , . lutheran self-despair, , . luxury, . lycaon, . lyre, . mahomet, . see mohammed. marcus aurelius, , , . margaret mary, see alacoque. margin of consciousness, . marshall, . martineau, . mather, . maudsley, . meaning of life, . medical criticism of religion, . medical materialism, ff. melancholy, , ; lectures v and vi, passim; cases of, , , , , . melting moods, . method of judging value of religion, , . methodism, , . meysenbug, . militarism, - . military type of character, . mill, . mind-cure, its sources and history, - ; its opinion of fear, ; cases of, - , , ; its message, ; its methods, - ; it uses verification, - ; its philosophy of evil, . miraculous character of conversion, . mohammed, , . molinos, . moltke, von, , . monasteries, . monism, . morbidness compared with healthy-mindedness, . see, also, melancholy. mormon revelations, . mortification, see asceticism. muir, . mulford, . mÜller, . murisier, . myers, , , , , . mystic states, their effects, , . mystical experiences, . mysticism, lectures xvi and xvii, passim; its marks, ; its theoretic results, , , ; it cannot warrant truth, ; its results, ; its relation to the sense of union, . mystical region of experience, . natural theology, . naturalism, , . nature, scientific view of, . negative accounts of deity, . nelson, , . nettleton, . newman, f. w., . newman, j. h., on dogmatic theology, , ; his type of imagination, . nietzsche, , . nitrous oxide, its mystical effects, . no-function, - , , , . non-resistance, , , . obedience, . obermann, . o'connell, . omit, . "once-born" type, , , , . oneness with god, see union. optimism, systematic, ; and evolutionism, ; it may be shallow, . orderliness of world, . organism determines all mental states whatsoever, . origin of mental states no criterion of their value, ff. orison, . over-beliefs, ; the author's, . over-soul, . oxford, graduate of, , . pagan feeling, . pantheism, , . parker, . pascal, . paton, . paul, saint, , . peek, . peirce, . penny, . perreyve, . persecutions, , . personality, explained away by science, , ; heterogeneous, ; alterations of, , ff.; is reality, . see character. peter, saint, of alcantara, . philo, . philosophy, lecture xviii, passim; must coerce assent, ; scholastic, ; idealistic, ; unable to give a theoretic warrant to faith, ; its true office in religion, . photisms, . piety, ff. pluralism, . polytheism, , . poverty, , . "pragmatism," , , - . prayer, ; its definition, ; its essence, ; petitional, ; its effects, - , . "presence," sense of, - . presence of god, - , , ff., , . presence of god, the practice of, . primitive human thought, . pringle-pattison, . prophets, the hebrew, . protestant theology, . protestantism and catholicism, , , , . providential leading, . psychopathy and religion, ff. puffer, . purity, , , . quakers, , . ramakrishna, , . rationalism, , ; its authority overthrown by mysticism, . ratisbonne, , . reality of unseen objects, lecture iii, passim. rÉcÉjac, , . "recollection," , . redemption, . reformation of character, . regeneration, see conversion; by relaxation, . reid, . relaxation, salvation by, . see surrender. religion, to be tested by fruits, not by origin, ff., ; its definition, , ; is solemn, ; compared with stoicism, ; its unique function, ; abstractness of its objects, ; differs according to temperament, , , , and ought to differ, ; considered to be a "survival," , , ; its relations to melancholy, ; worldly passions may combine with it, ; its essential characters, , ; its relation to prayer, - ; asserts a fact, not a theory, ; its truth, ; more than science, it holds by concrete reality, ; attempts to evaporate it into philosophy, ; it is concerned with personal destinies, , ; with feeling and conduct, ; is a sthenic affection, ; is for life, not for knowledge, ; its essential contents, ; it postulates issues of fact, . religious emotion, . religious leaders, often nervously unstable, ff., ; their loneliness, . "religious sentiment," . renan, . renunciations, . repentance, . resignation, . revelation, the anæsthetic, - . revelations, see automatisms. revelations, in mormon church, . revivalism, . ribet, . ribot, , . rodriguez, , , . royce, . rutherford, mark, . sabatier, a., . sacrifice, , . saint-pierre, . sainte-beuve, , . saintliness, sainte-beuve on, ; its characteristics, , ; criticism of, ff. saintly conduct, - . saints, dislike of natural man for, . salvation, . sandays, . satan, in picture, . scheffler, . scholastic arguments for god, . science, ignores personality and teleology, ; her "facts," , . "science of religions," , , , - . scientific conceptions, their late adoption, . second-birth, , , . seeley, . self of the world, . self-despair, , , . self-surrender, , . sÉnancour, . seth, . sexual temptation, . sexuality as cause of religion, , . "shrew," . sickness, . sick souls, lectures v and vi, passim. sighele, . sin, . sinners, christ died for, . skepticism, ff. skobeleff, . smith, joseph, . softening of the heart, . solemnity, , . soul, . soul, strength of, . spencer, , . spinoza, , . spiritism, . spirit-return, . spiritual judgments, . spiritual states, tests of their value, . starbuck, , , , , - , , , , , , , , . stevenson, , . stoicism, - , . strange appearance of world, . strength of soul, . subconscious action in conversion, , . subconscious life, , , , , , , . subconscious self, as intermediary between the self and god, . subliminal, see subconscious. sufis, , . suggestion, , . suicide, . supernaturalism its two kinds, ; criticism of universalistic, . supernatural world, . surrender, salvation by, , , . survival-theory of religion, , , . suso, , . swinburne, . symonds, , . sympathetic magic, . sympathy, see charity. systems, philosophic, . taine, . taylor, . tenderness, see charity. tennyson, , . teresa, saint, , , , , , , . theologia germanica, . theologians, systematic, . "theopathy," . thoreau, . threshold, . tiger, , . tobacco, , . tolstoy, , , . towianski, . tragedy of life, . tranquillity, . transcendentalism criticised, . transcendentalists, . trevor, . trine, , . truth of religion, how to be tested, ; what it is, ; mystical perception of, , . "twice-born," type, , , . tyndall, . "unconscious cerebration," . unification of self, , . "union morale," . union with god, , , , , ff. see lectures on conversion, passim. unity of universe, . unreality, sense of, . unseen realities, lecture iii, passim. upanishads, . upham, . utopias, . vacherot, . value of spiritual affections, how tested, . vambÉry, . vedantism, , , , . veracity, , ff. vivekananda, . voltaire, . voysey, . war, - . wealth-worship, . weaver, . wesley, . wesleyan self-despair, , . whitefield, . whitman, , , , . wolff, , . wood, henry, , , . world, soul of the, . worry, , . yes-function, - , , . yoga, . young, . footnotes as with many ideas that float in the air of one's time, this notion shrinks from dogmatic general statement and expresses itself only partially and by innuendo. it seems to me that few conceptions are less instructive than this re-interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality. it reminds one, so crudely is it often employed, of the famous catholic taunt, that the reformation may be best understood by remembering that its _fons et origo_ was luther's wish to marry a nun:--the effects are infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature. it is true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory--e.g., sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the saviour in a few christian mystics. but then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive function, and prove one's point by the worship of bacchus and ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints about the eucharist? religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole organism gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirred to expression. language drawn from eating and drinking is probably as common in religious literature as is language drawn from the sexual life. we "hunger and thirst" after righteousness; we "find the lord a sweet savor;" we "taste and see that he is good." "spiritual milk for american babes, drawn from the breasts of both testaments," is a sub-title of the once famous new england primer, and christian devotional literature indeed quite floats in milk, thought of from the point of view, not of the mother, but of the greedy babe. saint françois de sales, for instance, thus describes the "orison of quietude": "in this state the soul is like a little child still at the breast, whose mother, to caress him whilst he is still in her arms, makes her milk distill into his mouth without his even moving his lips. so it is here.... our lord desires that our will should be satisfied with sucking the milk which his majesty pours into our mouth, and that we should relish the sweetness without even knowing that it cometh from the lord." and again: "consider the little infants, united and joined to the breasts of their nursing mothers, you will see that from time to time they press themselves closer by little starts to which the pleasure of sucking prompts them. even so, during its orison, the heart united to its god oftentimes makes attempts at closer union by movements during which it presses closer upon the divine sweetness." chemin de la perfection, ch. xxxi.; amour de dieu, vii. ch. i. in fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion of the respiratory function. the bible is full of the language of respiratory oppression: "hide not thine ear at my breathing; my groaning is not hid from thee; my heart panteth, my strength faileth me; my bones are hot with my roaring all the night long; as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so my soul panteth after thee, o my god." _god's breath in man_ is the title of the chief work of our best known american mystic (thomas lake harris); and in certain non- christian countries the foundation of all religious discipline consists in regulation of the inspiration and expiration. these arguments are as good as much of the reasoning one hears in favor of the sexual theory. but the champions of the latter will then say that their chief argument has no analogue elsewhere. the two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. to which the retort again is easy. even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during adolescence. one might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct:--but that would be too absurd. moreover, if the argument from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that the religious age _par excellence_ would seem to be old age, when the uproar of the sexual life is past? the plain truth is that to interpret religion one must in the end look at the immediate content of the religious consciousness. the moment one does this, one sees how wholly disconnected it is in the main from the content of the sexual consciousness. everything about the two things differs, objects, moods, faculties concerned, and acts impelled to. any _general_ assimilation is simply impossible: what we find most often is complete hostility and contrast. if now the defenders of the sex-theory say that this makes no difference to their thesis; that without the chemical contributions which the sex- organs make to the blood, the brain would not be nourished so as to carry on religious activities, this final proposition may be true or not true; but at any rate it has become profoundly uninstructive: we can deduce no consequences from it which help us to interpret religion's meaning or value. in this sense the religious life depends just as much upon the spleen, the pancreas, and the kidneys as on the sexual apparatus, and the whole theory has lost its point in evaporating into a vague general assertion of the dependence, _somehow_, of the mind upon the body. for a first-rate example of medical-materialist reasoning, see an article on "les variétés du type dévot," by dr. binet-sanglé, in the revue de l'hypnotisme, xiv. . j. f. nisbet: the insanity of genius, d ed., london, , pp. xvi, xxiv. max nordau, in his bulky book entitled _degeneration_. h. maudsley: natural causes and supernatural seemings, , pp. , . autobiography, ch. xxviii. superior intellect, as professor bain has admirably shown, seems to consist in nothing so much as in a large development of the faculty of association by similarity. i may refer to a criticism of the insanity theory of genius in the psychological review, ii. ( ). i can do no better here than refer my readers to the extended and admirable remarks on the futility of all these definitions of religion, in an article by professor leuba, published in the monist for january, , after my own text was written. miscellanies, , p. (abridged). lectures and biographical sketches, , p. . feuilles détachées, pp. - (abridged). op. cit., pp. , . book v., ch. x. (abridged). book v., ch. ix. (abridged). chaps. x., xi. (abridged): winkworth's translation. book iv., § . benham's translation: book iii., chaps. xv., lix. compare mary moody emerson: "let me be a blot on this fair world, the obscurest, the loneliest sufferer, with one proviso,--that i know it is his agency. i will love him though he shed frost and darkness on every way of mine." r. w. emerson: lectures and biographical sketches, p. . once more, there are plenty of men, constitutionally sombre men, in whose religious life this rapturousness is lacking. they are religious in the wider sense; yet in this acutest of all senses they are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense that i wish, without disputing about words, to study first, so as to get at its typical _differentia_. the new spirit, p. . i owe this allegorical illustration to my lamented colleague and friend, charles carroll everett. example: "i have had much comfort lately in meditating on the passages which show the personality of the holy ghost, and his distinctness from the father and the son. it is a subject that requires searching into to find out, but, when realized, gives one so much more true and lively a sense of the fullness of the godhead, and its work in us and to us, than when only thinking of the spirit in its effect on us." augustus hare: memorials, i. , maria hare to lucy h. hare. symposium, jowett, , i. . example: "nature is always so interesting, under whatever aspect she shows herself, that when it rains, i seem to see a beautiful woman weeping. she appears the more beautiful, the more afflicted she is." b. de st. pierre. journal of the s. p. r., february, , p. . e. gurney: phantasms of the living, i. . pensées d'un solitaire, p. . letters of lowell, i. . i borrow it, with professor flournoy's permission, from his rich collection of psychological documents. mark rutherford's deliverance, london, , pp. , . in his book (too little read, i fear), natural religion, d edition, boston, , pp. , . c. hilty: glück, dritter theil, , p. . the soul; its sorrows and its aspirations, d edition, , pp. , . i once heard a lady describe the pleasure it gave her to think that she "could always cuddle up to god." john weiss: life of theodore parker, i. , . starbuck: psychology of religion, pp. , . "i know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer the feelings of melancholy. for myself, i find that they are the most voluptuous of all sensations," writes saint pierre, and accordingly he devotes a series of sections of his work on nature to the plaisirs de la ruine, plaisirs des tombeaux, ruines de la nature, plaisirs de la solitude--each of them more optimistic than the last. this finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence. the truth-telling marie bashkirtseff expresses it well:-- "in this depression and dreadful uninterrupted suffering, i don't condemn life. on the contrary, i like it and find it good. can you believe it? i find everything good and pleasant, even my tears, my grief. i enjoy weeping, i enjoy my despair. i enjoy being exasperated and sad. i feel as if these were so many diversions, and i love life in spite of them all. i want to live on. it would be cruel to have me die when i am so accommodating. i cry, i grieve, and at the same time i am pleased--no, not exactly that--i know not how to express it. but everything in life pleases me. i find everything agreeable, and in the very midst of my prayers for happiness, i find myself happy at being miserable. it is not i who undergo all this--my body weeps and cries; but something inside of me which is above me is glad of it all." journal de marie bashkirtseff, i. . r. m. bucke: cosmic consciousness, pp. - , abridged. i refer to the conservator, edited by horace traubel, and published monthly at philadelphia. song of myself, . iliad, xxi., e. myers's translation. "god is afraid of me!" remarked such a titanic-optimistic friend in my presence one morning when he was feeling particularly hearty and cannibalistic. the defiance of the phrase showed that a christian education in humility still rankled in his breast. "as i go on in this life, day by day, i become more of a bewildered child; i cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. the prim, obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic--or mænadic--foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me." r. l. stevenson: letters, ii. . "cautionary verses for children": this title of a much used work, published early in the nineteenth century, shows how far the muse of evangelical protestantism in england, with her mind fixed on the idea of danger, had at last drifted away from the original gospel freedom. mind-cure might be briefly called a reaction against all that religion of chronic anxiety which marked the earlier part of our century in the evangelical circles of england and america. i refer to mr. horatio w. dresser and mr. henry wood, especially the former. mr. dresser's works are published by g. p. putnam's sons, new york and london; mr. wood's by lee & shepard, boston. lest my own testimony be suspected, i will quote another reporter, dr. h. h. goddard, of clark university, whose thesis on "the effects of mind on body as evidenced by faith cures" is published in the american journal of psychology for (vol. x.). this critic, after a wide study of the facts, concludes that the cures by mind- cure exist, but are in no respect different from those now officially recognized in medicine as cures by suggestion; and the end of his essay contains an interesting physiological speculation as to the way in which the suggestive ideas may work (p. of the reprint). as regards the general phenomenon of mental cure itself, dr. goddard writes: "in spite of the severe criticism we have made of reports of cure, there still remains a vast amount of material, showing a powerful influence of the mind in disease. many cases are of diseases that have been diagnosed and treated by the best physicians of the country, or which prominent hospitals have tried their hand at curing, but without success. people of culture and education have been treated by this method with satisfactory results. diseases of long standing have been ameliorated, and even cured.... we have traced the mental element through primitive medicine and folk-medicine of to-day, patent medicine, and witchcraft. we are convinced that it is impossible to account for the existence of these practices, if they did not cure disease, and that if they cured disease, it must have been the mental element that was effective. the same argument applies to those modern schools of mental therapeutics--divine healing and christian science. it is hardly conceivable that the large body of intelligent people who comprise the body known distinctively as mental scientists should continue to exist if the whole thing were a delusion. it is not a thing of a day; it is not confined to a few; it is not local. it is true that many failures are recorded, but that only adds to the argument. there must be many and striking successes to counterbalance the failures, otherwise the failures would have ended the delusion.... christian science, divine healing, or mental science do not, and never can in the very nature of things, cure all diseases; nevertheless, the practical applications of the general principles of the broadest mental science will tend to prevent disease.... we do find sufficient evidence to convince us that the proper reform in mental attitude would relieve many a sufferer of ills that the ordinary physician cannot touch; would even delay the approach of death to many a victim beyond the power of absolute cure, and the faithful adherence to a truer philosophy of life will keep many a man well, and give the doctor time to devote to alleviating ills that are unpreventable" (pp. , of reprint). horace fletcher: happiness as found in forethought _minus_ fearthought, menticulture series, ii. chicago and new york, stone, , pp. - , abridged. h. w. dresser: voices of freedom, new york, , p. . henry wood: ideal suggestion through mental photography, boston, , p. . whether it differs so much from christ's own notion is for the exegetists to decide. according to harnack, jesus felt about evil and disease much as our mind-curers do. "what is the answer which jesus sends to john the baptist?" asks harnack, and says it is this: " 'the blind see, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead rise up, and the gospel is preached to the poor.' that is the 'coming of the kingdom,' or rather in these saving works the kingdom is already there. by the overcoming and removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by these actual effects john is to see that the new time has arrived. the casting out of devils is only a part of this work of redemption, _but jesus points to that as the sense and seal of his mission_. thus to the wretched, sick, and poor did he address himself, but not as a moralist, and without a trace of sentimentalism. he never makes groups and departments of the ills; he never spends time in asking whether the sick one 'deserves' to be cured; and it never occurs to him to sympathize with the pain or the death. he nowhere says that sickness is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthy use. no, he calls sickness sickness and health health. all evil, all wretchedness, is for him something dreadful; it is of the great kingdom of satan; but he feels the power of the saviour within him. he knows that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome, when sickness is made well." das wesen des christenthums, , p. . r. w. trine: in tune with the infinite, th thousand, n. y., . i have strung scattered passages together. the cairds, for example. in edward caird's glasgow lectures of - passages like this abound:-- "the declaration made in the beginning of the ministry of jesus that 'the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' passes with scarce a break into the announcement that 'the kingdom of god is among you'; and the importance of this announcement is asserted to be such that it makes, so to speak, a difference _in kind_ between the greatest saints and prophets who lived under the previous reign of division, and 'the least in the kingdom of heaven.' the highest ideal is brought close to men and declared to be within their reach, they are called on to be 'perfect as their father in heaven is perfect.' the sense of alienation and distance from god which had grown upon the pious in israel just in proportion as they had learned to look upon him as no mere national divinity, but as a god of justice who would punish israel for its sin as certainly as edom or moab, is declared to be no longer in place; and the typical form of christian prayer points to the abolition of the contrast between this world and the next which through all the history of the jews had continually been growing wider: 'as in heaven, so on earth.' the sense of the division of man from god, as a finite being from the infinite, as weak and sinful from the omnipotent goodness, is not indeed lost; but it can no longer overpower the consciousness of oneness. the terms 'son' and 'father' at once state the opposition and mark its limit. they show that it is not an absolute opposition, but one which presupposes an indestructible principle of unity, that can and must become a principle of reconciliation." the evolution of religion, ii. pp. , . it remains to be seen whether the school of mr. dresser, which assumes more and more the form of mind-cure experience and academic philosophy mutually impregnating each other, will score the practical triumphs of the less critical and rational sects. the theistic explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new nature within one the moment the old nature is sincerely given up. the pantheistic explanation (which is that of most mind-curers) is by the merging of the narrower private self into the wider or greater self, the spirit of the universe (which is your own "subconscious" self), the moment the isolating barriers of mistrust and anxiety are removed. the medico-materialistic explanation is that simpler cerebral processes act more freely where they are left to act automatically by the shunting-out of physiologically (though in this instance not spiritually) "higher" ones which, seeking to regulate, only succeed in inhibiting results.--whether this third explanation might, in a psycho-physical account of the universe, be combined with either of the others may be left an open question here. within the churches a disposition has always prevailed to regard sickness as a visitation; something sent by god for our good, either as chastisement, as warning, or as opportunity for exercising virtue, and, in the catholic church, of earning "merit." "illness," says a good catholic writer (p. lejeune: introd. à la vie mystique, , p. ), "is the most excellent of corporeal mortifications, the mortification which one has not one's self chosen, which is imposed directly by god, and is the direct expression of his will. 'if other mortifications are of silver,' mgr. gay says, 'this one is of gold; since although it comes of ourselves, coming as it does of original sin, still on its greater side, as coming (like all that happens) from the providence of god, it is of divine manufacture. and how just are its blows! and how efficacious it is!... i do not hesitate to say that patience in a long illness is mortification's very masterpiece, and consequently the triumph of mortified souls.' " according to this view, disease should in any case be submissively accepted, and it might under certain circumstances even be blasphemous to wish it away. of course there have been exceptions to this, and cures by special miracle have at all times been recognized within the church's pale, almost all the great saints having more or less performed them. it was one of the heresies of edward irving, to maintain them still to be possible. an extremely pure faculty of healing after confession and conversion on the patient's part, and prayer on the priest's, was quite spontaneously developed in the german pastor, joh. christoph blumhardt, in the early forties and exerted during nearly thirty years. blumhardt's life by zündel ( th edition, zurich, ) gives in chapters ix., x., xi., and xvii. a pretty full account of his healing activity, which he invariably ascribed to direct divine interposition. blumhardt was a singularly pure, simple, and non- fanatical character, and in this part of his work followed no previous model. in chicago to-day we have the case of dr. j. a. dowie, a scottish baptist preacher, whose weekly "leaves of healing" were in the year of grace in their sixth volume, and who, although he denounces the cures wrought in other sects as "diabolical counterfeits" of his own exclusively "divine healing," must on the whole be counted into the mind-cure movement. in mind- cure circles the fundamental article of faith is that disease should never be accepted. it is wholly of the pit. god wants us to be absolutely healthy, and we should not tolerate ourselves on any lower terms. edwards, from whose book on the revival in new england i quote these words, dissuades from such a use of prayer, but it is easy to see that he enjoys making his thrust at the cold dead church members. h. w. dresser: voices of freedom, . dresser: living by the spirit, . dresser: voices of freedom, . trine: in tune with the infinite, p. . trine: p. . quoted by lejeune: introd. à la vie mystique, , p. . henry wood: ideal suggestion through mental photography, pp. , (abridged). see appendix to this lecture for two other cases furnished me by friends. whether the various spheres or systems are ever to fuse integrally into one absolute conception, as most philosophers assume that they must, and how, if so, that conception may best be reached, are questions that only the future can answer. what is certain now is the fact of lines of disparate conception, each corresponding to some part of the world's truth, each verified in some degree, each leaving out some part of real experience. tract on god, man, and happiness, book ii. ch. x. commentary on galatians, philadelphia, , pp. - (abridged). molinos: spiritual guide, book ii., chaps. xvii., xviii. (abridged). i say this in spite of the monistic utterances of many mind-cure writers; for these utterances are really inconsistent with their attitude towards disease, and can easily be shown not to be logically involved in the experiences of union with a higher presence with which they connect themselves. the higher presence, namely, need not be the absolute whole of things, it is quite sufficient for the life of religious experience to regard it as a part, if only it be the most ideal part. cf. j. milsand: luther et le serf-arbitre, , _passim_. he adds with characteristic healthy-mindedness: "our business is to continue to fail in good spirits." the god of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgment passed on their failures by the opinion of this world. to our own consciousness there is usually a residuum of worth left over after our sins and errors have been told off--our capacity of acknowledging and regretting them is the germ of a better self _in posse_ at least. but the world deals with us _in actu_ and not _in posse_: and of this hidden germ, not to be guessed at from without, it never takes account. then we turn to the all- knower, who knows our bad, but knows this good in us also, and who is just. we cast ourselves with our repentance on his mercy: only by an all-knower can we finally be judged. so the need of a god very definitely emerges from this sort of experience of life. e.g., iliad, xvii. : "nothing then is more wretched anywhere than man of all that breathes and creeps upon this earth." e.g., theognis, - : "best of all for all things upon earth is it not to be born nor to behold the splendors of the sun; next best to traverse as soon as possible the gates of hades." see also the almost identical passage in oedipus in colonus, .--the anthology is full of pessimistic utterances: "naked came i upon the earth, naked i go below the ground--why then do i vainly toil when i see the end naked before me?"--"how did i come to be? whence am i? wherefore did i come? to pass away. how can i learn aught when naught i know? being naught i came to life: once more shall i be what i was. nothing and nothingness is the whole race of mortals."--"for death we are all cherished and fattened like a herd of hogs that is wantonly butchered." the difference between greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature. they would have despised a life set wholly in a minor key, and summoned it to keep within the proper bounds of lachrymosity. the discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the hellenes had attained to being in the classic period. but all the same was the outlook of those hellenes blackly pessimistic. for instance, on the very day on which i write this page, the post brings me some aphorisms from a worldly-wise old friend in heidelberg which may serve as a good contemporaneous expression of epicureanism: "by the word 'happiness' every human being understands something different. it is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds. the wise man is satisfied with the more modest but much more definite term _contentment_. what education should chiefly aim at is to save us from a discontented life. health is one favoring condition, but by no means an indispensable one, of contentment. woman's heart and love are a shrewd device of nature, a trap which she sets for the average man, to force him into working. but the wise man will always prefer work chosen by himself." ribot: psychologie des sentiments, p. . a. gratry: souvenirs de ma jeunesse, , pp. - , abridged. some persons are affected with anhedonia permanently, or at any rate with a loss of the usual appetite for life. the annals of suicide supply such examples as the following:-- an uneducated domestic servant, aged nineteen, poisons herself, and leaves two letters expressing her motive for the act. to her parents she writes:-- "life is sweet perhaps to some, but i prefer what is sweeter than life, and that is death. so good-by forever, my dear parents. it is nobody's fault, but a strong desire of my own which i have longed to fulfill for three or four years. i have always had a hope that some day i might have an opportunity of fulfilling it, and now it has come.... it is a wonder i have put this off so long, but i thought perhaps i should cheer up a bit and put all thought out of my head." to her brother she writes: "good-by forever, my own dearest brother. by the time you get this i shall be gone forever. i know, dear love, there is no forgiveness for what i am going to do.... i am tired of living, so am willing to die.... life may be sweet to some, but death to me is sweeter." s. a. k. strahan: suicide and insanity, d edition, london, , p. . roubinovitch et toulouse: la mélancolie, , p. , abridged. i cull these examples from the work of g. dumas: la tristesse et la joie, . my extracts are from the french translation by "zonia." in abridging i have taken the liberty of transposing one passage. grace abounding to the chief of sinners: i have printed a number of detached passages continuously. the life and journal of the rev. mr. henry alline, boston, , pp. , . i owe my acquaintance with this book to my colleague, dr. benjamin rand. compare bunyan: "there was i struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at some times i could, for days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the dreadful judgment of god, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. i felt also such clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that i was, especially at some times, as if my breast-bone would have split asunder.... thus did i wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me; which burden also did so oppress me that i could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet." for another case of fear equally sudden, see henry james: society the redeemed form of man, boston, , pp. ff. example: "it was about eleven o'clock at night ... but i strolled on still with the people.... suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. the rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, 'ho hai!' involuntarily reëchoed by all of us, was over in three seconds; and then i know not what happened till i returned to my senses, when i found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if prepared to be devoured by our enemy, the sovereign of the forest. i find my pen incapable of describing the terror of that dreadful moment. our limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beat violently, and only a whisper of the same 'ho hai!' was heard from us. in this state we crept on all fours for some distance back, and then ran for life with the speed of an arab horse for about half an hour, and fortunately happened to come to a small village.... after this every one of us was attacked with fever, attended with shivering, in which deplorable state we remained till morning."--autobiography of lutfullah, a mohammedan gentleman, leipzig, , p. . e.g., "our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. these never presented a practical difficulty to any man--never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. these are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs," etc. emerson: "spiritual laws." notes sur la vie, p. . see, for example, f. paulhan, in his book les caractères, , who contrasts les equilibrés, les unifiés, with les inquiets, les contrariants, les incohérents, les emiettés, as so many diverse psychic types. annie besant: an autobiography, p. . smith baker, in journal of nervous and mental diseases, september, . louis gourdon (essai sur la conversion de saint augustine, paris, fischbacher, ) has shown by an analysis of augustine's writings immediately after the date of his conversion (a. d. ) that the account he gives in the confessions is premature. the crisis in the garden marked a definitive conversion from his former life, but it was to the neo-platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward christianity. the latter he appears not fully and radically to have embraced until four years more had passed. confessions, book viii., chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged. th. jouffroy: nouveaux mélanges philosophiques, me édition, p. . i add two other cases of counter-conversion dating from a certain moment. the first is from professor starbuck's manuscript collection, and the narrator is a woman. "away down in the bottom of my heart, i believe i was always more or less skeptical about 'god;' skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through my early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the emotional elements in my religious growth. when i was sixteen i joined the church and was asked if i loved god. i replied 'yes,' as was customary and expected. but instantly with a flash something spoke within me, 'no, you do not.' i was haunted for a long time with shame and remorse for my falsehood and for my wickedness in not loving god, mingled with fear that there might be an avenging god who would punish me in some terrible way.... at nineteen, i had an attack of tonsilitis. before i had quite recovered, i heard told a story of a brute who had kicked his wife downstairs, and then continued the operation until she became insensible. i felt the horror of the thing keenly. instantly this thought flashed through my mind: 'i have no use for a god who permits such things.' this experience was followed by months of stoical indifference to the god of my previous life, mingled with feelings of positive dislike and a somewhat proud defiance of him. i still thought there might be a god. if so he would probably damn me, but i should have to stand it. i felt very little fear and no desire to propitiate him. i have never had any personal relations with him since this painful experience." the second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough. it is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel's burden, or that touch of a needle which makes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize out. tolstoy writes: "s., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows how he ceased to believe:-- "he was twenty-six years old when one day on a hunting expedition, the time for sleep having come, he set himself to pray according to the custom he had held from childhood. "his brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked at him. when s. had finished his prayer and was turning to sleep, the brother said, 'do you still keep up that thing?' nothing more was said. but since that day, now more than thirty years ago, s. has never prayed again; he never takes communion, and does not go to church. all this, not because he became acquainted with convictions of his brother which he then and there adopted; not because he made any new resolution in his soul, but merely because the words spoken by his brother were like the light push of a finger against a leaning wall already about to tumble by its own weight. these words but showed him that the place wherein he supposed religion dwelt in him had long been empty, and that the sentences he uttered, the crosses and bows which he made during his prayer, were actions with no inner sense. having once seized their absurdity, he could no longer keep them up." my confession, p. . op. cit., letter iii., abridged. i subjoin an additional document which has come into my possession, and which represents in a vivid way what is probably a very frequent sort of conversion, if the opposite of "falling in love," falling out of love, may be so termed. falling in love also conforms frequently to this type, a latent process of unconscious preparation often preceding a sudden awakening to the fact that the mischief is irretrievably done. the free and easy tone in this narrative gives it a sincerity that speaks for itself. "for two years of this time i went through a very bad experience, which almost drove me mad. i had fallen violently in love with a girl who, young as she was, had a spirit of coquetry like a cat. as i look back on her now, i hate her, and wonder how i could ever have fallen so low as to be worked upon to such an extent by her attractions. nevertheless, i fell into a regular fever, could think of nothing else; whenever i was alone, i pictured her attractions, and spent most of the time when i should have been working, in recalling our previous interviews, and imagining future conversations. she was very pretty, good humored, and jolly to the last degree, and intensely pleased with my admiration. would give me no decided answer yes or no, and the queer thing about it was that whilst pursuing her for her hand, i secretly knew all along that she was unfit to be a wife for me, and that she never would say yes. although for a year we took our meals at the same boarding-house, so that i saw her continually and familiarly, our closer relations had to be largely on the sly, and this fact, together with my jealousy of another one of her male admirers, and my own conscience despising me for my uncontrollable weakness, made me so nervous and sleepless that i really thought i should become insane. i understand well those young men murdering their sweethearts, which appear so often in the papers. nevertheless i did love her passionately, and in some ways she did deserve it. "the queer thing was the sudden and unexpected way in which it all stopped. i was going to my work after breakfast one morning, thinking as usual of her and of my misery, when, just as if some outside power laid hold of me, i found myself turning round and almost running to my room, where i immediately got out all the relics of her which i possessed, including some hair, all her notes and letters, and ambrotypes on glass. the former i made a fire of, the latter i actually crushed beneath my heel, in a sort of fierce joy of revenge and punishment. i now loathed and despised her altogether, and as for myself i felt as if a load of disease had suddenly been removed from me. that was the end. i never spoke to her or wrote to her again in all the subsequent years, and i have never had a single moment of loving thought towards one who for so many months entirely filled my heart. in fact, i have always rather hated her memory, though now i can see that i had gone unnecessarily far in that direction. at any rate, from that happy morning onward i regained possession of my own proper soul, and have never since fallen into any similar trap." this seems to me an unusually clear example of two different levels of personality, inconsistent in their dictates, yet so well balanced against each other as for a long time to fill the life with discord and dissatisfaction. at last, not gradually, but in a sudden crisis, the unstable equilibrium is resolved, and this happens so unexpectedly that it is as if, to use the writer's words, "some outside power laid hold." professor starbuck gives an analogous case, and a converse case of hatred suddenly turning into love, in his psychology of religion, p. . compare the other highly curious instances which he gives on pp. - , of sudden non-religious alterations of habit or character. he seems right in conceiving all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions unconsciously developing until they are ready to play a controlling part, when they make irruption into the conscious life. when we treat of sudden "conversion," i shall make as much use as i can of this hypothesis of subconscious incubation. h. fletcher: menticulture, or the a-b-c of true living, new york and chicago, , pp. - , abridged. i have considerably abridged tolstoy's words in my translation. in my quotations from bunyan i have omitted certain intervening portions of the text. a sketch of the life of stephen h. bradley, from the age of five to twenty-four years, including his remarkable experience of the power of the holy spirit on the second evening of november, . madison, connecticut, . jouffroy is an example: "down this slope it was that my intelligence had glided, and little by little it had got far from its first faith. but this melancholy revolution had not taken place in the broad daylight of my consciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affections had made it dreadful to me, so that i was far from avowing to myself the progress it had made. it had gone on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration of which i was not the accomplice; and although i had in reality long ceased to be a christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, i should have shuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had i been accused of such a falling away." then follows jouffroy's account of his counter-conversion, quoted above on p. . one hardly needs examples; but for love, see p. , note; for fear, p. ; for remorse, see othello after the murder; for anger, see lear after cordelia's first speech to him; for resolve, see p. (j. foster case). here is a pathological case in which _guilt_ was the feeling that suddenly exploded: "one night i was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as swedenborg describes as coming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a sense of _guilt_. during that whole night i lay under the influence of the rigor, and from its inception i felt that i was under the curse of god. i have never done one act of duty in my life--sins against god and man, beginning as far as my memory goes back--a wildcat in human shape." e. d. starbuck: the psychology of religion, pp. , . no one understands this better than jonathan edwards understood it already. conversion narratives of the more commonplace sort must always be taken with the allowances which he suggests: "a rule received and established by common consent has a very great, though to many persons an insensible influence in forming their notions of the process of their own experience. i know very well how they proceed as to this matter, for i have had frequent opportunities of observing their conduct. very often their experience at first appears like a confused chaos, but then those parts are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular steps as are insisted on; and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken of from time to time, till they grow more and more conspicuous in their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and more obscure. thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so as to bring it to an exact conformity to the scheme already established in their minds. and it becomes natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist upon distinctness and clearness of method, to do so too." treatise on religious affections. studies in the psychology of religious phenomena, american journal of psychology, vii. ( ). i have abridged mr. hadley's account. for other conversions of drunkards, see his pamphlet, rescue mission work, published at the old jerry m'auley water street mission, new york city. a striking collection of cases also appears in the appendix to professor leuba's article. a restaurant waiter served provisionally as gough's "saviour." general booth, the founder of the salvation army, considers that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question whether they are to rise or sink. the crisis of apathetic melancholy--no use in life--into which j. s. mill records that he fell, and from which he emerged by the reading of marmontel's memoirs (heaven save the mark!) and wordsworth's poetry, is another intellectual and general metaphysical case. see mill's autobiography, new york, , pp. , . starbuck, in addition to "escape from sin," discriminates "spiritual illumination" as a distinct type of conversion experience. psychology of religion, p. . psychology of religion, p. . psychology of religion, p. . compare, also, pp. - and . for instance, c. g. finney italicizes the volitional element: "just at this point the whole question of gospel salvation opened to my mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time. i think i then saw, as clearly as i ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement of christ. gospel salvation seemed to me to be an offer of something to be accepted, and all that was necessary on my part was to get my own consent to give up my sins and accept christ. after this distinct revelation had stood for some little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put, 'will you accept it now, to- day?' i replied, 'yes; _i will accept it to-day, or i will die in the attempt!_' " he then went into the woods, where he describes his struggles. he could not pray, his heart was hardened in its pride. "i then reproached myself for having promised to give my heart to god before i left the woods. when i came to try, i found i could not.... my inward soul hung back, and there was no going out of my heart to god. the thought was pressing me, of the rashness of my promise that i would give my heart to god that day, or die in the attempt. it seemed to me as if that was binding on my soul; and yet i was going to break my vow. a great sinking and discouragement came over me, and i felt almost too weak to stand upon my knees. just at this moment i again thought i heard some one approach me, and i opened my eyes to see whether it were so. but right there the revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty that stood in the way, was distinctly shown to me. an overwhelming sense of my wickedness in being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees before god took such powerful possession of me, that i _cried at the top of my voice, and exclaimed that i would not leave that place if all the men on earth and all the devils in hell surrounded me_. 'what!' i said, 'such a degraded sinner as i am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy god; and ashamed to have any human being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavoring to make my peace with my offended god!' the sin appeared awful, infinite. it broke me down before the lord." memoirs, pp. - , abridged. starbuck: op. cit., pp. , . extracts from the journal of mr. john nelson, london, no date, p. . starbuck, p. . starbuck, p. . starbuck, p. . edward's and dwight's life of brainerd, new haven, , pp. - , abridged. describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the rising of some objects above, and the sinking of others below the conscious threshold) were only two ways of describing an indivisible event. doubtless this is often absolutely true, and starbuck is right when he says that "self-surrender" and "new determination," though seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are "really the same thing. self-surrender sees the change in terms of the old self; determination sees it in terms of the new." op. cit., p. . a. a. bonar: nettleton and his labors, edinburgh, , p. . charles g. finney: memoirs written by himself, , pp. , . life and journals, boston, , pp. - , abridged. my quotations are made from an italian translation of this letter in the biografia del sig. m. a. ratisbonne, ferrara, , which i have to thank monsignore d. o'connell of rome for bringing to my notice. i abridge the original. published in the international scientific series. the reader will here please notice that in my exclusive reliance in the last lecture on the subconscious "incubation" of motives deposited by a growing experience, i followed the method of employing accepted principles of explanation as far as one can. the subliminal region, whatever else it may be, is at any rate a place now admitted by psychologists to exist for the accumulation of vestiges of sensible experience (whether inattentively or attentively registered), and for their elaboration according to ordinary psychological or logical laws into results that end by attaining such a "tension" that they may at times enter consciousness with something like a burst. it thus is "scientific" to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alterations of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories reaching the bursting-point. but candor obliges me to confess that there are occasional bursts into consciousness of results of which it is not easy to demonstrate any prolonged subconscious incubation. some of the cases i used to illustrate the sense of presence of the unseen in lecture iii were of this order (compare pages , , , ); and we shall see other experiences of the kind when we come to the subject of mysticism. the case of mr. bradley, that of m. ratisbonne, possibly that of colonel gardiner, possibly that of saint paul, might not be so easily explained in this simple way. the result, then, would have to be ascribed either to a merely physiological nerve storm, a "discharging lesion" like that of epilepsy; or, in case it were useful and rational, as in the two latter cases named, to some more mystical or theological hypothesis. i make this remark in order that the reader may realize that the subject is really complex. but i shall keep myself as far as possible at present to the more "scientific" view; and only as the plot thickens in subsequent lectures shall i consider the question of its absolute sufficiency as an explanation of all the facts. that subconscious incubation explains a great number of them, there can be no doubt. edwards says elsewhere: "i am bold to say that the work of god in the conversion of one soul, considered together with the source, foundation, and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end, and eternal issue of it, is a more glorious work of god than the creation of the whole material universe." emerson writes: "when we see a soul whose acts are regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank god that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say: crump is a better man, with his grunting resistance to all his native devils." true enough. yet crump may really be the better _crump_, for his inner discords and second birth; and your once-born "regal" character, though indeed always better than poor crump, may fall far short of what he individually might be had he only some crump-like capacity for compunction over his own peculiar diabolisms, graceful and pleasant and invariably gentlemanly as these may be. in his book, the spiritual life, new york, . op. cit., p. . op. cit., p. . i piece together a quotation made by w. monod, in his book la vie, and a letter printed in the work: adolphe monod: i., souvenirs de sa vie, , p. . commentary on galatians, ch. iii. verse , and ch. ii. verse , abridged. in some conversions, both steps are distinct; in this one, for example:-- "whilst i was reading the evangelical treatise, i was soon struck by an expression: 'the finished work of christ.' 'why,' i asked of myself, 'does the author use these terms? why does he not say "the atoning work"?' then these words, 'it is finished,' presented themselves to my mind. 'what is it that is finished?' i asked, and in an instant my mind replied: 'a perfect expiation for sin; entire satisfaction has been given; the debt has been paid by the substitute. christ has died for our sins; not for ours only, but for those of all men. if, then, the entire work is finished, all the debt paid, what remains for me to do?' in another instant the light was shed through my mind by the holy ghost, and the joyous conviction was given me that nothing more was to be done, save to fall on my knees, to accept this saviour and his love, to praise god forever." autobiography of hudson taylor. i translate back into english from the french translation of challand (geneva, no date), the original not being accessible. tolstoy's case was a good comment on those words. there was almost no theology in his conversion. his faith-state was the sense come back that life was infinite in its moral significance. american journal of psychology, vii. - , abridged. above, p. . dwight: life of edwards, new york, , p. , abridged. w. f. bourne: the king's son, a memoir of billy bray, london, hamilton, adams & co., , p. . consult william b. sprague: lectures on revivals of religion, new york, , in the long appendix to which the opinions of a large number of ministers are given. memoirs, p. . these reports of sensorial photism shade off into what are evidently only metaphorical accounts of the sense of new spiritual illumination, as, for instance, in brainerd's statement: "as i was walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. i do not mean any external brightness, for i saw no such thing, nor any imagination of a body of light in the third heavens, or anything of that nature, but it was a new inward apprehension or view that i had of god." in a case like this next one from starbuck's manuscript collection, the lighting up of the darkness is probably also metaphorical:-- "one sunday night, i resolved that when i got home to the ranch where i was working, i would offer myself with my faculties and all to god to be used only by and for him.... it was raining and the roads were muddy; but this desire grew so strong that i kneeled down by the side of the road and told god all about it, intending then to get up and go on. such a thing as any special answer to my prayer never entered my mind, having been converted by faith, but still being most undoubtedly saved. well, while i was praying, i remember holding out my hands to god and telling him they should work for him, my feet walk for him, my tongue speak for him, etc., etc., if he would only use me as his instrument and give me a satisfying experience--when suddenly the darkness of the night seemed lit up--i felt, realized, knew, that god heard and answered my prayer. deep happiness came over me; i felt i was accepted into the inner circle of god's loved ones." in the following case also the flash of light is metaphorical:-- "a prayer meeting had been called for at close of evening service. the minister supposed me impressed by his discourse (a mistake--he was dull). he came and, placing his hand upon my shoulder, said: 'do you not want to give your heart to god?' i replied in the affirmative. then said he, 'come to the front seat.' they sang and prayed and talked with me. i experienced nothing but unaccountable wretchedness. they declared that the reason why i did not 'obtain peace' was because i was not willing to give up all to god. after about two hours the minister said we would go home. as usual, on retiring, i prayed. in great distress, i at this time simply said, 'lord, i have done all i can, i leave the whole matter with thee.' immediately, like a flash of light, there came to me a great peace, and i arose and went into my parents' bedroom and said, 'i do feel so wonderfully happy.' this i regard as the hour of conversion. it was the hour in which i became assured of divine acceptance and favor. so far as my life was concerned, it made little immediate change." i add in a note a few more records:-- "one morning, being in deep distress, fearing every moment i should drop into hell, i was constrained to cry in earnest for mercy, and the lord came to my relief, and delivered my soul from the burden and guilt of sin. my whole frame was in a tremor from head to foot, and my soul enjoyed sweet peace. the pleasure i then felt was indescribable. the happiness lasted about three days, during which time i never spoke to any person about my feelings." autobiography of dan young, edited by w. p. strickland, new york, . "in an instant there rose up in me such a sense of god's taking care of those who put their trust in him that for an hour all the world was crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and i sprang to my feet and began to cry and laugh." h. w. beecher, quoted by leuba. "my tears of sorrow changed to joy, and i lay there praising god in such ecstasy of joy as only the soul who experiences it can realize."--"i cannot express how i felt. it was as if i had been in a dark dungeon and lifted into the light of the sun. i shouted and i sang praise unto him who loved me and washed me from my sins. i was forced to retire into a secret place, for the tears did flow, and i did not wish my shopmates to see me, and yet i could not keep it a secret."--"i experienced joy almost to weeping."--"i felt my face must have shone like that of moses. i had a general feeling of buoyancy. it was the greatest joy it was ever my lot to experience."--"i wept and laughed alternately. i was as light as if walking on air. i felt as if i had gained greater peace and happiness than i had ever expected to experience." starbuck's correspondents. psychology of religion, pp. , . sainte-beuve: port-royal, vol. i. pp. and , abridged. " 'love would not be love,' says bourget, 'unless it could carry one to crime.' and so one may say that no passion would be a veritable passion unless it could carry one to crime." (sighele: psychologie des sectes, p. .) in other words, great passions annul the ordinary inhibitions set by "conscience." and conversely, of all the criminal human beings, the false, cowardly, sensual, or cruel persons who actually live, there is perhaps not one whose criminal impulse may not be at some moment overpowered by the presence of some other emotion to which his character is also potentially liable, provided that other emotion be only made intense enough. fear is usually the most available emotion for this result in this particular class of persons. it stands for conscience, and may here be classed appropriately as a "higher affection." if we are soon to die, or if we believe a day of judgment to be near at hand, how quickly do we put our moral house in order--we do not see how sin can evermore exert temptation over us! old-fashioned hell-fire christianity well knew how to extract from fear its full equivalent in the way of fruits for repentance, and its full conversion value. example: benjamin constant was often marveled at as an extraordinary instance of superior intelligence with inferior character. he writes (journal, paris, , p. ), "i am tossed and dragged about by my miserable weakness. never was anything so ridiculous as my indecision. now marriage, now solitude; now germany, now france, hesitation upon hesitation, and all because at bottom i am _unable to give up anything_." he can't "get mad" at any of his alternatives; and the career of a man beset by such an all-round amiability is hopeless. the great thing which the higher excitabilities give is _courage_; and the addition or subtraction of a certain amount of this quality makes a different man, a different life. various excitements let the courage loose. trustful hope will do it; inspiring example will do it; love will do it; wrath will do it. in some people it is natively so high that the mere touch of danger does it, though danger is for most men the great inhibitor of action. "love of adventure" becomes in such persons a ruling passion. "i believe," says general skobeleff, "that my bravery is simply the passion and at the same time the contempt of danger. the risk of life fills me with an exaggerated rapture. the fewer there are to share it, the more i like it. the participation of my body in the event is required to furnish me an adequate excitement. everything intellectual appears to me to be reflex; but a meeting of man to man, a duel, a danger into which i can throw myself headforemost, attracts me, moves me, intoxicates me. i am crazy for it, i love it, i adore it. i run after danger as one runs after women; i wish it never to stop. were it always the same, it would always bring me a new pleasure. when i throw myself into an adventure in which i hope to find it, my heart palpitates with the uncertainty; i could wish at once to have it appear and yet to delay. a sort of painful and delicious shiver shakes me; my entire nature runs to meet the peril with an impetus that my will would in vain try to resist." (juliette adam: le général skobeleff, nouvelle revue, , abridged.) skobeleff seems to have been a cruel egoist; but the disinterested garibaldi, if one may judge by his "memorie," lived in an unflagging emotion of similar danger-seeking excitement. see the case on p. , above, where the writer describes his experiences of communion with the divine as consisting "merely in the _temporary obliteration of the conventionalities_ which usually cover my life." above, p. . "the only radical remedy i know for dipsomania is religiomania," is a saying i have heard quoted from some medical man. doddridge's life of colonel james gardiner, london religious tract society, pp. - . here, for example, is a case, from starbuck's book, in which a "sensory automatism" brought about quickly what prayers and resolves had been unable to effect. the subject is a woman. she writes:-- "when i was about forty i tried to quit smoking, but the desire was on me, and had me in its power. i cried and prayed and promised god to quit, but could not. i had smoked for fifteen years. when i was fifty-three, as i sat by the fire one day smoking, a voice came to me. i did not hear it with my ears, but more as a dream or sort of double think. it said, 'louisa, lay down smoking.' at once i replied, 'will you take the desire away?' but it only kept saying: 'louisa, lay down smoking.' then i got up, laid my pipe on the mantel-shelf, and never smoked again or had any desire to. the desire was gone as though i had never known it or touched tobacco. the sight of others smoking and the smell of smoke never gave me the least wish to touch it again." the psychology of religion, p. . professor starbuck expresses the radical destruction of old influences physiologically, as a cutting off of the connection between higher and lower cerebral centres. "this condition," he says, "in which the association-centres connected with the spiritual life are cut off from the lower, is often reflected in the way correspondents describe their experiences.... for example: 'temptations from without still assail me, but there is nothing _within_ to respond to them.' the ego [here] is wholly identified with the higher centres, whose quality of feeling is that of withinness. another of the respondents says: 'since then, although satan tempts me, there is as it were a wall of brass around me, so that his darts cannot touch me.' "--unquestionably, functional exclusions of this sort must occur in the cerebral organ. but on the side accessible to introspection, their causal condition is nothing but the degree of spiritual excitement, getting at last so high and strong as to be sovereign; and it must be frankly confessed that we do not know just why or how such sovereignty comes about in one person and not in another. we can only give our imagination a certain delusive help by mechanical analogies. if we should conceive, for example, that the human mind, with its different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many-sided solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body. as it is pried up, say by a lever, from a position in which it lies on surface a, for instance, it will linger for a time unstably halfway up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back or "relapse" under the continued pull of gravity. but if at last it rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond surface a altogether, the body will fall over, on surface b, say, and abide there permanently. the pulls of gravity towards a have vanished, and may now be disregarded. the polyhedron has become immune against farther attraction from their direction. in this figure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional influences making for a new life, and the initial pull of gravity to the ancient drawbacks and inhibitions. so long as the emotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it produces are unstable, and the man relapses into his original attitude. but when a certain intensity is attained by the new emotion, a critical point is passed, and there then ensues an irreversible revolution, equivalent to the production of a new nature. i use this word in spite of a certain flavor of "sanctimoniousness" which sometimes clings to it, because no other word suggests as well the exact combination of affections which the text goes on to describe. "it will be found," says dr. w. r. inge (in his lectures on christian mysticism, london, , p. ), "that men of preëminent saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us. they tell us that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediate experience, that god is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can see his footprints everywhere in nature, and feel his presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in proportion as they come to themselves they come to him. they tell us what separates us from him and from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms; and, secondly, sensuality in all its forms; that these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from us the face of god; while the path of the just is like a shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day." the "enthusiasm of humanity" may lead to a life which coalesces in many respects with that of christian saintliness. take the following rules proposed to members of the union pour l'action morale, in the bulletin de l'union, april - , . see, also, revue bleue, august , . "we would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, of discipline, of resignation and renunciation; we would teach the necessary perpetuity of suffering, and explain the creative part which it plays. we would wage war upon false optimism; on the base hope of happiness coming to us ready made; on the notion of a salvation by knowledge alone, or by material civilization alone, vain symbol as this is of civilization, precarious external arrangement, ill-fitted to replace the intimate union and consent of souls. we would wage war also on bad morals, whether in public or in private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over-refinement; on all that tends to increase the painful, immoral, and anti-social multiplication of our wants; on all that excites envy and dislike in the soul of the common people, and confirms the notion that the chief end of life is freedom to enjoy. we would preach by our example the respect of superiors and equals, the respect of all men; affectionate simplicity in our relations with inferiors and insignificant persons; indulgence where our own claims only are concerned, but firmness in our demands where they relate to duties towards others or towards the public. "for the common people are what we help them to become; their vices are our vices, gazed upon, envied, and imitated; and if they come back with all their weight upon us, it is but just." above, pp. ff. h. thoreau: walden, riverside edition, p. , abridged. c. h. hilty: glück, vol. i. p. . the mystery of pain and death, london, , p. . compare madame guyon: "it was my practice to arise at midnight for purposes of devotion.... it seemed to me that god came at the precise time and woke me from sleep in order that i might enjoy him. when i was out of health or greatly fatigued, he did not awake me, but at such times i felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of god. he loved me so much that he seemed to pervade my being, at a time when i could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence. my sleep is sometimes broken,--a sort of half sleep; but my soul seems to be awake enough to know god, when it is hardly capable of knowing anything else." t. c. upham: the life and religious experiences of madame de la mothe guyon, new york, , vol. i. p. . i have considerably abridged the words of the original, which is given in edwards's narrative of the revival in new england. bougaud: hist. de la bienheureuse marguerite marie, , p. . paris, . page . page . op. cit., p. . the barrier between men and animals also. we read of towianski, an eminent polish patriot and mystic, that "one day one of his friends met him in the rain, caressing a big dog which was jumping upon him and covering him horribly with mud. on being asked why he permitted the animal thus to dirty his clothes, towianski replied: 'this dog, whom i am now meeting for the first time, has shown a great fellow- feeling for me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance of his greetings. were i to drive him off, i should wound his feelings and do him a moral injury. it would be an offense not only to him, but to all the spirits of the other world who are on the same level with him. the damage which he does to my coat is as nothing in comparison with the wrong which i should inflict upon him, in case i were to remain indifferent to the manifestations of his friendship. we ought,' he added, 'both to lighten the condition of animals, whenever we can, and at the same time to facilitate in ourselves that union of the world of all spirits, which the sacrifice of christ has made possible.' " andré towianski, traduction de l'italien, turin, (privately printed). i owe my knowledge of this book and of towianski to my friend professor w. lutoslawski, author of "plato's logic." j. patterson's life of richard weaver, pp. - , abridged. as where the future buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar--having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should perish with him. bulletin de l'union pour l'action morale, september, . b. pascal: prières pour les maladies, §§ xiii., xiv., abridged. from thomas c. upham's life and religious opinions and experiences of madame de la mothe guyon, new york, , ii. , i. , , abridged. op. cit., london, , p. . claparÈde et goty: deux héroines de la foi, paris, , p. . compare these three different statements of it: a. p. call: as a matter of course, boston, ; h. w. dresser: living by the spirit, new york and london, ; h. w. smith: the christian's secret of a happy life, published by the willard tract repository, and now in thousands of hands. t. c. upham: life of madame catharine adorna, d ed., new york, , pp. , - . the history of thomas elwood, written by himself, london, , pp. - . memoirs of w.e. channing, boston, , i. . l. tyerman: the life and times of the rev. john wesley, i. . a. mounin: le curé d'ars, vie de m. j. b. m. vianney, , p. , abridged. b. wendell: cotton mather, new york, no date, p. . that of the earlier jesuit, rodriguez, which has been translated into all languages, is one of the best known. a convenient modern manual, very well put together, is l'ascétique chrétienne, by m. j. ribet, paris, poussielgue, nouvelle édition, . saint jean de la croix, vie et oeuvres, paris, , ii. , , abridged. "insects," i.e. lice, were an unfailing token of mediæval sainthood. we read of francis of assisi's sheepskin that "often a companion of the saint would take it to the fire to clean and _dispediculate_ it, doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father himself was no enemy of _pedocchi_, but on the contrary kept them on him (le portava adosso), and held it for an honor and a glory to wear these celestial pearls in his habit." quoted by p. sabatier: speculum perfectionis, etc., paris, , p. , note. the life of the blessed henry suso, by himself, translated by t. f. knox, london, , pp. - , abridged. bougaud: hist. de la bienheureuse marguerite marie, paris, , pp. , . compare, also, pp. , . lejeune: introduction à la vie mystique, , p. . the holocaust simile goes back at least as far as ignatius loyola. alfonso rodriguez, s. j.: pratique de la perfection chrétienne, part iii., treatise v., ch. x. letters li. and cxx. of the collection translated into french by bouix, paris, . bartoli-michel, ii. . rodriguez: op. cit., part iii., treatise v., ch. vi. sainte-beuve: histoire de port royal, i. . rodriguez: op. cit., part iii., treatise iii., chaps. vi., vii. r. philip: the life and times of george whitefield, london, , p. . edward carpenter: towards democracy, p. , abridged. speculum perfectionis, ed. p. sabatier, paris, , pp. , . an apology for m. antonia bourignon, london, , pp. , , abridged. another example from starbuck's ms. collection:-- "at a meeting held at six the next morning, i heard a man relate his experience. he said: the lord asked him if he would confess christ among the quarrymen with whom he worked, and he said he would. then he asked him if he would give up to be used of the lord the four hundred dollars he had laid up, and he said he would, and thus the lord saved him. the thought came to me at once that i had never made a real consecration either of myself or of my property to the lord, but had always tried to serve the lord in _my_ way. now the lord asked me if i would serve him in _his_ way, and go out alone and penniless if he so ordered. the question was pressed home, and i must decide: to forsake all and have him, or have all and lose him! i soon decided to take him; and the blessed assurance came, that he had taken me for his own, and my joy was full. i returned home from the meeting with feelings as simple as a child. i thought all would be glad to hear of the joy of the lord that possessed me, and so i began to tell the simple story. but to my great surprise, the pastors (for i attended meetings in three churches) opposed the experience and said it was fanaticism, and one told the members of his church to shun those that professed it, and i soon found that my foes were those of my own household." j. j. chapman, in the political nursery, vol. iv. p. , april, , abridged. george fox: journal, philadelphia, , pp. - , abridged. christian saints have had their specialties of devotion, saint francis to christ's wounds; saint anthony of padua to christ's childhood; saint bernard to his humanity; saint teresa to saint joseph, etc. the shi-ite mohammedans venerate ali, the prophet's son-in-law, instead of abu-bekr, his brother-in-law. vambéry describes a dervish whom he met in persia, "who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before, that he would never employ his organs of speech otherwise but in uttering, everlastingly, the name of his favorite, _ali, ali_. he thus wished to signify to the world that he was the most devoted partisan of that ali who had been dead a thousand years. in his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and friends, no other word but 'ali!' ever passed his lips. if he wanted food or drink or anything else, he expressed his wants still by repeating 'ali!' begging or buying at the bazaar, it was always 'ali!' treated ill or generously, he would still harp on his monotonous 'ali!' latterly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air, and shriek out, all the while, at the top of his voice, 'ali!' this dervish was venerated by everybody as a saint, and received everywhere with the greatest distinction." arminius vambÉry, his life and adventures, written by himself, london, , p. . on the anniversary of the death of hussein, ali's son, the shi-ite moslems still make the air resound with cries of his name and ali's. compare h. c. warren: buddhism in translation, cambridge, u. s., , passim. compare j. l. merrick: the life and religion of mohammed, as contained in the sheeah traditions of the hyat-ul-kuloob, boston, , passim. bougaud: hist. de la bienheureuse marguerite marie, paris, , p. . bougaud: hist. de la bienheureuse marguerite marie, paris, , pp. , . bougaud: op. cit., p. . examples: "suffering from a headache, she sought, for the glory of god, to relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in her mouth, when the lord appeared to her to lean over towards her lovingly, and to find comfort himself in these odors. after having gently breathed them in, he arose, and said with a gratified air to the saints, as if contented with what he had done: 'see the new present which my betrothed has given me!' "one day, at chapel, she heard supernaturally sung the words, '_sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_.' the son of god leaning towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said to her at the second sanctus: 'in this _sanctus_ addressed to my person, receive with this kiss all the sanctity of my divinity and of my humanity, and let it be to thee a sufficient preparation for approaching the communion table.' and the next following sunday, while she was thanking god for this favor, behold the son of god, more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her in his arms as if he were proud of her, and presents her to god the father, in that perfection of sanctity with which he had dowered her. and the father took such delight in this soul thus presented by his only son, that, as if unable longer to restrain himself, he gave her, and the holy ghost gave her also, the sanctity attributed to each by his own _sanctus_--and thus she remained endowed with the plenary fullness of the blessing of _sanctity_, bestowed on her by omnipotence, by wisdom, and by love." révélations de sainte gertrude, paris, , i. , . furneaux jordan: character in birth and parentage, first edition. later editions change the nomenclature. as to this distinction, see the admirably practical account in j. m. baldwin's little book, the story of the mind, . on this subject i refer to the work of m. murisier (les maladies du sentiment religieux, paris, ), who makes inner unification the mainspring of the whole religious life. but _all_ strongly ideal interests, religious or irreligious, unify the mind and tend to subordinate everything to themselves. one would infer from m. murisier's pages that this formal condition was peculiarly characteristic of religion, and that one might in comparison almost neglect material content, in studying the latter. i trust that the present work will convince the reader that religion has plenty of material content which is characteristic, and which is more important by far than any general psychological form. in spite of this criticism, i find m. murisier's book highly instructive. example: "at the first beginning of the servitor's [suso's] interior life, after he had purified his soul properly by confession, he marked out for himself, in thought, three circles, within which he shut himself up, as in a spiritual intrenchment. the first circle was his cell, his chapel, and the choir. when he was within this circle, he seemed to himself in complete security. the second circle was the whole monastery as far as the outer gate. the third and outermost circle was the gate itself, and here it was necessary for him to stand well upon his guard. when he went outside these circles, it seemed to him that he was in the plight of some wild animal which is outside its hole, and surrounded by the hunt, and therefore in need of all its cunning and watchfulness." the life of the blessed henry suso, by himself, translated by knox, london, , p. . vie des premières religieuses dominicaines de la congrégation de st. dominique, à nancy; nancy, , p. . meschler's life of saint louis of gonzaga, french translation by lebrÉquier, ; p. . in his boyish note-book he praises the monastic life for its freedom from sin, and for the imperishable treasures, which it enables us to store up, "of merit in god's eyes which makes of him our debtor for all eternity." loc. cit., p. . mademoiselle mori, a novel quoted in hare's walks in rome, , i. . i cannot resist the temptation to quote from starbuck's book, p. , another case of purification by elimination. it runs as follows:-- "the signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence. they get out of tune with other people; often they will have nothing to do with churches, which they regard as worldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow careless of their social, political, and financial obligations. as an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight of whom the writer made a special study. she had been a member of one of the most active and progressive churches in a busy part of a large city. her pastor described her as having reached the censorious stage. she had grown more and more out of sympathy with the church; her connection with it finally consisted simply in attendance at prayer-meeting, at which her only message was that of reproof and condemnation of the others for living on a low plane. at last she withdrew from fellowship with any church. the writer found her living alone in a little room on the top story of a cheap boarding-house, quite out of touch with all human relations, but apparently happy in the enjoyment of her own spiritual blessings. her time was occupied in writing booklets on sanctification--page after page of dreamy rhapsody. she proved to be one of a small group of persons who claim that entire salvation involves three steps instead of two; not only must there be conversion and sanctification, but a third, which they call 'crucifixion' or 'perfect redemption,' and which seems to bear the same relation to sanctification that this bears to conversion. she related how the spirit had said to her, 'stop going to church. stop going to holiness meetings. go to your own room and i will teach you.' she professes to care nothing for colleges, or preachers, or churches, but only cares to listen to what god says to her. her description of her experience seemed entirely consistent; she is happy and contented, and her life is entirely satisfactory to herself. while listening to her own story, one was tempted to forget that it was from the life of a person who could not live by it in conjunction with her fellows." the best missionary lives abound in the victorious combination of non-resistance with personal authority. john g. paton, for example, in the new hebrides, among brutish melanesian cannibals, preserves a charmed life by dint of it. when it comes to the point, no one ever dares actually to strike him. native converts, inspired by him, showed analogous virtue. "one of our chiefs, full of the christ- kindled desire to seek and to save, sent a message to an inland chief, that he and four attendants would come on sabbath and tell them the gospel of jehovah god. the reply came back sternly forbidding their visit, and threatening with death any christian that approached their village. our chief sent in response a loving message, telling them that jehovah had taught the christians to return good for evil, and that they would come unarmed to tell them the story of how the son of god came into the world and died in order to bless and save his enemies. the heathen chief sent back a stern and prompt reply once more: 'if you come, you will be killed.' on sabbath morn the christian chief and his four companions were met outside the village by the heathen chief, who implored and threatened them once more. but the former said:-- " 'we come to you without weapons of war! we come only to tell you about jesus. we believe that he will protect us to-day.' "as they pressed steadily forward towards the village, spears began to be thrown at them. some they evaded, being all except one dexterous warriors; and others they literally received with their bare hands, and turned them aside in an incredible manner. the heathen, apparently thunderstruck at these men thus approaching them without weapons of war, and not even flinging back their own spears which they had caught, after having thrown what the old chief called 'a shower of spears,' desisted from mere surprise. our christian chief called out, as he and his companions drew up in the midst of them on the village public ground:-- " 'jehovah thus protects us. he has given us all your spears! once we would have thrown them back at you and killed you. but now we come, not to fight but to tell you about jesus. he has changed our dark hearts. he asks you now to lay down all these your other weapons of war, and to hear what we can tell you about the love of god, our great father, the only living god.' "the heathen were perfectly overawed. they manifestly looked on these christians as protected by some invisible one. they listened for the first time to the story of the gospel and of the cross. we lived to see that chief and all his tribe sitting in the school of christ. and there is perhaps not an island in these southern seas, amongst all those won for christ, where similar acts of heroism on the part of converts cannot be recited." john g. paton, missionary to the new hebrides, an autobiography, second part, london, , p. . saint peter, saint teresa tells us in her autobiography (french translation, p. ), "had passed forty years without ever sleeping more than an hour and a half a day. of all his mortifications, this was the one that had cost him the most. to compass it, he kept always on his knees or on his feet. the little sleep he allowed nature to take was snatched in a sitting posture, his head leaning against a piece of wood fixed in the wall. even had he wished to lie down, it would have been impossible, because his cell was only four feet and a half long. in the course of all these years he never raised his hood, no matter what the ardor of the sun or the rain's strength. he never put on a shoe. he wore a garment of coarse sackcloth, with nothing else upon his skin. this garment was as scant as possible, and over it a little cloak of the same stuff. when the cold was great he took off the cloak and opened for a while the door and little window of his cell. then he closed them and resumed the mantle,--his way, as he told us, of warming himself, and making his body feel a better temperature. it was a frequent thing with him to eat once only in three days; and when i expressed my surprise, he said that it was very easy if one once had acquired the habit. one of his companions has assured me that he has gone sometimes eight days without food.... his poverty was extreme; and his mortification, even in his youth, was such that he told me he had passed three years in a house of his order without knowing any of the monks otherwise than by the sound of their voice, for he never raised his eyes, and only found his way about by following the others. he showed this same modesty on public highways. he spent many years without ever laying eyes upon a woman; but he confessed to me that at the age he had reached it was indifferent to him whether he laid eyes on them or not. he was very old when i first came to know him, and his body so attenuated that it seemed formed of nothing so much as of so many roots of trees. with all this sanctity he was very affable. he never spoke unless he was questioned, but his intellectual right-mindedness and grace gave to all his words an irresistible charm." f. max mÜller: ramakrishna, his life and sayings, , p. . oldenberg: buddha; translated by w. hoey, london, , p. . "the vanities of all others may die out, but the vanity of a saint as regards his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away." ramakrishna, his life and sayings, , p. . "when a church has to be run by oysters, ice-cream, and fun," i read in an american religious paper, "you may be sure that it is running away from christ." such, if one may judge by appearances, is the present plight of many of our churches. c. v. b. k.: friedens- und kriegs-moral der heere. quoted by hamon: psychologie du militaire professional, , p. xli. zur genealogie der moral, dritte abhandlung, § . i have abridged, and in one place transposed, a sentence. we all know _daft_ saints, and they inspire a queer kind of aversion. but in comparing saints with strong men we must choose individuals on the same intellectual level. the under-witted strong man, homologous in his sphere with the under-witted saint, is the bully of the slums, the hooligan or rowdy. surely on this level also the saint preserves a certain superiority. see above, p. . above, pp. - . newman's _securus judicat orbis terrarum_ is another instance. "mesopotamia" is the stock comic instance.--an excellent old german lady, who had done some traveling in her day, used to describe to me her _sehnsucht_ that she might yet visit "philadelphia," whose wondrous name had always haunted her imagination. of john foster it is said that "single words (as _chalcedony_), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fascination over him. 'at any time the word _hermit_ was enough to transport him.' the words _woods_ and _forests_ would produce the most powerful emotion." foster's life, by ryland, new york, , p. . the two voices. in a letter to mr. b. p. blood, tennyson reports of himself as follows:-- "i have never had any revelations through anæsthetics, but a kind of waking trance--this for lack of a better word--i have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when i have been all alone. this has come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words--where death was an almost laughable impossibility--the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. i am ashamed of my feeble description. have i not said the state is utterly beyond words?" professor tyndall, in a letter, recalls tennyson saying of this condition: "by god almighty! there is no delusion in the matter! it is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder, associated with absolute clearness of mind." memoirs of alfred tennyson, ii. . the lancet, july and , , reprinted as the cavendish lecture, on dreamy mental states, london, baillière, . they have been a good deal discussed of late by psychologists. see, for example, bernard-leroy: l'illusion de fausse reconnaissance, paris, . charles kingsley's life, i. , quoted by inge: christian mysticism, london, , p. . h. f. brown: j. a. symonds, a biography, london, , pp. - , abridged. crichton-browne expressly says that symonds's "highest nerve centres were in some degree enfeebled or damaged by these dreamy mental states which afflicted him so grievously." symonds was, however, a perfect monster of many-sided cerebral efficiency, and his critic gives no objective grounds whatever for his strange opinion, save that symonds complained occasionally, as all susceptible and ambitious men complain, of lassitude and uncertainty as to his life's mission. what reader of hegel can doubt that that sense of a perfected being with all its otherness soaked up into itself, which dominates his whole philosophy, must have come from the prominence in his consciousness of mystical moods like this, in most persons kept subliminal? the notion is thoroughly characteristic of the mystical level, and the _aufgabe_ of making it articulate was surely set to hegel's intellect by mystical feeling. benjamin paul blood: the anæsthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy, amsterdam, n. y., , pp. , . mr. blood has made several attempts to adumbrate the anæsthetic revelation, in pamphlets of rare literary distinction, privately printed and distributed by himself at amsterdam. xenos clark, a philosopher, who died young at amherst in the ' 's, much lamented by those who knew him, was also impressed by the revelation. "in the first place," he once wrote to me, "mr. blood and i agree that the revelation is, if anything, non-emotional. it is utterly flat. it is, as mr. blood says, 'the one sole and sufficient insight why, or not why, but how, the present is pushed on by the past, and sucked forward by the vacuity of the future. its inevitableness defeats all attempts at stopping or accounting for it. it is all precedence and presupposition, and questioning is in regard to it forever too late. it is an _initiation of the past_.' the real secret would be the formula by which the 'now' keeps exfoliating out of itself, yet never escapes. what is it, indeed, that keeps existence exfoliating? the formal being of anything, the logical definition of it, is static. for mere logic every question contains its own answer--we simply fill the hole with the dirt we dug out. why are twice two four? because, in fact, four is twice two. thus logic finds in life no propulsion, only a momentum. it goes because it is a-going. but the revelation adds: it goes because it is and _was_ a-going. you walk, as it were, round yourself in the revelation. ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own trail. the more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. so the present is already a foregone conclusion, and i am ever too late to understand it. but at the moment of recovery from anæsthesis, just then, _before starting on life_, i catch, so to speak, a glimpse of my heels, a glimpse of the eternal process just in the act of starting. the truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there),--which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning. that is why there is a smile upon the face of the revelation, as we view it. it tells us that we are forever half a second too late--that's all. 'you could kiss your own lips, and have all the fun to yourself,' it says, if you only knew the trick. it would be perfectly easy if they would just stay there till you got round to them. why don't you manage it somehow?" dialectically minded readers of this farrago will at least recognize the region of thought of which mr. clark writes, as familiar. in his latest pamphlet, "tennyson's trances and the anæsthetic revelation," mr. blood describes its value for life as follows:-- "the anæsthetic revelation is the initiation of man into the immemorial mystery of the open secret of being, revealed as the inevitable vortex of continuity. inevitable is the word. its motive is inherent--it is what has to be. it is not for any love or hate, nor for joy nor sorrow, nor good nor ill. end, beginning, or purpose, it knows not of. "it affords no particular of the multiplicity and variety of things; but it fills appreciation of the historical and the sacred with a secular and intimately personal illumination of the nature and motive of existence, which then seems reminiscent--as if it should have appeared, or shall yet appear, to every participant thereof. "although it is at first startling in its solemnity, it becomes directly such a matter of course--so old-fashioned, and so akin to proverbs, that it inspires exultation rather than fear, and a sense of safety, as identified with the aboriginal and the universal. but no words may express the imposing certainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial, adamic surprise of life. "repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it could not possibly be otherwise. the subject resumes his normal consciousness only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence, and to try to formulate its baffling import,--with only this consolatory afterthought: that he has known the oldest truth, and that he has done with human theories as to the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race. he is beyond instruction in 'spiritual things.' "the lesson is one of central safety: the kingdom is within. all days are judgment days: but there can be no climacteric purpose of eternity, nor any scheme of the whole. the astronomer abridges the row of bewildering figures by increasing his unit of measurement: so may we reduce the distracting multiplicity of things to the unity for which each of us stands. "this has been my moral sustenance since i have known of it. in my first printed mention of it i declared: 'the world is no more the alien terror that was taught me. spurning the cloud-grimed and still sultry battlements whence so lately jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull lifts her wing against the nightfall, and takes the dim leagues with a fearless eye.' and now, after twenty-seven years of this experience, the wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while i renew and doubly emphasize that declaration. i know--as having known--the meaning of existence: the sane centre of the universe--at once the wonder and the assurance of the soul--for which the speech of reason has as yet no name but the anæsthetic revelation."--i have considerably abridged the quotation. op. cit., pp. - , abridged. i subjoin, also abridging it, another interesting anæsthetic revelation communicated to me in manuscript by a friend in england. the subject, a gifted woman, was taking ether for a surgical operation. "i wondered if i was in a prison being tortured, and why i remembered having heard it said that people 'learn through suffering,' and in view of what i was seeing, the inadequacy of this saying struck me so much that i said, aloud, 'to suffer _is_ to learn.' "with that i became unconscious again, and my last dream immediately preceded my real coming to. it only lasted a few seconds, and was most vivid and real to me, though it may not be clear in words. "a great being or power was traveling through the sky, his foot was on a kind of lightning as a wheel is on a rail, it was his pathway. the lightning was made entirely of the spirits of innumerable people close to one another, and i was one of them. he moved in a straight line, and each part of the streak or flash came into its short conscious existence only that he might travel. i seemed to be directly under the foot of god, and i thought he was grinding his own life up out of my pain. then i saw that what he had been trying with all his might to do was to _change his course_, to _bend_ the line of lightning to which he was tied, in the direction in which he wanted to go. i felt my flexibility and helplessness, and knew that he would succeed. he bended me, turning his corner by means of my hurt, hurting me more than i had ever been hurt in my life, and at the acutest point of this, as he passed, i _saw_. i understood for a moment things that i have now forgotten, things that no one could remember while retaining sanity. the angle was an obtuse angle, and i remember thinking as i woke that had he made it a right or acute angle, i should have both suffered and 'seen' still more, and should probably have died. "he went on and i came to. in that moment the whole of my life passed before me, including each little meaningless piece of distress, and i _understood_ them. _this_ was what it had all meant, _this_ was the piece of work it had all been contributing to do. i did not see god's purpose, i only saw his intentness and his entire relentlessness towards his means. he thought no more of me than a man thinks of hurting a cork when he is opening wine, or hurting a cartridge when he is firing. and yet, on waking, my first feeling was, and it came with tears, 'domine non sum digna,' for i had been lifted into a position for which i was too small. i realized that in that half hour under ether i had served god more distinctly and purely than i had ever done in my life before, or that i am capable of desiring to do. i was the means of his achieving and revealing something, i know not what or to whom, and that, to the exact extent of my capacity for suffering. "while regaining consciousness, i wondered why, since i had gone so deep, i had seen nothing of what the saints call the _love_ of god, nothing but his relentlessness. and then i heard an answer, which i could only just catch, saying, 'knowledge and love are one, and the _measure_ is suffering'--i give the words as they came to me. with that i came finally to (into what seemed a dream world compared with the reality of what i was leaving), and i saw that what would be called the 'cause' of my experience was a slight operation under insufficient ether, in a bed pushed up against a window, a common city window in a common city street. if i had to formulate a few of the things i then caught a glimpse of, they would run somewhat as follows:-- "the eternal necessity of suffering and its eternal vicariousness. the veiled and incommunicable nature of the worst sufferings;--the passivity of genius, how it is essentially instrumental and defenseless, moved, not moving, it must do what it does;--the impossibility of discovery without its price;--finally, the excess of what the suffering 'seer' or genius pays over what his generation gains. (he seems like one who sweats his life out to earn enough to save a district from famine, and just as he staggers back, dying and satisfied, bringing a lac of rupees to buy grain with, god lifts the lac away, dropping _one_ rupee, and says, 'that you may give them. that you have earned for them. the rest is for me.') i perceived also in a way never to be forgotten, the excess of what we see over what we can demonstrate. "and so on!--these things may seem to you delusions, or truisms; but for me they are dark truths, and the power to put them into even such words as these has been given me by an ether dream." in tune with the infinite, p. . the larger god may then swallow up the smaller one. i take this from starbuck's manuscript collection:-- "i never lost the consciousness of the presence of god until i stood at the foot of the horseshoe falls, niagara. then i lost him in the immensity of what i saw. i also lost myself, feeling that i was an atom too small for the notice of almighty god." i subjoin another similar case from starbuck's collection:-- "in that time the consciousness of god's nearness came to me sometimes. i say god, to describe what is indescribable. a presence, i might say, yet that is too suggestive of personality, and the moments of which i speak did not hold the consciousness of a personality, but something in myself made me feel myself a part of something bigger than i, that was controlling. i felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in nature. i exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all--the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-trunks, and so on. in the years following, such moments continued to come, but i wanted them constantly. i knew so well the satisfaction of losing self in a perception of supreme power and love, that i was unhappy because that perception was not constant." the cases quoted in my third lecture, pp. , , , are still better ones of this type. in her essay, the loss of personality, in the atlantic monthly (vol. lxxxv. p. ), miss ethel d. puffer explains that the vanishing of the sense of self, and the feeling of immediate unity with the object, is due to the disappearance, in these rapturous experiences, of the motor adjustments which habitually intermediate between the constant background of consciousness (which is the self) and the object in the foreground, whatever it may be. i must refer the reader to the highly instructive article, which seems to me to throw light upon the psychological conditions, though it fails to account for the rapture or the revelation-value of the experience in the subject's eyes. op. cit., i. - . memoiren einer idealistin, te auflage, , iii. . for years she had been unable to pray, owing to materialistic belief. whitman in another place expresses in a quieter way what was probably with him a chronic mystical perception: "there is," he writes, "apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education (though i think it the goal and apex of all education deserving the name), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousness, this revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call _the world_; a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in the hand of the hunter. [of] such soul-sight and root-centre for the mind mere optimism explains only the surface." whitman charges it against carlyle that he lacked this perception. specimen days and collect, philadelphia, , p. . my quest for god, london, , pp. , , abridged. op. cit., pp. , , abridged. cosmic consciousness: a study in the evolution of the human mind, philadelphia, , p. . loc. cit., pp. , . my quotation follows the privately printed pamphlet which preceded dr. bucke's larger work, and differs verbally a little from the text of the latter. my quotations are from vivekananda, raja yoga, london, . the completest source of information on yoga is the work translated by vihari lala mitra: yoga vasishta maha ramayana, vols., calcutta, - . a european witness, after carefully comparing the results of yoga with those of the hypnotic or dreamy states artificially producible by us, says: "it makes of its true disciples good, healthy, and happy men.... through the mastery which the yogi attains over his thoughts and his body, he grows into a 'character.' by the subjection of his impulses and propensities to his will, and the fixing of the latter upon the ideal of goodness, he becomes a 'personality' hard to influence by others, and thus almost the opposite of what we usually imagine a 'medium' so-called, or 'psychic subject' to be." karl kellner: yoga: eine skizze, münchen, , p. . i follow the account in c. f. koeppen: die religion des buddha, berlin, , i. ff. for a full account of him, see d. b. macdonald: the life of al- ghazzali, in the journal of the american oriental society, , vol. xx. p. . a. schmÖlders: essai sur les écoles philosophiques chez les arabes, paris, , pp. - , abridged. gÖrres's christliche mystik gives a full account of the facts. so does ribet's mystique divine, vols., paris, . a still more methodical modern work is the mystica theologia of vallgornera, vols., turin, . m. rÉcÉjac, in a recent volume, makes them essential. mysticism he defines as "the tendency to draw near to the absolute morally, _and by the aid of symbols_." see his fondements de la connaissance mystique, paris, , p. . but there are unquestionably mystical conditions in which sensible symbols play no part. saint john of the cross: the dark night of the soul, book ii. ch. xvii., in vie et oeuvres, me édition, paris, , iii. - . chapter xi. of book ii. of saint john's ascent of carmel is devoted to showing the harmfulness for the mystical life of the use of sensible imagery. in particular i omit mention of visual and auditory hallucinations, verbal and graphic automatisms, and such marvels as "levitation," stigmatization, and the healing of disease. these phenomena, which mystics have often presented (or are believed to have presented), have no essential mystical significance, for they occur with no consciousness of illumination whatever, when they occur, as they often do, in persons of non-mystical mind. consciousness of illumination is for us the essential mark of "mystical" states. the interior castle, fifth abode, ch. i., in oeuvres, translated by bouix, iii. - . bartoli-michel: vie de saint ignace de loyola, i. - . others have had illuminations about the created world, jacob boehme, for instance. at the age of twenty-five he was "surrounded by the divine light, and replenished with the heavenly knowledge; insomuch as going abroad into the fields to a green, at görlitz, he there sat down, and viewing the herbs and grass of the field, in his inward light he saw into their essences, use, and properties, which was discovered to him by their lineaments, figures, and signatures." of a later period of experience he writes: "in one quarter of an hour i saw and knew more than if i had been many years together at an university. for i saw and knew the being of all things, the byss and the abyss, and the eternal generation of the holy trinity, the descent and original of the world and of all creatures through the divine wisdom. i knew and saw in myself all the three worlds, the external and visible world being of a procreation or extern birth from both the internal and spiritual worlds; and i saw and knew the whole working essence, in the evil and in the good, and the mutual original and existence; and likewise how the fruitful bearing womb of eternity brought forth. so that i did not only greatly wonder at it, but did also exceedingly rejoice, albeit i could very hardly apprehend the same in my external man and set it down with the pen. for i had a thorough view of the universe as in a chaos, wherein all things are couched and wrapt up, but it was impossible for me to explicate the same." jacob behmen's theosophic philosophy, etc., by edward taylor, london, , pp. , , abridged. so george fox: "i was come up to the state of adam in which he was before he fell. the creation was opened to me; and it was showed me, how all things had their names given to them, according to their nature and virtue. i was at a stand in my mind, whether i should practice physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the lord." journal, philadelphia, no date, p. . contemporary "clairvoyance" abounds in similar revelations. andrew jackson davis's cosmogonies, for example, or certain experiences related in the delectable "reminiscences and memories of henry thomas butterworth," lebanon, ohio, . vie, pp. , . loc. cit., p. . saint teresa discriminates between pain in which the body has a part and pure spiritual pain (interior castle, th abode, ch. xi.). as for the bodily part in these celestial joys, she speaks of it as "penetrating to the marrow of the bones, whilst earthly pleasures affect only the surface of the senses. i think," she adds, "that this is a just description, and i cannot make it better." ibid., th abode, ch. i. vie, p. . oeuvres, ii. . above, p. . vie, pp. , , - , . mÜller's translation, part ii. p. . t. davidson's translation, in journal of speculative philosophy, , vol. xxii. p. . "deus propter excellentiam non immerito nihil vocatur." scotus erigena, quoted by andrew seth: two lectures on theism, new york, , p. . j. royce: studies in good and evil, p. . jacob behmen's dialogues on the supersensual life, translated by bernard holland, london, , p. . cherubinischer wandersmann, strophe . op. cit., pp. , , abridged. from a french book i take this mystical expression of happiness in god's indwelling presence:-- "jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart. it is not so much a habitation, an association, as a sort of fusion. oh, new and blessed life! life which becomes each day more luminous.... the wall before me, dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour because the sun shines on it. wherever its rays fall they light up a conflagration of glory; the smallest speck of glass sparkles, each grain of sand emits fire; even so there is a royal song of triumph in my heart because the lord is there. my days succeed each other; yesterday a blue sky; to-day a clouded sun; a night filled with strange dreams; but as soon as the eyes open, and i regain consciousness and seem to begin life again, it is always the same figure before me, always the same presence filling my heart.... formerly the day was dulled by the absence of the lord. i used to wake invaded by all sorts of sad impressions, and i did not find him on my path. to-day he is with me; and the light cloudiness which covers things is not an obstacle to my communion with him. i feel the pressure of his hand, i feel something else which fills me with a serene joy; shall i dare to speak it out? yes, for it is the true expression of what i experience. the holy spirit is not merely making me a visit; it is no mere dazzling apparition which may from one moment to another spread its wings and leave me in my night, it is a permanent habitation. he can depart only if he takes me with him. more than that; he is not other than myself: he is one with me. it is not a juxtaposition, it is a penetration, a profound modification of my nature, a new manner of my being." quoted from the ms. "of an old man" by wilfred monod: il vit: six méditations sur le mystère chrétien, pp. - . compare m. maeterlinck: l'ornement des noces spirituelles de ruysbroeck, bruxelles, , introduction, p. xix. upanishads, m. mÜller's translation, ii. , . schmÖlders: op. cit., p. . enneads, bouillier's translation, paris, , iii. . compare pp. - , and vol. i. p. . autobiography, pp. , . op. cit., strophe . h. p. blavatsky: the voice of the silence. swinburne: on the verge, in "a midsummer vacation." compare the extracts from dr. bucke, quoted on pp. , . as serious an attempt as i know to mediate between the mystical region and the discursive life is contained in an article on aristotle's unmoved mover, by f. c. s. schiller, in mind, vol. ix., . i abstract from weaker states, and from those cases of which the books are full, where the director (but usually not the subject) remains in doubt whether the experience may not have proceeded from the demon. example: mr. john nelson writes of his imprisonment for preaching methodism: "my soul was as a watered garden, and i could sing praises to god all day long; for he turned my captivity into joy, and gave me to rest as well on the boards, as if i had been on a bed of down. now could i say, 'god's service is perfect freedom,' and i was carried out much in prayer that my enemies might drink of the same river of peace which my god gave so largely to me." journal, london, no date, p. . ruysbroeck, in the work which maeterlinck has translated, has a chapter against the antinomianism of disciples. h. delacroix's book (essai sur le mysticisme spéculatif en allemagne au xivme siècle, paris, ) is full of antinomian material. compare also a. jundt: les amis de dieu au xivme siècle, thèse de strasbourg, . compare paul rousselot: les mystiques espagnols, paris, , ch. xii. see carpenter's towards democracy, especially the latter parts, and jefferies's wonderful and splendid mystic rhapsody, the story of my heart. in chapter i. of book ii. of his work degeneration, "max nordau" seeks to undermine all mysticism by exposing the weakness of the lower kinds. mysticism for him means any sudden perception of hidden significance in things. he explains such perception by the abundant uncompleted associations which experiences may arouse in a degenerate brain. these give to him who has the experience a vague and vast sense of its leading further, yet they awaken no definite or useful consequent in his thought. the explanation is a plausible one for certain sorts of feeling of significance; and other alienists (wernicke, for example, in his grundriss der psychiatrie, theil ii., leipzig, ) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. but the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. it seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which we as yet know nothing. they sometimes add subjective _audita et visa_ to the facts, but as these are usually interpreted as transmundane, they oblige no alteration in the facts of sense. compare professor w. wallace's gifford lectures, in lectures and essays, oxford, , pp. ff. op. cit., p. , abridged. ibid., p. , abridged and italicized. discourse ii. § . as regards the secondary character of intellectual constructions, and the primacy of feeling and instinct in founding religious beliefs, see the striking work of h. fielding, the hearts of men, london, , which came into my hands after my text was written. "creeds," says the author, "are the grammar of religion, they are to religion what grammar is to speech. words are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed afterwards. speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse. as speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must follow" (p. ). the whole book, which keeps unusually close to concrete facts, is little more than an amplification of this text. for convenience' sake, i follow the order of a. stÖckl's lehrbuch der philosophie, te auflage, mainz, , band ii. b. boedder's natural theology, london, , is a handy english catholic manual; but an almost identical doctrine is given by such protestant theologians as c. hodge: systematic theology, new york, , or a. h. strong: systematic theology, th edition, new york, . it must not be forgotten that any form of _dis_order in the world might, by the design argument, suggest a god for just that kind of disorder. the truth is that any state of things whatever that can be named is logically susceptible of teleological interpretation. the ruins of the earthquake at lisbon, for example: the whole of past history had to be planned exactly as it was to bring about in the fullness of time just that particular arrangement of débris of masonry, furniture, and once living bodies. no other train of causes would have been sufficient. and so of any other arrangement, bad or good, which might as a matter of fact be found resulting anywhere from previous conditions. to avoid such pessimistic consequences and save its beneficent designer, the design argument accordingly invokes two other principles, restrictive in their operation. the first is physical: nature's forces tend of their own accord only to disorder and destruction, to heaps of ruins, not to architecture. this principle, though plausible at first sight, seems, in the light of recent biology, to be more and more improbable. the second principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation. no arrangement that for _us_ is "disorderly" can possibly have been an object of design at all. this principle is of course a mere assumption in the interests of anthropomorphic theism. when one views the world with no definite theological bias one way or the other, one sees that order and disorder, as we now recognize them, are purely human inventions. we are interested in certain types of arrangement, useful, æsthetic, or moral,--so interested that whenever we find them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. the result is that we work over the contents of the world selectively. it is overflowing with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. if i should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, i could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. our dealings with nature are just like this. she is a vast _plenum_ in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable directions. we count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. there are in reality infinitely more things 'unadapted' to each other in this world than there are things 'adapted'; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. but we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory. it accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills our encyclopædias. yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention. the facts of order from which the physico-theological argument starts are thus easily susceptible of interpretation as arbitrary human products. so long as this is the case, although of course no argument against god follows, it follows that the argument for him will fail to constitute a knock-down proof of his existence. it will be convincing only to those who on other grounds believe in him already. for the scholastics the _facultas appetendi_ embraces feeling, desire, and will. op. cit., discourse iii. § . in an article, how to make our ideas clear, in the popular science monthly for january, , vol. xii. p. . pragmatically, the most important attribute of god is his punitive justice. but who, in the present state of theological opinion on that point, will dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent in some shape is rendered certain by pure logic? theology herself has largely based this doctrine upon revelation; and, in discussing it, has tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas of criminal law for a priori principles of reason. but the very notion that this glorious universe, with planets and winds, and laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams and rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modern imagination. it weakens a religion to hear it argued upon such a basis. john caird: an introduction to the philosophy of religion, london and new york, , pp. - , and - , much abridged. a. c. fraser: philosophy of theism, second edition, edinburgh and london, , especially part ii. chaps. vii. and viii.; a. seth [pringle-pattison]: hegelianism and personality, ibid., , passim. the most persuasive arguments in favor of a concrete individual soul of the world, with which i am acquainted, are those of my colleague, josiah royce, in his religious aspect of philosophy, boston, ; in his conception of god, new york and london, ; and lately in his aberdeen gifford lectures, the world and the individual, vols., new york and london, - . i doubtless seem to some of my readers to evade the philosophic duty which my thesis in this lecture imposes on me, by not even attempting to meet professor royce's arguments articulately. i admit the momentary evasion. in the present lectures, which are cast throughout in a popular mould, there seemed no room for subtle metaphysical discussion, and for tactical purposes it was sufficient, the contention of philosophy being what it is (namely, that religion can be transformed into a universally convincing science), to point to the fact that no religious philosophy has actually convinced the mass of thinkers. meanwhile let me say that i hope that the present volume may be followed by another, if i am spared to write it, in which not only professor royce's arguments, but others for monistic absolutism shall be considered with all the technical fullness which their great importance calls for. at present i resign myself to lying passive under the reproach of superficiality. idea of a university, discourse iii. § . newman's imagination so innately craved an ecclesiastical system that he can write: "from the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: i know no other religion; i cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion." and again, speaking of himself about the age of thirty, he writes: "i loved to act as feeling myself in my bishop's sight, as if it were the sight of god." apologia, , pp. , . the intellectual difference is quite on a par in practical importance with the analogous difference in character. we saw, under the head of saintliness, how some characters resent confusion and must live in purity, consistency, simplicity (above, p. ff.). for others, on the contrary, superabundance, over-pressure, stimulation, lots of superficial relations, are indispensable. there are men who would suffer a very syncope if you should pay all their debts, bring it about that their engagements had been kept, their letters answered, their perplexities relieved, and their duties fulfilled, down to one which lay on a clean table under their eyes with nothing to interfere with its immediate performance. a day stripped so staringly bare would be for them appalling. so with ease, elegance, tributes of affection, social recognitions--some of us require amounts of these things which to others would appear a mass of lying and sophistication. in newman's lectures on justification, lecture viii. § , there is a splendid passage expressive of this æsthetic way of feeling the christian scheme. it is unfortunately too long to quote. compare the informality of protestantism, where the "meek lover of the good," alone with his god, visits the sick, etc., for their own sakes, with the elaborate "business" that goes on in catholic devotion, and carries with it the social excitement of all more complex businesses. an essentially worldly-minded catholic woman can become a visitor of the sick on purely coquettish principles, with her confessor and director, her "merit" storing up, her patron saints, her privileged relation to the almighty, drawing his attention as a professional _dévote_, her definite "exercises," and her definitely recognized social _pose_ in the organization. above, p. ff. a fuller discussion of confession is contained in the excellent work by frank granger: the soul of a christian, london, , ch. xii. example: "the minister at sudbury, being at the thursday lecture in boston, heard the officiating clergyman praying for rain. as soon as the service was over, he went to the petitioner and said, 'you boston ministers, as soon as a tulip wilts under your windows, go to church and pray for rain, until all concord and sudbury are under water.' " r. w. emerson: lectures and biographical sketches, p. . auguste sabatier: esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion, me éd., , pp. - , abridged. my authority for these statistics is the little work on müller, by frederic g. warne, new york, . the life of trust; being a narrative of the lord's dealings with george müller, new american edition, n. y., crowell, pp. , , . ibid., p. . op. cit., p. , abridged. ibid., p. . i cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even more primitive style of religious thought, which i find in arber's english garland, vol. vii. p. . robert lyde, an english sailor, along with an english boy, being prisoners on a french ship in , set upon the crew, of seven frenchmen, killed two, made the other five prisoners, and brought home the ship. lyde thus describes how in this feat he found his god a very present help in time of trouble:-- "with the assistance of god i kept my feet when they three and one more did strive to throw me down. feeling the frenchman which hung about my middle hang very heavy, i said to the boy, 'go round the binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.' so the boy did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall.... then i looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them withal. but seeing nothing, i said, 'lord! what shall i do?' then casting up my eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, i jerked my right arm and took hold, and struck the point four times about a quarter of an inch deep into the skull of that man that had hold of my left arm. [one of the frenchmen then hauled the marlin spike away from him.] but through god's wonderful providence! it either fell out of his hand, or else he threw it down, and at this time the almighty god gave me strength enough to take one man in one hand, and throw at the other's head: and looking about again to see anything to strike them withal, but seeing nothing, i said, 'lord! what shall i do now?' and then it pleased god to put me in mind of my knife in my pocket. and although two of the men had hold of my right arm, yet god almighty strengthened me so that i put my right hand into my right pocket, drew out the knife and sheath, ... put it between my legs and drew it out, and then cut the man's throat with it that had his back to my breast: and he immediately dropt down, and scarce ever stirred after."--i have slightly abridged lyde's narrative. as, for instance, in answer to prayer, by the bishop of ripon and others, london, ; touching incidents and remarkable answers to prayer, harrisburg, pa., (?); h. l. hastings: the guiding hand, or providential direction, illustrated by authentic instances, boston, (?). c. hilty: glück, dritter theil, , pp. ff. "good heaven!" says epictetus, "any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a providence, to a humble and grateful mind. the mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from milk, and wool from skins; who formed and planned it? ought we not, whether we dig or plough or eat, to sing this hymn to god? great is god, who has supplied us with these instruments to till the ground; great is god, who has given us hands and instruments of digestion; who has given us to grow insensibly and to breathe in sleep. these things we ought forever to celebrate.... but because the most of you are blind and insensible, there must be some one to fill this station, and lead, in behalf of all men, the hymn to god; for what else can i do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to god? were i a nightingale, i would act the part of a nightingale; were i a swan, the part of a swan. but since i am a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise god ... and i call on you to join the same song." works, book i. ch. xvi., carter-higginson translation, abridged. james martineau: end of the sermon "help thou mine unbelief," in endeavours after a christian life, d series. compare with this page the extract from voysey on p. , above, and those from pascal and madame guyon on p. . souvenirs de ma jeunesse, , p. . op. cit., letter xxx. above, p. ff. compare the withdrawal of expression from the world, in melancholiacs, p. . above, pp. , . a friend of mine, a first-rate psychologist, who is a subject of graphic automatism, tells me that the appearance of independent actuation in the movements of his arm, when he writes automatically, is so distinct that it obliges him to abandon a psychophysical theory which he had previously believed in, the theory, namely, that we have no feeling of the discharge downwards of our voluntary motor-centres. we must normally have such a feeling, he thinks, or the _sense of an absence_ would not be so striking as it is in these experiences. graphic automatism of a fully developed kind is rare in religious history, so far as my knowledge goes. such statements as antonia bourignon's, that "i do nothing but lend my hand and spirit to another power than mine," is shown by the context to indicate inspiration rather than directly automatic writing. in some eccentric sects this latter occurs. the most striking instance of it is probably the bulky volume called, 'oahspe, a new bible in the words of jehovah and his angel ambassadors,' boston and london, , written and illustrated automatically by dr. newbrough of new york, whom i understand to be now, or to have been lately, at the head of the spiritistic community of shalam in new mexico. the latest automatically written book which has come under my notice is "zertoulem's wisdom of the ages," by george a. fuller, boston, . w. sanday: the oracles of god, london, , pp. - , abridged. op. cit., p. . this author also cites moses's and isaiah's commissions, as given in exodus, chaps. iii. and iv., and isaiah, chap. vi. quoted by augustus clissold: the prophetic spirit in genius and madness, , p. . mr. clissold is a swedenborgian. swedenborg's case is of course the palmary one of _audita et visa_, serving as a basis of religious revelation. nÖldeke, geschichte des qorâns, , p. . compare the fuller account in sir william muir's life of mahomet, d ed., , ch. iii. the mormon theocracy has always been governed by direct revelations accorded to the president of the church and its apostles. from an obliging letter written to me in by an eminent mormon, i quote the following extract:-- "it may be very interesting for you to know that the president [mr. snow] of the mormon church claims to have had a number of revelations very recently from heaven. to explain fully what these revelations are, it is necessary to know that we, as a people, believe that the church of jesus christ has again been established through messengers sent from heaven. this church has at its head a prophet, seer, and revelator, who gives to man god's holy will. revelation is the means through which the will of god is declared directly and in fullness to man. these revelations are got through dreams of sleep or in waking visions of the mind, by voices without visional appearance, or by actual manifestations of the holy presence before the eye. we believe that god has come in person and spoken to our prophet and revelator." for example, on pages , , , above. from this point of view, the contrasts between the healthy and the morbid mind, and between the once-born and the twice-born types, of which i spoke in earlier lectures (see pp. - ), cease to be the radical antagonisms which many think them. the twice-born look down upon the rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being "mere morality," and not properly religion. "dr. channing," an orthodox minister is reported to have said, "is excluded from the highest form of religious life by the extraordinary rectitude of his character." it is indeed true that the outlook upon life of the twice-born--holding as it does more of the element of evil in solution--is the wider and completer. the "heroic" or "solemn" way in which life comes to them is a "higher synthesis" into which healthy- mindedness and morbidness both enter and combine. evil is not evaded, but sublated in the higher religious cheer of these persons (see pp. - , - ). but the final consciousness which each type reaches of union with the divine has the same practical significance for the individual; and individuals may well be allowed to get to it by the channels which lie most open to their several temperaments. in the cases which were quoted in lecture iv, of the mind-cure form of healthy-mindedness, we found abundant examples of regenerative process. the severity of the crisis in this process is a matter of degree. how long one shall continue to drink the consciousness of evil, and when one shall begin to short-circuit and get rid of it, are also matters of amount and degree, so that in many instances it is quite arbitrary whether we class the individual as a once-born or a twice-born subject. compare, e.g., the quotation from renan on p. , above. "prayerful" taken in the broader sense explained above on pp. ff. how was it ever conceivable, we ask, that a man like christian wolff, in whose dry-as-dust head all the learning of the early eighteenth century was concentrated, should have preserved such a baby-like faith in the personal and human character of nature as to expound her operations as he did in his work on the uses of natural things? this, for example, is the account he gives of the sun and its utility:-- "we see that god has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions on the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts, may inhabit its surface. since men are the most reasonable of creatures, and able to infer god's invisible being from the contemplation of the world, the sun in so far forth contributes to the primary purpose of creation: without it the race of man could not be preserved or continued.... the sun makes daylight, not only on our earth, but also on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost utility to us; for by its means we can commodiously carry on those occupations which in the night-time would either be quite impossible, or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of artificial light. the beasts of the field can find food by day which they would not be able to find at night. moreover we owe it to the sunlight that we are able to see everything that is on the earth's surface, not only near by, but also at a distance, and to recognize both near and far things according to their species, which again is of manifold use to us not only in the business necessary to human life, and when we are traveling, but also for the scientific knowledge of nature, which knowledge for the most part depends on observations made with the help of sight, and, without the sunshine, would have been impossible. if any one would rightly impress on his mind the great advantages which he derives from the sun, let him imagine himself living through only one month, and see how it would be with all his undertakings, if it were not day but night. he would then be sufficiently convinced out of his own experience, especially if he had much work to carry on in the street or in the fields.... from the sun we learn to recognize when it is midday, and by knowing this point of time exactly, we can set our clocks right, on which account astronomy owes much to the sun.... by help of the sun one can find the meridian.... but the meridian is the basis of our sun-dials, and generally speaking, we should have no sun-dials if we had no sun." vernünftige gedanken von den absichten der natürlichen dinge, , pp. - . or read the account of god's beneficence in the institution of "the great variety throughout the world of men's faces, voices, and handwriting," given in derham's physico-theology, a book that had much vogue in the eighteenth century. "had man's body," says dr. derham, "been made according to any of the atheistical schemes, or any other method than that of the infinite lord of the world, this wise variety would never have been: but men's faces would have been cast in the same, or not a very different mould, their organs of speech would have sounded the same or not so great a variety of notes; and the same structure of muscles and nerves would have given the hand the same direction in writing. and in this case, what confusion, what disturbance, what mischiefs would the world eternally have lain under! no security could have been to our persons; no certainty, no enjoyment of our possessions; no justice between man and man; no distinction between good and bad, between friends and foes, between father and child, husband and wife, male or female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the malice of the envious and ill-natured, to the fraud and violence of knaves and robbers, to the forgeries of the crafty cheat, to the lusts of the effeminate and debauched, and what not! our courts of justice can abundantly testify the dire effects of mistaking men's faces, of counterfeiting their hands, and forging writings. but now as the infinitely wise creator and ruler hath ordered the matter, every man's face can distinguish him in the light, and his voice in the dark; his hand-writing can speak for him though absent, and be his witness, and secure his contracts in future generations. a manifest as well as admirable indication of the divine superintendence and management." a god so careful as to make provision even for the unmistakable signing of bank checks and deeds was a deity truly after the heart of eighteenth century anglicanism. i subjoin, omitting the capitals, derham's "vindication of god by the institution of hills and valleys," and wolff's altogether culinary account of the institution of water:-- "the uses," says wolff, "which water serves in human life are plain to see and need not be described at length. water is a universal drink of man and beasts. even though men have made themselves drinks that are artificial, they could not do this without water. beer is brewed of water and malt, and it is the water in it which quenches thirst. wine is prepared from grapes, which could never have grown without the help of water; and the same is true of those drinks which in england and other places they produce from fruit.... therefore since god so planned the world that men and beasts should live upon it and find there everything required for their necessity and convenience, he also made water as one means whereby to make the earth into so excellent a dwelling. and this is all the more manifest when we consider the advantages which we obtain from this same water for the cleaning of our household utensils, of our clothing, and of other matters.... when one goes into a grinding- mill one sees that the grindstone must always be kept wet and then one will get a still greater idea of the use of water." of the hills and valleys, derham, after praising their beauty, discourses as follows: "some constitutions are indeed of so happy a strength, and so confirmed an health, as to be indifferent to almost any place or temperature of the air. but then others are so weakly and feeble, as not to be able to bear one, but can live comfortably in another place. with some the more subtle and finer air of the hills doth best agree, who are languishing and dying in the feculent and grosser air of great towns, or even the warmer and vaporous air of the valleys and waters. but contrariwise, others languish on the hills, and grow lusty and strong in the warmer air of the valleys. "so that this opportunity of shifting our abode from the hills to the vales, is an admirable easement, refreshment, and great benefit to the valetudinarian, feeble part of mankind; affording those an easy and comfortable life, who would otherwise live miserably, languish, and pine away. "to this salutary conformation of the earth we may add another great convenience of the hills, and that is affording commodious places for habitation, serving (as an eminent author wordeth it) as screens to keep off the cold and nipping blasts of the northern and easterly winds, and reflecting the benign and cherishing sunbeams, and so rendering our habitations both more comfortable and more cheerly in winter. "lastly, it is to the hills that the fountains owe their rise and the rivers their conveyance, and consequently those vast masses and lofty piles are not, as they are charged, such rude and useless excrescences of our ill-formed globe; but the admirable tools of nature, contrived and ordered by the infinite creator, to do one of its most useful works. for, was the surface of the earth even and level, and the middle parts of its islands and continents not mountainous and high as now it is, it is most certain there could be no descent for the rivers, no conveyance for the waters; but, instead of gliding along those gentle declivities which the higher lands now afford them quite down to the sea, they would stagnate and perhaps stink, and also drown large tracts of land. "[thus] the hills and vales, though to a peevish and weary traveler they may seem incommodious and troublesome, yet are a noble work of the great creator, and wisely appointed by him for the good of our sublunary world." until the seventeenth century this mode of thought prevailed. one need only recall the dramatic treatment even of mechanical questions by aristotle, as, for example, his explanation of the power of the lever to make a small weight raise a larger one. this is due, according to aristotle, to the generally miraculous character of the circle and of all circular movement. the circle is both convex and concave; it is made by a fixed point and a moving line, which contradict each other; and whatever moves in a circle moves in opposite directions. nevertheless, movement in a circle is the most "natural" movement; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as it does, in the larger circle, has the greater amount of this natural motion, and consequently requires the lesser force. or recall the explanation by herodotus of the position of the sun in winter: it moves to the south because of the cold which drives it into the warm parts of the heavens over libya. or listen to saint augustine's speculations: "who gave to chaff such power to freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power to warm that it ripens green fruit? who can explain the strange properties of fire itself, which blackens all that it burns, though itself bright, and which, though of the most beautiful colors, discolors almost all that it touches and feeds upon, and turns blazing fuel into grimy cinders?... then what wonderful properties do we find in charcoal, which is so brittle that a light tap breaks it, and a slight pressure pulverizes it, and yet is so strong that no moisture rots it, nor any time causes it to decay." city of god, book xxi. ch. iv. such aspects of things as these, their naturalness and unnaturalness, the sympathies and antipathies of their superficial qualities, their eccentricities, their brightness and strength and destructiveness, were inevitably the ways in which they originally fastened our attention. if you open early medical books, you will find sympathetic magic invoked on every page. take, for example, the famous vulnerary ointment attributed to paracelsus. for this there were a variety of receipts, including usually human fat, the fat of either a bull, a wild boar, or a bear; powdered earthworms, the _usnia_, or mossy growth on the weathered skull of a hanged criminal, and other materials equally unpleasant--the whole prepared under the planet venus if possible, but never under mars or saturn. then, if a splinter of wood, dipped in the patient's blood, or the bloodstained weapon that wounded him, be immersed in this ointment, the wound itself being tightly bound up, the latter infallibly gets well,--i quote now van helmont's account,--for the blood on the weapon or splinter, containing in it the spirit of the wounded man, is roused to active excitement by the contact of the ointment, whence there results to it a full commission or power to cure its cousin-german, the blood in the patient's body. this it does by sucking out the dolorous and exotic impression from the wounded part. but to do this it has to implore the aid of the bull's fat, and other portions of the unguent. the reason why bull's fat is so powerful is that the bull at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive murmurs, and therefore dies with a higher flame of revenge about him than any other animal. and thus we have made it out, says this author, that the admirable efficacy of the ointment ought to be imputed, not to any auxiliary concurrence of satan, but simply to the energy of the _posthumous character of revenge_ remaining firmly impressed upon the blood and concreted fat in the unguent. j. b. van helmont: a ternary of paradoxes, translated by walter charleton, london, .--i much abridge the original in my citations. the author goes on to prove by the analogy of many other natural facts that this sympathetic action between things at a distance is the true rationale of the case. "if," he says, "the heart of a horse, slain by a witch, taken out of the yet reeking carcase, be impaled upon an arrow and roasted, immediately the whole witch becomes tormented with the insufferable pains and cruelty of the fire, which could by no means happen unless there preceded a conjunction of the spirit of the witch with the spirit of the horse. in the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch is kept captive, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. similarly hath not many a murdered carcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh hæmorrhage or cruentation at the presence of the assassin?--the blood being, as in a furious fit of anger, enraged and agitated by the impress of revenge conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's compulsive exile from the body. so, if you have dropsy, gout, or jaundice, by including some of your warm blood in the shell and white of an egg, which, exposed to a gentle heat, and mixed with a bait of flesh, you shall give to a hungry dog or hog, the disease shall instantly pass from you into the animal, and leave you entirely. and similarly again, if you burn some of the milk either of a cow or of a woman, the gland from which it issued will dry up. a gentleman at brussels had his nose mowed off in a combat, but the celebrated surgeon tagliacozzus digged a new nose for him out of the skin of the arm of a porter at bologna. about thirteen months after his return to his own country, the engrafted nose grew cold, putrefied, and in a few days dropped off, and it was then discovered that the porter had expired, near about the same punctilio of time. there are still at brussels eye-witnesses of this occurrence," says van helmont; and adds, "i pray what is there in this of superstition or of exalted imagination?" modern mind-cure literature--the works of prentice mulford, for example--is full of sympathetic magic. compare lotze's doctrine that the only meaning we can attach to the notion of a thing as it is "in itself" is by conceiving it as it is _for_ itself; i.e., as a piece of full experience with a private sense of "pinch" or inner activity of some sort going with it. even the errors of fact may possibly turn out not to be as wholesale as the scientist assumes. we saw in lecture iv how the religious conception of the universe seems to many mind-curers 'verified' from day to day by their experience of fact. "experience of fact" is a field with so many things in it that the sectarian scientist, methodically declining, as he does, to recognize such "facts" as mind-curers and others like them experience, otherwise than by such rude heads of classification as "bosh," "rot," "folly," certainly leaves out a mass of raw fact which, save for the industrious interest of the religious in the more personal aspects of reality, would never have succeeded in getting itself recorded at all. we know this to be true already in certain cases; it may, therefore, be true in others as well. miraculous healings have always been part of the supernaturalist stock in trade, and have always been dismissed by the scientist as figments of the imagination. but the scientist's tardy education in the facts of hypnotism has recently given him an apperceiving mass for phenomena of this order, and he consequently now allows that the healings may exist, provided you expressly call them effects of "suggestion." even the stigmata of the cross on saint francis's hands and feet may on these terms not be a fable. similarly, the time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of "hystero-demonopathy" by which to apperceive it. no one can foresee just how far this legitimation of occultist phenomena under newly found scientist titles may proceed--even "prophecy," even "levitation," might creep into the pale. thus the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. the final human opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to foresee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. if this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitively triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be. hume's criticism has banished causation from the world of physical objects, and "science" is absolutely satisfied to define cause in terms of concomitant change--read mach, pearson, ostwald. the "original" of the notion of causation is in our inner personal experience, and only there can causes in the old-fashioned sense be directly observed and described. when i read in a religious paper words like these: "perhaps the best thing we can say of god is that he is _the inevitable inference_," i recognize the tendency to let religion evaporate in intellectual terms. would martyrs have sung in the flames for a mere inference, however inevitable it might be? original religious men, like saint francis, luther, behmen, have usually been enemies of the intellect's pretension to meddle with religious things. yet the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect. see how the ancient spirit of methodism evaporates under those wonderfully able rationalistic booklets (which every one should read) of a philosopher like professor bowne (the christian revelation, the christian life, the atonement: cincinnati and new york, , , ). see the positively expulsive purpose of philosophy properly so called:-- "religion," writes m. vacherot (la religion, paris, , pp. , , et passim), "answers to a transient state or condition, not to a permanent determination of human nature, being merely an expression of that stage of the human mind which is dominated by the imagination.... christianity has but a single possible final heir to its estate, and that is scientific philosophy." in a still more radical vein, professor ribot (psychologie des sentiments, p. ) describes the evaporation of religion. he sums it up in a single formula--the ever-growing predominance of the rational intellectual element, with the gradual fading out of the emotional element, this latter tending to enter into the group of purely intellectual sentiments. "of religious sentiment properly so called, nothing survives at last save a vague respect for the unknowable _x_ which is a last relic of the fear, and a certain attraction towards the ideal, which is a relic of the love, that characterized the earlier periods of religious growth. to state this more simply, _religion tends to turn into religious philosophy_.--these are psychologically entirely different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratiocination, whereas the other is the living work of a group of persons, or of a great inspired leader, calling into play the entire thinking and feeling organism of man." i find the same failure to recognize that the stronghold of religion lies in individuality in attempts like those of professor baldwin (mental development, social and ethical interpretations, ch. x.) and mr. h. r. marshall (instinct and reason, chaps, viii. to xii.) to make it a purely "conservative social force." compare, for instance, pages , , , , to , to . american journal of psychology, vii. . above, p. . above, p. . above, p. . example: henri perreyve writes to gratry: "i do not know how to deal with the happiness which you aroused in me this morning. it overwhelms me; i want to _do_ something, yet i can do nothing and am fit for nothing.... i would fain do _great things_." again, after an inspiring interview, he writes: "i went homewards, intoxicated with joy, hope, and strength. i wanted to feed upon my happiness in solitude, far from all men. it was late; but, unheeding that, i took a mountain path and went on like a madman, looking at the heavens, regardless of earth. suddenly an instinct made me draw hastily back--i was on the very edge of a precipice, one step more and i must have fallen. i took fright and gave up my nocturnal promenade." a. gratry: henri perreyve, london, , pp. , . this primacy, in the faith-state, of vague expansive impulse over direction is well expressed in walt whitman's lines (leaves of grass, , p. ):-- "o to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.... dear camerado! i confess i have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination, or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated." this readiness for great things, and this sense that the world by its importance, wonderfulness, etc., is apt for their production, would seem to be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths. trust in our own dreams of ambition, or in our country's expansive destinies, and faith in the providence of god, all have their source in that onrush of our sanguine impulses, and in that sense of the exceedingness of the possible over the real. compare leuba: loc. cit., pp. - . the contents of religious consciousness, in the monist, xi. , july, . loc. cit., pp. , , abridged. see, also, this writer's extraordinarily true criticism of the notion that religion primarily seeks to solve the intellectual mystery of the world. compare what w. bender says (in his wesen der religion, bonn, , pp. , ): "not the question about god, and not the inquiry into the origin and purpose of the world is religion, but the question about man. all religious views of life are anthropocentric." "religion is that activity of the human impulse towards self-preservation by means of which man seeks to carry his essential vital purposes through against the adverse pressure of the world by raising himself freely towards the world's ordering and governing powers when the limits of his own strength are reached." the whole book is little more than a development of these words. remember that for some men it arrives suddenly, for others gradually, whilst others again practically enjoy it all their life. the practical difficulties are: , to "realize the reality" of one's higher part; , to identify one's self with it exclusively; and , to identify it with all the rest of ideal being. "when mystical activity is at its height, we find consciousness possessed by the sense of a being at once _excessive_ and _identical_ with the self: great enough to be god; interior enough to be me. the 'objectivity' of it ought in that case to be called _excessivity_, rather, or exceedingness." rÉcÉjac: essai sur les fondements de la conscience mystique, , p. . the word "truth" is here taken to mean something additional to bare value for life, although the natural propensity of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is thereby certified as true. above, p. . proceedings of the society for psychical research, vol. vii. p. . for a full statement of mr. myers's views, i may refer to his posthumous work, "human personality in the light of recent research," which is already announced by messrs. longmans, green & co. as being in press. mr. myers for the first time proposed as a general psychological problem the exploration of the subliminal region of consciousness throughout its whole extent, and made the first methodical steps in its topography by treating as a natural series a mass of subliminal facts hitherto considered only as curious isolated facts, and subjecting them to a systematized nomenclature. how important this exploration will prove, future work upon the path which myers has opened can alone show. compare my paper: "frederic myers's services to psychology," in the said proceedings, part xlii., may, . compare the inventory given above on pp. - , and also what is said of the subconscious self on pp. - , - . compare above, pp. ff. one more expression of this belief, to increase the reader's familiarity with the notion of it:-- "if this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come in and begin to weep and wail, 'oh, the darkness,' will the darkness vanish? bring the light in, strike a match, and light comes in a moment. so what good will it do you to think all your lives, 'oh, i have done evil, i have made many mistakes'? it requires no ghost to tell us that. bring in the light, and the evil goes in a moment. strengthen the real nature, build up yourselves, the effulgent, the resplendent, the ever pure, call that up in every one whom you see. i wish that every one of us had come to such a state that even when we see the vilest of human beings we can see the god within, and instead of condemning, say, 'rise, thou effulgent one, rise thou who art always pure, rise thou birthless and deathless, rise almighty, and manifest your nature.' ... this is the highest prayer that the advaita teaches. this is the one prayer: remembering our nature." ... "why does man go out to look for a god?... it is your own heart beating, and you did not know, you were mistaking it for something external. he, nearest of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my soul.--i am thee and thou art me. that is your own nature. assert it, manifest it. not to become pure, you are pure already. you are not to be perfect, you are that already. every good thought which you think or act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the infinity, the god behind, manifests itself--the eternal subject of everything, the eternal witness in this universe, your own self. knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degradation. we are it already; how to know it?" swami vivekananda: addresses, no. xii., practical vedanta, part iv. pp. , , london, ; and lectures, the real and the apparent man, p. , abridged. for instance, here is a case where a person exposed from her birth to christian ideas had to wait till they came to her clad in spiritistic formulas before the saving experience set in:-- "for myself i can say that spiritualism has saved me. it was revealed to me at a critical moment of my life, and without it i don't know what i should have done. it has taught me to detach myself from worldly things and to place my hope in things to come. through it i have learned to see in all men, even in those most criminal, even in those from whom i have most suffered, undeveloped brothers to whom i owed assistance, love, and forgiveness. i have learned that i must lose my temper over nothing, despise no one, and pray for all. most of all i have learned to pray! and although i have still much to learn in this domain, prayer ever brings me more strength, consolation, and comfort. i feel more than ever that i have only made a few steps on the long road of progress; but i look at its length without dismay, for i have confidence that the day will come when all my efforts shall be rewarded. so spiritualism has a great place in my life, indeed it holds the first place there." flournoy collection. "the influence of the holy spirit, exquisitely called the comforter, is a matter of actual experience, as solid a reality as that of electro-magnetism." w. c. brownell, scribner's magazine, vol. xxx. p. . that the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a perfectly definite one for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preceding lectures. i append another concrete example to reinforce the impression on the reader's mind:-- "man can learn to transcend these limitations [of finite thought] and draw power and wisdom at will.... the divine presence is known through experience. the turning to a higher plane is a distinct act of consciousness. it is not a vague, twilight or semi-conscious experience. it is not an ecstasy; it is not a trance. it is not super-consciousness in the vedantic sense. it is not due to self- hypnotization. it is a perfectly calm, sane, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousness from the phenomena of sense- perception to the phenomena of seership, from the thought of self to a distinctively higher realm.... for example, if the lower self be nervous, anxious, tense, one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. this is not done by a word simply. again i say, it is not hypnotism. it is by the exercise of power. one feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is perceived on a hot summer day. the power can be as surely used as the sun's rays can be focused and made to do work, to set fire to wood." the higher law, vol. iv. pp. , , boston, august, . transcendentalists are fond of the term "over-soul," but as a rule they use it in an intellectualist sense, as meaning only a medium of communion. "god" is a causal agent as well as a medium of communion, and that is the aspect which i wish to emphasize. transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world makes _this_ difference, that facts _exist_. we owe it to the absolute that we have a world of fact at all. "a world" of fact!--that exactly is the trouble. an entire world is the smallest unit with which the absolute can work, whereas to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world, setting in at single points. our difficulties and our ideals are all piecemeal affairs, but the absolute can do no piecework for us; so that all the interests which our poor souls compass raise their heads too late. we should have spoken earlier, prayed for another world absolutely, before this world was born. it is strange, i have heard a friend say, to see this blind corner into which christian thought has worked itself at last, with its god who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help us with no private burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he is on our own. odd evolution from the god of david's psalms! see my will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy, , p. . such a notion is suggested in my ingersoll lecture on human immortality, boston and london, . tertium quid, , p. . see also pp. , . [transcriber's note: this production is based on https://archive.org/details/meditationsoness guiz/page/n additional citations indicated by "usccb", are based on the united states conference of catholic bishops bible found at http://usccb.org/bible/books-of-the-bible. ] {i} meditations {ii} {iii} meditations on the essence of christianity, and on the religious questions of the day. by m. guizot. translated from the french, under the superintendence of the author. london: john murray, albemarle street. . {iv} london: bradbury and evans, printers, whitefriars. {v} contents. page i. natural problems ii. christian dogmas iii. the supernatural iv. the limits of science v. revelation vi. the inspiration of holy scripture vii. god according to the bible viii. jesus christ according to the gospels note {vi} {vii} preface. during the last nineteen centuries, christianity has been often assailed, and has successfully resisted every attack. of these attacks, some have been more violent, but none more serious than that of which it is, in _these_ days, the object. for eighteen hundred years christians were in turn persecutors and persecuted; christians persecuted as christians, christians persecutors of every one who was not christian--christians mutually persecuting each other. this persecution varied, it is true, in degree of cruelty with the age and the country, as it also did in the degree of inflexibility evinced and success attained in the prosecution of its object; but whatever the diversity of state, church, or punishment, whatever the degree of severity or laxity in the application of the principle, this principle was ever the same. {viii} after having had to endure proscription and martyrdom under the imperial government of paganism, the christian religion lived, in its turn, under the guard of the civil law, defended by the arms of secular power. in these days it exists in the very presence of liberty. it has to deal with free thought,--with free discussion. it is called upon to defend, to guard itself, to prove incessantly and against every comer its moral and historical veracity, to vindicate its claims upon man's intelligence and man's soul. roman catholics, protestants, or jews, christians or philosophers, all, at least in our country, are sheltered from every persecution; for no one without incurring the risk of ridicule could characterise as persecution the sacrifices or the inconveniences to which the expression of his opinion may occasionally subject him. to every man such expression of opinion is permitted, and can never lead to the forfeiture, on the part of any single individual, of any of his political rights or privileges. {ix} religious liberty--that is to say, the liberty of believing; of believing differently or of disbelieving--may be but imperfectly accepted and guaranteed as a principle in certain states; but it still is evident that it is becoming so every day more and more, and that it will eventually become the common law of the civilised world. one of the circumstances that render this fact pregnant with importance is that it does not stand isolated; but holds its place in the great intellectual and social revolution, which, after the fermentation and the preparation of centuries, has broken out and is in course of accomplishment in our own days. the scientific spirit, the preponderance of the democratic principle, and that of political liberty, are the essential characteristics and invincible tendencies of this revolution. these new forces may fall into enormous errors and commit enormous faults, the penalty for which they will ever dearly pay; still they are definitively installed in modern society; the sciences will continue to develop themselves in its bosom in the full independence of their methods and of their results; the democracy will establish itself in the positions which it has conquered, and on the ground which has been opened to it; political liberty in the midst of its storms and its disappointments will still, sooner or later, cause itself to be accepted as the necessary guarantee for all the acquisitions and all the progress possible in society. {x} these are the grand predominant facts to which all public institutions will now have to adapt themselves, and with which all authority whose action is upon the mind requires to live at peace. christianity also must submit to the same tests and trials. as it has surmounted all others, so also will it surmount this; its essence and origin would not be divine did they not permit it to adapt itself to all the different forms of human institutions, to serve them now as a guide, now as a support in their vicissitudes whether of adversity or prosperity. {xi} it is, however, of the most serious importance for christians not to deceive themselves, either as to the nature of the struggle which they will have to sustain, or as to its perils and the legitimate arms which they may use to combat them. the attack directed against the christian religion is one hotly carried on, now with a brutal fanaticism, now with a dexterous learning; at one time with the appeal to sincere convictions, and at another invoking the worst passions; some contest christianity as false, others reject it as too exacting and imposing too much restraint; the greater part apprehend it as a tyranny. injustice and suffering are not so soon forgotten; nor does one readily recover from the effect of terror. the memory of religious persecutions still lives, and this it is that maintains, in multitudes, whose opinions vacillate, aversion, prejudice, and a lively sentiment of alarm. christians on their side are loth to recognise and accommodate themselves to the new order of society; every moment they are shocked, irritated, terrified by the ideas and language to which that society gives utterance. {xii} men do not so readily pass from a state of privilege to one of community of rights--from a state of dominion to one of liberty; they do not resign themselves without a struggle to the audacious obstinacy of contradiction, to the daily necessity of resisting and conquering. government according to principles of liberty is still more influenced by passion, and entails a necessity of still more exertion in the sphere of religion than of civil politics: believers find it still more difficult to support incredulity than governments to bear with oppositions; and, nevertheless, these themselves are forced to do so, and can only find in free discussion and in the full exercise of their peculiar liberties the force which they require to rise above their perilous condition, and reduce--not to silence, for that is impossible, but to an idle warfare--their inveterate enemies. to leave that civil society, in which the different sects of religion are now-a-days compelled to live in peace and side by side, and to enter religious society itself, the christian church of our days:--what is its actual position with respect to these grand questions which it has to discuss with the spirit of human liberty and audacity? {xiii} does it comprehend properly, does it suitably carry on the warfare in which it is engaged? does it tend in its proceedings to a re-establishment of a real peace, and active harmonious relations between itself and that general society in the midst of which it is living? i say _christian church_. it is, in effect, the whole church of christ, and not such or such a church that is in these days attacked, and vitally attacked. when men deny the supernatural world, the inspiration of the scriptures, and the divinity of jesus christ, they really assail the whole body of christians--romanists, protestants or greeks: they are virtually destroying the foundations of faith in all the belief of christians, what ever their particular difference of religious opinion or forms of ecclesiastical government.. {xiv} it is by faith that all christian churches live; there is no form of government, monarchical or republican, concentrated or diffused, that suffices to maintain a church; there is no authority so strong, no liberty so broad, as to be able in a religious society to dispense with the necessity of faith. for what is it that unites in a church if it is not faith? faith is the bond of souls. when then the foundations of their common faith are attacked, the differences existing between christian churches upon special questions, or the diversities of their organization or government, become secondary interests; it is from a common peril that they have to defend themselves; or they must reconcile themselves to see dried up the common source from which they all derive sustenance and life. i fear that the sentiment of this common peril is not, in all the christian churches, as clear and well defined, as deep and predominant, as their common safety requires. in presence of similar questions everywhere varied, of identical attacks everywhere directed against the vital facts and dogmas of christianity, i dread christians of the different communions not concentrating all their forces upon the mighty struggles in which they are, all, to engage. {xv} my dread, however, is unattended by astonishment. although the danger is the same for all, the traditional opinions and habits, and consequently the actual dispositions, are very different. many romanists feel the persuasion that faith would be saved were they only delivered from liberty of thought. many protestants believe that they are but employing their right of free examination, and do not lose their title to be regarded as christians, when they are in effect abandoning the foundations and withdrawing from the source of faith. roman catholicism has not sufficient reliance on its roots, and respects too much its branches; no tree exists that does not need culture and clearing in accordance with climate and season, if it is to be expected to continue to bear always good fruit; but the roots should be especially defended from every attack. protestantism is too forgetful that it also has roots from which it cannot be separated without perishing, and that religion is not what an annual is in vegetation: a plant that men cultivate and renew at their pleasure. {xvi} whilst the romanists dread freedom of thought too much, the protestants on their side have too great a fear of authority. some believe that inasmuch as religious faith has firm and fixed points, movement and progress are incompatible with religious society; others affirm that a religious society can never have fixed points, and that religion consists in religious sentiment and individual belief. what would have become of christianity, had it from its birth been condemned to the immobility which the former recommend; and what would become of it at the present day, were it surrendered, as the latter would have it, to the caprice of every mind, and the wind of every day? happily, god permits not that, at this crisis, the true principles and the true interests of the christian religion should remain without sufficient defenders. {xvii} romanists there are who understand their age and the new constitution of society, who accept frankly its liberty, religious and politic: it is precisely they who have most boldly testified their attachment to the faith of rome, who have claimed with most ardor the essential liberties of their church, and defended with most energy the rights of its chief. nor are protestants wanting who have used with the most untiring zeal all the liberty acquired in our days by protestantism; they have founded all those associations and originated all those undertakings which have manifested the vital energy and extended the action of the protestant church; they have demanded and they continue to demand, for this church, the reestablishment of its synods, that is to say, its religious autonomy. amongst these protestants, where men have appeared who have not found in the protestant church as by law established the entire satisfaction of their convictions, they have felt no hesitation to separate from it and to found, with their own means alone, independent churches. {xviii} it may be affirmed also of the protestants that they have most largely put in practice all the rights and all the liberties of protestantism, in the internal ordeal through which christianity is at present passing; it is precisely they who assert most loudly the dogmas of the christian faith and maintain most inflexibly the authoritative rights established by law in the bosom of their church. the liberal romanists of the present day are the most zealous defenders of the fundamental traditions and institutions of catholicism. the protestants who have been the most active during the last half-century in the exercise of the liberties of protestantism are the firmest maintainers of its doctrines and of its vital rules. humanly speaking, it is upon the influence exercised and to be exercised in their respective churches and on the public, by these two classes of christians, that depends the peaceable issue of the crisis through which christianity is in these days passing. {xix} our society is, doubtless, far from meriting the title of a christian one; still it cannot be characterised as anti-christian; considered as one vast whole, it has no hostile or general prejudice against the christian religion: it maintains the habits, the instincts, i would willingly add the longings, of christians; it is conscious that christian faith and ordinance serve powerfully its interests with respect to order and peace; the fanatical opponents of christianity exercise upon it far more disquieting than seductive influences, for it has already had experience of their empire; and where society appears to offer a silent acquiescence or even to pride itself upon them, still at bottom it dreads their progress. such being the state of the case, and such the constitution of society, how are we to draw men away from their apathy and their ignorance in matters of religion? how lead them back to christianity? they alone can accomplish this object, who, in their defence and propagation of the religion of jesus, shall not wound society itself in the ideas, sentiments, rights and interests which have at present rooted themselves in its very life and energies. {xx} like religion, modern society has also its fixed points and its invincible tendencies: it can never be set on terms of harmony with the former unless by the concurring action of men who have with each of them a genuine and deep sentiment of sympathy. since the christian religion lives in these times confronting civil liberty, those alone can be efficient champions of religion who at the same time profess fully the christian faith and accept with sincerity the tests of liberty. but in pursuing their pious and salutary enterprise, let not these liberal christians flatter themselves with the probability of any prompt or complete success: maintain and propagate the christian faith they may, but they will never be able in the bosom of society to get rid either of incredulity or doubt; even while combating them they must learn to endure their presence; in institutions of freedom there is essentially an intermixture of good and evil, of truth and error; contrary ideas and dispositions produce and develop themselves in it simultaneously. {xxi} "think not that i am come to send peace on earth: i came not," said jesus to his apostles, "to send peace, but a sword." [footnote ] the sword of jesus christ, that is, christianity, at war with human error and shortcomings; a victory, still a victory ever incomplete in an incessant struggle,--_that_ is the condition to which those must submit with resignation who, in the bosom of liberty, defend the truth of christianity. [footnote : matthew x. .] were these valiant and intelligent champions of the faith of jesus not adopted and accredited as such in the churches to which they belong; did the church of rome furnish ground for thinking her essentially hostile to the fundamental principles and rights of modern society, and that she only tolerates them as moses tolerated divorce amongst the jews, "because of the hardness of their heart"; and, on the other hand, did the rejectors of the supernatural, of the inspiration of the scriptures, and of the divinity of jesus christ, predominate in the bosom of protestantism; and finally, did the latter then become nought but a hesitating system of philosophy; {xxii} if all these deplorable things were to be realised, i am far from thinking that, owing to such faults, such disasters, the religion of christ would vanish from the world and definitively withdraw from men its light and its support: the destinies of religion are far above human errors; but still, beyond all doubt, for mankind to be turned back from them, and for the light to return to their soul and harmony to modern society, there would have again to burst out in the human soul and in society one of those immense troubles, one of those revolutionary whirlwinds, whose evils man is compelled actually to undergo before he can derive benefit from its lessons. on the point of addressing myself to questions more profound and of a less transitory nature, i content myself with having merely indicated what i think of the crisis that agitates christendom at the present day, as also of its main cause, its perils, and the chances, good or bad, that it holds out for the future. {xxiii} in the work of which the first part is now before the public, i omit all the circumstantial facts and details as well as the discussions that grow out of them, and it is only with the christian religion as it is in itself, with its fundamental belief and its reasonableness, that i occupy myself; it has been my purpose to illustrate the truth of christianity by contrasting it with the systems and the doubts that men set in array against it. it is my intention to avoid all direct and personal polemics; express reference to individuals embarrasses and envenoms all questions in controversy, and gives rise to ill-judged deference or unjust invective, two descriptions of falsity for which alike i feel no sympathy: let me have then for adversaries ideas alone; and whatever these may be, i admit beforehand the possibility of sincerity on the part of those that prefer them. without this admission all serious discussion is out of the question; and neither the intellectual enormity of the error, nor its awful practical consequences, positively precludes sincerity on the part of him that promulgates it. {xxiv} the mind of man is still more easily led astray than his heart, and is still more egotistical; after having once conceived and expressed an idea, it attaches itself to it as to its own offspring, takes a pride in imprisoning itself in it, as if it were so taking possession of the pure and entire truth. these _meditations_ will be divided into four series. in the first, which forms this volume, i explain and establish what constitutes, in my opinion, the essence of the christian religion; that is to say, what those natural problems are, that correspond with the fundamental dogmas that offer their solution, the supernatural facts upon which these same dogmas repose--creation, revelation, the inspiration of the scriptures, god according to the biblical account, and jesus according to the gospel narrative. {xxv} next to the essence of the christian religion comes its history; and this will be the subject of a second series of _meditations_, in which i shall examine the authenticity of the scriptures, the primary causes of the foundation of christianity, christian faith, as it has always existed throughout its different ages and in spite of all its vicissitudes; the great religious crisis in the sixteenth century which divided the church and europe between roman catholicism and protestantism; finally those different anti-christian crises, which at different epochs and in different countries have set in question and imperilled christianity itself, but which dangers it has ever surmounted. the third _meditation_ will be consecrated to the study of the actual state of the christian religion, its internal and external condition: i shall retrace the regeneration of christianity which occurred amongst us at the commencement of the nineteenth century, both in the church of rome and in the protestant churches; the impulse imparted to it at the same epoch by the spiritualistic philosophy that then began again to flourish, and the movement in the contrary direction which showed itself very remarkably soon afterwards in the resurrection of materialism, of pantheism, of scepticism, and in works of historical criticism. {xxvi} i shall attempt to determine the idea, and consequently, in my opinion, the fundamental error of these different systems, the avowed and active enemies of christianity. finally, in the fourth series of these _meditations_ i shall endeavour to discriminate and to characterise the future destiny of the christian religion, and to indicate by what course it is called upon to conquer completely and to sway morally this little corner of the universe termed by us our earth, in which unfold themselves the designs and power of god, just as, doubtless, they do in an infinity of worlds unknown to us. i have passed thirty-five years of my life in struggling, on a bustling arena, for the establishment of political liberty and the maintenance of order as established by law. i have learnt, in the labours and trials of this struggle, the real worth of christian faith and of christian liberty. {xxvii} god permits me, in the repose of my retreat, to consecrate to their cause what remains to me of life and of strength. it is the most salutary favour and the greatest honour that i can receive from his goodness. guizot. val-richer, _june_, . {xxviii} { } meditations on the essence of the christian religion. first meditation. natural problems. from the very origin of the human race, wherever man has existed, or still exists, certain questions have peculiarly and irresistibly fixed his attention, and they continue to do so at the present hour. { } this arises not alone from a feeling of natural curiosity, or the ardent thirst for knowledge, but from a deeper and more powerful motive: the destiny of man is intimately involved in these questions; they contain the secret not only of all that he sees around him, but of his own being; and when he aspires to solve them, it is not merely because he desires to understand the spectacle of which he is a beholder, but because he feels, and is conscious of being himself an actor in the great drama of existence, and because he seeks to ascertain his own part there, and comprehend his own destiny. his present conduct and his future lot are as much at issue as the satisfaction of his thought. these great problems are, for man, not questions of science, but questions of life: in considering them he feels himself compelled to say, with hamlet, "to be or not to be, that is the question." whence does the world proceed, and whence does man appear in the midst of it? what is the origin of each, and whither does each tend? what are their beginning and their end? laws there are which govern them;--is there a legislator? { } under the empire of these laws, man feels and calls himself free: is he so in reality? how is his liberty compatible with the laws which govern him and the world? is he a passive instrument of fate, or a responsible agent? what are the ties and relations which connect him with the legislator of the world? the world and man himself present a strange and painful spectacle. good and evil, both moral and physical, order and disorder, joy and sorrow, are here intimately blended and yet in continual antagonism. whence come this commingling and this strife? is good or is evil the condition and the law of man and of the world? if good, how then has evil found admission? wherefore suffering and death? why this moral disorder?--the calamities which so frequently befall the good, and the prosperity, so abhorrent to our feelings, which attends the wicked? is this the normal and definitive state of man and of the world? { } man is conscious that he is at the same time great and little, strong and feeble, powerful and impotent. he finds in himself matter for admiration and for love, and yet he suffices not to himself in any respect; he seeks an aid, a support, beyond and above himself: he asks, he invokes, he prays. what mean these inward disquietudes,--these alternate impulses of pride and weakness? have they, or not, a meaning and an object? why prayer? such are the natural problems, now dimly felt, now clearly defined, which in all ages and among all nations, in every form and in every degree of civilization, by instinct or by reflexion, have arisen, and still arise, in the human mind. i indicate only the greatest, the most apparent: i might recall many others which are connected with them. not only are these problems natural to man; they appertain to him alone; they are his peculiar privilege. man alone, among all creatures known to us, perceives and states them, and feels himself imperiously called upon to solve them. { } i borrow the following admirable observations from m. de châteaubriand:--"why does not the ox as i do? it can lie down upon the grass, raise its head toward heaven, and in its lowings call upon that unknown being who fills this immensity of space. but no: content with the turf on which it tramples, it interrogates not those suns in the firmament above, which are the grand evidence of the existence of god. animals are not troubled with those hopes which fill the heart of man; the spot on which they tread yields them all the happiness of which they are susceptible; a little grass satisfies the sheep; a little blood gluts the tiger. the only creature that looks beyond himself, and is not all in all to himself, is man." [footnote ] [footnote : genie du christianisme, vol. i. p. , edit, of .] from these problems, natural and peculiar to man, all religions have sprung. the object of them all is to satisfy man's thirst for their solution. as these problems are the source of religion, the solutions they receive are its substance and foundation. { } there prevails in our days a very general tendency to regard religion as consisting essentially--i might say wholly--in religious sentiment, in those lofty and vague aspirations which are termed the poetry of the soul, beyond and above the realities of life. through the religious sentiment, the soul enters into relation with the divine order of things; and this relation, of a wholly personal and intimate character, independent of all positive dogma, of any organized church, is deemed to be all-sufficient for man, the true and needful religion. unquestionably the religious sentiment, the intimate and personal relation of the soul with the divine order, is essential and necessary to religion; but religion is more than this--much more. the human soul is not to be divided and restricted to certain faculties selected and exalted, whilst the rest are condemned to slumber. man is not a mere sensitive and poetic being, aspiring to rise above the present and material world by love and imagination: he not only feels, but he thinks; he requires to know and believe as well as love; it is not enough that his soul should be capable of emotion and aspiration; he requires that it should be fixed, and rest upon convictions in harmony with his emotions. { } this it is that man seeks in religion; he requires something more than a pure and noble rapture; he requires enlightenment, as well as sympathy. but if the moral problems that beset his thought are not solved, what he experiences may be poetry,--it is not religion. i cannot contemplate unmoved the troubles of men of lofty minds, seeking in the religious sentiment alone a refuge against doubt and impiety. it is well to preserve, in the shipwreck of faith and the chaos of thought, the great instincts of our nature, and not to lose sight of the sublime requirements which remain unsatisfied. i know not to what extent, men of eminent minds may thus compensate, by their sincerity and fervour of sentiment, for the void in their belief; but let them not deceive themselves; barren aspirations and specious doubts satisfy a man as little as to his future spiritual interests as with respect to his condition in the present life; the natural problems to which i have alluded will ever be the great weight pressing upon the soul, and religious sentiment will never alone suffice to be the religion of mankind. { } besides this apotheosis of religious sentiment, some at the present day have essayed a different, a more serious and more daring theory. far from sounding the natural problems to which religions correspond, schools of philosophy, occupying a prominent intellectual position,--the pantheistic school, and the so-called positive school,--suppress and deny them altogether. in their view, the world has existed, of itself, from all eternity, as have the laws also by which it is sustained and developed. in their elementary principles, and taken altogether, all things have ever been what they now are, and what they will ever continue to be. there is no mystery in this universe; there exist only facts and laws, naturally and necessarily linked together; and these furnish the field for human science, which, although incomplete, is yet indefinitely progressive, in its power as well as in its operations. { } according to these views, divine providence and human liberty, the origin of evil, the commingling and the strife of good and evil in the world, and in man, the imperfection of the present order of things, and the destiny of man, the prospect of the re-establishment of order in the future--these are all mere dreams, freaks of man's thought: no such questions indeed exist, inasmuch as the world is eternal, it is in its actual state complete, normal, and definitive, though at the same time progressive. the remedy for the moral and physical evils which afflict mankind, must then be sought, not in any power superior to the world, but simply in the progress of the sciences and the advance of human enlightenment. { } i shall not here discuss this system; i do not even qualify it by its true name; i merely recapitulate its tenets. but, at the first and simple aspect, what contempt does it manifest of the spontaneous and universal instincts of man! what heedlessness of the facts which fill and never cease to characterize the universal history of the human race! nevertheless to this we are come: not a solution, but the negation of the natural problems, which irresistibly occupy the human soul, is presented to man for his full satisfaction and repose. let him follow the mathematical or physical sciences; let him be a mechanician, chemist, critic, novelist, or poet; but let him not enter upon what is termed the sphere of religious and theological inquiry: here are no real questions to solve, nought to investigate, nothing to do,--nothing to expect,--absolutely nothing. { } second meditation. christian dogmas. the christian religion knows man better, and treats man better: it has other answers to his questions; and it is between the absolute negation of the problems of religion and the christian solution of these problems that the discussion lies at the present day. some words there are which we now regard with distrust and alarm: we suspect their masking illegitimate pretensions and tyranny. such, in our days, has been the lot of the word _dogma_. to many this word imparts an imperious necessity to believe, at once offending and disquieting. singular contrast! on all sides we seek for principles, and we take alarm at dogmas. { } this sentiment, however absurd in itself, is in no way strange; christian dogmas have served as motive and pretext for so much iniquity, so many acts of oppression and cruelty, that their very name has become tainted and suspected. the word bears the penalty of the reminiscences which it awakens: and justly. all attacks upon the liberty of conscience, all employment of force to extirpate or to impose religious belief, is, and ever has been, an iniquitous and tyrannical act. all powers, all parties, all churches, have held such acts to be not only permissible, but enjoined by the divine law: all have deemed it not merely their right, but their duty, to prevent and to punish by law and human force, error in matters of religion. they may all allege in excuse, the sincerity of their belief in the legitimacy of this usurpation. the usurpation is not the less enormous and fatal, and perhaps indeed it is, of all human usurpations, the one which has inflicted on men the most odious torments and the grossest errors. { } it will constitute the glory of our time to have discarded this pretension: nevertheless it yet exists, with persistency, in certain states, in certain laws, in certain recesses of the human soul and of christian society; and there is, and ever will be, need to watch and to combat it, to render its banishment unconditional and without appeal. subdued, however, it is: civil freedom in matters of faith and religious life has become a fundamental principle of civilization and of law. these questions, affecting the relations of man to god, are no longer discussed or adjusted in the arena and by a recourse to the hand of political and executive power; but they are transported to the sphere of the intellect and left to the uncontrolled working of the mind itself. but again, in this sphere of the intellect, these questions still start up and call loudly for their peculiar solution--that is, for the fundamental facts and ideas, the principles in effect which their nature requires. the christian religion has its own principles, which constitute the rational basis of the faith it inculcates and the life which it enjoins. these are termed its dogmas. { } the christian dogmas are the principles of the christian religion, and the christian solutions of the problems of natural religion. let men of a serious mind, who have not entirely rejected the christian religion, and who still admire it, whilst denying its fundamental dogmas, beware of this: the flowers whose perfume captivates them will quickly fade, the fruits they delight in will soon cease to grow when the axe shall have been applied to the roots of the tree that bears them. for myself, arrived at the term of a long life, one of labour, of reflection, and of trials,--of trials in thought as well as in action,--i am convinced that, the christian dogmas are the legitimate and satisfactory solutions of those religious problems which, as i have said, nature suggests and man carries in his own breast, and from which he cannot escape. { } i beg, at the outset, theologians, whether catholic or protestant, to pardon me. i have no design to cite or to explain, or to maintain, all the various doctrinal points, all the articles of faith, which have been included in the term of christian dogmas. during eighteen centuries, christian theology has very often ventured to advance out of and beyond the limits of the christian religion: man has confounded his own labours with the work of god. it is the natural consequence of the union of human activity and human imperfection. this same result may be traced throughout the history of the world, especially in the history of the society and religion upon which god has grafted the christian religion. at the time when god raised up jesus christ among the jews, the faith and the law of the jews were no longer solely and purely the faith and law which god had given to them by moses: the pharisees, the sadducees, and many others, had essentially modified, enlarged, and altered both. christianity too has had its pharisees and its sadducees; in its turn it has been made to feel the workings of human thought and the influence of human passions on its divine revelation. { } i cannot recognize, in all the uncertain fruits of these labours, the claim to the title of christian dogmas. nevertheless i have no intention here to specify particularly and to combat such tenets in the church and in christian theology, as i can neither accept nor defend. it is not for me--and i venture to say, it is not for any christian--to scan critically the interior of the edifice, at a moment when its foundations are ardently attacked. far rather i prefer to rally in a common defence all who abide within its walls. i shall here allude only to the dogmas common to them all, which i sum up in these terms:--the creation, providence, original sin, the incarnation, and the redemption. these constitute the essence of the christian religion, and all who believe in these dogmas i hold to be christians. one leading and common characteristic in these dogmas strikes me at the outset: they deal frankly with the religious problems natural to and inherent in man, and offer at once the solution. { } the dogma of creation attests the existence of god, as creator and legislator, and it attests also the link which unites man with god. the dogma of providence explains and justifies prayer, that instinctive recourse of man to the living god, to that supreme power which is ever present with him in life, and which influences his destiny. the dogma of original sin accounts for the presence of evil and disorder in mankind and in the world. the dogmas of the incarnation and of redemption, rescue man from the consequences of evil, and open to him a prospect in another life of the re-establishment of order. unquestionably, the system is grand, complete, well connected, and forcible: it answers to the requirements of the human soul, removes the burden which oppresses it, imparts the strength which it needs, and the satisfaction to which it aspires. has it a rightful claim to all this power? is its influence legitimate, as well as efficacious? { } in my own mind i have borne the burthen of the objections to the christian system, and to each of its essential dogmas; i have experienced the anxieties of doubt: i shall state how i have escaped from doubt, and the ground upon which my convictions have been founded. i. creation. the only serious opponents of the dogma of the creation are those who maintain that the universe, the earth, the man upon the earth, have existed from all eternity, and, collectively, in the state in which they now are. no one however can hold this language, to which facts are invincibly opposed. how many ages man has existed on the earth, is a question that has been largely discussed, and is still under discussion. the inquiry in no way affects the dogma of the creation itself: it is a certain and recognized fact, that man has not always existed on the earth, and that the earth has for long periods undergone different changes incompatible with man's existence. man therefore had a beginning: man has come upon the earth. how has he come there? { } here the opponents of the dogma of creation are divided: some uphold the theory of spontaneous generation; others, the transformation of species. according to one party, matter possesses, under certain circumstances and by the simple development of its own proper power, the faculty of creating animated beings. according to others, the different species of animated beings which still exist, or have existed at various epochs and in the different conditions of the earth, are derived from a small number of primitive types, which have possessed, through the lapse of millions and thousands of millions of ages, the power of developing and perfecting themselves, so as to gain admission, through transformation, into higher species. hence they conclude, with more or less hesitation, that the human race is the result of a transformation, or a series of transformations. { } the attempt to establish the theory of spontaneous production dates from a remote period. science has ever baffled it: the more its observations have been exact and profound, the more have they refuted the hypothesis of the innate creative power of matter. this result has been again recently established by the attentive examination of men of eminent scientific attainments, within and without the walls of the academy of sciences. but were it even otherwise,--could the advocates of the theory of spontaneous production refer to experiments hitherto irrefutable, these would furnish no better explanation of the first appearance of man upon earth, and i should retain my right to repeat here what i have advanced elsewhere on this subject:[footnote ]-- [footnote : l'eglise et la société chrétienne en , p. .] { } "such a mode of generation cannot, nor ever could, produce any but infant beings, in the first hour and in the first state of incipient life. it has, i believe, never been asserted, nor will any person ever affirm, that, by spontaneous generation, man-- that is to say, man and woman, the human couple--can have issued, or that they have issued at any period, from matter, of full form and stature, in possession of all their powers and faculties, as greek paganism represented minerva issuing from the brain of jupiter. yet it is only upon this supposition, that man, appearing for the first time upon earth, could have lived there to perpetuate his species and to found the human race. let any one picture to himself the first man, born in a state of the earliest infancy, alive but inert, devoid of intelligence, powerless, incapable of satisfying his own wants even for a moment, trembling, sobbing, with no mother to listen to or feed him! and yet we have in this a picture of the first man, as presented by the system of spontaneous generation. it is manifestly not thus that the human race first appeared upon earth." the system of the transformation of species is no less refuted by science than by the instincts of common sense. it rests upon no tangible fact, on no principle of scientific observation or historic tradition. { } all the facts ascertained, all the monuments collected in different ages and different places, respecting the existence of living species, disprove the hypothesis of their having undergone any transformation, any notable and permanent change: we meet with them a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago, the same as they are at the present day. in the same species the races may vary and undergo mutual changes: the species do not change; and all attempts to transform them artificially, by crossings with allied species, have only resulted in modifications, which, after two or three generations, have been struck with barrenness, as if to attest the impotence of man to effect, by the progressive transformation of existing species, a creation of new species. man is not an ape transformed and perfected by some dim imperceptible fermentation of the elements of nature and by the operation of ages: this assumed explanation of the origin of the human species is a mere vague hypothesis, the fruit of an imagination ill comprehending the spectacle that nature presents, and therefore easily seduced to form ingenious conjectures: these their authors sow in the stream of events unknown and of time infinite, and trust to them for the realization of their dreams. { } the principle of the fundamental diversity and the permanence of species--firmly upheld by m. cuvier, m. flourens, m. coste, m. quatrefages, and by all exact observers of facts--remains dominant in science as in reality. [footnote ] [footnote : cuvier--discours sur les révolutions du globe, pp. , , (edit. ); flourens--ontologie naturelle, pp. - ( ); journal des savants (october, november, and december, ); three articles on the work of ch. darwin, on the origin of species and the laws of progress among organised beings; coste--histoire générale et particulière du développement des corps organisés; discours préliminaire, vol. i. p. ; quatrefages--metamorphoses de l'homme et des animaux, p. ( ); and his articles on the unity of the human species, published in the "revue des deux mondes," in and , and collected in one volume ( ).] { } besides these vain attempts to supersede god the creator, and to explain by the inherent and progressive power of matter, the origin of man and of the world, the christian dogma of creation has yet other adversaries. one party, to combat it, seizes its arms from the bible itself, alleging the account there given of the successive facts of the creation, of which the world and man were the result; they cite and enumerate the difficulties of reconciling this account with the observations and the conclusions of science. i shall weigh the force of this class of objections in treating of the inspiration of the holy scriptures, of their real object and true meaning; but i at once raise the dogma of creation above this attack,--placing it at its proper height and isolation: it is the general fact, it is the very principle of creation which constitutes the dogma; what ever may be the obscurities or the scientific difficulties presented by the biblical narrative, the principle and the general fact of the creation remain unaffected: god the creator does not the less remain in possession of his work. the christian religion, in its essence, asserts and demands nothing more. { } but lastly, the christian dogma of creation is met by the general objection raised against all the facts and all the acts which are termed supernatural: that is to say, against the existence of god as well as the dogma of creation, against all religions in common with christianity. such a question requires to be considered, not with reference to any particular dogma, or with a view to defend one side only of the edifice of christianity. this point, then, i shall presently examine frankly and in all its bearings. ii. providence. god the creator is also god the preserver. he lives, and is at the same time the source of life. the union between him and his creature does not cease when the creature is brought into existence. the dogma of providence is consequent upon that of creation. { } prayer is more than the mere outburst of the desires or sorrows of the soul, seeking that satisfaction, strength, or consolation which it does not find within itself; it is the expression of a faith, instinctive or reflective, obscure or clear, wavering or steadfast, in the existence, the presence, the power, and the sympathy of the being to whom prayer is addressed. without a certain measure of faith and trust in god, prayer would not burst forth, or would suddenly be dried up in the soul. if faith everywhere resists, and everywhere outlives all the denials, all the doubts, and all the darkness which oppress mankind, it is that man bears within himself an imperishable consciousness of the enduring bond which connects him with god, and god with him. far from destroying this sentiment, experience and the spectacle of life explain and confirm it. in reflecting on his destiny, man recognises in it three different sources, and divides, so to say, into three classes the facts which make up the whole. he is conscious of being subject to events which are the consequence of laws, general, permanent, and independent of his will, but which by his intelligence he observes and comprehends. { } by the act of his free will he also himself creates events, of which he knows himself to be author, and these have their own consequences and enter too into the tissue of his life. lastly, he passes through events, in his view, neither the result of those general laws from which nothing can withdraw him, nor the act of his own liberty,--events of which he perceives neither the cause, the reason, nor the author. man attributes this last class of events sometimes to a blind cause, which he terms chance; at another, to an intelligent and supreme intention which is in god. his mind at times revolts at the inanity of this word _chance_, which explains and defines nothing; and he then pictures to himself a mysterious, impenetrable power, a merely necessary chain of unknown facts, to which he gives the name of fatality, destiny. to account for this obscure and accidental part of human life, which originates neither from any general and conceivable laws, nor from the free will of man himself, we must choose between fatality and providence, chance and god. { } i express my meaning without hesitation. who ever accepts as a satisfactory explanation the theory of fatality and chance, does not truly believe in god. whoever believes truly in god, relies upon providence. god is not an expedient, invented to explain the first link in the chain of causation, an actor called to open by creation the drama of the world, then to relapse into a state of inert uselessness. by the very fact of his existence, god is present with his work, and sustains it. providence is the natural and necessary development of god's existence; his constant presence and permanent action in creation. the universal and insuperable instinct which leads man to prayer, is in harmony with this great fact; he who believes in god cannot but have recourse to him and pray to him. { } objections are raised to the name itself of god. he acts, it is said, only by general and permanent laws: how can we implore his interference in favour of our special and exceptional desires? he is immutable, ever perfect, and ever the same: how is it conceivable that he lends himself to the fickleness of human sentiments and wishes? the prayer which ascends to him is forgetful of his real nature. men have treated the attributes of god as furnishing an objection to his providence. this objection, so often repeated, never fails to astonish me. the majority of those who urge it, assert at the same time that god is incomprehensible, and that we cannot penetrate the secret of his nature. what then is this but to pretend to comprehend god? and by what right do they oppose his nature to his providence, if his nature is, to us, an impenetrable mystery? i refrain from reproaching them for their ambition; ambition is the privilege and the glory of man; but in retaining it, let them not overlook its legitimate limits. there is only this alternative: either man must cease to believe in god, because he cannot comprehend him, or in effect admit his incomprehensibility, and still at the same time believe in him. { } he cannot pass and repass incessantly from one system to the other, now declaring god to be incomprehensible; now speaking of him, of his nature and his attributes, as if he were within the province of human science. great as is the question of providence, the one i have here to consider is still greater, for it is the question of the very existence of god; and the fundamental inquiry is to know whether he exists, or does not exist. god is at once light and mystery: in intimate relation with man, and yet beyond the limits of his knowledge. i shall presently endeavour to mark the limit at which human knowledge stops, and indicate its proper sphere; but this i at once assume as certain: whoever, believing in god and speaking of him as incomprehensible, yet persists in endeavouring to define him scientifically, and seeks to penetrate the mystery, which he has yet admitted, is in great risk of destroying his own belief, and of setting god aside, which is one way of denying him. { } but i leave for a moment these two simultaneous propositions, namely, the impossibility of comprehending god, and the necessity of believing in him; and i proceed at once to that objection to the special providence of god which is drawn from the general character of the laws of nature. this objection results from confounding very different things, and overlooking a fundamental one,--the fact characteristic indeed of human nature. it is true that the providence of god presides over the order of the world which he governs by general and permanent laws: these laws would be more accurately designated by another name; they are the will of god, continually acting upon the world, for not only the laws but the lawgiver are there ever present. but when god created man, he created him different from the physical world; free, and a moral agent; and hence there is a fundamental difference between the action of god on the physical world, and his action on man. { } i shall subsequently state my opinion as to the full meaning of the expression, "man is a free being," and as to the nature of the consequences to which it leads; for the present, i assume, as a certain and incontestable fact, this principle of human liberty,--of the free determination of man considered as a moral agent. admitting this, it cannot be said that god governs mankind at large by general and permanent laws; for what would this be but to ignore or annul the liberty granted to man, that is to say, to misconceive and mutilate the work of god himself. man exercises a free determination, and in his own life actually gives birth to events which are not the result of any general and external laws. divine providence watches the operations of man's volition, and records the manner in which it has been exercised. it does not treat man as it deals with the stars in heaven and the waves of the ocean, which have neither thought nor will; with man it has other relations than with nature, and employs a different mode of action. { } there is little wisdom in instituting comparisons between objects or facts not essentially analogous; and the idea of god has been so often disfigured by representing him in the image of man, that i mistrust the efficacy of any analogies borrowed from humanity to convey a conception of god. i cannot, however, overlook the fact, that god has created man in his own image, nor can i absolutely refrain from seeking, in nature or the life of man, some type to shadow forth the features of god. let us consider the human family: the father and mother assist in directing the active development of the child; they watch over it with authority and tenderness; they control its liberty without annulling it, and they listen to its little prayers--now granting them, now refusing them, as their reason dictates, and with a view to the child's main and future interests. { } the child, without thought or design, by the spontaneous instinct of its nature, recognizes the authority and feels the tenderness of its parents; as it advances in age, it sometimes obeys and sometimes resists their injunctions, using or misusing its natural liberty; but in all the fickleness of its will, it asks, it entreats, full of confidence--joyous and thankful when it obtains from its parents what it desires; yet, when denied, still ready again to ask and to entreat with the same confidence as before. this is what takes place in the government of the human family when ruled according to the dictates of nature and right. an image we have here, imperfect but still true--a shadowing-forth, faint yet faithful--of divine providence. thus it is that the christian religion qualifies and describes the action of god in the life of man. it exhibits god as ever present and accessible to man, as a father to his child; it exhorts, encourages, invites man to implore, to confide in, to pray to god. it reserves absolutely the answer of god to that prayer; he will grant, or he will refuse: we cannot penetrate his motives--"the ways of god are not our ways." { } nevertheless, to prayer, ceaseless and ever renewed, the christian dogma associates the firm hope that "nothing is impossible with god." this dogma is thus in full and intimate harmony with the nature of man; whilst recognizing his liberty, it does homage to his dignity; in tendering to him the resource of an appeal to god it provides for his weakness. in science, it suppresses not the mystery which cannot be suppressed; but, in man's life, it solves the natural problem which weighs upon the soul. iii. original sin. the dogmas of creation and providence bring us into the presence of god; it is the action of god upon the world and man that they proclaim and affirm. the dogma of original sin brings us back to man; it is the act of man towards god, which stands at the very beginning of the history of mankind. { } in what does this dogma consist? what are the elements and the essential facts which constitute it, and upon which it is founded? the dogma of original sin implies and affirms these propositions: . that god, in creating man, has created him an agent, moral, free, and fallible; . that the will of god is the moral law of man, and obedience to the will of god is the duty of man, inasmuch as he is a moral and free agent; . that, by an act of his own free will, man has knowingly failed in his duty, by disobeying the law of god; . that the free man is a responsible being, and that disobedience to the law of god has justly entailed on him punishment; . that that responsibility and that punishment are hereditary, and that the fault of the first man has weighed and does weigh upon the human race. { } the authority of god, the duty of obedience to the law of god, the liberty and responsibility of man, the heritage of human responsibility are, in their moral chronology, the principles and the facts comprised in the dogma of original sin. i turn away my attention for a moment from the dogma itself, its source, its history, the biblical and christian tradition of this first step in evil of the human race. and considering man, his nature, and his destiny in their actual and general state, i investigate and verify the moral facts as they manifest themselves at the present day, to the eyes of good sense, amidst the disputes of the learned. man, at his birth, is subjected to the moral authority, as well as the physical power of the parents who, humanly speaking, created him. obedience is to him a duty, and at the same time a necessity. this physical necessity and this moral obligation, however ultimately connected with each other, are not one and identical; and the child, in its spontaneous development, instinctively feels the moral obligation long before it is conscious of the physical necessity. { } the instinctive feeling of the obligation is united with the growing sentiment of affection; and the child obeys the look, the voice of its mother, unconscious of its absolute dependence upon her. as the sentiment of affection and the instinct of obligatory obedience are the first dawn of moral good in the development of the child, so the impulse to disobedience is the first symptom, the first appearance of moral evil. it is with the voluntary disobedience of the child to the will of its mother that the moral infraction commences, and it is in disobedience that it resides. it considers neither the motives nor the consequences of its act; it is simply conscious that it disobeys, and regards its mother with a mingled feeling of restlessness and defiance; it tries, with hesitation, the maternal authority; it strives to be, and especially to appear, independent of the natural and legitimate power which rules it, and which it recognises at the very moment when it opposes its own will to that higher law. { } as the child, so is the man. as man is born free, so he lives free; and as he is born subject, so he lives subject. liberty co-exists with authority and resists without annulling it. authority exists before liberty, and as it does not yield to it, so neither does it supersede it. man, inasmuch as he knows that he disobeys, renders homage to authority by the very fact of his disobedience. authority, on its side, recognizes the liberty of man, by the condemnation which it passes on him for having misused it; for he would not be responsible for his acts were he not free. in the co-existence of these two powers, authority and liberty, at one time in accordance, at another in conflict, lies the great secret of nature and of human destiny, the fundamental principle of man and of the world. let it be clearly understood that i speak here of the moral world, of the world of thought and of will. in the physical world there is neither authority nor liberty; there are merely certain forces, forces acting inevitably and unequally. { } if the question concerned the material world, could i do better than repeat what pascal has admirably said: "man is but a reed--the weakest in nature--but he is a reed which thinks; the universe need not rise in arms to crush him; a vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. but were the universe to crush him, man would still be nobler than the power which killed him, for he knows that he dies; and of the advantage which the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing." when man obeys or disobeys, he knows just as well that authority confronts him, as that liberty of action abides with himself. he knows what he does, and he charges himself with the responsibility. moral order is here complete. throughout all times and in all places, in all men, as in the first man, disobedience to legitimate authority is the principle and foundation of moral evil, or, to call it by its religious name, of sin. { } disobedience has various and complicated sources; it may spring from a thirst for independence, from ambition or presumptuous curiosity, or from giving rein to human inclinations and temptations; but, whatever its origin, disobedience is ever the essential characteristic of that free act which constitutes sin, as it is also the source of the responsibility which accompanies it. eminent men, eminently pious men, have combated the doctrine of human liberty; unable to reconcile it with what they term the divine prescience, they have denied the fundamental fact of the nature of man, rather than fully acknowledge the mystery of the nature of god. others, equally eminent and sincere, have limited themselves to raising doubts regarding human liberty, and denying it the value of an absolute and peremptory fact. in my opinion, they have confounded facts essentially different, although intimately blended; they have ignored the special and simple character of the very fact of free will. during a course of lectures which i delivered thirty-five years ago at the sorbonne, on the history of civilization in france, having occasion to examine the controversy of st. augustine with pelagius on free will, predestination, and grace, i explained these subjects in terms which i repeat here, finding no others which appear to me more exact and more complete:-- { } "the fact which lies at the foundation of the whole dispute," i said in , "is liberty, free will, the human will. to comprehend this fact exactly, we must divest it of every foreign element, and confine it strictly to itself. it is the want of this precaution that has led to such frequent misconception of the thing itself; men have not looked simply at the fact of liberty, and at that alone. it has been viewed and described, so to speak, _péle-méle_ with other facts, closely connected to it, it is true, in the moral life of man, but which are no less essentially different. for example, human liberty has been said to consist in the act of deliberating upon and choosing between motives; that deliberation, and that choice and judgment consequent upon it, have been regarded as the essence of free will. { } not so at all. these are acts of the intellect, not of liberty; it is before the intellect that the various motives of resolution and action, interests, passions, opinions, and such like, present themselves; the intellect considers, compares, estimates, weighs, and judges them. this is a preparatory task, which precedes the act of volition, but which does not in any way constitute it. when, after deliberation, man has taken full cognisance of the motives presented to him, and of their value, there takes place a process entirely new, and wholly different, that of free will; man forms a resolution--that is to say, he commences a series of facts having their source in himself, of which he regards himself as the author; and these are effectuated because he wills them; they would have no existence did he not will it, and would be different if he desired to produce them otherwise. now, let us imagine all remembrance of this process of intellectual deliberation obliterated, the motives so known and appreciated, forgotten; concentrate your thought, and that of the man who takes a resolution, upon the moment when he says, 'it is my will, therefore i shall do so; and ask yourself, ask too the man, whether he could not will and act otherwise. { } without doubt, you will reply, as he will do, 'assuredly,' and this it is that reveals the fact of liberty; it consists wholly in the resolution which man takes after the deliberation is at an end; it is the resolution that is the proper act of man, which is through him and through him alone; a simple act, independent of all the facts which precede or accompany it, identical in the most varied circumstances, always the same, whatever be its motives or its results. "at the same time that man feels himself free, and is conscious of the power of commencing by his own will alone a series of facts, he recognises that his will is subjected to the empire of a certain law, which takes different names, according to the circumstances to which it is applied--moral law, reason, good sense, &c ... man is free, but according even to man's own way of thinking, his will is not arbitrary; he may use it in an absurd, senseless, unjust, and culpable manner, and whenever he uses it a certain rule must govern it. the observance of this rule is his duty, the task assigned to his liberty." { } it is that act of a will (that is to say of a will strictly brought back to its central and essential limits) acting freely in the intimate recesses of his being, which, in the case of disobedience to the law of duty, constitutes in man sin, and entails on him its responsibility. is this responsibility exclusively personal, and limited to the author of the act, or communicated, so to say, by contagion, and transmitted in a certain measure to his descendants? i am still considering only actual appreciable acts, such as they produce and manifest themselves in the moral life of the human race. we find the poetry and mythology of nearly all nations expressing the idea of an utopian state of existence, referred to times remote and primitive, to which they assign different names, as the golden age, the age of the gods, and which they picture as an epoch when there existed no moral and physical evil in the world,--an era of peace, bliss, and innocence. { } this is the more remarkable, as it has no foundation, and finds no pretext in any tradition of historical times, however remote; for from the commencement of history, from the time that we can discern any trace of facts at all precise and authentic, it is not the golden age, on the contrary, it is the iron age which appears--an epoch of violence and ignorance and barbarism, in which war and force are rampant, and which has not in effect the least resemblance to those beautiful dreams of ancient poetry. without now seeking to establish any relation between these mythological dreams and the biblical traditions; or, for the moment, drawing from the golden age any argument in support of the garden of eden; i merely point it out as a great fact, as evidence of a general instinct, so to say, of the human imagination. what is the meaning of this? whence comes this utopia of innocence and bliss in the cradle of the human race? { } to what does this idea of a primal time, without strife, without sin, and without pain, correspond? but from this cradle of man and this primitive poetry, to revert to the present time, to real life, to the cradle of the infant, why is it that, apart from all personal affection, we so readily term infancy the age of innocence? how is it that we find it so charming to give it this name, and regard it under this aspect? physical ill is already present, for it begins with the very beginning of life; but moral ill has not yet appeared; life has not yet brought to the soul its trials, nor called forth its failings, and the idea of the soul without spot or stain has for us an inexpressible attraction; we feel a deep joy in witnessing innocence, or at least its image in the child, when we no longer see it around us, nor find it within ourselves. what means this universal instinct, which in the dreams of the imagination, as well as in the intimate scenes of domestic life, whether we turn in thought to the cradle of the human race or to that of the infant, leads us to regard innocence as the primitive and normal state of man, and makes us place in the spot where innocence resides that which some term paradise, and others the golden age? { } manifestly between the soul without spot and the soul tainted with evil, between the creature who is merely fallible and the creature who has sinned, there is a very great change of state, a distance immense, an abyss. we have a secret feeling of this deplorable change, of the fall into this abyss; and it is without premeditation, by the mere impulse of our nature, that we suffer our thoughts to bear us far--far beyond that abyss, and to pause on the rapturous contemplation of a state anterior to the fall. hence spring, and thus are explained, the power and the charm which the idea of innocence has for us; absolute innocence we have never seen, but the idea is still vouchsafed to us; and so it appears to us in the cradle of the world, and in the cradle of the infant, and the pleasure is infinite which we derive from the ideal spectacle of purity which they each suggest. { } is this a pleasure foreign to all personal sentiment, to all secret reference to ourselves, the pleasure, that is to say, of a simple spectator? no: these impressions, which the picture of innocence awakens in us, are connected with and carry us back to ourselves; this change in the state of man, that mysterious past which has thrown him so far from innocence, leaving him, nevertheless, the idea and the worship of it--these were not the lot of the first man alone: the entire human race was, and remains, subject to them. our present evil does not proceed solely from ourselves; we have received it as a heritage before having brought it upon us as a penalty: we are not merely fallible beings, we are the children of a being who has sinned. { } how can we feel surprise at this inheritance of woe! have we not daily the example and the spectacle before our eyes? it is an incontestable and undisputed fact, that two elements enter into the moral life of man: on the one side, his innate dispositions, his natural and involuntary inclinations,--on the other, his inmost and individual will. the natural inclinations of a man do not destroy his moral liberty nor enslave his will, but they render its exercise more laborious and more difficult to him; it is not a chain which he carries, it is a burden that he bears. equally incontestable and undisputed is it that the natural dispositions of men are different and unequally distributed; no one is entirely exempt from evil inclinations; every man is not only fallible, but prone to transgress, and prone not only to transgress, but to transgress in some particular direction or other. nor can the fact be disputed, although appreciable with more difficulty, that the natural and special dispositions of the individual descend to him in a certain measure from his origin, and that parents transmit to their children such or such moral propensities just as they do such or such physical temperament, or such or such features. hereditary transmission enters into the moral as well as the physical order of the world. { } this inheritance must take effect, it has done so from the first days of man's existence upon earth, for man has been created complete in his whole nature. and whilst, at the same time as complete, he has been created fallible, i ask, who shall measure the distance between man fallible, but still without fault, and the first transgression? who shall sound the depth of the fall, and of the change which it brought into the moral condition of its author? who shall weigh the consequences of this change to the state and the moral dispositions of man's descendants? to appreciate the extent and gravity of this awful fact, of this first appearance and this first heritage of moral evil, we have but one test,--the instinct we still preserve of a state of innocence, and of the immense space which this instinct irresistibly compels us to place between native innocence and man's first transgression; but this test is unexceptionable; it dimly reveals to us, in this fatal transformation, the whole infirmity and responsibility of the human race. { } an objection is raised to this as an injustice: how, it is said, can each man be responsible for a fault which he has not himself committed--for the transgression of another man, separated from himself by so many ages? i consider this objection weak and frivolous. such an objection would attach to all the inequalities which exist among men, to the inequality of the destinies as well as that of the nature of man, to the inequality of his moral disposition as well as to that of his physical powers. the objection would attach to the solidarity of successive generations, and the controlling influence which the ideas, the acts, the destiny of each of them exert on the ideas, the acts, the destiny of those which follow it. the objection would attach to the ties which unite the child with its parents, and which are the cause of its sometimes inheriting their evil dispositions, and sometimes suffering for their faults. it is in short the general order of the world to which such an objection must apply; it is the very existence of evil, and its unequal distribution in a manner wholly independent of individual merit which assumes the character of a monstrous iniquity. { } and when we come to this point, that we no longer refer the source of evil to the fault and the responsibility of man, placed here on earth in a scene and period of transition and of trial, see to what alternative we are brought. we must either regard evil as natural, eternal, necessary, in the future as in the past, as the normal state of man and of the world; that is to say, we must deny god, the creation, the divine providence, human morality, liberty, responsibility and hope; or, on the other hand, it is to god himself that we must impute evil, and whom we must render accountable. the dogma of original sin alone relieves the human mind from this odious and unacceptable alternative: far from being in contradiction either with the history of humanity, or with the facts and instincts which constitute man's moral nature, this dogma admits, illustrates, and explains them. { } the fact of original sin presents nothing strange, nothing obscure; it consists essentially in disobedience to the will of god, which will is the moral law of man. this disobedience, the sin of adam, is an act committed everywhere and every day, arising from the same causes, marked by the same characters, and attended by the same consequences as the christian dogma assigns to it. at the present day, as in the garden of eden, this act is occasioned by a thirst for absolute independence, the ambitious aspirings of curiosity and pride, or weakness in the face of temptation. at the present day, as in the garden of eden, it produces an immense change in the inmost state of man, a change, the mere idea of which seizes upon the human soul, and disturbs it to its very depths; it transports man from the state of innocence to the state of sin. at the present day, as in the garden of eden, the act which produces this change involves and entails the responsibility not only of its author but of his descendants; sin is contagious in time as in space, it is transmitted, as well as diffused. { } the christian dogma exhibits the first man created fallible, but born innocent; innocent at the age of man, proud in the plenitude of his faculties, not the subject of any evil and fatal heritage. all at once, for the first time, of his own will, man disobeys god. here lies original sin, the same in its nature as sin at the present day, for they both consist in disobedience to the law of god, but it is the first in date in the history of man's liberty, and the human source of that evil for which the christian religion, whilst pointing it out, offers to man the remedy and the cure. iv. the incarnation. all religions have given a prominent place to the problem of existence and the origin of evil; all have attempted its solution. { } the good and the evil genius, ormuzd and ahriman among the persians; god the creator, god the preserver, and god the destroyer--brahma, vishnu, and siva--in india; the titans overwhelmed by the thunderbolts of jove while scaling olympus; prometheus chained to the rock for having snatched fire from heaven; all are so many hypotheses to explain the conflict between good and evil, between order and disorder in the world and in man. but all these hypotheses are complicated, confused, and encumbered with chimeras and fables; all attribute the derivation of evil to incongruous causes, none assign any term to the conflict, nor find a remedy for the evil. the christian religion alone clearly states and effectually solves the question; it alone imputes to man himself, and to him alone, the origin of evil; it alone represents god as intervening to raise man from his fall, and to save him from his peril. { } in the course of the sixth and fifth centuries before the christian era, a great fact appears in history; a breath of reform, religious, moral and social, arises, and spreads from east to west, among all the nations then at all progressing in the path of civilization. notwithstanding the uncertainties of chronology, it may be said, according to the most recent and accurate researches, that confucius in china, the buddha càkya-mouni in india, zoroaster in persia, pythagoras and socrates in greece, are all included in the limits of this epoch; [footnote ] men as dissimilar as they are celebrated, but who have all, in different ways and in unequal degrees, undertaken a great work of reforming both the men and the social institutions of their times. [footnote : these researches give the following dates:-- . confucius, from to b.c.; . zoroaster, from to , or from to b.c.; . buddha càkya-mouni, in the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. (he died, according to burnouf, b.c.); . pythagoras, from to b.c.; . socrates, to or b.c.] { } confucius was above all a practical moralist, skilled in observation, counsel, and discipline; buddha càkya-mouni, a dreamer, and a mystical and popular preacher; zoroaster, a legislator, religious and political; pythagoras and socrates, philosophers, bent upon instructing the distinguished bands of disciples whom they gathered around them. there is no doubt, notwithstanding the trials of their life, that neither power nor glory amongst their contemporaries was wanting to them. confucius and zoroaster were the favourites and counsellors of kings. buddha càkya-mouni, himself the son of a king, became the idol of innumerable multitudes. pythagoras and socrates formed schools and pupils who were an honour to the human mind. by their personal genius and by the excellence of some of their ideas and actions, these men have ensured themselves the admiration of all posterity. did they act up to their teachings, and accomplish what they attempted? did they really change the moral and social condition of nations? did they cause humanity to make any great progress, and open to it horizons which it had not before known? { } by no means. whatever fame attaches to the names of these men, whatever influence they may have exerted, what ever trace of their passage may have remained, they rather appeared to have power than really to possess it; they agitated the surface far more than they stirred the depths; they did not draw nations out of the beaten tracks in which they had lived. they did not transform souls. in considering the facts at large, and notwithstanding the political and material revolutions which they underwent, china after confucius, india after buddha, persia after zoroaster, greece after pythagoras and socrates, followed in the same ways, retained the same propensities, as before. still more, among these very different nations, stagnation was only be succeeded by decay. where are these nations at the present day, more than two thousand years after the appearance of these glorious characters in their history? what great progress, what salutary changes, have been effected? what are they in comparison and in contact with christian nations? { } outside of christianity there have been grand spectacles of activity and force, brilliant phenomena of genius and virtue, generous attempts at reform, learned philosophical systems, and beautiful mythological poems; no real profound or fruitful regeneration of humanity and of society. a few ages only after these barren efforts among the great nations of the world, jesus christ appears among a small, obscure people, weak and despised. he himself is weak and despised in the midst of his people; he neither possesses nor seeks any social power, any temporal means of action and of success; he collects around him only disciples weak and despised as himself. not only are they weak and despised, they proclaim it themselves, and, far from being troubled at this, they glory in it, and derive from it confidence. st. paul writes to the corinthians: "and i, brethren, when i came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of god. for i determined not to know any thing among you, save jesus christ, and him crucified. { } and i was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. ... therefore i take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for christ's sake; for when i am weak, then i am strong." [footnote ] [footnote : corinthians ii. ; corinthians xii. .] and in truth, jesus christ, the master of st. paul, is strong in his sufferings, and imparts his strength to his disciples; from his cross, he accomplishes what erewhile, in asia and europe, princes and philosophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages, attempted without success; he changes the moral state and the social state of the world; he pours into the souls of men new enlightenment and new powers; for all classes, for all human conditions, he prepares destinies before his advent unknown; he liberates them at the same time that he lays down rules for their guidance; he quickens them and stills them; he places the divine law and human liberty face to face, and yet still in harmony; he offers an effectual remedy for the evil which weighs upon humanity; to sin he opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness the door of hope. { } whence comes this power? what are its source and its nature? how did those who were its witnesses and instruments think and speak of it at the moment when it was manifested? they all, unanimously, saw in jesus christ, god; most of them, from the first moment, suddenly moved and enlightened by his presence and his words; some, with rather more surprise and hesitation, but soon penetrated and convinced in their turn. "when jesus came into the coasts of cæsarea philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that i the son of man am? and they said, some say that thou art john the baptist; some, elias; and others, jeremias, or one of the prophets. he saith unto them, but whom say ye that i am? and simon peter answered and said, thou art the christ, the son of the living god. { } and jesus answered and said unto him, blessed art thou, simon barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which is in heaven." [footnote ] another day, meeting with a similar instance of doubt, jesus says to thomas, "if ye had known me, ye should have known my father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. philip saith unto him, lord, shew us the father, and it sufficeth us. jesus saith unto him, have i been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the father." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xvi. - .] [footnote : john, xiv. - .] it has been remarked, that there are certain variations in the language of the apostles, and certain shades of difference in their leading impressions; and this is indeed true: they call jesus christ at one time the son of god, at another the son of man; they regard him and represent him now under his divine aspect, at another under his human aspect; they do not present exactly the same image of him; they do not all equally dwell upon the same traits of his nature, or the same facts of his earthly life. { } st. matthew is more a narrator and moralist; it is he who relates with fuller details the birth and childhood of jesus christ, and who gives at the greatest length the sermon on the mount. st. john is more in the habit of contemplating and depicting the divine nature of jesus christ and his relation to god: "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god. ... and the word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. ... no man hath seen god at any time; the only-begotten son, which is in the bosom of the father, he hath declared him." [footnote ] [footnote : john, i. , , .] { } it is also st. john who relates the testimony of the forerunner, st. john the baptist, answering to those who had said to him that all men come to jesus christ: "ye yourselves bear me witness, that i said, i am not the christ, but that i am sent before him. ... he that cometh from above is above all. ... he whom god hath sent speaketh the words of god: for god giveth not the spirit by measure unto him. ... the father loveth the son, and hath given all things into his hand" [footnote ] st. paul is more systematic, and enters more fully into the questions and principles of the christian doctrine, and he regards the divinity of jesus christ as the first of these principles. he writes to the philippians: "let this mind be in you, which was also in christ jesus: who, being in the form of god, thought it no usurpation to be equal with god: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." [footnote ] [footnote : john iii. , , , and .] [footnote : philippians ii. - . i have given this verse in osterwald's translation, which is also that of the vulgate; but my son guillaume, who is following out a careful course of study of latin and greek philology in sacred and profane literature, reminds me that the text of this passage presents a difficulty which furnished a field for the labours of erasmus, cameron, grotius, méric casaubon, in the sixteenth century, as well as many others before and after them. the greek word [greek text] admits of two meanings, an active and a passive sense--it may designate the _action of ravishing, of carrying off by force,_ or the _object carried off_--the act of depredation, or the spoil. substantives derived from verbs frequently waver between these two acceptations, and the word [greek text], which is merely another form of [greek text], is unquestionably a case in point. Ã�schylus, euripides, herodotus, have employed it in the first sense; Ã�schylus, euripides, thucydides, and polybius in the second sense. now, in the passage of st. paul, accordingly as one or the other sense is adopted, these words must either be translated thus: "he did not consider it a usurpation to be equal to god;" or thus, "he did not display as a trophy his equality to god;" that is to say: he did not display his equality with god as the conquerors of the earth display the spoils and booty which they have amassed; he did not make use of his divinity to reign, to triumph, to pride himself in it; he was not the messiah whom the carnal jews expected, a visible king and victorious in arms; but, on the contrary, "he humbled himself, and took upon him the form of a servant," etc., etc. this second interpretation seems more probable; the reasoning on which it is founded is thus more connected and flowing; and at the same time, it leaves the doctrine of the apostle intact; it changes nothing in his conception or his conclusions. in this passage, as in many others, st. paul likewise affirms the divinity of the saviour whom he announces to men; and it is from this majesty, subjected to a voluntary humiliation, veiled under the form of a servant, obedient unto the death of the cross, that he presents an august example and an imperative lesson for christians of humility and mutual support. it is thus that this interpretation has been admitted and defended by two eminent men, a scholar of the sixteenth and a theologian of the nineteenth century, both of whom were strongly attached to the dogma of the divinity of jesus christ--i allude to méric casaubon (de verborum usu, pp. - , at the end of the letters of his father), and m. a. vinet (homilétique, p. ).] { } .... it is he "who is the image of the invisible god, the first-born of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." [footnote ] [footnote : colossians i. - .] { } st. peter and st. john, in their epistles, speak in the same terms as st. paul. st. peter says, "we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our lord jesus christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. for he received from god the father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, this is my beloved son, in whom i am well pleased; hear ye him." [footnote ] [footnote : peter i. , .] { } st. john writes: "whosoever denieth the son, the same hath not the father; but he that acknowledgeth the son hath the father also." [footnote ] "hereby know ye the spirit of god: every spirit that confesseth that jesus christ is come in the flesh is of god; and every spirit that confesseth not that jesus christ is come in the flesh is not of god." [footnote ] [footnote : john ii. .] [footnote : john iv. , .] such is the language of the apostles; such are, at the same time, its shades of variance and its harmony. they have all evidently the same conception of jesus christ, they have all the same faith in him. st. matthew, as well as st. john, st. peter and st. paul, alike regard jesus christ as at once god and man, the representative of god on earth, and the mediator between god and men--come from god, and re-ascended unto him as the source and centre of his being. the dogma of the incarnation, that is to say, of the divinity of jesus christ, pervades the holy scriptures--the gospels, the acts of the apostles, the epistles of the apostles, the writings of the first fathers. it is the common and fixed basis, the source and essence of the christian faith. { } this was affirmed and declared by jesus christ himself. what his disciples believed and related of him, is what he himself told them of himself, as well as what they themselves witnessed and thought of him: "all things are delivered unto me of my father: and no man knoweth the son, but the father: neither knoweth any man the father, save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him." [footnote ] --"i and my father are one." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xi. .] [footnote : john x. .] and when he approaches the term of his mission, when, after having announced to his disciples that the hour was coming when they would be dispersed, each going his own way, leaving him alone, jesus christ raises his thoughts to god and says, "father, the hour is come; glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. { } and this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true god, and jesus christ whom thou hast sent. i have glorified thee on the earth: i have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. and now, o father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which i had with thee before the world was. i have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. for i have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that i came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. i pray for them: i pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. and all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and i am glorified in them. and now i am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and i come to thee. holy father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." [footnote ] [footnote : john xvii. - .] { } i might multiply these texts; but these surely suffice to show that the words of jesus christ in relation to himself, and those of his apostles, are in perfect unison; he speaks of himself as they speak of him; he qualifies himself as they qualify him; he calls god his "father," as his disciples call him "the son of god." he has the same faith in himself, in his nature, and in his mission, as st. matthew, st. john, st. peter, and st. paul had in him. it is a great source of error, in the study of facts, not to know how to stop at their general and essential features, and, losing sight of these, to give prominence to partial and secondary features. on the subject of the divinity of jesus christ, that fundamental principle of the christian religion, the precise meaning and import of such or such a word may be disputed; such or such an expression may be thought an interpolation, and so eliminated in any particular gospel, in any particular epistle; nevertheless there will always remain infinitely more than sufficient evidence of the fact that those who at the present day believe in the divinity of jesus christ, believe simply what the apostles believed and said, and that the apostles themselves only believed and said, nearly nineteen centuries ago, what jesus christ himself said to them. { } the opponents of the dogma of the incarnation and of the divinity of jesus christ disregard equally man and history, the complex elements of human nature, and the meaning of the great facts which mark the religious life of the human race. what is man himself, but an incomplete and imperfect incarnation of god? the materialists who deny the soul, and the naturalists who deny creation, are alone consistent in rejecting the christian dogma. all who believe in the distinction of spirit and matter, who do not believe that man is the result of the fermentation of matter, or of the transformation of species, are constrained to admit the presence in human nature of the divine element, and they must necessarily accept these words in genesis: "god created man in his own image;" that is to say, they must acknowledge the presence of god in frail and fallible humanity. { } i open the histories of all religions, of all mythologies, the most refined as well as the grossest; i find at every step the idea and the assertion of the divine incarnation. brahmanism, buddhism, paganism, all faiths, all religious idolatries, abound in incarnations of every kind and date, primitive or successive, connected with this or that historical event, adapted to explain this or that fact, to satisfy this or that human propensity. it is the natural and universal instinct of men to picture to themselves the action of god upon the human race under the form of the incarnation of god in man. { } like all religious instincts, that of the belief in the divine incarnation may engender, and has engendered, the most absurd superstitions, the most extravagant hypotheses. in the same way as the natural faith in god has been the source of all idolatries, so the tendency to incarnate god in man has given rise to, and admitted, every kind of strange imagining and spurious tradition. are we then to pronounce all divine incarnation false, every tradition of it spurious? rather let us say that it proceeds from the infirmity of the human mind, if we see realities and mere chimeras, truths and errors, in such close proximity, if we find them calling one another by the same names and unceasingly confounding one another's attributes. the pretended incarnation of brahma, or of buddha, proves no more against the divinity of jesus christ than the adoration of idols proves against the existence of god. jesus christ, god and man, has characteristics which appertain to him alone. these have founded his power and occasioned the success of his works, a power and a success which belong to him alone. { } it is not a human reformer, but god himself, who, through jesus christ, has accomplished what no human reformer has ever accomplished, or even conceived,--the reform of the moral and social condition of the world, the regeneration of the human soul, and the solution of the problems of human destiny. it is by these signs, by these results, that the divinity of jesus christ is manifested. how was the divine incarnation accomplished in man? here, as in the union of the soul and the body, as in the creation, arises the mystery; but if we cannot fathom the reason of it, the fact not the less exists. when this fact has taken the form of dogma, theology has sought to explain it. in my opinion, this was a mistake; theology has obscured the fact in developing and commenting upon it. it is the fact itself of the incarnation which constitutes the christian faith, and which rises above all definitions and all theological controversies. to disregard this fact--to deny the divinity of jesus christ--is to deny, to overthrow the christian religion, which would never have been what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but that the divine incarnation was its principle, and jesus christ--god and man--its author. { } v. the redemption. i enter into the sanctuary of the christian faith. god has done more than manifest himself in jesus christ. he has done more than place upon the earth and before men his own living image, the type of sanctity and the model of life. the creator has accomplished, through jesus christ, toward man, his creature, an act of his beneficence and at the same time of his sovereign power. jesus christ is not only god made man to spread the divine light upon men; he is god made man to conquer and efface in man moral evil, the fruit of the sin of man. he brings not only light and law, but pardon and salvation. { } and it is at the price of his own suffering, of his own sacrifice, that he brings these to them. he is the type of self-devotion at the same time as of sanctity. he has submitted to be a victim in order to be a saviour. the incarnation leads to the cross, and the cross to the redemption. here are the supreme dogma and mystery. here are revealed plainly the sense and the import of christianity. by what ways did jesus christ penetrate the human soul to accomplish this great work? how did he win the human soul to the christian faith, in order to snatch it from evil and to save it? when man fails in the duty of which he recognises the law,--when he commits the wrong which he is bound to shun,--when, after sin, repentance arises within him, and a sense of the necessity of expiation is soon joined with this sentiment of repentance, the moral instinct of man teaches that repentance does not suffice to efface the fault, and that it requires to be expiated: reparation supposes suffering. { } and when the religious sentiment is joined to the moral sentiment,--when man believes in god, and sees in him the author and dispenser of the moral law, he regards himself as guilty of transgression toward god whom he has disobeyed, he feels the need of being pardoned and of being restored to the favour of the sovereign master whom he has offended. among all nations, in all religions, under all social forms, these two instincts--as to the necessity of expiation to ensue upon the fault, and the necessity of pardon to follow the transgression--appear natural and inherent in the human soul. they have been at all times and in all places, the source of a multitude of beliefs and practices; some pure and touching, others foolish and odious: these may all be briefly comprised in the single expression, _sacrifices_. the histories of all nations, barbarous or civilized, ancient or modern, teem with sacrificial rites of every description, whether they be of a nature gross or mystical, of a performance mild or bloody; rites invented and celebrated either to expiate the sins of man, or to appease the anger of god and regain his favour. { } nor is this all; we have here to note another moral fact, not less real although it seems stranger to the eyes of superficial reason. mankind has believed that a fault might be expiated by another than its author, that innocent victims might be efficaciously offered up to influence god, and to save the guilty. this belief has led to sacrifices no less absurd than atrocious: the pretended expiation has become an additional crime: it has at the same time been also the source of heroic acts and sublime examples of self-devotion. both the domestic records of families and the public histories of nations have furnished us with admirable instances of innocence voluntarily offering itself as a sacrifice, taking upon itself the penalty, the suffering, the death, to expiate the sin of others, and to win from divine justice--now satisfied--the pardon of the offender. { } and are we then to regard this merely as a pious, a generous illusion, a devotedness as vain as admirable? yes, such is the view that all those must adopt who believe neither in providence nor prayer, nor in the existence of any efficacious relation between the actions of man and the purposes of god; no solidarity between men, no connection between the sacrifice of him who practises the act of self-devotion, and the destiny of him who is its object. but those who have faith in the living god, in his continued presence, and his never-sleeping providence, those who believe that nothing in man, whether it be good or whether it be evil, is in vain, that every moral act bears its fruit visible or invisible, immediate or remote, such as these cannot fail to feel, to have, as it were, a presentiment, that in such self-sacrifice of the innocent for the salvation of the guilty, there exists a mysterious virtue. the secret of this it may not be given them to fathom, but it nevertheless gives life in their bosom to the hope that such sublime devotion will not fail of its object. { } and now, to pass from this feeling, and from the acts of man, whose reality no one can dispute, to the corresponding dogmas of christianity, let me, by the side of these acts of devotedness and self-sacrifice of the human creature in his innocence seeking to atone for the sins of the human creature who is guilty, place the self-devotion and the self-sacrifice of jesus christ, the man-god, tendered to ransom from sin the race of mankind and to open to it the way of salvation; who is not struck by this sublime analogy? what connection and harmony between the purest, the most generous, instincts of the human soul, and the dogma of god's redemption? i touch upon none of the questions, i enter into none of the controversies which have sprung up with respect to this dogma of redemption; i do not weigh with a view to compare faith and works, nor do i essay to assign the part due to divine grace or to human virtue; i do not define or seek to number the elect, but i pause upon the fact itself of the redemption by jesus christ, the fact upon which the dogma itself reposes. { } all that the most renowned heroes, the most glorious saints of humanity have striven to accomplish, in order to expiate the sins of any creature or any nation, jesus christ the elect of god, the son of god, the god-man, came to effect for all mankind, by means of incomparable sorrow, humiliation, and sufferings. and, as was affirmed by st. paul in the first century, and by bossuet in the seventeenth, this very suffering, this humiliation, this martyrdom of jesus christ, have constituted his victory and his empire. and i would ask, what other spectacle than that of god made man to constitute himself victim--made victim to become the saviour--could have excited in the soul of mankind those outbursts of admiration, of respect, and of love, that ardent, invincible, and contagious faith, of which the apostles and the primitive christians have left us the evidences and the example? it was requisite that the victim and the sacrifice should be equal to the work. { } that work was the christian religion, that incomparable system of facts, dogmas, precepts, promises, which, in the midst of all the doubts and all the controversies of the mind of man, have for nineteen centuries afforded satisfaction and solution to those aspirings of the human race, which nature prompts, whether they assume the form of religious instincts or religious problems. { } third meditation. the supernatural. to a system so grand, and in such profound harmony with man's own nature, an objection is made which is thought decisive; that system proclaims the supernatural, has the supernatural for its principle and foundation. it is objected that the supernatural itself has no existence. this objection is not novel, but it has at this moment in appearance assumed a more serious and formidable shape than ever. it is in the name of science itself, of all the human sciences, of the physical sciences, historical science, philosophical science, that the pretension is made that is to reduce the supernatural to a nonentity, and to banish it from the world and from man. { } the reverence that i feel for science is infinite. i would have it as free and unshackled as i would desire to see it honoured. but i would at the same time like to see it deal somewhat more rigorously and logically with itself. i would like to see it less exclusively absorbed by its own peculiar labours and occupations, its momentary successes; more careful not to forget or omit any of the ideas or any of the facts which bear upon the subject with which it deals, and for which in its solution it has still to account. in whatever quarter, at this day, the wind may be, the abolition of the supernatural is a difficult enterprise, for the belief in the supernatural is a fact natural, primitive, universal, constant in the life and history of the human race. we may interrogate mankind in all times and places, in all states of society and degrees of civilization, we find it always and everywhere spontaneously believing in facts and causes beyond the sphere of this palpable world, of this living piece of mechanism termed nature. in vain do we extend, explain, amplify nature itself; the instinct of man, the instinct of human masses, has never suffered that nature to confine it: it has always sought and seen something beyond. { } it is this belief--instinctive, and hitherto indestructible--which is qualified as a radical error; this universal and enduring fact in man's history it is which men seek to abolish. they go farther; they affirm that it is already abolished--that the _people_ no longer believe in the supernatural, and that any attempt to bring them back to it would be vain. incredible conceit of man! what, because in a corner of the world in one day among ages brilliant progress may have been made in natural and historical science--because in the name of the sciences, and in brilliant books, the supernatural has been combated, they proclaim the supernatural vanquished, abolished; and we hear the judgment pronounced, not merely in the name of the learned, but of the people! have you then completely forgotten, or have you never thoroughly comprehended, humanity and the history of humanity? { } do you ignore absolutely what the people really is, and what all those nations are that cover the surface of the earth? have you never then penetrated into those millions of souls in which the belief in the supernatural is and abides, present and active even when the words which move their lips disown it? are you then unconscious of the immense distance which there is between the depths and the surface of those souls, between the variable breaths which only ruffle the minds of men, and the immutable instincts which preside over their very being? true, there are, in our days, amongst the people, many fathers, mothers, children, who believe themselves incredulous, and mock scorn fully at miracles; but follow them in the intimacy of their homes, amongst the trials of their lives, how do these parents act, when their child is ill, those farmers when their crops are threatened, those sailors when they float upon the waters a prey to the tempest? they elevate their eyes to heaven, they burst forth in prayer, they invoke that supernatural power said by you to be abolished in their very thought. by their spontaneous and irresistible acts they give to your words and to their own a striking disavowal. { } but to advance a step towards you, admitted that the faith in the supernatural is abolished; let us enter together that society and those classes to whom this moral ruin is a triumph and a vaunt. what then ensues? in the place of god's miracles, man's miracles make their appearance. they are searched for, they are called for; men are found to invent them, and to contrive them to be recognised by thousands of beholders. it is not necessary to go either far in time or wide in space to see the supernatural of superstition raising itself in the place of the supernatural of religion, and credulity hurrying to meet falsehood half-way. { } but away with these unhealthy paroxysms of humanity; and to return to its sober and enduring history. we will admit that the instinctive belief in the supernatural has been the source and abides the foundation of all religions, of religion in the most general sense of the word, and of essential religion. the most serious, at the same time the most perplexed, of the thinkers who in our days have approached the subject, m. edmond scherer, saw plainly enough that that was the question at issue, and he has so put it in the third of his "conversations théologiques," noble yet sad imaging forth of the fermentation in his own ideas and the struggles which they occasion in his soul. "the supernatural is not a something external to religion," says one of the two speakers between whom m. scherer supposes the discussion, "it is religion itself." "no," says the other, "the supernatural is not the peculiar element of religion, but rather of superstition: the supernatural fact has no relation with the human soul, for it is the essence of the supernatural that it goes beyond all those conditions which constitute credibility; its essence indeed is the being _anti-human_." { } the discussion continues and becomes animated: the contrary nature of the perplexities experienced by the two speakers becomes manifest. "perhaps," says the rationalist, "the supernatural was a necessary form of religion for ill cultivated minds: but rightly or wrongly, our modern civilization rejects miracles; without positive denial, it remains indifferent to them. even the preacher knows not how to deal with them; the more he is in earnest, the more his christian feeling has inwardness and vitality, the more does the miracle also disappear from his teaching. miracles formerly constituted the great force of the sermon, at the present day what are they but a secret source of embarrassment? everybody feels vaguely when confronted by the marvellous accounts in our sacred volumes, what he feels when confronted by the legends of the saints; it is impossible for that to be religion, it is only its superfoetation." "it is true," exclaims with sorrow the hesitating christian, "we believe no longer in miracles; you might have added that neither do we any more believe in god himself; the two things go together. { } we hear much now-a-days of christian spiritualism--of the religion of the conscience, and you yourself seem to see that men in giving up miracles are making progress in religion. ah! why is it that the intimate experience of my own heart cannot express itself in a forcible protest against any such opinion? whenever i find my faith in miraculous agency vacillating within me, the image of my god seems to be fading away from my eyes: he ceases to be for me god the free, the living, the personal; the god with whom the soul converses, as with a master and friend; and this holy dialogue once interrupted, what is left us? how does life become sad? how does it lose its illusions? reduced to the satisfaction of mere physical wants, to eat, to drink, to sleep, to make money, deprived of all horizon, how puerile does our maturity appear, how sorrowful our old age, how meaningless our anxieties! { } "no more mystery, no more innocence, no more infinity, no longer any heaven above our heads, no more poesy. ah! be sure: the incredulity which rejects the miracle has a tendency to unpeople heaven, and to disenchant the earth. the supernatural is the natural sphere of the soul. it is the essence of its faith, of its hope, of its love. i know how specious criticism is, how victorious its arguments often appear; but i know one thing besides, and perhaps i might here even appeal to your own testimony; in ceasing to believe in what is miraculous, the soul finds that it has lost the secret of divine life; henceforth it is urged downwards towards the abyss, soon it lies on the earth, and not seldom in the dirt." in his turn the disbeliever in the supernatural is troubled and saddened: "listen," he says: "the history of humanity seems to be sometimes moving in obedience to the following scheme. the world begins with religion, and, referring all phenomena to a first cause, it sees god everywhere. { } then comes philosophy, which, having discovered the connection of secondary causes, and the laws of their operation, makes a corresponding deduction from the direct intervention of divinity, and then founding itself upon the idea of necessity (for it is only necessity which falls within the domain of science, and science is in fact but the knowledge of what is necessary); philosophy tends in its very fundamental principle to exclude god from the world. it does more; it finishes by denying human liberty as it has denied god. the reason is evident: liberty is a cause beyond the sphere of the necessary connection of causes, a first cause, a cause which serves as cause to itself: and from that moment philosophy, unequal to any explanation, feels itself disposed to deny that first cause. a philosophy true to itself will ever be fatalistic. for from that moment philosophy corrupts and destroys itself. when it has no other god than the universe, no other man than the chief of the mammalia, what is it but a mere system of zoology? { } zoology constitutes the whole science of the epoch, of the materialists, and to speak plainly, that is our position at the present day. but materialism can never be the be-all and the end-all of the human race. corrupt and enervated, society is passing through immense catastrophes, is falling in ruins; the iron harrow of revolution is breaking up mankind like the clods of the field; in the bloody furrows germinate new races; the soul in the agony of its distress believes once more; it resumes its faith in virtue, it finds again the language of prayer. to the age of the renaissance succeeded that of the reformation; to the germany of frederick the great, the germany of . so faith springs up for ever and ever out of its ashes. ah, that i must add it, humanity rises again but to resume the march which i have just described. but can it be said of it besides, that like this globe of ours it is making any movement in advance whilst it is so turning round itself, and if it does so advance, towards what is it gravitating? { } 'whither, whither, o lord, marches the earth in the heavens?'" [footnote ] [footnote : mélange de critique religieuse, par edmond scherer--conversations théologiques, pp. - .] but it is not towards heaven that the earth would march if it followed the path in which the adversaries of the supernatural are impelling it. it is this peculiarity, they say, of the supernatural, that being incredible, it is in its very essence anti-human. now it is precisely to something not anti-human but superhuman that the human soul aspires, and there seeks to realize these aspirations in the supernatural. we should be never weary of repeating it; the whole finite world in its entirety, with all its facts and all its laws, comprising indeed man himself, suffices not for the soul of man; it requires something grander and more perfect for the subject of its contemplation, the object of its love; it desires to fix its trust in something more stable; to lean upon something less fragile. { } this supreme and sublime ambition it is to which religion, in its widest sense, gives birth and supplies nourishment; and this supreme and sublime ambition it is also that the religion of christ more particularly responds to and satisfies. let those, therefore, who flatter themselves that although abolishing the belief in the supernatural, they leave christians still christians, undeceive themselves; what they are abolishing, destroying, is very religion, for their arguments assail all religion in general, and christianity in particular. it may be that they do not inflict upon themselves all this evil, and that in retaining a sincere religious sentiment they really believe themselves nearly christians; the soul struggles against the errors of the thought, and a moral suicide is a rare spectacle. but the evil even in spreading unveils more plainly its nature and increases in intensity; besides men, in masses, draw from error far more logical conclusions than the man ever did in whom the error had its origin. the people are not the learned, neither are they philosophers, and only once succeed in destroying in them all faith in the supernatural, and you may consider it certain that the faith in christ must have previously disappeared. { } have you well weighed all this? have you pictured to yourself what a man, what mankind, what the soul of man, what human society itself would become if religion were in effect abolished, if religious faith entirely disappeared? i will not give way to anguish of soul or sinister presentiments, but i do not hesitate to affirm that no imagination can represent with adequate fidelity what would take place in us and around us if the place at present occupied by christian belief were on a sudden to become vacant, and its empire annihilated. no one could pronounce to what degree of disorder and degradation humanity would be precipitated. but awful indeed would be the result if all faith in the supernatural were extinct in the soul, and if man had in a supernatural state neither trust nor hope. it is not my design, however, to confine myself here to the question regarded merely in its moral, practical light; i approach the supernatural as viewed with the eyes of free and speculative reason. { } it is condemned for its very name's sake. nothing is or can be, it is said, beyond and above nature. nature is one and complete; everything is comprised in it; in it, of necessity, all things cohere, enchain, and develop themselves. we are here in thorough pantheism--that is to say, in absolute atheism. i do not hesitate to give to pantheism its real name. amongst the men who at the present day declare themselves the opponents of the supernatural, most, certainly, do not believe that they are nor do they desire to be atheists. but let me tell them that they are leading others whither they neither think nor wish themselves to go. the negation of the supernatural, and that in the name of the unity and universality of nature, is pantheism, and pantheism is nothing more nor less than atheism. { } in the sequel of these meditations, when i come to speak particularly of the actual state of the christian religion, and of the different systems which combat it, i will in this respect justify my assertion; at present, i have to repel direct attacks upon the supernatural--attacks less fundamental than those of pantheism, but not less serious, for in truth, whether men know it or not, and whether they mean it or not, all attacks in this warfare reach the same object, and as soon as the supernatural is the aim it is religion itself that receives the shaft. the fixity of the laws of nature is appealed to; that, say they, is the palpable and incontestable fact established by the experience of mankind, and upon which rests the conduct of human life. in presence of the permanent order of nature and the immutability of its laws, we cannot admit any partial, any momentary infractions; we cannot believe in the supernatural, in miracles. true, general and constant laws do govern nature. are we, therefore, to affirm that those laws are necessary, and that no deviation from them is possible in nature? who is there that does not discern an essential, an absolute difference between what is general and what is necessary? { } the permanence of the actual laws of nature is a fact established by experience, but it is not the only fact possible, the only fact conceivable by reason; those laws might have been other laws, they may change. several of them have not always been what they now are, for science itself proves that the condition of the universe has been different from what it is at present; the universal and permanent order of which we form part, and in which we confide, has not always been what we now see it; it has had a beginning; the creation of the actual system of nature and of its laws is a fact as certain as the system itself is certain. and what is creation but a supernatural fact, the act of a power superior to the actual laws of nature, and which has power to modify them just as much as it has had power to establish them? the first of miracles is god himself. { } there is a second miracle--man. i resume what i have already said; by his title as a moral being and free agent, man lives beyond and above the influence of the general and permanent laws of nature; he creates by his will effects which are not at all the necessary consequence of any pre-existent law; and those effects take their place in a system absolutely distinct and independent from the visible order which governs the universe. the moral liberty of man is a fact as certain, and natural, as the order of nature, and it is at the same time a supernatural fact--that is to say, essentially foreign to the order of nature and to its laws. god is the being moral and free _par excellence_, that is to say, the being excellently capable of acting as first cause beyond the influence of causation. by his title as a moral being and free agent, man is in intimate relation with god. who shall define the possible contingencies, or fathom the mysteries of this relation? who dare to say that god cannot modify, that he never does modify, according to his plans with respect to the moral system and to man, the laws which he has made and which he maintains in the material order of nature? { } some have hesitated absolutely to deny the possibility of supernatural facts; and so their attack is indirect. if those facts, say they, are not impossible, they are incredible, for no particular testimony of man in favour of a miracle can give a certitude equal to that which, on the opposite side, results from the experience which men have of the fixity of the laws of nature. "it is experience only," says hume, "which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. when therefore these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do, but subtract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder. but according to the principles here explained, this subtraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation: and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion." [footnote ] [footnote : essays and treatises on several subjects, by david hume; essay on miracles, vol. iii. p. - , bâle, . [same work, p. , london, mo, .--translator.]] { } it is in this reasoning of hume that the opponents of miracles shut themselves up as in an impregnable fortress to refuse them all credence. what confusion of facts and ideas! what a superficial solution of one of the grandest problems of our nature! what! a simple operation of arithmetic, with respect to two experimental observations, estimated in ciphers, is to decide the question whether the universal belief of the race of man in the supernatural is well-founded or simply absurd; whether god only acts upon the world and upon man by laws established once for all, or whether he still continues to make, in the exercise of his power, use of his liberty! { } not only does the sceptic hume here show himself unconscious of the grandeur of the problem; he mistakes even in the motives upon which he founds his shallow conclusion; for it is not from human experience alone that human testimony draws her authority: this authority has sources more profound, and a worth anterior to experience: it is one of the natural bonds, one of the spontaneous sympathies which unite with one another men and the generations of men. is it by virtue of experience that the child trusts to the words of its mother, that it has faith in all she tells it? the mutual trust that men repose in what they say or transmit to each other is an instinct, primitive, spontaneous, which experience confirms or shakes, sets up again or sets bounds to, but which experience does not originate. i find in the same essay of hume, [footnote ] this other passage: "the passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events from which it is derived." [footnote : hume's essay on miracles, p. , _ubi supra_.] { } thus, if we are to credit hume, it is merely for his pleasure, for the diversion of the imaginative faculty, that man believes in the supernatural; and beneath this impression--though real, still only of a secondary nature--which does no more than skim the surface of the human soul, the philosopher has no glimpse at all of the profound instincts and superior requisitions which have sway over him. but why an attack of this character, so indirect and little complete? why should hume limit himself to the proposition that miracles can never be historically proved, instead of at once affirming the impossibility of miracles themselves? this is what the opponents of the supernatural virtually think; and it is because they commence by regarding miracles as impossible that they apply themselves to destroy the value of the evidences by which they are supported. { } if the evidence which surrounds the cradle of christianity, if the fourth, if even the tenth part of it were adduced in support of facts of a nature extra-ordinary, unexpected, or unheard of, but still not having a character positively supernatural, the proof would be accepted as unexceptionable: the facts for certain. in appearance, it is merely the proof by witnesses of the supernatural that is contested; whereas, in reality, the very possibility of the thing is denied that is sought to be proved. the question ought to be put as it really is, instead of such a solution being offered as is a mere evasion. lately, however, men of logical minds and daring spirits have not hesitated to speak more frankly and plainly. "the new dogma, they say, the fundamental principle of criticism, is the negation of the supernatural. ... those still disposed to reject this principle have nothing to do with our books, and we, on our side, have no cause to feel disquietude at their opposition and their censure, for we do not write for them. and if this discussion is altogether avoided, it is because it is impossible to enter into it with out admitting an unacceptable proposition, viz., one which presumes that the supernatural can in any given case be possible. [footnote ] [footnote : conservation, involution, et positivisme, par m. littré, preface, p. xxvi, and following pages--m. havet, revue des deux mondes, août, .] { } i do not reproach the disciples of the school of hume for having evinced greater timidity: if they attacked the supernatural by a side way, not as being impossible in itself, but as being merely incapable of proof by human testimony, they did not do so designedly and with deceitful purpose. let us render them more justice, and do them more honour. a prudent and an honest instinct held them back on the declivity upon which they had placed themselves; they felt that to deny even the possibility of the supernatural, was to enter at full sail into pantheism and fatalism, that is to say, was the same thing as at once dispensing with god and doing away with the free agency of man. their moral sense, their good sense, withheld them from any such course. { } the fundamental error of the adversaries of the supernatural is that they contest it in the name of human science, and that they class the supernatural amongst facts within the domain of science, whereas the supernatural does not fall within that domain, and the very attempt so to treat it has led, indeed, to its being entirely rejected. { } fourth meditation. the limits of science. an eminent moralist, who was at the same time not only a theologian, but a philosopher well versed in the physical sciences, i mean dr. chalmers, professor at the university of edinburgh, and corresponding member of the institute of france, wrote in his work on _natural theology_, a chapter entitled: _on man's partial and limited knowledge of divine things._ the first pages are as follows:-- "the true modern philosophy never makes more characteristic exhibition of itself, than at the limit which separates the known from the unknown. it is there that we behold it in a twofold aspect--that of the utmost deference and respect for all the findings of experience within this limit; that, on the other hand, of the utmost disinclination and distrust for all those fancies of ingenious or plausible speculation which have their place in the ideal region beyond it. { } to call in the aid of a language which far surpasses our own in expressive brevity, its office is '_indagare_' rather than '_divinare_.' the products of this philosophy are copies and not creations. it may discover a system of nature, but not devise one. it proceeds first on the observation of individual facts and if these facts are ever harmonised into a system, this is only in the exercise of a more extended observation. in the work of systematising, it makes no excursion beyond the territory of actual nature--for they are the actual phenomena of nature which form the first materials of this philosophy--and they are the actual resemblances of these phenomena that form, as it were, the cementing principle, to which the goodly fabrics of modern science owe all the solidity and all the endurance that belong to them. { } it is this chiefly which distinguishes the philosophy of the present day from that of by-gone ages. the one was mainly an excogitative, the other mainly a descriptive process--a description however extending to the likenesses as well as to the peculiarities of things; and, by means of these likenesses, these observed likenesses alone, often realising a more glorious and magnificent harmony than was ever pictured forth by all the imaginations of all the theorists. "in the mental characteristics of this philosophy, the strength of a full-grown understanding is blended with the modesty of childhood. the ideal is sacrificed to the actual--and, however splendid or fondly cherished a hypothesis may be, yet if but one phenomenon in the real history of nature stand in the way, it is forthwith and conclusively abandoned. to some the renunciation may be as painful as the cutting off a right hand, or the plucking out a right eye--yet, if true to the great principle of the baconian school, it must be submitted to. { } with its hardy disciples one valid proof outweighs a thousand plausibilities--and the resolute firmness wherewith they bid away the speculations of fancy is only equalled by the childlike compliance wherewith they submit themselves to the lessons of experience. "it is thus that the same principle which guides to a just and a sound philosophy in all that lies within the circle of human discovery, leads also to a most unpresuming and unpronouncing modesty in reference to all that lies beyond it. and should some new light spring up on this exterior region, should the information of its before hidden mysteries break in upon us from some quarter that was before inaccessible, it will be at once perceived (on the supposition of its being a genuine and not an illusory light) that, of all other men, they are the followers of bacon and newton who should pay the most unqualified respect to all its revelations. { } in their case it comes upon minds which are without prejudice, because on that very principle, which is most characteristic of our modern science, upon minds without preoccupation. ... the strength of his confidence in all the ascertained facts of the _terra cognita_ is at one or in perfect harmony with the humility of his diffidence in regard to all the conceived plausibilities of the _terra incognita_. "and let it further be remarked of the self-denial which is laid upon us by bacon's philosophy, that, like all other self-denial in the cause of truth or virtue, it hath its reward. in giving ourselves up to its guidance, we have often to quit the fascinations of beautiful theory; but in exchange for them, we are at length regaled by the higher and substantial beauties of actual nature. there is a stubbornness in facts before which the specious imagination is compelled to give way; and perhaps the mind never suffers more painful laceration than when, after having vainly attempted to force nature into a compliance with her own splendid generalizations, she, on the appearance of some rebellious and impracticable phenomenon, has to practise a force upon herself--when she thus finds the goodly speculation superseded by the homely and unwelcome experience. { } it seemed at the outset a cruel sacrifice, when the world of speculation, with all its manageable and engaging simplicities, had to be abandoned; and on becoming the pupils of observation, we, amid the varieties of the actual world around us, felt as if bewildered, if not lost, among the perplexities of a chaos. this was a period of greatest sufferance; but it has had a glorious termination. in return for the assiduity wherewith the study of nature hath been prosecuted, she hath made a more abundant revelation of her charms. order hath arisen out of confusion, and in the ascertained structure of the universe there are now found to be a state and a sublimity beyond all that was ever pictured by the mind in the days of her adventurous and unfettered imagination. { } even viewed in the light of a noble and engaging spectacle for the fancy to dwell upon, who would ever think of comparing with the system of newton, either that celestial machinery of des cartes, which was impelled by whirlpools of ether, or that still more cumbrous planetarium of cycles and epicycles which was the progeny of a remoter age? it is thus that at the commencement of the observational process there is the abjuration of beauty. but it soon reappears in another form, and brightens as we advance, and at length there arises on solid foundation, a fairer and goodlier system than ever floated in airy romance before the eye of genius. nor is it difficult to perceive the reason of this. what we discover by observation is the product of divine imagination bodied forth by creative power into a stable and enduring reality. what we devise by our own ingenuity is but the product of human imagination. the one is the solid archetype of those conceptions which are in the mind of god: the other is the shadowy representation of those conceptions which are in the mind of man. it is just as with the labourer, who, by excavating the rubbish which hides and besets some noble architecture, does more for the gratification of our taste, than if by his unpractised hand he should attempt to regale us with plans and sketches of his own. { } and so the drudgery of experimental science, in exchange for that beauty whose fascinations it withstood at the outset of its career, has evolved a surpassing beauty from among the realities of truth and nature. ... "the views contemplated through the medium of observation, are found not only to have a justness in them, but to have a grace and a grandeur in them far beyond all the visions which are contemplated through the medium of fancy, or which ever regaled the fondest enthusiast in the enchanted walks of speculation and poetry. but neither the grace nor the grandeur alone would, without evidence, have secured acceptance for any opinion. it must first be made to undergo, and without ceremony, the freest treatment from human eyes and human hands. it is at one time stretched on the rack of an experiment, at another it has to pass through fiery trial in the bottom of a crucible. { } in another it undergoes a long questioning process among the fumes and the filtrations and the intense heat of a laboratory; and not till it has been subjected to all this inquisitorial torture and survived it, is it preferred to a place in the temple of truth, or admitted among the laws and lessons of a sound philosophy." no one certainly will contest that this is the language of a fervent disciple of science. it is impossible to have a keener apprehension of its beauty, and to accept more completely its laws. what mathematician, natural philosopher, physiologist, or chemist, could speak in terms of greater respect and submission of the necessity of observation, and of the authority of experience? dr. chalmers is not the less for that a true and fervent christian; his religious faith equals his scientific exactitude: he receives christ, and professes christ's doctrine with as firm a voice as he does bacon and bacon's method. { } not that for him religious belief is the mere result of education, of tradition, of habit; but it, on the contrary, springs as much from reflection and learning, as his acquirements in natural science themselves; in each sphere he has probed the very sources and weighed the motives of his convictions. how did he, in each instance, reach such a haven of repose? whence in him this harmony between the philosopher and the christian? let us again allow dr. chalmers to speak for himself:-- "it is of importance here to remark that the enlargement of our knowledge in all the natural sciences, so far from adding to our presumption, should only give a profounder sense of our natural incapacity and ignorance in reference to the science of theology. it is just as if in studying the policy of some earthly monarch we had made the before unknown discovery of other empires and distant territories whereof we knew nothing but the existence and the name. this might complicate the study without making the object of it at all more comprehensible, and so of every new wonder which philosophy might lay open to the gaze of inquirers. { } it might give us a larger perspective of the creation than before, yet, in _fact_, cast a deeper shade of obscurity over the counsels and ways of the creator. we might at once obtain a deeper insight into the secrets of the workmanship, and yet feel, and legitimately feel, to be still more deeply out of reach, the secret purposes of him who worketh all in all. every discovery of an addition to the greatness of his works may bring with it an addition to the unsearchableness of his ways. .... "that telescope which has opened our way to suns and systems innumerable, leaves the moral administration connected with them in deepest secrecy. it has made known to us the bare existence of other worlds; but it would require another instrument of discovery ere we could understand their relation to ourselves, as products of the same almighty hand, as parts or members of a family under the same paternal guardianship. this more extended survey of the material universe just tells us how little we know of the moral or spiritual universe. { } it reveals nothing to us of the worlds that roll in space, but the bare elements of motion, and magnitude, and number--and so leaves us at a more hopeless distance from the secret of the divine administration than when we reasoned of the earth as the universe, of our species as the alone rational family of god that he had implicated with body, or placed in the midst of a corporeal system. ... "to know that we cannot know certain things, is in itself positive knowledge, and a knowledge of the most safe and valuable nature. ... there are few services of greater value to the cause of knowledge than the delineation of its boundaries." [footnote ] [footnote : chalmers's works: natural theology, pp. - ; glasgow.] in holding this language, what in effect is dr. chalmers doing? he is separating what is finite from what is infinite, the thing created from the creator, the world subject to government from the sovereign that governs it; and in marking this line of demarcation, he says in his modesty to science, what god in his power says to the ocean: "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." { } doctor chalmers was right; the limits of the finite world are those also of human science: how far within these vast limits science may extend her empire, who shall affirm? but what we certainly may assert is, that she never can exceed them. the finite world alone is within her reach, the only world that she can fathom. it is only in the finite world that man's mind can fully grasp the facts, observe them in all their extent, and under all their aspects, discriminate their relations and their laws (which constitute also a species of facts), and so verify the system to which they should be referred. this it is that makes what we term scientific processes and labour, and human sciences are the results. what need to mention that in speaking of the finite world, i do not mean to speak of the material world alone? moral facts there also are which fall under observation, and enter into the domain of science. { } the study of man in his actual condition, whether considered as an individual or as forming a member of a nation, is also a scientific study, subject to the same method as that of the material world: and it is its legitimate province also to detect in the actual order of this world the laws of those particular facts to which it addresses itself. but if the limits of the finite world are those of human science, they are not those of the human soul. man contains in himself ideas and ambitious aspirations extending far beyond and rising far above the finite world, ideas of and aspirations towards the infinite, the ideal, the perfect, the immutable, the eternal. these ideas and aspirations are themselves realities admitted by the human mind; but even in admitting them man's mind comes to a halt; they give him a presentiment of, or to speak with more precision, a revelation of, an order of things different from the facts and laws of the finite world which lies under his observation; but whilst man has of this superior order the instinct and the perspective, he can have of it no positive knowledge. { } it proceeds from the sublimity of his nature if he has a glimpse of infinity--if he aspires to it; whereas it results from the infirmity of his actual condition if his positive knowledge is limited by the world in which he exists. i was born in the south, under the very sun. i have yet, for the most part, lived in regions either of the north, or bordering upon the north, regions so frequently immersed in mists. when under their pale sky we look towards the horizon, a fog of greater or less density limits the view; the vision itself might penetrate much farther, but an external obstacle arrests it; it does not find there the light it needs. regard now the horizon under the pure and brilliant sky of the south; the plains, distant as well as near, are bathed in light; the human eye can penetrate there as far as its organization permits. if it pierces no farther, it is not for want of light, but because its proper and natural force has attained its limit: the mind knows that there are spaces beyond that which the eye traverses, but the eye penetrates them not. { } this is an image of what happens to the mind itself when contemplating and studying the universe: it reaches a point where its clear sight, that is to say its positive appreciation, halts, not that it finds there the end of things themselves, but the limit of man's scientific appreciation of them; other realities present themselves to him; he has a glimpse of them; he believes in them spontaneously and naturally; it is not given to him to grasp them and to measure them; but he can neither ignore them, nor know them, neither have positive knowledge of them, nor refrain from having faith in them. i cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing what i wrote thirteen years ago upon the same subject, when philosophically examining the real meaning of the word _faith_. "the object of every religious belief," said i, "is in a certain, a large measure, inaccessible to human science. human science may establish that object's reality; it may arrive at the boundary of this mysterious world; and assure itself of the existence there of facts with which man's destiny is connected; but it is not given to it so to attain the facts themselves as to subject them to its examination. { } "their incapacity to do so has struck more than one philosopher, and has led them to the conclusion that no such reality exists, that every religious belief contemplates subjects simply chimerical. others, shutting their eyes to their own incompetency, have dashed daringly forwards towards the sphere of the supernatural; and just as if they had succeeded in penetrating into it, they have described its facts, resolved its problems, assigned its laws. it is difficult to say who shows more foolish arrogance, the man who maintains that that of which he cannot have positive knowledge has no real existence, or the man who pretends to be able to know everything that actually exists. however this may be, mankind has never for a single day assented to either assertion: man's instincts and his actions have constantly disavowed both the negation of the disbeliever and the confidence of the theologian. { } in spite of the former, he has persisted in believing in the existence of the unknown world, and in the reality of the relations which connect him with it: and notwithstanding the powerful influences of the latter, he has refused to admit their having attained their object--raised the veil; and so man has continued to agitate the same problems, to pursue the same truths, as ardently and as laboriously as at the first day, just as if nothing had been done at all." [footnote ] [footnote : meditations et Ã�tudes morales, p. . paris, .] i have just read again the excellent compendium given by m. cousin in his _general history of philosophy from the most ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century_. he establishes that all the philosophical labours of the human understanding have terminated in four great systems--sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism--the sole actors in that intellectual arena where, in all ages and amongst all nations, they are in turn in the position of combatants and of sovereigns. { } and, after having clearly characterised in their origin and their development these four systems, m. cousin adds, "as for their intrinsic merits, habituate yourselves to this principle: they have existed; therefore they had their reason to exist; therefore they are true at least in part. error is the law of our nature: to it we are condemned; and in all our opinions and all our words there is always a large allowance to be made for error, and too often for absurdity. but absolute absurdity does not enter into the mind of man; it is the excellence of man's thought, that without some leaven of truth it admits nothing, and absolute error is impossible. the four systems which have just been rapidly laid before you have had each their existence; therefore they contain truth, still without being entirely true. partially true, and partially false, these systems reappear at all the great epochs. time cannot destroy any one of them, nor can it beget any new one, because time develops and perfects the human mind, though without changing its nature and its fundamental tendencies. { } time does no more than multiply and vary almost infinitely the combinations of the four simple and elementary systems. hence originate those countless systems which history collects and which it is its office to explain." [footnote ] [footnote : histoire générale de la philosophic depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la fin du xviii siècle, par m. victor cousin, pp. - . .] m. cousin excels in explaining these numberless philosophical combinations, and in tracing them all back to the four great systems which he has defined; but there is a fact still more important than the variety of these combinations, and which calls itself for explanation. why did these four essential systems--sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism, appear from the most ancient times? why have they continued to reproduce themselves always and everywhere, with deductions more or less logical, with greater or less ability, but still fundamentally always and everywhere the same? why, upon these supreme questions, did the human mind achieve at so early a period, what may be termed, it is true, but essays at a solution, but which essays in some sort have exhausted the mind rather than satisfied it? { } how is it that these different systems, invented with such promptitude, have never been able either to come to an accord, nor has any one been able to prevail decidedly against another and to cause itself to be received as the truth? why has philosophy, or, to speak more precisely, why have metaphysics, remained essentially stationary; great at their birth, but destined not to grow: whereas the other sciences--those styled natural sciences--have been essentially progressive: at first feeble, and making in succession conquest after conquest; these they have been able to retain, until they have formed a domain day by day more extended and less contested? the very fact that suggests these questions contains the answer to them. man has, upon the fundamental subject of metaphysics, a primitive light, rather the heritage and dowry of human nature, than the conquest of human science. { } the metaphysician appropriates it as a torch to lighten him on his obscure and ill-defined path. he finds in man himself a point of departure at once profound and certain; but his aim is god; that is to say, an aim above his reach. must we, then, renounce the study of the great questions which form the subject of metaphysics as a vain labour, where the human mind is turning indefinitely in the same circle, incapable not only of attaining the object which it is pursuing, but of making any advance in its pursuit? often, and with more ability than has been evinced by the positive school of the present day, has this judgment been pronounced against metaphysics. but that judgment man's mind has never accepted, and never will accept; the great problems which pass beyond the finite world lie propounded before him; never will he renounce the attempt to solve them; he is impelled to it by an irresistible instinct, an instinct full of faith and of hope, in spite of the repeated failure of his efforts. { } as man is in the sphere of action, so is he also in that of thought; he aspires higher than it is possible to achieve: this is his nature and his glory; to renounce his aspirations would be declaring his own forfeiture. but without any such abdication, it is still necessary that he should know himself, it is necessary that he should understand that his strength here below is infinitely less than his ambition, and that it is not given him to have any positive scientific knowledge of that infinite and ideal world towards which he dashes. the facts and the problems which he there encounters are such, that the methods and the laws which direct the human mind in the study of the finite world are inapplicable. the infinite is for us the object not of science but belief, and it is alike impossible for us either to reject or penetrate it. { } let man, then, feel a profound sentiment of that double truth: let him, without sacrificing the ambitious aspirations of his intelligence, recognise the limits imposed upon his achievements in science; he will not then be long in also recognising that, in the relations of the finite with the infinite--of himself with god--he stands in need of superhuman assistance, and that this does not fail him. god has given to man what man never can conquer, and revelation opens to him that world of the infinite over which, by its own exertions and of itself alone, man's mind never could spread light. the light man receives from god himself. { } fifth meditation. revelation. when it was objected to leibnitz "that there is nothing in the intelligence that has not first been in the sense," leibnitz replied, "if not the intelligence itself." [footnote ] [footnote : nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.--nisi intellectus ipse.] in the answer of leibnitz i will change but a single word, and substitute for _intelligence, soul_. _soul_ is a term more comprehensive and more complete than _intelligence;_ it embraces everything in the human being that is not body and matter; it is not the mere intelligence, a special faculty of man; it is all the intellectual and moral man. { } the soul possesses itself and carries with it into life native faculties and an inborn light: these manifest and develop themselves more and more as they come into relation with the exterior world; but they had still an existence prior to those relations, and they exercise an important influence upon what results. the external world does not create nor essentially change the intellectual and moral being that has just come into life, but it opens to it a stage where that being acts in accordance at once with its proper nature, and the conditions and influences in the midst of which the action takes place. the hypothesis of a statue endowed with sensibility is a contradiction; in seeking to explain man's first growth, it loses sight of the entire intellectual and moral being. when, as i said before, man first entered the world, he did not enter it, he could not enter it, as a new-born babe, with the mere breath of life; he was created full grown, with instincts and faculties complete in their power and capable of immediate action. { } we must either deny the creation and be driven to monstrous hypotheses, or admit that the human being who now develops himself slowly and laboriously, was at his first appearance mature in body and in mind. the creation implies then the revelation, a revelation which lighted man at his entrance into the world, and qualified him from that very moment to use his faculties and his instincts. do we, can we, picture to ourselves the first man, the first human couple, with a complete physical development, and yet without the essential conditions of intellectual activity, physically strong and morally a nonentity, the body of twenty years and the soul in the first hour of infancy? such a fact is self-contradictory, and impossible of conception. what was the positive extent of this primal revelation, the necessary attendant upon creation, which occurred in the first relation of god with man? no man can say. i open the book of genesis and there i read: { } "and the lord god took the man, and put him into the garden of eden to dress it and to keep it. and the lord god commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. and the lord god said, it is not good that the man should be alone; i will make him an help meet for him. and out of the ground the lord god formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. and adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for adam there was not found an help meet for him. and the lord god caused a deep sleep to fall upon adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the lord god had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. { } and adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. ... therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis ii. - .] according, then, to the bible, the primitive revelation essentially bore upon the three points,--marriage, language, and the duty of man's obedience to god his creator: adam received at the hand of god the moral law of his liberty, the companion of his life, and the faculty by which he was enabled to name the creatures that were around him: in other words, the three sources of religion, of family, and of science were immediately unclosed to him. it is not necessary here to enter upon any of the questions which have been raised, as to the human origin of language, the primitive language, or the formation of families, with their influence upon the great organisation of society: the limits of the primitive revelation cannot be determined scientifically; the fact of the revelation itself is certain. { } this is the light which lighted the first man from his first entrance upon life, and without which it is impossible to conceive that he could have survived. the primitive revelation did not abandon mankind on its development and dispersion; it accompanied it everywhere, as a general and permanent revelation. the light which had lighted the first man spread amongst all nations and throughout all ages, assuming the character of ideas, universal and uncontested; of instincts, spontaneous and indestructible. no nation has been without this light, none left to its own unassisted efforts to grope its way through the darkness of life. let not the human understanding pride itself too much upon its works; the glory does not belong to it alone: what it has accomplished it has accomplished by aid of the primitive principles received from god; in all his works and all his progress man has had for point of departure and support that primitive revelation. { } all the grand doctrines, all the mighty institutions, which have governed the world, whatever intermixture of monstrous and fatal errors they may have contained, have preserved a trace of the fundamental verities which were the dowry of humanity at its birth. god has forsaken no portion of the human race; and not less amidst the errors into which it has fallen, than in the noble developments which constitute its glory, we recognise signs of the primitive teaching derived from its divine author. after the revelation made to the first man, and in the midst of the general revelation diffused over all mankind, a great event occurs in history: a special revelation takes place, and has for its seat the bosom of an inconsiderable nation, that had been shut in during sixteen centuries in a little corner of the world; and it was thence that, nineteen centuries ago, that revelation proceeded to enlighten and to subdue, according to the predictions of its author, all the human race. { } a man of an imagination as fertile as his knowledge is profound, who, with an admirable candour has in his works associated hypothesis and faith, m. ewald, professor at the university of göttingen, has recently thus characterised this event:--"the history of the old jewish people is fundamentally the history of the true religion, proceeding from step to step to its complete development, rising through all kinds of struggles, until it achieves a supreme victory, and finally manifesting itself in all its majesty and power, in order to spread irresistibly, by its proper virtue, so as to become the eternal possession and blessing of all nations." [footnote ] [footnote : h. ewald, geschichte des volkes israel, bis christus. nd ed., vol. i. p. . göttingen, . ] how is the great event thus characterised by m. ewald proved? by what marks can we distinguish the divine origin of this special revelation that became the christian religion? what does it affirm itself in support of its claim to the moral conquest of mankind? { } at the very outset, in proving her dogmas and precepts to have come from god, the christian revelation asserts that the documents in which it is written are themselves of divine origin. the divine inspiration of the sacred volume is the first basis of the christian faith, the external title of christianity to authority over souls. what is the full import of this title? what the signification of the inspiration of the sacred volumes? { } sixth meditation. the inspiration of the scriptures. i have read the sacred volumes over and over again, i have perused them in very different dispositions of mind, at one time studying them as great historical documents, at another admiring them as sublime works of poetry. i have experienced an extraordinary impression, quite different from either curiosity or admiration. i have felt myself the listener of a language other than that of the chronicler or the poet; and under the influence of a breath issuing from other sources than human. not that man does not occupy a great place in the sacred volumes; he displays himself there, on the contrary, with all his passions, his vices, his weaknesses, his ignorance, his errors; the hebrew people shows itself rude, barbarous, changeable, superstitious, accessible to all the imperfections, to all the failings, of other nations. { } but the hebrew is not the sole actor in his history; he has an ally, a protector, a master, who intervenes incessantly to command, inspire, direct, strike, or save. god is there, always present, acting-- "et ce n'est pas un dieu comme vos dieux frivoles, insensibles et sourds, impuissants, mutilés, de bois, de marbre, ou d'or, comme vous le voulez." [footnote ] "not such a god as are _your_ friv'lous gods, insensible and deaf, weak, mutilated, of wood, or stone, or gold, as _you_ will have them." [footnote : corneille, polyeucte, acte iv. sc. .] it is the god one and supreme, all powerful, the creator, the eternal. and even in their forgetfulness and their disobedience, the hebrews believe still in god: he is still the object at once of their fear, of their hope, and of a faith that persists in the midst of the infidelity of their lives. the bible is no poem in which man recounts and sings the adventures of his god combined with his own; it is a real drama, a continued dialogue between god and man personified in the hebrews; it is, on the one side, god's will and god's action, and, on the other, man's liberty and man's faith, now in pious association, now at fatal variance. { } the more i have perused the scriptures, the more surprised i feel that earnest readers should not have been impressed as i have been, and that several should have failed to see the characteristic of divine inspiration, so foreign to every other book, so remarkable in this one. that men who absolutely deny all supernatural action of god in the world, should not be more disposed to admit it in the sources of the bible than elsewhere, is perfectly comprehensible; but the attack upon the divine inspiration of the sacred books has another motive, and one more likely to prove contagious. it is not without deep regret that i proceed in this place to contradict ancient traditions, at once respected and respectable, and perhaps to offend sober and sincere convictions. but my own conviction is stronger than my regret, and it is still more so because accompanied by another conviction, which is, that the system that it is my intention to contest, has occasioned, continues to occasion, and may still occasion, an immense ill to christianity. { } whoever reads without prejudice in the hebrew and greek the original texts of the scriptures, whether of the old or new testament, meets there often in the midst of their sublime beauties, i do not say merely faults of style, but of grammar, in violation of those logical and natural rules of language common to all tongues. are we to infer that these faults have the same origin as the doctrines with which they are intermixed, and that they are both divinely inspired? [footnote ] [footnote : i indicate, in a note placed at the end of this volume, some instances of these grammatical faults met with in the scriptures, and to which it is impossible to assign the character of divine inspiration.] and yet this is what is pretended by fervent and learned men, who maintain that all, absolutely all, in the scriptures is divinely inspired--the words as well as the ideas, all the words used upon all subjects, the material of language as well as the doctrine which lies at its base. { } in this assertion i see but deplorable confusion, leading to profound misapprehension both of the meaning and the object of the sacred books. it was not god's purpose to give instruction to men in grammar, and if not in grammar, neither was it, any more god's purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy, geography, or chronology. it is on their relations with their creator, upon duties of men towards him and towards each other, upon the rule of faith and of conduct in life, that god has lighted them by light from heaven. it is to the subject of religion and morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of the scriptures is directed. amongst the principal arguments alleged to prove that everything in the sacred volumes is divinely inspired, particular use has been made of the second epistle of st. paul to timothy, where in effect we find the passage:-- "all scripture is given by inspiration of god, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: "that the man of god may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." [footnote ] [footnote : timothy iii. , .] { } is it possible to determine in words of greater precision the religious and moral object of the inspiration? appeal is made to a consideration of a different description. if, it is said, we at the same time admit, on the one side, the inspiration of the sacred books, and on the other, that this inspiration is not universal and absolute, who shall make the selection between these two parts?--who mark the limit of the inspiration?--who say which texts, which passages are inspired, and which are not? so to divide the holy scriptures is to strip them of their supernatural character, to destroy their authenticity, by surrendering them to all the incertitudes, all the disputes of men: a complete and uninterrupted inspiration alone is capable of commanding faith. { } never-dying pretension of man's weakness! created intelligent and free, he proposes to use largely his intelligence and his freedom; at the same time, conscious how feeble his means are, how inadequate to his aspirations, he invokes a guide, a support; and from the very moment that his hope fixes upon it, he will have it immutable, infallible. he searches a fixed point to which to attach himself with absolute and permanent assurance. in creating man, god did not leave him without fixed points; the divine revelation, and the inspiration of the scriptures, had precisely for object and effect to supply these, but not on all subjects alike and without distinction. i refer here again to what i lately said respecting the separation of the finite and the infinite, of the world created, and of its creator. at the same time that the limits of the finite world are those of human science, it is to human study and human science that god has surrendered the finite world; it is not there that god has set up his divine torch; he has dictated to moses the laws which regulate the duties of man towards god, and of man towards man; but he has left to newton the discovery of the laws which preside over the universe. { } the scriptures speak upon all subjects; circumstances connected with the finite world are there incessantly mixed with perspectives of infinity; but it is only to the latter, to that future of which they permit us to snatch a view, and to the laws which they impose upon men, that the divine inspiration addresses itself; god only pours his light in quarters which man's eye and man's labour cannot reach; for all that remains, the sacred books speak the language used and understood by the generations to whom they are addressed. god does not, even when he inspires them, transport into future domains of science the interpreters he uses, or the nations to whom he sends them; he takes them both as he finds them, with their traditions, their notions, their degree of knowledge or ignorance as respects the finite world, of its phenomena and its laws. { } it is not the condition, the scientific progress of the human understanding; it is the condition and moral progress of the human soul which are the object of the divine action, and god requires not for the exercise of his power on the human soul, science either as a precursor or a companion; he addresses himself to instincts and desires the most intimate and most sublime as well as the most universal in man's nature, to instincts and desires of which science is neither the object nor the measure, and which require to be satisfied from other sources. whatever true or false science we find in the scriptures upon the subject of the finite world, proceeds from the writers themselves or their contemporaries; they have spoken as they believed, or as those believed who surrounded them when they spoke: on the other hand, the light thrown over the infinite, the law laid down, and the perspective opened by that same light, these are what proceed from god, and which he has inspired in the scriptures. their object is essentially and exclusively moral and practical; they express the ideas, employ the images, and speak the language best calculated to produce a powerful effect upon the soul, to regenerate and to save it. i open the gospel according to st. luke, and i there read the admirable parable:-- { } "there was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: "and there was a certain beggar named lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, "and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. "and it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; "and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth abraham afar off, and lazarus in his bosom. "and he cried and said, father abraham, have mercy on me, and send lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for i am tormented in this flame. "but abraham said, son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. "and beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. "then he said, i pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: { } "for i have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. "abraham saith unto him, they have moses and the prophets; let them hear them. "and he said, nay, father abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. "and he said unto him, if they hear not moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." [footnote ] [footnote : luke xvi. - .] was it the intention of jesus, and of the evangelist who has repeated his words, to describe, as they really are, the condition of men after their earthly existence, their positive local position after god's judgment, and their relations either with each other or with the world which they have quitted? certainly not; the material circumstances intermixed with this dialogue are only images borrowed from actual common life. but what images so strike, so penetrate the soul? what more solemn warning addressed to men in this life, to rouse them to a sense of their duties towards god and their fellow creatures, in the name of the mysterious future that awaits them? { } nothing is further from my thought than to see in the sacred books mere poetical images and symbols; those books are really, with respect to the religious problems that beset man's thoughts, the light and the voice of god; still, that light only lights, that voice only reveals revelations of god with man, duties which god enjoins men in the course of their present life, and prospects which he opens to them beyond the imperfect and limited world where this life passes. as for this life itself, it is the object of human study and science, not of the inspiration of the sacred scriptures. in disregarding this limit, in pretending to attribute to the language of the scriptures, used with reference to the phenomena of the finite world, the character of divine inspiration, men have fallen with respect both to thought and act into deplorable errors. hence proceeded the trial of galileo, and numerous other controversies, numerous other condemnations still more absurd, still more to be regretted, in which christianity was immediately placed in opposition to human science, and constrained to inflict or receive remarkable disavowals. { } the same is the case at the present day with respect to numerous objections made in the name of the natural sciences to christianity, and which from the learned circles where they have their birth, spread over a world at once curious and frivolous, where they cause the christian faith itself to be regarded as ignorant credulity. nothing of this kind could ever occur, no necessity of such conflict could await the christian religion, if on the one side the limits of human science, and on the other those of divine inspiration, were recognised as they really are, and respected according to their rightful claims. i might cite in aid of the opinion i support numerous and great authorities. i will refer to but three, appealed to by galileo himself in in his letters to the grand duchess christina of lorraine" [footnote ]--(who could appeal to authorities more august?)--"many things," says st. jerome, "are recounted in the scriptures according to the judgment of the times when they happened, and not according to the truth." [footnote ] [footnote : opere complete di galileo-galilei, t. ii. chap. ii. pp. - . florence, .] [footnote : oeuvres de st. jérôme, comment, in jeremiam, ed. vallars. t. ix. p. .] { } "the purpose of the holy scriptures," says the cardinal baronius, "is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go." "this," says kepler, "is the counsel i give to the man so ill informed as not to understand the science of astronomy, or so weak as to regard adhesion to copernicus as proof of want of piety:--let him at once leave the study of astronomy and the examination of the opinions of philosophers; instead of devoting himself to those arduous researches, let him remain at home, till his fields, and occupy himself with his proper business; and thence, raising towards the admirable vault of heaven his eyes, which constitute for him his sole mode of vision, let him pour forth his heart in thanksgivings and praises to god his creator. he may rest assured that he is thus rendering to god a worship as perfect as that of the astronomer himself, to whom god has accorded the gift of seeing clearer with the eyes of his intelligence; but who, above all the worlds and all the heavens that he attains, knows and wills to find his god." [footnote ] [footnote : kepler, nova astronomia, introductio, p. . prague, .] { } i discard, then, as absolutely foreign to the grand question that occupies me, all the difficulties suggested to the scriptures in the name of those sciences whose province is finite nature. i seek and consider in these books only what is their sole object,--the relations of god with man, and the solution of those problems which these relations cause to weigh upon the human soul. the deeper we go in the study of the sacred volumes, restored to their real object, the more the divine inspiration becomes manifest and striking. god and man are there ever both present, both actors in the same history. of this history it is my present object to illustrate the grand features. { } seventh meditation. god according to the bible. it is far from my intention to evade the questions which concern the authenticity of the bible, and of the respective books which compose it. i shall enter upon them in the second series of these _meditations_, when i touch upon the history of the christian religion. those questions, however, have no bearing upon the subject which occupies me at the present moment; the bible, whatever its antiquity, whatever the comparative antiquity of its different parts, has been ever that witness of god in which the hebrews believed, and under the law of which they lived, the great monument of the religion in the bosom of which the christian religion took its birth. it is this god of whom in the bible, and in the bible alone, it is my purpose to seek the peculiar and true character. { } the nations of semitic origin have been honoured for their primitive and persistent faith in the unity of god. under different forms, and amidst events very dissimilar, nearly all nations have been polytheistic; the semitic nations alone have believed firmly in the one god. this great moral fact has been attributed to different and to complex causes; but the fact itself is generally acknowledged and admitted. in two respects in this assertion there is exaggeration. on one side, among the nations of semitic origin, several were polytheistic; the descendants of abraham, the hebrews, and the arab ishmaelites, alone remained really monotheistic; on the other side, the idea of the unity of god was not entirely strange even to the polytheistic nations. the greater part, like the hindoos and the greeks, admitted one sole and primordial power anterior and superior to their gods;--idea, vague and searched from afar, derived from the instinct of man or the reflection of the philosopher, and which amongst those nations became neither the basis of any religion that deserves the name, nor any efficacious obstacle to idolatry. { } the god of the bible is no such sterile abstraction; he is the one god at the present time as in the origin of all things, the personal god, living, acting, and presiding efficiently over the destinies of the world that he has created. he has besides another characteristic, one far more striking, which belongs to him more exclusively than that of unity. the gods of the polytheistic nations have histories filled with events, vicissitudes, transformations, adventures. the mythology of the egyptians, of the hindoos, of the greeks, of the scandinavians, and numerous others, is but the poetical or symbolical recital of the varied and agitated lives of their gods. we detect in these recitals sometimes the personification of the fancies of nations described in accordance with their actual phenomena, some times the reminiscences of human personages who have struck the imagination of the people. { } but whatever their origin, whatever their name, each of those gods has his individual history more or less overladen with incidents and acts, now heroic, now licentious, now elegantly fantastic, now grossly eccentric. all the polytheistic religions are collections of biographies, divine or legendary, allegorical or completely fabulous, in which the careers and the passions, the actions and the dreams of men, reproduce themselves under the forms and names of deities. the god of the bible has no biography, neither has he any personal adventures. nothing occurs to him and nothing changes in him; he is always and invariably the same, a being real and personal, absolutely distinct from the finite world and from humanity, identical and immutable in the bosom of the universal diversity and movement. "i am that i am," is the sole definition that he vouchsafes of himself, and the constant expression of what he is in all the course of the history of the hebrews, to which he is present and over which he presides without ever receiving from it any reflex of influence. { } such is the god of the bible, in evident and permanent contrast with all the gods of polytheism, still more distinct and more solitary by his nature than by his unity. this is, indeed, so peculiarly the proper and essential character of the god of the bible, that this character has passed into the very language of the hebrews, and has become there the very name of god. several words are employed in the bible as appellations of god. one of these _el, eloah,_ in the plural _elohïm_, expresses force, _creative power_, and is applied to the manifold gods of paganism as well as to the one god of the hebrews. _el shaddaï_ is translated by _the all-powerful_. _adonai_ signifies _lord_. the word _yahwe_ or _yehwe_, which becomes in hebrew pronunciation _jehovah_, means simply _he is_, and means self-existence, the being absolute and eternal. { } this name occurs in no other of the semitic languages, and it is at the epoch of moses that it appears for the first time amongst the hebrews: "and god spake unto moses, and said unto him, i am the eternal" (_yahwe, jehovah_). "and i appeared unto abraham, isaac, and unto jacob, by the name of the all-powerful (_el shaddaï_), but by my name eternal was i not known to them." [footnote ] _yahwe, jehovah_, is at once the true god and the national god of israel. [footnote ] [footnote : exodus vi. , .] [footnote : i have consulted respecting the precise sense and the different shades of meaning of the terms expressing god in hebrew, my learned _confrère_ at the academy of inscriptions, m. munk, who has replied to all my inquiries with as much clearness as courtesy.] the history of the hebrews is neither less significant nor less expressive than their language; it is the history of the relations of the god, one and immutable with the people chosen by him to be the special representative of the religious principle, and the regenerating source of religious life in the human race. { } this people undergoes the destiny and trials common to all nations; it demands, and becomes subject to, a variety of different governments; it falls into the errors and faults usual to nations; it frequently succumbs to the temptations of idolatry; like the others, it has its days of virtue and of vice, of prosperity and of reverses, of glory and of abasement. amidst all the vicissitudes and errors of the people of the bible, the god of the bible remains invariably the same, without any tincture of anthropomorphism, without any alteration in the idea which the hebrews conceive of his nature, either during their fidelity or disobedience to his commandments. it is always the god who has said, "i am that i am," of whom his people demand no other explanation of himself, and who, ever present and sovereign, pursues the designs of his providence with men, who either use or abuse the liberty of action which that god had accorded to them at their creation. i wish to retrace, according to the bible, the principal phases and the principal actors in this history. { } the more i study, the more i feel that i am watching, as m. ewald has expressed it, "the career of the true religion, advancing step by step to its complete development," that is to say, that i am there observing the action of god upon the first steps and upon the religious progress of the human race. i. god and abraham. the history of the hebrews, temporal and spiritual, opens with abraham. at his first appearance in the bible, abraham is a nomad chief, who has quitted chaldæa and the town of haran, where his father, terah, descended from shem, is still living. he is wandering with his family, his servants, and his flocks, at first on the frontiers and afterwards in the interior of the land of canaan, halting wherever he finds water and pasturage, and conducting his tents and his tribe at one time through the mountainous districts, at another along the plains below. why has he left chaldæa? { } according to the bible itself, his father was an idolater: "your fathers," said joshua to the people of israel, "dwelt on the other side of the flood" (the euphrates) "in old time, even terah, the father of abraham, and the father of nachor: and they served other gods." [footnote ] the book of judith contains a similar assertion; [footnote ] and the jewish and arabian traditions confirm, at the same time that they amplify, the statement: the father of abraham, they say, was an idolatrous fanatic, and his son abraham, having set himself against the practice of idolatry, was upon his charge thrown into a burning furnace, from which a miracle alone preserved him. the historian josephus speaks of the insurrections which took place amongst the chaldæans on the occasion of their religious dissensions. [footnote : joshua xxiv. .] [footnote : judith v. - . ] [usccb: judith v. - . "these people are descendants of the chaldeans. they formerly dwelt in mesopotamia, for they did not wish to follow the gods of their forefathers who were born in the land of the chaldeans. since they abandoned the way of their ancestors, and acknowledged with divine worship the god of heaven, their forefathers expelled them from the presence of their gods. so they fled to mesopotamia and dwelt there a long time. their god bade them leave their abode and proceed to the land of canaan. here they settled, and grew very rich in gold, silver, and a great abundance of livestock."] the bible makes no allusion to these traditions; from the very beginning god intervenes in the history of the father of the hebrews. { } "the eternal had said unto abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that i will shew thee: i will make thee a great nation, and i will bless thee, and make thy name great; ... and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. ... so abram departed, ... and abram took sarai his wife, and lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the sons that they had gotten in haran; and they went forth to go into the land of canaan; and into the land of canaan they came." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis xii. - .] how had god spoken to abraham? by a voice from without or by an internal inspiration? the writer of the biblical narrative occupies himself in no respect with the question. god is for him, present and an actor in the history just as much as abraham is; the intervention of god has in his eyes nothing but what is perfectly simple and natural. the same faith animates abraham; he issues forth from chaldæa and wanders through palestine, according to the word and under the direction of the eternal. { } he wanders through the midst of populations already established upon the land of canaan, and with these he lives in peace, but still, not uniting with them; bringing them succour when attacked by foreign chieftains; fighting in their behalf as a faithful ally, sometimes, perhaps, in the character of a valiant _condottiere_ [mercenary], but remaining isolated in his capacity of nomad patriarch, with his family and his tribe; repelling even the gifts and favours which might perhaps lower his character or affect his independence. everywhere that he halts, or that any incident of importance occurs to him, at sichem, bethel, beersheba, hebron, he raises an altar to his god. in his wandering uncertain life a famine impels him on one occasion even as far as egypt:--the first perhaps of those shepherd chiefs who issued from asia, and who were so soon to invade that rich country. abraham passes in egypt several years, well treated by the reigning pharaoh; on excellent terms with the egyptian priests, imparting to them and receiving from them such knowledge of astronomy or of natural philosophy as they mutually possessed; but maintaining ever carefully the isolation of his family, of his tribe, and of his religion. of his own accord, or at the instance of the pharaoh, he quits egypt, carrying with him not only his flocks and his camels, but his egyptian slaves, and amongst others hagar. { } he returns to the country of canaan, again wanders through several of its districts, takes part in different events--internal troubles or foreign wars, and finally settles with his family and dependents at hebron, near the oaks of mamre, amongst the tribe of the children of heth; but still always in his capacity as a foreigner, and always careful as such to preserve his character and his independence. when his wife sarah died, the book of genesis tells us that, "abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of heth, saying, "i am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that i may bury my dead out of my sight. "and the children of heth answered abraham, saying unto him, { } "hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. "and abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of heth. "and he communed with them, saying, if it be your mind that i should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and entreat for me to ephron the son of zohar, "that he may give me the cave of machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a buryingplace amongst you. "and ephron dwelt among the children of heth: and ephron the hittite answered abraham in the audience of the children of heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, "nay, my lord, hear me: the field give i thee, and the cave that is therein, i give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give i it thee: bury thy dead. "and abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land. "and he spake unto ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, but if thou wilt give it, i pray thee, hear me: i will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and i will bury my dead there. "and ephron answered abraham, saying unto him, "my lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. { } "and abraham hearkened unto ephron; and abraham weighed to ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. "and the field of ephron, which was in machpelah, which was before mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure "unto abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. "and after this, abraham buried sarah his wife in the cave of the field of machpelah before mamre: the same is hebron in the land of canaan. "and the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of heth." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis xxiii. - .] little importance does abraham attach to his precarious condition as a wanderer and a stranger; he has faith in god. god commands, and abraham obeys. god promises, and abraham trusts. one day, however, with a feeling of anxious humility, abraham makes the following prayer to god:-- "lord eternal, what wilt thou give me, seeing i go childless, and there is eliezer of damascus shall be my heir? { } and behold the word of the lord came unto him, saying, this shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. i am god, the mighty, all-powerful; walk before my face, be thou perfect. i will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generation, for an everlasting possession, and i will be their god. but thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou and thy seed after thee, in their generations. and abraham believed in the lord; and the eternal counted it to him for righteousness." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis xv. - . and xvii. - .] in these days, in the bosom of christian civilization, obedience to god and confidence in god are the first precepts, the first virtues of christianity. they were also the virtues of abraham, and the precepts inculcated by abraham's history in the bible. { } and the god of abraham, the god of the bible, is the same who is the object of adoration to the christian of the present day; the same conception as that of those philosophers of the present day who believe in god, and believe in him as in god absolute and perfect, self-dependent, eternal, without the possibility or attempt to define him otherwise. thousands of years have changed nothing as to the biblical notion of god in the human soul, nor as to the essential laws regulating the relation of man with god. historical tradition fully confirms the moral fact here mentioned. abraham has not been the object of any mystical conception, or any mythological metamorphosis; nowhere has he been transformed into demigod or son of god; he has ever remained the model of religious faith and submission, the type of the pious man in intimate relation with god. throughout all antiquity, and in all the east, as much for the primitive christians as for the jews and arabs, as much for the mussulmans as for the jews and christians, god is the god of abraham; abraham is the friend of god, the father and the prince of believers; these are the very names that the gospel gives him; [footnote ] and the koran, too, celebrates him in these words:-- [footnote : st. paul's epistle to the romans iv.; galatians iii.; epistle of st. james ii. .] { } "and when the night overshadowed him, he saw a star, and he said, this is my lord; but when it set, he said, i like not gods which set. and when he saw the moon rising, he said, this is my lord; but when he saw it set, he said, verily, if my lord direct me not, i shall become one of the people who go astray. and when he saw the sun rising, he said, this is my lord, this is the greatest; but when it set, he said, my people, verily i am clear of that which ye associate with god. i direct my face unto him who hath created the heavens and the earth." [footnote ] [footnote : koran vi.] the eternal, the god one and immutable, is the god of abraham; abraham is the servant and adorer of the true god. { } ii. god and moses. the true idea of god, and the faith in his effectual and continued providence, are the two great religious principles which the name of abraham suggests. this is the beginning of the history of the hebrews, and the origin of that ancient covenant which, in passing from the pentateuch to the gospel, has become the new covenant, the christian religion. about five centuries later, we find the hebrews settled in egypt, in the land of goshen, between the lower nile, the red sea, and the desert, in a condition very different from that in which they had first been when attracted to the court of pharaoh by the prosperity of joseph, the great-grandson of abraham. the new pharaoh oppresses them cruelly; they are a prey to the miseries of slavery, the contagion of idolatry, to all the evils, all the perils, physical and moral, which can afflict a nation numerically weak, fallen under the yoke of one powerful and civilized. { } the hebrews nevertheless persist in their religious faith, cling to their national reminiscences; they do not suffer their nationality to be lost in and confounded with that of their masters; they endure without offering any active resistance; they will not deliver themselves, but they have never ceased to believe in their god, and they await their deliverer. moses has been saved from the waters of the nile by pharaoh's own daughter. he has been brought up at heliopolis, in the midst of the pomp of the court, and instructed in the sciences of the egyptian priests. he has served the sovereign of egypt; he has commanded his troops and made war for him against the Ã�thiopians. he has received an egyptian name, osarsiph, or tisithen. everything seems to concur to make him an egyptian. but he remains a faithful israelite: true to the faith and to the fortunes of his brethren. their oppression rouses his indignation; he avenges one of them by killing his oppressor. { } the victims of oppression, alarmed, disavow moses, instead of supporting him. moses flees from egypt and takes refuge in the desert, amongst a tribe of wandering arabs, the midianites, sprung, like himself, from abraham. their chief, the sheick of the tribe, jethro, called also hobab, receives him as a son, and gives him his daughter zipporah in marriage. the proud israelite, who has declined to remain an egyptian, becomes an arab, and leads, several years, the nomadic life of the hospitable tribe. it is now in the peninsula of sinai that moses wanders with the servants and flocks of his father-in-law. in the centre of that peninsula, of yore a province in the empire of the pharaohs, but which had fallen into the possession of the pastoral arabs, rises sinai, a mount with which from time immemorial, among the neighbouring tribes, have been connected as many sacred traditions as have ever been assigned to mount ararat in armenia, or the himalayas in india. in this venerable spot, before a burning bush, moses, with a heart full of faith, hears god calling him and commanding him to lead his people, the children of israel, out of egypt. { } moses is humble, distrustful of himself, just as abraham before him had been. "who am i, that i should go unto pharaoh, and that i should bring forth the children of israel out of egypt? ... when i come unto the children of israel, and shall say unto them, the god of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, what is his name? what shall i say unto them? and god said unto moses i am that i am: and he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of israel, i am hath sent me unto you." [footnote ] [footnote : exodus iii. , , .] moses receives his mission from jehovah, and feels no other disquietude than arises from the desire to accomplish it. in presence of such facts, with this association of god and man in the same work, the opponents of the supernatural still clamour: "why," ask they, "this confusion of divine action and of human action? has god need of man's concurrence? { } can he not, if he will, accomplish all his designs by himself, and through the fulness of his omnipotence?" in my turn, i would ask them if they know why god created man, and if god has put them into the secret of his intentions towards the instrument whom he employs for his designs? there precisely lies the privilege of humanity: man is god's associate, subject to him, yet a free agent independent of him; he intervenes by his proper action in plans of which only an infinitely small part is revealed to his intelligence and reserved for his execution. western asia and its history are full of the name of moses: jews, christians, and mahometans style him the first prophet, the great lawgiver, the great theologian; everywhere, in the scene of the events themselves, the places retain a memory of him: the traveller meets there the well of moses, the ravine of moses, the mountain of moses, the valley of moses. { } in other countries and other ages, this name has been given as the most glorious that the saints could receive: st. peter has been styled the moses of the christian church; st. benedict, the moses of the monastic orders; ulphilas, the moses of the goths. what did moses do to obtain a renown so great and so enduring? he gained no battles; he conquered no territory; he founded no cities; he governed no state; he was not even a man in whom eloquence replaced other sources of influence and power: "and moses said unto the lord, my lord, i am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but i am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." [footnote ] [footnote : exodus iv. .] there is not in this whole history a single grand human action, a single grand event, proceeding from human agency; all, all is the work of god; and moses is nothing on any occasion but the interpreter and instrument of god: to this mission he has consecrated soul and life; it is only by virtue of this title that he is powerful, and that he shares, as far as his capacity as a man permits, a work infinitely grander and more enduring than that accomplished by all the heroes and all the masters that the world ever acknowledged. { } i know no more striking spectacle than that of the unshakeable faith and inexhaustible energy of moses in the pursuit of a work not his own, in which he executes what he has not conceived, in which he obeys rather than commands. obstacles and disappointments meet him at each turn; he has to struggle with weaknesses, infidelity, caprices, jealousies, and seditions, and these not merely in his own nation, but in his own family. he has himself his moments of sadness, of disquietude: "and moses cried unto the lord, saying, what shall i do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me.... [footnote ] i beseech thee, shew me thy glory." [footnote : exodus xvii. ; xxxiii. - .] and god answers him, "i will make all my goodness pass before thee. ... thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live." and moses trusts in god, and continues to triumph whilst he obeys him. { } the work of deliverance is consummated; moses has led the people of israel out of egypt, has surmounted the first perils and the first sufferings of the desert. they advance through the group of mountains in the peninsula of sinai passing from valley to valley, they arrive "at the entrance of a large basin surrounded by lofty peaks. of these the one which commands the most extensive view is covered with enormous blocks, as if the mountain had been overthrown by an earthquake. a deep cleft divides the peak into two. "no one who has approached the râs sufsâfeh through that noble plain, or who has looked down upon the plain from that majestic height, will willingly part with the belief that these are the two essential features of the view of the israelitish camp. that such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is so remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an eyewitness. { } the awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary, would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. the low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly answers to the 'bounds' which were to keep the people off from 'touching the mount.' [footnote ] [footnote : exodus xix. .] the plain itself is not broken and uneven, and narrowly shut in, like almost all others in the range, but presenting a long retiring sweep, against which the people could remove and stand afar off.' the cliff, rising like a huge altar in front of the whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of the 'mount that might not be touched,' and from which 'the voice' of god might be heard far and wide over the stillness of the plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the confluence of all the contiguous valleys. { } here, beyond all other parts of the peninsula, is the adytum, withdrawn, as if in the end of the world,' from all the stir and confusion of earthly things." [footnote ] such was three thousand five hundred years ago, and such is still, the place where moses received from god and gave to the people of israel that law of the ten commandments which resound still through all the christian churches as the first foundation of their faith and the first moral rule of christian nations. [footnote : sinai and palestine in connection with their history. by arthur stanley, dean of westminster, pp. , . london, .] the hebrews, at the moment when the decalogue became their fundamental law, were in a crisis of social transformation; they were upon the point of passing from the pastoral nomadic condition to that of farmers and settlers. it seems that, at such an epoch, the political institutions of a people would, as the basis of their government, be its most natural and most urgent business. { } the decalogue leaves the subject entirely untouched; makes to it not the remotest, the most indirect allusion. it is a law exclusively religious and moral, which only busies itself about the duties of man to god and to his fellow-creatures, and admits by its very silence all the varying forms of government that the external or internal state of society may seem to require. characteristic, grand, and original, not to be met with in the primitive laws of any other nascent state, and an admirable and remarkable manifestation of the divine origin of this one! it is to man's natural and his moral destiny that the decalogue addresses itself; it is to guide man's soul and his inmost will that it lays down rules; whereas it surrenders his external, his civil condition to all the varying chances of place and of time. { } another characteristic of this law is not less original or less urgent: it places god, and man's duties towards god, at the head and front of man's life and man's duties; it unites intimately religion and morality, and regards them as inseparable. if philosophers, in studying, discriminate between them; if they seek in human nature the special principle or principles of morality; if they consider the latter by itself and apart from religion, it is the right of science to do so. but still the result is but a scientific work--only a partial dissection of man's soul, addressed to only one part of its faculties, and holding no account of the entirety and the reality of the soul's life. the human body, taken as one whole, is by nature at once moral and religious; the moral law that he finds in himself needs an author and a judge; and god is to him the source and guarantee, the alpha and omega of morality. a metaphysician may, from time to time, affirm the moral law, and yet forget its divine author. a man may, now and then, admit, may respect the principles of morality, and yet remain estranged from religion; all this is possible, for all this we see. { } so small a portion of truth sometimes satisfies the human mind! man is so ready and so prone to misconceive and to mutilate himself! his ideas are by nature so incomplete and inconsequent, so easily dimmed or perverted by his passions or the action of his free will! these are but the exceptional conditions of the human mind, mere scientific abstractions; if men admit them, their influence is neither general nor durable. in the natural and actual life of the human race, morality and religion are necessarily united; and it is one of the divine characteristics of the decalogue, as it is also one of the causes of that authority which has remained to it after the lapse of so many centuries, that it has proclaimed and taken as its foundation their intimate union. this is not the place to consider the laws of moses in civil and penal matters, nor to refer to his ordinances respecting the worship, or to those that regard the organization of the priesthood of the hebrews. in the former of these two branches of the mosaic code, numerous dispositions, singularly moral, equitable, and humane, are found in connection with circumstances indicating a state of manners gross and cruel even to barbarism. { } the legislator is evidently under the empire of ideas and sentiments infinitely superior to those of the people, to whom, nevertheless, his strong sympathies attach him. when we consider the mosaic legislation, we find that in everything which concerns the external forms and practices of worship, the ideas of egypt have made great impression upon the mind of the lawgiver, and the frequent use that he has made of egyptian customs and ceremonies is not less visible. but far above these institutions and these traditions, which seem not seldom out of place and incoherent, soars and predominates constantly the idea of the god of abraham and of jacob, of the god one and eternal, of the true god. the laws of moses omit no occasion of inculcating the belief in that god, and of recalling him to the recollection of the hebrews. and this, not as if they were recalling a principle, an institution, a system; but as if they propose to place a sovereign, a lawful and living sovereign, in the presence of those whom he governs, and to whom they owe obedience and fidelity. { } moses never speaks in his own name, or in the name of any human power, or of any portion of the hebrew nation. god alone speaks and commands. god's word and his commands moses repeats to the people. at his first ascending mount sinai, when he had received the first inspiration from the eternal, "moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the lord commanded him. and all the people answered together, and said, all that the lord hath spoken we will do." [footnote ] [footnote : exodus xix. , .] when moses, again ascending mount sinai, had received from god the decalogue, he returned, "and he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, all that the lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." [footnote ] [footnote : exodus xxiv. .] { } as the events develop themselves, the hebrews are found far from rendering a constant obedience: they forget, they infringe--and that frequently--these laws of god which they have accepted; and god sometimes punishes, sometimes pardons them; still it is always god alone that is acting; it is from him alone that all emanates; neither the priests who preside over the ceremonies of his worship, nor the elders of israel whom he summons to prostrate themselves from afar before him, nor moses himself--his sole and constant interpreter--do anything by themselves, demand anything for themselves. the pentateuch is the history and the picture of the personal government by god of the israelites. "our legislator," says the historian josephus, "had in his thoughts not monarchies, nor oligarchies, nor democracies, nor any one of those political institutions: he commanded that our government should be (if it is permitted to make use of an expression somewhat exaggerated) what may be styled a theocracy." [footnote ] [footnote : joseph. contra apionem, ii. c. .] { } the eminent writers who have recently studied most profoundly the mosaic system--m. ewald in germany,[footnote ] mr. milman and mr. arthur stanley in england, m. nicolas in france--have adopted the expression of josephus, attaching to it its real and complete sense. "the term theocracy," says mr. stanley, "has been often employed since the time of moses, but in the sense of a sacerdotal government: a sense the very contrary to that in which its first author conceived it. the theocracy of moses was not at all a government by priests, or opposed to kings; it was the government by god himself, as opposed to a government by priests or by kings." [footnote ] [footnote : geschichte des volkes israel, bis christus, ii. . göttingen, .] [footnote : lectures on the jewish church, p. ] { } "mosaism," says m. nicolas, "is a theocracy in the proper sense of the word. it would be a complete error to understand this word in the sense which usage has given to it in our language. there is no question here in effect of a government exercised by a sacerdotal caste in the name and under the inspiration, real or pretended, of god. in the mosaic legislation the priests are not the ministers and instruments of the divine will; god reigns and governs by himself. it is he who has given his laws to the hebrews. moses has been, it is true, the medium between the eternal and the people, but the people has taken part in the grand spectacle of the revelation of the law; of this the people, in the exercise of its freedom, has evinced its acceptance; and in the covenant set on foot between the eternal and the family of jacob, moses has been, if i may be allowed the expression, only the public officer who has propounded the contract. he was himself, besides, not within the pale of the sacerdotal caste; and the charge of keeping, amending, and seeing to the carrying out of the body of laws was not confided to the priests." [footnote ] [footnote : Ã�tudes critiques sur la bible--ancien testament, p. .] { } let the learned men who thus characterise the mosaic theocracy pause here and measure the whole bearing of the fact which they comprehend so well. it is a fact unique in the history of the world. the idea of god is, amongst all nations, the source of religions; but in every case, except that of the hebrews, scarcely has the source appeared before it deviates and becomes troubled; men take the place of god; god's name is made to cover every kind of usurpation and falsehood; sometimes sacerdotal corporations take possession of all government, civil and religious; sometimes secular power overrules and enslaves religious faith and religious life. in the mosaic dispensation we have nothing of the kind; its very origin and its fundamental principles condemn and prohibit even the attempt at any such deviations. no paramount priesthood here; no secular power playing the part of the oppressor. god is constantly present, and sole master. all passes between god and the people; all, i say, so passes through the agency of a single man whom god inspires, and in whom the people have faith, asking no other authority than that of the revelation which he receives. { } no sign here of a fact of human origin: just as the god of the bible is the true god, the religion that descended, by moses, from sinai upon the elect people of god is the true religion destined to become, when jesus christ ascends calvary, the religion of the human race. iii. god and the kings. moses having brought out of egypt the people of israel, and having conducted it through the desert as far as the eastern bank of the jordan, in sight of canaan, the promised land, his mission terminates. "get thee up," says the eternal to him; "get thee up into the top of pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this jordan. but charge joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see." [footnote ] [footnote : deuteronomy iii. , .] { } moses has been, in the name of jehovah, the liberator and the legislator; joshua is the conqueror, the rough warrior, of yet signal piety and modesty, the ardent servant of jehovah, the faithful disciple of moses. after passing the jordan, traversing the land of canaan in every direction, and giving battle in succession to the greater part of the tribes that inhabit it, he destroys, or expels, or negotiates with them, and divides their lands among the twelve tribes of israel. these exchange their wandering life for that settled agricultural life of which moses has given them the law. the descendants of abraham settle as masters in the soil in which abraham had demanded as a favour the privilege of purchasing a tomb. { } the consequences of this new situation are not long in showing themselves. the conquest is protracted and difficult: the violence and rapine that characterise a state of war--one of dispossession and of extermination--replace amongst the hebrews the adventures and the pious emotions of the desert. in spite of their successes, the conquest nevertheless remains incomplete: several of the canaanitish tribes defend themselves efficaciously, and cling, side by side with the new comers, to their territory, their laws, their gods. the twelve tribes of israel disperse and settle, each on its own account, upon different and distant points, some being even separated by the jordan. the unity of the hebrew nation, of its faith, of its law, of its government, and of its destiny weakens rapidly; the tendency to idolatry, which the hebrews had so often evinced when wandering in the desert, reappears and developes itself, fomented by the vicinity of the polytheistic tribes of canaan. not, however, that we can precisely say that polytheism prevails against the one god; but rather that material images of jehovah become, in the midst of particular tribes, the object of the idolatrous worship so strongly prohibited by the decalogue. "and the children of israel did evil in the sight of the lord, and forgat the lord their god, and served baalim and the groves." [footnote ] [footnote : judges iii. .] { } under such influences the moral and social state of the people of israel undergoes profound changes; the barbarism, which had been formerly amongst them fanatical and austere, becomes unruly and licentious; their chiefs, their judges, during the epoch which bears their name, no longer possess, sometimes no longer merit, their confidence; even the heroic acts of some amongst them--of gideon, of deborah, of samson,--present rather a strange than an august character. the mosaic theocracy veils itself; the hebrew nation becomes disorganized; day by day, the religious and political anarchy in israel extends and becomes aggravated. { } but where the divine light has once shone, it is never completely extinguished; and when the voice of god has once spoken, the sound is never entirely lost, even to ears that no longer listen. it has been affirmed that after joshua, in the lapse of time that took place between the government of the judges and the end of the reign of solomon, the recollection of moses, of his actions and his laws, had almost entirely disappeared--had lost all authority in israel. some passages from the biblical narrative will suffice to remove this error. i read in the book of judges, with respect to the canaanitish tribes who resisted and survived in their countries the conquest and settlement of the hebrew tribes:--these nations "were to prove israel, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of moses." [footnote ] [footnote : judges iii. .] and again, in the book of samuel, it is the eternal "that advanced moses and aaron .... which brought forth your fathers out of the land of egypt, and made them dwell in this place." [footnote ] { } and in the book of kings,[footnote ] david, on the point of expiring, says to his son solomon, "keep the charge of the lord thy god, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of moses." [footnote : samuel xii. , .] [footnote : kings ii. .] and when solomon, after the solemn dedication of his temple, had addressed to god his prayer of thanksgiving, "he stood, and blessed all the congregation of israel with a loud voice, saying, blessed be the lord, that hath given rest unto his people israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of moses his servant." [footnote ] [footnote : kings viii. , .] in the customs and lives of the israelites these "good promises" had not practically, it is true, preserved all their efficacy: the worship of jehovah and the legislation of moses had fallen into sad oblivion, and undergone serious changes. but, in the national sentiment, jehovah the eternal was ever the one god, the true god; and moses his interpreter. { } moral and social disorder had invaded the hebrew confederation; the divine law and tradition were incessantly violated, still not ignored: they ever continued the divine law and tradition, the objects of the faith and veneration of israel. when the evil of anarchy had brought with it great national reverses,--when the philistines on the south, the ammonites on the east, and the mesopotamians on the north, had placed in jeopardy the hebrew settlement in canaan,--a general cry arose; on all sides, the tribes demanded a strong government, a single chief, one capable of maintaining order within, and supporting abroad the position and the honour of israel. a great and faithful servant of jehovah, the last of the judges, and the greatest of the prophets since moses,--samuel,--had recently governed israel, and strenuously struggled to arrest the progress of popular vice and misfortune; but he had become old, and his sons whom he had made "judges over israel ... walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment. { } then all the elders of israel gathered themselves together, and came to samuel unto ramah, and said unto him, behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations." [footnote ] [footnote : samuel viii. - .] the demand had in it nothing singular; even at the epoch when god, by his servant moses, was personally governing israel, the chance of the establishment of a human kingdom had been foreseen and provided for beforehand by the divine law: "when thou art come unto the land which the lord thy god giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, i will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the lord thy god shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." [footnote ] [footnote : deuteronomy xvii. , .] { } although thus provided for by the divine law, the demand of a king was extremely displeasing to samuel; "for the kingly rule was odious to him," says the historian josephus; "he had an innate love of justice, and was ardently attached to the aristocratical form of government, as to the form of polity which rendered men happy and worthy of god." [footnote ] [footnote : josephus, ant. jud. vol. vi. ch. iii. .] but the eternal "said unto samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that i should not reign over them ... now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them." [footnote ] [footnote : samuel viii. - .] samuel predicted to the hebrews how much the kingly form of government would cost them, all that they would have to suffer in their families, their property, and their liberties: "nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of samuel; and they said, nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles. { } and samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the lord. and the lord said to samuel, hearken unto their voice, and make them a king." [footnote ] [footnote : samuel viii. - .] the world's history offers no example where the merits and defects of absolute monarchy were so rapidly developed, where they were displayed so strikingly, as in this little hebrew monarchy, instituted with the view of escaping from anarchy by the express desire of the people itself. three kings succeed to the throne, in origin, character, conduct, and reign absolutely dissimilar. saul is a warrior, chosen by samuel for his strength, bodily beauty, and courage; ever ready for the combat, but without foresight, without perseverance in his military operations; easily intoxicated with good fortune; hurried away by brutal, capricious, or jealous passions; now engaged in furious struggles, now appearing in a dependent position, with his patron samuel, his son jonathan, his son-in-law david; a genuine barbarian king, arrogant, changeable of humour, impatient of control, prone to superstition, a moment serving israel against her enemies, but incapable of governing israel in the name of its god. { } david, on the contrary, is the faithful and consistent representative of religious faith and religious life in israel; the fervent and submissive adorer of the eternal; he is so at all the epochs and in the most varying aspects of his career, whether of humility or of grandeur; at once warrior, king, prophet, poet; as ardent to celebrate his god in his character of poet, as to serve him in the capacity of warrior, or to obey him in that of king; equally sublime in his thanksgiving to the eternal for his triumphs as in his invocation to him in his distresses; accessible to the most culpable human weaknesses, but prompt to repent the offence once committed; and giving always to impulses of joy or pious sadness the first place in his soul; very king of the nation that adores the very god. { } david accomplishes the work of his time: he obtains the object for which the monarchy had been demanded and instituted: he leaves behind him the tribes of israel reunited at home, and reassured against foreign enemies, proceeding too in the path of good order and confidence. heir to his father's work, his father's success, solomon comes next, and reigns forty years--years of almost as much repose as splendour: "god gave solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore." [footnote ] "and he had peace on all sides round about him. and judah and israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from dan even to beersheba, all the days of solomon." [footnote ] [footnote : kings iv. .] [usccb: footnote should be: kings iv. .] [footnote : ibid. , .] [usccb: footnote should be: kings iv. , .] the kingdom and the kingly authority rose under the government of solomon, and throughout all western asia, to a degree of power and splendour before unknown to the hebrews. a prosperity out of all proportion with the position of a new king and a small state, and which reminds us of the rapid histories and the political comets of the east. { } solomon at this point lost sight of both wisdom and virtue: the first hereditary prince of the hebrew monarchy terminated his life like a voluptuous sovereign of ecbatana or of nineveh; the son of the pious king david became a sceptical moralist; although a profound observer of the nature and destiny of man, such observation had led but to feelings of disgust. nor did the monarchy survive the monarch: the nation became effeminate and corrupt, in the effeminacy and corruption of its sovereign. scarcely was solomon dead, when his monarchy was divided into two kingdoms, which, at first rivals, became soon openly hostile to each other; sometimes a prey to tyranny, sometimes to anarchy, and almost always to war. it was not, as formerly, merely a bad phase of transition in the history of the hebrew nation; it was the commencement of national decline--decline irremediable, hopeless. { } but what, in this decline, will become of the law revealed on sinai to moses? is it destined to fall with the monarchy of solomon, or to languish and die out in the midst of the struggles and disasters of judah and of israel? quite the contrary: the religious faith and law of the hebrews will not only perpetuate themselves, but will again shine forth at this epoch of political ruin. above the fortune of states are the designs of god, to which instruments are never wanting; the kings continue to perpetrate acts of violence, and the people to show marks of weakness; but amidst all, the prophets of israel will maintain the ancient covenant, and prepare the coming of that new covenant which is to make of the god of israel the god of mankind. iv. god and the prophets. a celebrated political writer--a freethinker belonging to the radical school, somewhat also to the school of positivism--mr. john stuart mill, has recently said, in his work on government, "the egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of china, were very fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the point of civilisation which they attained. { } but, having reached that point, they were brought to a permanent halt, for want of mental liberty and individuality; requisites of improvement which the institutions that had carried them thus far, entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and, as the institutions did not break down and give place to others, further improvement stopped. in contrast with these nations, let us consider the example of an opposite character afforded by another and a comparatively insignificant oriental people--the jews. they, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and their organised institutions were as obviously of sacerdotal origin as those of the hindoos. these did for them what was done for other oriental races by their institutions--subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a national life. but neither their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the exclusive moulding of their character. { } their religion, which enabled persons of genius and a high religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as inspired from heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious unorganized institution--the order (if it may be so termed) of prophets. generally under the protection--it was not always effectual--of their sacred character, the prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up in that little corner of the earth the antagonism of influence, which is the only real security for continued progress. religion consequently was not there--what it has been in so many other places--a consecration of all that was once established, and a barrier against further improvement. the remark of a distinguished hebrew, m. salvador, that the prophets were, in church and state, the equivalent to the modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of the part fulfilled in national and universal histories by this great element of jewish life; by means of which, the canon of inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent in genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with the direct authority of the almighty, whatever appeared to them deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and higher interpretations of the national religion. { } conditions more favourable to progress could not easily exist; accordingly the jews, instead of being stationary like other asiatics, were, next to the greeks, the most progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation." [footnote ] [footnote : considerations on representative government. by john stuart mill, pp. - . london.] mr. mill is right, only he does not go far enough. modern civilization is in effect derived from the jews and from the greeks. to the latter it is indebted for its human and intellectual, to the former for its divine and moral, element. of these two sources, we owe to the jews, if not the more brilliant, at all events the more sublime and dearly acquired one. { } after the development of power and grandeur which took place amongst the jews in the reigns of david and solomon, their history is but a long series of misfortunes and reverses,--an eventful, painful decline. the hebrew state is divided into two kingdoms, almost constantly at war with each other. and whilst the kingdom of israel is a prey to continual usurpations and revolutions, making it the scene of all the violence and all the vicissitudes of a tyranny, the kingdom of judah has a line of princes, in turn good or bad, who keep it unceasingly in a state of trouble and of jeopardy. religion falls beneath the yoke of secular government; idolatry appears in the kingdom of israel, and braves audaciously the ancient national faith. the kingdom of judah, however, remains more faithful to jehovah and his law, to the traditions of moses, and to the race of david; but its languishing faith is no longer strong enough to arrest its march in the path of decline. { } in the two kingdoms, internal disorders are aggravated by reverses abroad; in the meantime, around them mighty empires spring up and succeed to each other. first israel and then judah are invaded by strangers; they are subjugated in turn by the assyrians, the egyptians, the syrians, the babylonians. the hebrews are not only vanquished and reduced to subjection, but exiled, transported, led captive far from their country. a new conqueror, cyrus, permits them to return to jerusalem; but not to resume their independence; at first subjects of the persian kings, they soon pass from their empire to that of the greek generals, who have divided amongst one another the conquests of alexander; then to the rule of the greeks succeeds that of the romans. during this succession of servitudes, scarcely are they allowed any moments of existence as a free nation, and even this freedom is more apparent than real. judea, like greece, is subjugated, but under circumstances of greater humiliation and distress. { } and shall, then, the hebrews oppose no efficacious resistance to these reverses? what is to become, in this absolute ruin of the nationality of the jews, of their god, and their faith? shall the miracles of sinai have no more virtue than the mysteries of eleusis, and jehovah languish away and vanish in the routine of sacerdotal ceremonies, or in philosophical scepticism? by no means: in the midst of his people's decay, the god of israel maintains interpreters who struggle with indomitable fidelity against public calamities and popular errors. the first of the prophets, moses, had spoken in the name and according to the commandment of jehovah. after him there never were wanting to israel men who inherited or pretended to the heritage of the same divine mission. "i will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee," said the eternal unto moses, "and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that i shall command him. ... { } but the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which i have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die." [footnote ] [footnote : deuteronomy xviii. , .] from moses to samuel, the series of the prophets is continued; some of them are of renown, like nathan in the reigns of david and solomon; but the greater number, without name in history, and appearing scattered over a long course of years. they are called the _seers_, [footnote ] or the inspired. [footnote ] [footnote : roêh or chozeh, in hebrew.] [footnote : nabi.] their speech gushes forth like a well under the breath of god. when the government of the judges gives place to that of the kings, the great actor in this drama of transition, samuel, opens for the prophets a new era; dedicated from his infancy to god's service, he feels beforehand and abides the divine inspiration: "speak, lord; for thy servant heareth." [footnote ] [footnote : samuel iii. , .] { } not long after, his renown spreads amongst the people; he is not pontiff, he is not even priest. [footnote ] [footnote : samuel propheta fuit, judex fuit, levita fuit, non pontifex, ne saoerdos quidem.--st. jerom adv. jovinianum.] but he is pre-eminently the seer: "is not the seer here?" such is the question addressed to some young maidens by the men who are in search of samuel. saul meets him without knowing him, and says to him, "i pray thee tell me where the house of the seer is." "i am the seer," replied samuel; and soon after, it is samuel himself, who, in compliance with the popular vote, approved by god, proclaims saul king. but at the moment when he thus changes the theocracy in israel into a monarchy, he foresees the vices and perils attendant upon the new government, and opposes to them the element of resistance drawn from their national beliefs and traditions; he transforms the order of prophets into a permanent institution; he founds schools of prophets, independent servants of jehovah, consecrated to the defence of his law and the enunciation of his will; { } constituting a sort of congregation independent of both church and state; leading, in fixed and appointed places,--at rama, bethel, jericho, jerusalem,--a life in common, but with out exclusive privileges; the sons of the prophets are brought up near their fathers; but still the mission of prophecy is accessible to all who have the call from god: "go, thou seer," said the priest amaziah, in his anger, to the prophet amos, "flee thee away into the land of judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. then answered amos, and said to amaziah, i was no prophet, neither was i a prophet's son: but i was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and the eternal took me as i followed the flock, and the lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto my people israel." [footnote ] [footnote : amos vii. - .] { } the prophets are neither priests nor monks: sprung from all the classes of the jewish nation, their vocation is essentially independent. they belong to god alone, and await divine inspiration to oppose, as it may happen, at one time the tyranny of the kings, at another the passions of the populace, at another the corruption of the priesthood: their only arms, the commands of god and the gift of prophecy. the functions assigned to them are as different as the places and circumstances of their life; but they are ready to take any part and to encounter any peril: some of them, like elijah and elisha, are men of action and of combat; the others, like isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel, amos, are narrators, moralists, prophets; some devote themselves to attacks upon the acts of violence and impiety committed by the kings, the others to the vices and corruption of the people; the same spirit, however, animates them all; they are all interpreters and labourers of jehovah; they defend, all of them, the faith of god against idolatry, justice and right against tyranny, the national independence against foreign dominion. { } in the name of the god of abraham and of jacob, they labour and succeed in maintaining or in reanimating religious and moral life amidst the decay and servitude of israel. "all the time," says st. augustine, "from the epoch when the holy samuel began to prophesy, to the day when the people of israel was led captive into babylonia, is the period of the prophets." [footnote ] [footnote : de civitate dei, l. xvii. ch. .] to accomplish their mission, to ensure their hard-earned successes, they had other arms than lamentations and exhortations, arising out of what was past and inevitable; other expedients than pious reproaches and expressions of regret. these defenders of the ancient faith of moses do not shut themselves up within the external forms and rites of their religion; they pursue the moral object that it proposes; they insist upon the spirit that vivifies it. "your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth" (said the lord, according to isaiah): "they are a trouble unto me; i am weary to bear them. { } and when ye spread forth your hands, i will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, i will not hear: your hands are full of blood. wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." [footnote ] [footnote : isaiah i. - .] "wherewith shall i come before the lord" (said the prophet micah), "and bow myself before the high god? shall i come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? will the lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall i give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? he hath shewed thee, o man, what is good; and what doth the lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy god?" [footnote ] [footnote : micah vi. - .] { } even whilst calling the people of israel back to the faith of their fathers, the prophets open to them new perspectives: whilst reproaching them with the errors that have led to their decay and servitude, they permit them yet to see the future delivery and regeneration. it is their divine character to live at once in the past and in the future; to confide alike to the ordinances of the eternal and to his promises: they move forward, but they change not; they believe, they hope; they are faithful to moses whilst they announce the messiah. v. expectation of the messiah. controversy has the mischievous power of the homeric jupiter: it collects clouds amidst which the light that we seek for disappears. the old and the new testament, the history of the jews and the history of jesus christ, lie before us. do these two monuments form but one single edifice? that second history, is it comprised and written beforehand in the first? { } such is the question which has for the last eighteen centuries occupied and divided the learned. some affirm that jesus christ was foreseen and predicted among the jews, and that the series of prophecies continued from the very time of moses until the advent of christ. others lay stress upon the hiatus--the want of connection and cohesion--the contradictions to be detected here between the old and new testament; and thence they conclude that the text of the old testament by no means contains the facts that appear in the new testament, and that the miraculous history of jesus christ was, in the bosom of israel, neither miraculously foreseen nor predicted. why was it, and how was it possible, that two assertions so contradictory came to be both adopted and maintained by men most of them as sincere as learned? { } they have all committed the fault of plunging into the petty details of facts and texts, searching in all places, without exception, for the complete demonstration of their particular theses, and losing sight of the great fact, the general and dominant fact to which we should refer as alone capable of solving the question. they descend into the mazy paths which perplex the plain below, instead of grasping from the summit of the mountains, the whole comprehensive view, and the grand road leading to the goal itself. believers have insisted upon discovering, fact by fact, in the biblical prophecies the whole mission and all the life of jesus. the incredulous, on the other hand, have minutely adverted to all the discrepancies, all the difficulties, suggested by a comparison of the texts of the old testament and of the gospel narrative; they have contrasted the glories of the messiah, the powerful king of israel, so often announced by the prophets, with the humble life, the cruel death of jesus, and with the ruin of jerusalem. { } in my opinion, they have on both sides lost sight of the inward and essential characteristic of this sublime history; the special action of god is revealed therein, but without suppressing the action of men; miracles take their place in the midst of the natural course of events; the ambitious aspirations of the jews connect themselves with the religious perspective opened to them by the prophets; the divine and the human, the inspiration from on high and the impulse of the national imagination, appear together. these two elements should be disentangled: the mind should be raised above the perplexing influences which they exercise, and the attention directed to that heavenly beam which pierces the vapours of this earthly atmosphere. thus, all the embarrassment that controversy occasioned vanishing, the history yields to us its profound meanings, and, in spite of complications having their origin in the wordy explanations of man, the design of god makes itself manifest in all its majestic simplicity. discarding all discussion and commentary, let us merely collect, from epoch to epoch, the principal texts which speak of the advent of the future messiah. i might here multiply citations, but i limit myself to those where the allusion is evident. it is the bible, and the bible alone, that is speaking. { } the first act of disobedience to god, the act of original sin, has just been committed. the eternal god says to the serpent that has seduced eve: "because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. ... and i will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis iii. , .] he that shall bruise the head of the serpent shall belong, says the book of genesis, to the race of shem, to the posterity of abraham and jacob, to the kingdom of judah. "but thou, beth-lehem ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in israel." [footnote ] [footnote : genesis ix. ; xii. ; xlix. ; micah v. .] { } israel is at its apogee of splendour: david prophesies alike the sufferings and the glory of that saviour of the world who is to be not merely the king of zion, but "the son and the anointed of the eternal:" "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the expression attributed to him by the prophet king. ... "all they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head. ... they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. ... they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. ... he trusted on the lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. ... ye that fear the lord, praise him; all ye the seed of jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of israel. ... all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." [footnote ] [footnote : psalms ii. , , ; xxii. , ; lxix. ; xxii. , , , .] { } the kingdom of david and of solomon has begun to decay; judah and israel are separating; both kingdoms have their prophets, who at one time struggle against the crimes and evils of their respective ages, and, at another, occupy themselves in disclosing prospects of the future. "hear ye now, o house of david. ... "therefore the lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name immanuel. ... "the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. ... "for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty god, the everlasting father, the prince of peace. ... "and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots: "and the spirit of the lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the lord; "... and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: "but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity, for the meek of the earth. ... { } "listen, o isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; the lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. ... "and said unto me, thou art my servant, o israel, in whom i will be glorified. "then i said, i have laboured in vain, i have spent my strength for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the lord, and my work with my god. "and now, saith the lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring jacob again to him, though israel be not gathered, yet shall i be glorious in the eyes of the lord, and my god shall be my strength. "and he said, it is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of jacob, and to restore the preserved of israel: i will also give thee for a light to the gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. ... "rejoice greatly, o daughter of zion; shout, o daughter of jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. "... for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. "he is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. { } "surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of god, and afflicted. "but he was wounded for our trangressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. "all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. "he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. "he was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. ... "yet it pleased the lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the lord shall prosper in his hand. "he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. "therefore will i divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." [footnote ] [footnote : isaiah vii. - ; ix. ; xi. ; xlix. - ; zechariah ix. ; isaiah liii.] { } whatever controversies may arise out of these texts, and many others which i might cite, one fact subsists and rises above all question and all controversy. seventeen centuries passed in the interval between the decalogue being received by moses upon mount sinai, and the actual approach of the messiah announced by the prophets; and at the end of these seventeen centuries, the god, from whom moses received the decalogue, he who defined himself to be "i am that i am." jehovah, still is, has never ceased to be the god, the sole god of israel. israel has passed through all governments, undergone all vicissitudes, fallen into all the errors to which it is possible for a nation to succumb: the jews have had a hierarchy, and judges, and kings; they have been alternately conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves; they have had their days of power and their days of humiliation, their temptation to idolatry and paroxysms of impiety; still they have ever returned to the one god: to the true god; their faith has survived all their faults and all their misfortunes; and after those seventeen centuries, israel is waiting at the hand of jehovah a messiah, to be, according to the affirmation of its greatest prophets, the liberator and the saviour, not of israel alone, but of all nations. { } fact without parallel in history! in vain shall men exhaust against it all their science, and all their scepticism: there is here more than the work of man; the fact itself is not human. but what more shall that fact become, and what shall be our belief, when all shall have received its consummation,--the prophecies their accomplishment,--when jehovah shall have given to the world jesus christ? { } eighth meditation. jesus christ according to the gospel. need i say that by the words, "the gospel," here used, i understand the four gospels, the acts of the apostles, the epistles, all the books, in fact, which compose the canon of the new testament as it is received by all christians? these books have been variously studied: now with the design of disproving, now of explaining the life of jesus christ; now with the object of a controversialist, now with that of a commentator. i approach the subject in neither character. i would wish to study jesus christ in the new testament solely to know him well, and to make him well known; to place him before the reader, and to depict him faithfully according to the evidence of his history. { } i propose hereafter, in a second series of these _meditations_, to examine its authenticity, and the degree of credit to which it is entitled. for the moment i assume the testimony as good and valid. beyond all doubt, at the outset, it is at least entitled to this respect. the powerful influence of these books, and of the accounts which they contain, such as they remain to us, has been put to the test and proved. they have overcome paganism. they have conquered greece, rome, and barbarous europe. they are actually overcoming the world. and the sincerity of the authors is no less certain than the virtue of the books: however possible it may be to contest the enlightenment, the critical sagacity of the original historians of jesus christ, their good faith is beyond all question: it appears in their language; they believed what they said; they sealed their assertions with their blood: "i believe," said pascal, "only those histories, the witnesses to which confirm their attestation by submitting to death." although not always a sufficient reason to believe an account, it constitutes a decisive motive to believe in the sincerity of the witness. { } i have before cited from the old testament some of the texts which contain the promises made to israel of the messiah. these promises had evidently excited lively attention amongst the jews; the satisfaction felt at their accomplishment expressed itself loudly at the birth of jesus christ: "and behold, there was a man in jerusalem, whose name was simeon ... waiting for the consolation of israel: and the holy ghost was upon him. ... lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people israel." [footnote ] [footnote : luke ii. - .] { } besides simeon, a pious woman, anna, "of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served god with fastings and prayers night and day. and she coming in that instant gave thanks unto the lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in jerusalem." [footnote ] [footnote : luke ii. , .] but there was far more than merely the demonstrations of simeon and anna,--than these impulses of joy on the part of the faithful followers of jehovah: "in those days came john the baptist, preaching in the wilderness of judæa. ... and the same john had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. ... and saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. for this is he that was spoken of by the prophet esaias, saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the lord, make his paths straight. ... i indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. ... but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not. { } he it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet i am not worthy to unloose. ... and i knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to israel, therefore am i come baptizing with water. ... and i saw, and bare record that this is the son of god." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew iii. - ; mark i. - ; luke iii. - ; john i. - .] attempts have sometimes been made, although with no very great confidence on the part of the propounders of the theory, to represent jesus as the most eminent among several reformers, who, about the same epoch, aspired to the title and character of the messiah predicted by the prophets and expected by israel. reference has been particularly made to one of his predecessors, judas the gaulonite, who, a few years after the birth of jesus, on the occasion of a census ordered by the imperial legate quirinius, undertook to raise judæa in insurrection against this measure--against the tribute that it imposed, and against the emperor himself--proclaiming that to god alone belonged the appellation _master_, and that liberty was worth more than life. [footnote ] [footnote : joseph. antiq. jud. . xvii. ch. ; . xviii. ch. . acts of the apostles, ch. v. - .] { } these comparisons--i forbear to use the word assimilations--are entirely without foundation. these men, who, as it is pretended, anticipated the career of jesus, were simply men who opposed the roman dominion, and who stood up, like the maccabees before them, in the name of national independence, and in a spirit of reaction in favor of the mosaic government. jesus was not so anticipated: his mission had no relation with any previous essay; and his sole forerunner was john the baptist, as strange as himself to any political view or conspiracy, and as humble before him--before the true, the sole messiah--as judas the gaulonite and his adherents were bold and daring towards the emperor. { } there is an interval of thirty years between the birth of jesus and the day when he enters actively on the performance of his divine mission. [footnote ] [footnote : the question as to the precise epoch of the birth of jesus christ, as well as of the commencement and the duration of his public career, has been well and concisely considered in the synopsis evangelica of m. constantin tischendorf (p. - . leipzig, ). the preferable conclusion from these researches is, that jesus christ was born in the year of roma , that he commenced his divine mission towards the end of the year of rome , and that his death took place in the fourth month of the year of rome .] these thirty years, however, were not idly passed, nor were they without their peculiar testimony to christ and the future in store for him:-- "and joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. ... "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of god was upon him. "now his parents went to jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. "and when he was twelve years old, they went up to jerusalem after the custom of the feast. "and when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child jesus tarried behind in jerusalem; and joseph and his mother knew not of it. "but they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. { } "and when they found him not, they turned back again to jerusalem, seeking him. "and it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. "and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. "and when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and i have sought thee sorrowing. "and he said unto them, how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business? "and they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. "and he went down with them, and came to nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. "and jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with god and man." [footnote ] [footnote : luke ii. , - .] { } thus begins that manifestation in the person of the child jesus christ, that mixture of humanity and divinity, of natural life and miraculous life, which is his peculiar and sublime characteristic. in the opinion of the men who, in principle, reject the supernatural, this mixed divine-human nature, and consequently jesus christ himself, is at once incomprehensible and inadmissible. what wonder if christ has in these days to encounter such adversaries? had he not to do so when invested with the attributes of humanity, among contemporaries, and even in his own family? in his first days of human existence, his mother, mary, saw him and understood him not. and nevertheless "mary kept all these sayings in her heart." expression, at once profound and touching; revealing the mysterious complication of the nature of man! man is not content to resign himself to the limits imposed by the actual laws of the finite world; his aspirations tend elsewhere. and still, when called upon to rise above the present order of nature--that order which he is able to appreciate--he experiences a certain astonishment, a certain hesitation; he does not know if he ought to believe in that supernatural that he was recently invoking, and that he never ceases to invoke; for, like mary, he preserves the instinct in his heart! { } it is just at the present day as it was nineteen centuries ago. jesus has ever to encounter such contradictory moods of human nature: he is confronted at once by the hope of, the thirsting after, the supernatural inherent in the human soul, and by all the objections, all the doubts that the supernatural itself suggests to the human mind. he has to satisfy that hope, to surmount those doubts. the gospel opens the history of this solemn struggle, that gave rise to christianity, and is the source of all those agitations which afflict christians at the present day. i. jesus christ and his apostles. on entering upon the active purposes of his mission, it is the will of jesus to have, and he has disciples--apostles. he knows the power of an association founded upon faith and love. he knows also that faith and love are virtues as rare as they are efficacious. it is not numbers that he seeks. he surrounds himself with a select band of believers, and lives with them in a complete and enduring intimacy. { } in the midst of these intimate relations, jesus declares his authority primitive and supreme:--"ye have not chosen me, but i have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." [footnote ] [footnote : john xv. .] but the authority of the master does not prevent him from evincing a tenderness full of trust, and from respecting himself the dignity of his disciples:--"henceforth i call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but i have called you friends; for all things that i have heard of my father i have made known unto you." [footnote ] [footnote : john xv. .] { } he evinces on all occasions towards his apostles the trust that he feels in them, and shows his sense of the superiority of the position to which he has elevated them. his language sometimes fills them with astonishment, and they are more peculiarly struck by the numerous parables in which, whilst addressing the assembled multitude, he clothes his precepts:--"and the disciples came, and said unto him, why speakest thou unto them in parables? he answered and said unto them, because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. ... but unto those that are without, all these things are done in parables." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xiii. , ; mark iv. , .] the confidingness of jesus, however, never descends to weak compliance; when, in an impulse of vanity and ambition, one of his apostles asks for a particular favour, jesus rebukes him with severity:--"james and john, the sons of zebedee, come unto him, saying, master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. and he said unto them, what would ye that i should do for you? they said unto him, grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory. but jesus said unto them, ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that i drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that i am baptized with? { } and they said unto him, we can. and jesus said unto them, ye shall indeed drink of the cup that i drink of; and with the baptism that i am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: but to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. ... ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. but so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister." [footnote ] [footnote : mark x. - ; matthew xx. - .] jesus having thus selected and intimately attached to him his apostles, commissions them to carry forth his law:--"go not into the way of the gentiles, and into any city of the samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of israel. and as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. { } heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrips for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. ... behold, i send ye forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew x. - , ; luke x. - .] it is, in effect, prudence side by side with absolute self-denegation that jesus, in his first instructions, enjoins upon his disciples; at the very commencement of their mission he limits its object; he recommends to them particularly "the lost sheep of the house of israel;" he declares his will to be that, instead of a pertinacity with out bounds, "they should depart, shaking off the dust from their feet, out of the city that should not receive them nor hear their words." but he adds immediately, as if to give to their mission all its grandeur:--"what i tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops. and fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew x. , .] { } jesus knows that his disciples will need the firmest courage, and, far from promising them any of the goods of this world, any temporal successes, he discloses to them unceasingly all the perils they will incur, all the invectives they will have to endure. "but beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the gentiles ... and ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. and ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew x. - . luke xxi. - .] { } what reformer, other than jesus christ, ever held to his followers such language? who else than god could have imparted to their language such virtue that they would in obedience to it sacrifice with joy not merely all the good things of this life, but life itself? nevertheless, one of those apostles, and the first of them all, peter, evinces some disquietude, if not at their lot in this world, at least at their destinies in the kingdom of heaven. "then answered peter and said unto him, behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? and jesus said unto them, verily i say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of israel. and every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xix. - .] { } but jesus does not intend that the prospect of their lofty inheritance should inspire in the minds of any of his apostles, and not more in that of peter than the rest, any proud presumptuousness, and he immediately adds, "but many that are first, shall be last; and the last shall be first." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xix. .] the world's history may be perused and reperused; the causes of all the revolutions that have taken place in the world, whether religious or political, may be probed and investigated; but we shall nowhere be able to trace in the dealings of chiefs and accomplices, of originators and fellow-workmen, the divine characteristics of absolute and uncompromising sincerity that reign throughout the actions and language of jesus christ in his conduct towards his apostles. them he has chosen and loved; to them he has entrusted his work; but he practises with them no arts of worldly wisdom; he withholds nothing from them; here is no faltering encouragement, no exaggeration in the promises that he makes or in the hope that he holds forth; he speaks to them the language of pure truth, and it is in the name of that truth that he gives them his commands and transfers to them his mission. "never did man speak like this man," [footnote ] nor so deal with men. [footnote : john vii. .] { } ii. jesus christ and his precepts. jesus speaks:--and it is at one time with his disciples alone, at another surrounded by eager, astonished multitudes; now from the mount, now on the shore of the sea of gennesareth, from a bark; by the road side; in the house of the pharisee, simon, and the toll-gatherer, levi; in the synagogue of nazareth, in the temple of jerusalem:--jesus speaks, "not like the scribes," not like the philosophers; he expounds no system; he discusses no question; he does not pace up and down like socrates with his learned friends in the gardens of the academy, nor lose himself in the mazes of the human understanding. jesus speaks to men, to all men without distinction; he speaks to them of man's life, man's soul, man's destiny, of matters that touch all alike. and he speaks to them "as one having authority." { } what does he say to them? what teach, what command, in that speech full of authority? he teaches them, he enjoins them, to have faith, hope, charity: those virtues which have now borne his name nineteen centuries, those virtues which are essentially christian. is it, then, in his own name that jesus christ teaches and commands? by no means: "my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of god, or whether i speak of myself. "he that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. ... then cried jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, ye both know me, and ye know whence i am: i am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. { } "but i know him: for i am from him, and he hath sent me." [footnote ] [footnote : john vii. - , , .] whilst he refers everything to god, jesus christ seeks not to define or explain him; he affirms him and demonstrates him; god is the first cause, the point from which all things spring; faith in god is the paramount source of virtue, and of power, as well as virtue, of hope and of resignation. for jesus christ has not only a perfect faith in god, he has also a profound knowledge of man: he knows that, unaided, man's soul cannot, with out despair, without withering, bear the burthen imposed by the injustice of the world and of life, of the miseries and erroneous appreciation of mankind. to this injustice and this wretchedness jesus christ never ceases to oppose god, god's justice, god's benevolence, god's succour: he recommends to him all the forsaken, all the oppressed, all the wretched, all the victims of society. he enjoins to these not resignation alone, but hope as the sister and companion of faith. { } nor does he hold forth to those that suffer the realization of earthly expectations, the restoration of worldly prosperity, as their resource and their consolation. he has nothing to do with remedies deceitful like these. he acts with the most perfect truthfulness and sincerity towards mankind in general, as he also does with his disciples: he only promises them the re-establishment of justice, and the reward of virtue, in that mysterious future where god alone reigns, and of which he discloses to them the perspective without unfolding the secrets. nothing strikes me more in the gospel than this double character of austerity and of love, of severe purity and tender sympathy, which constantly appears, which reigns in the actions and the words of jesus christ in everything that touches the relation of god and mankind. { } to jesus christ the law of god is absolute, sacred; the violation of the law, and sin, are odious to him; but the sinner himself irresistibly moves him and attracts him: "what man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? and when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. and when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, rejoice with me; for i have found my sheep which was lost. i say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." [footnote ] [footnote : luke xv. - .] jesus said unto them, "they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. ... for i am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew ix. , .] what is the signification of this sublime fact; what the meaning in jesus of this union, this harmony of severity and of love, of saint-like holiness and of human sympathy? it is heaven's revelation of the nature of jesus him-self, of the god-man. { } god, he made himself man. god is his father, men are his brethren. he is pure and holy like god: he is accessible and sensible to all that man feels. thus the vital principles of the christian faith, the divine and the human nature united in jesus, start to evidence, in his sentiments and language respecting the relations between god and man. the dogma is the foundation of the principles. another fact is not less significant. at the same time that the divine and mysterious character of jesus christ appears in the gospel, his acts and his words have a character essentially simple and practical. he pursues no learned object, no scientific plan; he develops no system; his object is something infinitely grander than the triumph of any logical abstraction: it is to pervade the human soul, to establish himself in it--to save it. he speaks the language--he appeals to the ideas most calculated to ensure him success. { } sometimes he addresses himself to the task of inspiring in men the most poignant disquietude as to their future destiny, if they violate the laws of god; at other times he causes to shine before their eyes the realisation of the most magnificent hopes, if with sincerity they persist in faith. he knows the generation that he is addressing; he knows human nature in its universality, and what it will be in future generations: his object is to produce upon it an effect at once positive, general, durable; he chooses the ideas, he employs the images suitable to his design for the regeneration and the salvation of all. god's ambassador is the most penetrating and able of human moralists. more than once, the attempt has been made to find him at fault, to detect in his language exaggerations, contradictions, incoherencies irreconcilable with his divine authority. surprise, for instance, has been expressed, that he should have one day said, according to st. matthew: "he that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad;" [footnote ] and that he should another day, according to st. mark, have used the expression, "for he that is not against us is on our part." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xii. .] [footnote : mark ix. .] { } these two passages have been characterised as furnishing "two rules of proselytism entirely opposed to each other, and as involving a contradiction growing out of some impassioned struggle." [footnote ] [footnote : vie de jesus, par m. renan, p. .] in my turn i observe that it astonishes me how earnest men can fall into any such error. jesus does not lay down in these two passages two contradictory rules of proselytism, he merely observes and refers in turn to two different facts: who has not learnt, in the course of actual life, that, according to the difference of circumstances and persons, the man who abstains from active concurrence, who keeps himself aloof, by that very fact may at one time give support and strength, and at another injure and impede? these two assertions, far from being in contradiction, may be both true, and jesus christ, in uttering them, spoke as a sagacious observer, not as a moralist who is enunciating precepts. { } i have heard other critics reproachfully regard another passage as a sort of blasphemy. according to st luke: "there was in a city a judge, which feared not god, neither regarded man: and there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, avenge me of mine adversary. and he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, though i fear not god, nor regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, i will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me." [footnote ] [footnote : luke xviii. - .] is it possible to infer from these words an intention on the part of jesus to liken god to an unjust judge, and to make the mere importunate persistence in praying a claim to god's grace? he only cited an occurrence which made noise in his time, in order to instil a lively impression of the utility of perseverance. to attain his end, he never makes use of out-of-the-way or impure expedients; but he draws from the ordinary events of human life examples and reasons to illustrate and render intelligible the divine precepts, and to insure their acceptance. all the parables have this meaning and object. { } next to the precepts which refer to the relations of man with god come those which respect the relations of men with one another. whilst faith and hope regard god, charity has man for its object. charity, it has often been repeated, is the great principle of jesus christ, pre-eminently the christian virtue. i know, not, however, whether the source whence christian charity derives its character and grandeur has been adequately perceived or remarked. in the different pagan religions, whether of character gross or learned, we have deifications of the different forces of nature or of men themselves. and even in those religions in which gods in their turn are said to assume man's shape, it is man particularly that is predominant, and that lives in the incarnation of god. { } whereas in christianity, it is not a god sprung from nature or of human origin that becomes man, but the god self-existent, anterior, and superior to all beings, the god, one, eternal. the hebrew religion, alone of all religions, shows god essentially and eternally distinct from the nature and the mankind that he has created, and that he governs. the christian faith alone shows god one and eternal; the god of abraham and of moses making himself man, and the divine nature uniting itself to the human nature in the person of jesus. and in this union it is the divine nature that shines forth, that speaks, that sets in movement. and this incarnation is unparalleled like the god its author. and why did god make himself man? "what is the object of this unparalleled, this mysterious incarnation? it is god's purpose to rescue man from the evil and the peril which have continued to weigh upon him since the fault committed by his first progenitor. it is god's purpose to ransom the human race from the sin of adam, the heritage of adam's children, and to bring it back to the ways of eternal life. these are the designs, loudly proclaimed, of the divine incarnation in jesus, and the price of all the sufferings and agonies which he endured in its accomplishment. { } need i say more? who does not see how this sublime fact exalts man's dignity at the same time that it illustrates the worth of man's nature? by the mere fact of god having assumed his form is man's nature glorified; and all men, so to say, have their share of the honour done by god to humanity in uniting himself with it, and in accepting, for a moment of time, all the conditions of humanity. but as far as mankind is here concerned, it is far more than a mere accession of an honour or a glorifying of his nature: it is a striking manifestation of the value that all men have in the eyes of god. for it is not for some of them only, for some class or nation, or portion of humanity, it is for all humanity that god became incarnate in jesus christ, and that jesus christ has submitted to all human sufferings. every human soul is the object of this divine sacrifice, and called upon to gather the fruit. { } this is the source, this the privilege of christian charity. the dogma makes the force of the precept itself. jesus crucified is god's charity towards man. impossible that men should not feel themselves bound to act towards each other as god has done to them; and towards what man is not charity a duty? without the divinity and sacrifice of jesus christ, the value of man's soul, if i may be pardoned the expression, sinks,--neither his salvation nor the example of his saviour is any longer the question,--charity becomes nothing more than human goodness; a sentiment, however noble and useful, still limited both in impulsive energy and in efficacy; having its source in man alone, it can but incompletely solace the unequally distributed sufferings of mortality. it is not suited to inspire any long effort or great sacrifice: it is not adequate to convert the longing desire for the moral amendment, the physical relief of humanity, into that inextinguishable sympathy and untiring and impassioned emotion which really constitute charity, and which the christian faith, in the history of the world, has alone been able to inspire. { } thus the essential precepts of jesus, the virtues which he commands as the basis and source of all the others, have an intimate connection with his doctrine, a doctrine "which is not," he tells us himself, "_his_, but of him that sent him;" that is to say, they are connected with the fundamental dogmas of the christian religion. no one denies the perfection, the sublimity of the gospel morality; men indeed seem to feel a sort of self-complacency, a satisfaction in celebrating it, with a view to the conclusion, more or less explicitly stated, that that morality constitutes the whole gospel. this is, however, not less than absolutely to mistake the bond which unites in man thought with sentiment, and belief with action. man is grander and less easy to satisfy than superficial moralists pretend; the law of his life is for him, in the profound instinct of his soul, necessarily connected with the secret of his destiny; and it is only the christian dogma that gives to christian ethics the royal authority of which they stand in need to govern and to regenerate humanity. { } iii. jesus and his miracles. i have called myself one of those who admit the supernatural; and i have stated my reasons. i might stop there and enter into no special reflection as to the gospel miracles. the possibility of miracles once accorded in principle, nothing remains but to weigh the value of the testimony in their support. in the second series of these _meditations_, where i treat of the authenticity of the localities specified in the holy scriptures, i shall occupy myself with this examination. it is not, however, my wish to elude, upon the subjects that lie at the bottom of this question, any of the difficulties that it presents: for here we find the point of attack sought by the adversaries of the christian faith. the image of christ as it results from the gospel would be besides singularly unfaithful, did we not range in it his miracles by the side of his precepts. { } i avow once more my belief in god, in god the creator, the sovereign master of the universe, who orders it and governs it by that independent and constant action of his providence and power styled the laws of nature. to those who regard nature as having existed from all eternity of itself, and governed by laws immutable and proceeding from fate, i have nothing to say of jesus or his miracles; the question at issue between them and me is more important than that which respects miracles; it involves the very question of pantheism or christianity, of fatalism or liberty, affecting both god and man. upon these subjects i have already expressed my general opinion and its grounds. i propose to enter further upon it in the third series of these _meditations_, when i come to speak of the different systems which are now in conflict throughout christendom. but at this moment i address myself to deists and to men of wavering minds, and to these alone. { } one thing is beyond all doubt: the perfect sincerity of the apostles and of the primitive christians as to their faith in the miracles of jesus. sincerity still more striking that it is united to every sort of hesitation in the mind and weakness in the conduct, and that it only triumphs gradually and slowly when jesus has quitted his disciples and has left them alone charged with his work. whilst he was with them, st. peter has failed, st. thomas has doubted; after several miracles have been performed by jesus, his disciples are astonished, put questions to him, yet still doubt of him and of his power. upon several occasions jesus addresses them as men "of little faith," and at the moment when he is arrested, they abandon him, they fly from him. no impassioned enthusiasm, no exaggeration in their trustfulness and their devotedness; even with them jesus sees himself confronted by all the vacillations and pusillanimity of humanity; he persuades them, he wins them, he preserves them only by great exertion, and by dint, so to say, of divine power and divine virtue. { } they only really believe in him after having witnessed the accomplishment of his sacrifice and his last miracle, when they had seen his crucifixion and his resurrection. only then they believed; but from that moment their faith became absolute, superior to all perils and all trials: full of the holy spirit, and associated in a certain measure to their divine master, they pursue his work with unshaken confidence and firmness, without pretending to any merit, without any impulse of personal pride. before "the gate of the temple which is called beautiful," st. peter has healed a lame man and made him to walk. "and as the lame man which was healed held peter and john, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called solomon's, greatly wondering. and when peter saw it, he answered unto the people, ye men of israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? ... ye killed the prince of life, whom god hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses. { } and his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." [footnote ] [footnote : acts iii. - .] it was not the people only that felt astonishment, but "the rulers and elders; the scribes, the high priest, and all those who were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at jerusalem, and set in their midst "peter and john, and after a deliberation full of anxiety, they "commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of jesus. but peter and john answered and said unto them, whether it be right in the sight of god to hearken unto you more than unto god, judge ye. for we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard." [footnote ] [footnote : acts iv. , , - .] what sincerity and what firmness ever showed themselves more strikingly than those that grew out of the faith of st. paul? from such faith he had been originally farther removed than the other apostles; he had done far more than merely err like peter or doubt like thomas; he had hotly persecuted the first followers of christ. { } in his turn penetrated and subdued on the road to damascus by the voice of jesus, he devotes himself to him life and soul; he recounts himself his miraculous conversion, [footnote ] and as little doubt can be entertained of the authenticity of his epistles as of the sincerity that dictated them. [footnote : corinthians xv. . corinthians xi. , ; xii. - . galatians i. - .] the history of all religions abounds in miracles; but in all religions except the christian, the miracles recounted by their historians are evidently either contrivances of the founder to induce persuasion, or they spring from the play of the human imagination, ever disposed to delight in the marvellous, ever particularly prone to give way in the sphere of religion to its fantastic suggestions. in the gospel miracles, on the contrary, we have nothing of the kind; no artifice in their author; none of the marvellous machinery of poetry, nor any hasty credulity in the historians. { } the miraculous agency of christ is essentially simple, practical, and moral: he does not go in search of miracles; neither does he make any vain display of them: they are wrought when a pressing emergency or a natural occasion calls for them; and when they are demanded in faith and in trust, he then works them without ostentation and in right of his divine mission; whilst at the very moment he makes the doubt and the coldness with which he is received, the subject of complaint: "woe unto thee, chorazin! wo unto thee, bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in tyre and sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." [footnote ] jesus has full confidence in himself, in the miracles that he effects, in the doctrine that he inculcates. he feels no astonishment, but merely sorrow, that his work, the work of light and of salvation, pursued by him in accordance with the will of god his father, should not obtain a more rapid, a more general success. [footnote : matthew xi. .] { } as for us, remote spectators, the astonishment must be not the slowness or limited nature of that success, but its rapidity and its extent. all religions that have taken place in the world's history, have been established by moral and by material agency; all appealed from their very commencement as much to force as to persuasion, as much to the arm as to the tongue. christianity alone lived and grew during three centuries by its own single native virtue, without any other appeal than that made to truth, without any other aid than that of faith. during those three centuries the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of its author constituted its only weapons, and weapons which have prevailed against all other arms. those dogmas, those precepts, and those miracles effected the conquest of man's mind and of human society in spite of the resistance of greek philosophy, roman power, and all the poetical or mystical mythologies of antiquity marshalled against them. { } the victory has not, it is true, put an end to all struggle of man's intelligence: neither has the light from christ dissipated all darkness, nor satisfied all minds; the explanation and commentaries of man have obscured the doctrines of christ; human prejudices have mistaken his precepts; and legends have been grafted upon his miracles. but the fact does not the less exist, that the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of christ, without any aid from human sources, sufficed to found and ensure the triumph of the christian religion: this is a fact primitive and supreme. and from this single result shines forth the divine character of the christian religion, for its triumph without the miraculous agency of god, would be of all miracles the most impossible to receive. iv. jesus, the jews, and the gentiles. think not that i am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: i am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew v. .] { } "do not think that i will accuse you to the father: there is one that accuseth you, even moses, in whom ye trust. for had ye believed moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" [footnote ] [footnote : john v. - .] this was the language that jesus used to the jews. it was in the name of their history and of their faith, in the name of the god of abraham and of jacob, that he called them to him, presenting himself to them in the double capacity of conservative and reformer, and appealing to the ancient law against those who, whilst observing it outwardly, really changed its character. "then came to jesus scribes and pharisees, which were of jerusalem, saying, why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. but he answered and said unto them, "why do ye also transgress the commandment of god by your tradition? for god commanded, saying, honour thy father and mother: and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. { } but ye say, whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, it is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. thus ye have made the commandment of god of none effect by your tradition![footnote ] ... woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xv. - .] [footnote : matthew xxiii. .] jesus was incessantly warning, making appeals to the jews; and when he saw that they pertinaciously disavowed and rejected him, he cried, in an impulse of patriotic, affectionate sadness:--"o jerusalem, jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would i have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xxiii. . luke xiii. .] { } i know nothing more imposing than the apparition of a grand idea, a divine idea rising and mounting rapidly upon the human horizon. such is the spectacle afforded to us in its short duration by the history of jesus christ. in his first instructions to his apostles, he said to them, "go not to the gentiles and enter not into any city of the samaritans; but go ye rather to the lost sheep of the people of israel." thus he carefully avoided offending the sentiments of the day, and only enjoined upon his apostles what they might do with success at the very beginning of their mission. but soon the light increases that issues from the words and the actions of jesus; as i advance in the books of the gospel, i there read: "and when jesus was entered into capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. { } and jesus saith unto him, i will come and heal him. the centurion answered and said, lord, i am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. for i am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and i say to this man, go, and he goeth; and to another, come, and he cometh; and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. when jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, verily i say unto you, i have not found so great faith, no, not in israel. and i say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with abraham, and isaac, and jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew viii. - .] thus a great stride has been made; it is no longer for the sheep of the house of israel that jesus has come; from the east and from the west will men come to him, and he will receive them all. to continue the gospel narrative: departing from the borders of the lake of gennesareth, jesus "departed into the coasts of tyre and sidon. { } and, behold, a woman of canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, have mercy on me, o lord, thou son of david; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. but he answered her not a word. and his disciples came and besought him, saying, send her away; for she crieth after us. but he answered and said, i am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of israel. then came she and worshipped him, saying, lord, help me. but he answered and said, it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. and she said, truth, lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. then jesus answered and said unto her, o woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xv. - .] { } another day, near the city sychar and the well of jacob, jesus conversed with a woman of samaria, who had come there to draw water:--"the woman saith unto him, sir, i perceive that thou art a prophet. our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. jesus saith unto her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at jerusalem, worship the father. ... but the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the father in spirit and in truth: for the father seeketh such to worship him. god is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." [footnote ] [footnote : john iv. - .] thus disappears gradually, in the name of the god of the jews himself, the exclusive privilege of the jews to the divine revelation and to divine grace. and thus, too, the restricted religion of israel gives place to the grand catholicity of the religion of christ. the benefit of the true faith and of salvation is no longer limited to one people, whether great or small, ancient or modern; but is imparted to all the races of mankind. { } "go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost." [footnote ] "and he said unto them, go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."[footnote ] [footnote : matthew xxviii. .] [footnote : mark xvi. .] these were the last words which christ addressed to his apostles, and the apostles execute faithfully the instructions of their divine master; they go forth in effect, preaching in all places and to all nations his history, his doctrine, his precepts, and his parables. st. paul is the special apostle of the gentiles. from jesus, says this apostle, "we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name." "is he the god of the jews only? is he not also of the gentiles? yes, of the gentiles also." "for there is no difference between the jew and the greek: for the same lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." [footnote ] [footnote : romans i. .; iii. ; x. .] { } in spite of his prejudices as a jew, and of the differences that took place in the infancy of the church, st. peter adheres to st. paul; the apostles and the elders assembled at jerusalem adhere to st. peter and st. paul. the god of abraham and of jacob is now not merely the one god, he is the god of the whole human race; to all men alike he prescribes the same faith, the same law, and promises the same salvation. another question, more temporal in its nature, still a great, a delicate one, is raised in the presence of jesus christ. he withdraws from the jews their exclusive privilege to the knowledge and the grace of the true god; but what does he think of that which touches their existence as a nation, and as a great one? does he direct them to rebel and to struggle against their earthly governor and sovereign?--"then went the pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. and they sent out unto him their disciples with the herodians, saying, master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of god in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. tell us therefore, what thinkest thou? { } is it lawful to give tribute unto cesar, or not? but jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? shew me the tribute money. and they brought unto him a penny. and he saith unto them, whose is this image and superscription? they say unto him, cesar's. then saith he unto them, render therefore unto cesar the things which are cesar's; and unto god the things that are god's. when they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xxii. - . mark xii. - . luke xx. - .] { } in this reply of christ there was much more matter for admiration than the pharisees supposed; it was in effect much more than an adroit evasion of the snare that had been extended for him; it defined in principle the distinction of man's life as it regards religion, and man's life as it concerns society; the bounds, in fact, of church and of state. cæsar has no right to intervene, with his laws and material force, between the soul of man and his god; and on his side, the faithful worshipper of god is bound to fulfil towards cæsar the duties which the necessity of the maintenance of civil order imposes. the independence of religious faith, and at the same time its subjection to the laws of society, are alike the sense of christ's reply to the pharisees, and the divine source of the greatest progress ever made by human society since it began to feel the troubles and agitations of this earth. i take again these two grand principles, these two great acts of jesus,--the abolition of every privilege in the relations of god and man, and the distinction of man's religious and his civil life: i confront with these two principles all the history, and every state of society previous to the advent of jesus christ, and i am unable to discover in those essentially christian principles any kindred, any human origin. everywhere before christ, religions were national local religions; they were religions which established between nations, classes, individuals, enormous differences and inequalities. { } everywhere, also, before christ, man's civil life and his religious life were confounded, and mutually oppressed each other; that religion or those religions were institutions incorporated in the state, which the state regulated or repressed as its interest dictated. but in this catholicity of religious faith, in this independence of religious communities, i am constrained to recognise new and sublime principles, and to see in them flashes from the light of heaven. it needed many centuries before mental vision was capable of receiving that light; and no one shall pronounce how many centuries will be needed before it will pervade and penetrate the entire world. but whatever difficulties and shortcomings may be reserved in the womb of the future for the two great truths to which i have just referred, it is clear that god caused them first to beam forth from the life and teaching of jesus christ. { } v. jesus and women. at the very source of all religions, as well as in their subsequent history, women find a place to fill and a part to perform. at one time they constitute the material and furnish the ornament of licentious systems of mythology. at another, on the contrary, they are, for the heroes of those religions, objects either of pious horror or of observances at once rigorous and austere: women are considered by them as creatures full of evil and of peril; and they are accordingly thrust from their lives as men thrust from them what is a temptation and an impurity. voluptuous pictures and adventures on the one hand, and zealous impulses of rigid asceticism on the other, constitute the two extremes to which religions in their ages of youth and of vigour are alternately prone. { } sometimes--and it is more fortunate for women when it is the case--they are described in the narrative of these religions, such as they really are in human life, charmers and at the same time charmed, seducers and seduced, idols and slaves; at first votaries of the enthusiasm, the victims of the errors and the passions which they at once inspire and feel. whether asiatic or european, rude or refined, such are the striking features with which all systems of religion, excepting christianity, have characterised the women whom they have introduced in their narratives. neither of these characteristics, nor anything analogous, is met with in the gospel and in the relations of jesus with women. they seem irresistibly attracted towards him, with hearts moved, imaginations struck by his manner of life, his precepts, his miracles, his language. he inspires them with feelings of tender respect and confiding admiration. the canaanitish woman comes and addresses to him a timid prayer for the healing of her daughter. the woman of samaria listens to him with eagerness, though she does not know him: mary seats herself at his feet, absorbed in reflections suggested by his words; and martha proffers to him the frank complaint that her sister assists her not, but leaves her unaided in the performance of her domestic duties. { } the sinner draws near to him in tears, pouring upon his feet a rare perfume, and wiping them with her hair. the adulteress, hurried into his presence by those who wished to stone her in accordance with the precepts of the mosaic law, remains motionless in his presence, even after her accusers have withdrawn, waiting in silence what he is about to say. jesus receives the homage, and listens to the prayers of all these women, with the gentle gravity and impartial sympathy of a being superior and strange to earthly passion. pure and inflexible interpreter of the divine law, he knows and understands man's nature, and judges it with that equitable severity which nothing escapes, the excuse as little as the fault. faith, sincerity, humanity, sorrow, repentance, touch him without biassing the charity and the justice of his conclusions; and he expresses blame or announces pardon with the same calm serenity of authority, certain that his eye has read the depths of the heart to which his words will penetrate. { } in his relations with the women who approach him, there is, in short, not the slightest trace of man; nowhere does the godhead manifest itself more winningly and with greater purity. and when there is no longer any question of these particular relations and conversations, when jesus has no longer before him women suppliants and sinners, who are invoking his power or imploring his clemency; when it is with the position and the destiny of women in general that he is occupying himself, he affirms and defends their claims and their dignity with a sympathy at once penetrating and severe. he knows that the happiness of mankind, as well as the moral position of women, depends essentially upon the married state; he makes of the sanctity of marriage a fundamental law of christian religion and society; he pursues adultery even into the recesses of the human heart, the human thought; he forbids divorce; he says of men, "have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? ... for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh. { } wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. what therefore god hath joined together, let not man put asunder. they say unto him, why did moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? he saith unto them, moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. and i say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xix. - ; v. , mark x. - . romans vii. , . corinthians vi. - ; vii. - .] signal and striking testimony to the progressive action of god upon the human race! jesus christ restores to the divine law of marriage the purity and the authority that moses had not enjoined to the hebrews "because of the hardness of their hearts." { } vi. jesus christ and children. the sentiments expressed by jesus christ towards children, and the language that he uses towards them, as these appear in the gospel narrative, must strike even the most careless reader. let me refer to the passages themselves:-- "and they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. but when jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of god. verily i say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of god as a little child, he shall not enter therein. and he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." [footnote ] [footnote : mark x. - ; matthew xix. - . luke xviii. - .] { } another day, "came the disciples unto jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? and jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, verily i say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xviii. - ; mark ix. - .] again another day, jesus, deploring the coldness that his preaching and his miracles frequently encountered, and that even in his closest vicinity, exclaimed, here no longer addressing his disciples, but god himself, "i thank thee, o father, lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xi. .] what is the full meaning of these words? they are not simply the expression of that impulse of gentle benevolence excited in all hearts at the sight of children, and their innocent confidence in all who come near them. { } jesus christ no doubt experienced the influence of this feeling, for he was strange to none of man's noble emotions; but his thoughts passed far beyond the children whose approach he permitted, and they merely furnished him with the living occasion to address to men themselves his solemn warnings. the child, i have already mentioned in these meditations,[footnote ] is, for us, the image of innocence, the type of the creature fallible, yet who has not yet sinned, who knows not yet either error of understanding, or the seduction of passion, or the blinding influence of pride, or the troubles of doubt, or the extreme folly of sin, or the anguish of repentance; who follows in the first impulses of infancy only the spontaneous instincts of tender confidence in the parent to whom he is indebted for security and for love, for the first joys and the earliest blessings. [footnote : meditation ii., christian dogmas, p. .] { } jesus does not pretend to bring men back to that fair condition, to restore to them their primitive innocence: but he comes to ransom them from sin; he brings them the hope of pardon and salvation. confidence in god, a confidence sincere, unpretending, and loving, is that disposition which opens the soul of man to the divine blessing. this is also the disposition that the child evinces towards its parents; he calls upon them, and he hopes in them. hence those words of jesus: "suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." the way of innocence is a far better way than that of science to lead man up to god. science is a splendid thing; it is also a noble privilege of man that god, in creating him an intelligent and a free agent, has given him a capacity to desire and to pursue through study the truths of science, and even to attain them in a certain measure, and in a certain sphere. { } but when science attempts to exceed that measure and to quit that sphere; when it ignores and scorns the instincts,--natural, universal, and permanent instincts, of the human soul; when it essays to set up everywhere its own torch in the place of that primitive light that lights mankind: then, and from that cause alone, science fills itself with error; and this is the very case which called forth those words of jesus: "i praise thee, father, lord of heaven and of earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [footnote ] [footnote : matthew xi. . the words [greek text] are better rendered, "from the learned and the prudent," than "wise and intelligent;" "sages et intelligents," as in the french version by osterwald.] vii. jesus christ himself. i have sought to gather from the gospels the scattered facts that constitute the life of jesus. i have searched for them in his acts, his precepts, his words: in his different relations in life. i have added nothing, exaggerated nothing; on the contrary, the life of jesus is infinitely grander and more sublime than i have made it; his words are infinitely more profound and admiral than i have described them. and i have said nothing of the seal affixed to _his work_ and _his mission_ by his passion; nor have i shown jesus at gethsemane and upon the cross. { } according to the bible, god is without parallel--ever the same. jesus is also so according to the gospel. the most perfect, the most constant unity reigns in him: in his life as in his soul; in his language as in his acts. his action is progressive, and proportionate to the circumstances which call it forth and in the midst of which he lives; but his progress never entails any change of character or purpose. as he appears at the age of twelve, in the temple, already full of the sentiment of his divine nature, in his reply to his mother who was searching for him with disquietude, "knowest thou not that i must be about my father's business?" the same he remains and manifests himself in the whole course of his active mission--in galilee and at jerusalem, with his apostles and with the people, amongst the pharisees and the publicans, whether they be men, or women, or children who approach him; alike before caiaphas and pilate, and under the eyes of the crowd pressing around to listen to him. { } everywhere and in every circumstance, the same spirit animates him; he diffuses the same light, proclaims the same law. perfect and immutable, always at once son of god and son of man, he pursues and consummates amidst all the trials and all the sorrows of human existence his divine work for the salvation of mankind. what need to add more? how speak in detail of jesus himself when one believes in him, when one sees in him god made man, acting as god alone can act, and suffering all that man can suffer to ransom mankind from sin, and save it by bringing it back to god? how sound closely the mysteries of such a person and such a purpose? what passed in that divine soul during that human existence? who shall explain those cries of agony of jesus in the bosom of the most absolute faith in god his father and in himself, and those moments of horror at the approach of the sacrifice without the slightest hesitation in the sacrifice, without the smallest doubt as to its efficaciousness? { } this sublime fact, this intimate and continual intermixture of the divine and human finds no competent, no adequate expression in human speech, and the more we consider it the more difficult we find it to speak of it. those who have no faith in jesus, who admit not the supernatural character of his person, of his life, and of his work, do not feel this difficulty. having beforehand done away with god and with miracles, the history of jesus is for them nothing more than an ordinary history, which they narrate and explain like any other biography of man. but such historians fall into a far different difficulty, and wreck themselves on a far different rock. the supernatural being and power of jesus may be disputed, but the perfection, the sublimity of his actions and of his precepts, of his life and of his moral law, are incontestable. { } and in effect, not only are they not contested, but they are admired and celebrated enthusiastically, and complacently, too; it would seem as if it were desired to restore to jesus as man, and man alone, the superiority of which men deprive him in refusing to see in him the godhead. but then, what incoherence, what contradictions, what falsehood, what moral impossibility in his history, such as they make it; what a series of suppositions, irreconcilable with fact, nevertheless admitted! the man they make so perfect, so sublime, becomes by turns a dreamer or a charlatan; at once dupe and deceiver: dupe of his own mystical enthusiasm in believing in his own miracles; deceiver in tampering with evidence in order to accredit himself. the history of jesus christ is thus but a tissue of fables and falsehood. and nevertheless the hero of this history remains perfect, sublime, incomparable; the greatest genius, the noblest heart that the world ever saw; the type of virtue and moral beauty, the supreme and rightful chief of mankind. { } and his disciples, in their turn justly admirable, have braved everything, suffered everything, in order to abide faithful to him and to accomplish his work. and, in effect, the work has been accomplished: the pagan world has become christian, and the whole world has nothing better to do than to follow the example. what a contradictory and insolvable problem they present to us instead of the one they are so anxious to suppress! history reposes upon two foundations--positive written evidence as to facts and persons, and presumptive evidence resulting from the connection of facts and the action of persons. these two foundations are entirely lost sight of in the history of jesus such as it is recounted, or rather constructed, in these days; it is, on the one hand, in evident and shocking contradiction with the testimony of the men who saw jesus, or of the men who lived nearly in the time of those who had seen him; on the other side, with the natural laws presiding over the actions of men and the course of events. { } this does not deserve the name of historical criticism; it is a philosophical system and a romantic narrative substituted for the substantial proof and the circumstantial evidence; it is a jesus false and impossible, made by the hand of man pretending to dethrone the real living jesus--the son of god. the choice lies between the system and the mystery; between the romance of man and the purpose of god. even in revealing himself god still interposes veils, but these veils are no falsehoods. the gospel history of jesus shows us god acting in ways which are not his ways of every day. this special action of god characterises also many other facts in the history of the universe; amongst others, the great fact of the actual creation, where man, at his appearance upon earth, received the first divine revelation. the supernatural does not merely date from jesus christ; and if a man from this motive rejects the history of jesus, he will have to deny also a far different thing. { } to escape this fatal necessity, men of learning have recently striven to curtail indefinitely the proportion of the supernatural in the history of jesus, and to explain by natural means, most of the acts and circumstances of his life. a puerile attempt, which has altogether failed in the details, still leaving untouched the substance of the problem. no better success will attend the new attempt that has in these days been made, and which consists in placing the ideal in the place of the supernatural, and in elevating religious sentiment upon the ruins of the christian faith. this is doing either too much or too little. the human soul is not satisfied with these leavings, nor human pride with such refusals, when one is so hardy as to pretend, in the name of the science of man in this finite world, to determine the limits of the power of god, one must be still more hardy and--dethrone god himself. { } { } note. i said (p. ) that i would indicate some instances of grammatical faults to be met with in the scriptures, to which the character of divine inspiration cannot be assigned. upon the subject of the books of the old testament i have consulted my learned confrère, m. munk; his reply is in the precise words which follow: "the biblical authors," he writes to me, "whose style is most incorrect, are ezekiel and jeremiah. these authors, and particularly the first, err frequently against grammar and orthography; they are not merely influenced by the aramean dialect, but they disclose grammatical faults capable of being traced to no source in any of the semitic dialects. this remark has also been made by hebrew grammarians of the middle ages, and isaac abrabanel (towards the close of the th century), in the preface to his commentary upon ezekiel, does not hesitate to declare that this prophet was but superficially acquainted with hebrew grammar and orthography. { } nevertheless, neither jeremiah nor ezekiel, of whom both are distinguished by a certain originality of style, unlike that of any of the other hebrew writers, is wanting in elegance, energy, and boldness in images, and they display in the highest degree their proficiency in the art of composition. the following are some instances of the grave faults against grammar to be met with in their writings:-- _examples of incorrect expressions in ezekiel._ [transcriber's note: hebrew text is indicated by "hhhhhh". some latin characters are not exact. see the html version for the original text.] hhhhhh (_mischta' hawithem_), "and they worshipped" (viii. ), a barbarism for hhhhhh (_mischta'hawîm_). hhhhhh (_we-néschaar ani_), "and i remained" (xi. ), for hhhhhh (_wa-ëschaër_) or hhhhhh (_we-nischarti_). (there are here faults both of orthography and grammar.) hhhhhh (_ischôth_), "women" (xxiii. ), for hhhhhh (_nesché_). hhhhhh (_schib'a_), "his seven burnt offerings" (xl. ), for hhhhhh (_scheba'_). in the number seven the masculine is used instead of the feminine. hhhhhh (_bi-benôthayikh_), "in that thou buildest" (xvi. ), instead of hhhhhh (_bi-benotihékh_). hhhhhh (_be-schoubéni_), "when i returned" (xlvi. ), instead of hhhhhh (_be-schoubi_). hhhhhh (_gabehâ_), "his height was exalted" (xxxi. ), instead of hhhhhh (_gabehâ_). the last letter is _aleph_, for _hé_. { } the chaldean plural is used in several words, for instance: hhhhhh (_'hittîn_), "wheat" (iv. ), for hhhhhh (_'hittîm_); hhhhhh (_ha-iyyîn_), "the isles," or "the isles in the sea" (xxvi. ), instead of hhhhhh _(ha-iyyim_), an error in both orthography and grammar. _examples of incorrect expressions in jeremiah._ hhhhhh (_ôbîdâ_), "i will destroy" (xlvi. ), for hhhhhh (_aabîdâ_). hhhhhh (_nibbetha_), "hast thou prophesied" (xxvi. ), instead of hhhhhh (_nibbetha_). the syllable _bé_ has a _yod_ instead of an _aleph_. hhhhhh (_athanou_) "we come" (iii. ), instead of hhhhhh (_athinou_.). hhhhhh (_att_), "thee" in the feminine (terminating with _yod_ mute), for hhhhhh (_att_), a syriasm very frequent in jeremiah, who often forms the second person of the perfect fem. in hhhhhh (_t_ followed by _yod_) instead of hhhhhh (_t_). hhhhhh (_lô_ written with _waw_ quiescent), "not" very often for hhhhhh (_lô_ without the _waw_). hhhhhh (_hoglath_), "shall be carried away captive" (xiii. ), instead of hhhhhh (_hoglethâ_). the latter chaldaism we meet also in the pentateuch (leviticus xxv. ), hhhhhh (_we'asath_), her fruits (shall) come in." for hhhhhh (_we'asetah_), and ibid xxvi. ; hhhhhh (_we-hirzath_), "she shall enjoy," for hhhhhh (_we-hircethâ_). { } with respect to the new testament, i have required a similar notice from my son william, who has made the greek language in general, and its deviations in the writings of the gospel, the object of particular and careful study. i insert, also, the note which he has drawn up upon the subject:-- "on first approaching the text of the new testament, after having learnt the greek language and grammar in the classical writers, we are struck by numerous irregularities of expression: amongst these, however, we must carefully distinguish those which constitute merely particular and singular modes of expression from those which are real faults. the former are susceptible of explanation and justification by different examples and different arguments; the latter are not capable of being reconciled with the elementary and necessary laws of language. thus we may justify such or such a strange form of conjugation or of declension, which would be accounted a barbarism by a school boy, but which was nevertheless in actual use in some one or other of the local dialects, written and spoken by the greeks. { } again, however it may have been the rule in greek to set the verb in the singular when used with a neuter substantive in the plural, the rule has not been invariably observed even by the purest classical writers, and we may justify by exceptions collected here and there in their compositions, several passages of the new testament which, at first sight, might appear amenable to a charge of solecism. thus, in short, after our attention having, at first sight, been arrested and our minds disconcerted by other passages in which the sacred writer has confounded the sense of two words which resemble each other, as [greek text], which signifies _summon a witness_, and which st. peter employs instead of [greek text] which means, _give testimony_,[footnote ] as [greek text], which signifies _to be incapable_, and which st. matthew and st. mark employ in the sense of _being impossible_, [footnote ]--as [greek text], which signifies the _meridian or zenith of a star_, and which, on three occasions in the new testament, is used in the sense of _in the middle of the air_,--or, even when we meet words, not merely strange to the ear, but formed without attention to the rules and in contradiction to analogy, as [greek text] for [greek text][footnote ]--we may again, without any departure from logical rules, by judicious or subtle distinctions, escape from the difficulties which the passages suggest, and have a perfect right to do so. but after having made allowances for the irregularities susceptible of explanation in the language of the new testament, there still remain some which are real faults. the same word cannot be written by the same hand, at an interval of but three pages, both masculine and feminine, as the word [greek text], _rainbow_, in the _apocalypse_. [footnote ] when the substantive is feminine, the adjective cannot be masculine, as [greek text]. [footnote ] [footnote : peter i. .] [footnote : matthew xvii. ; luke i. .] [footnote : corinthians ii .] [footnote : compare iv. , and x. .] [footnote : apocalypse xiv. .] { } when the substantive is in the accusative, the adjective cannot be in the nominative. in such an employment of words we are able to trace in the sacred writings the hand of man, marks of human imperfection and error; and we must not forget that these faults become more numerous and grosser the greater the antiquity of the ms. in which we find them, and the purer the jewish origin of the writer. thus the greek of the apocalypse is singularly incorrect, at the same time that the imaginative turn of the expression is remarkably hebraic. [footnote ] in the text, styled the received text, and which was fixed in the th century, many of these faults have disappeared, because it has borrowed from mss. of then recent date. but now that biblical philosophy has mounted higher, we can discern how the copyists, one after the other, actuated by pious scruples, or thinking only to correct some error of their predecessors, have little by little effaced what appeared to them too great a departure from rules to have been written by an evangelist or an apostle. at the present day, these admitted irregularities are an element indispensible to every serious discussion respecting the nature and extent of the divine inspiration to be met with in the sacred volume. 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or, _the laws_ of the moral and physical world. translated from the original french of m. de mirabaud vol. ii. production notes: first published in french in under the pseudonym of mirabaud. this e-book based on a facsimile reprint of an english translation originally published - . this e-text covers the second of the original two volumes. contents part ii. of the divinity.--proofs of his existence.-- of his attributes.--of his influence over the happiness of man. chap. i. the origin of man's ideas upon the divinity. chap. ii. of mythology.--of theology chap. iii. of the confused and contradictory ideas of theology. chap. iv. examination of the proofs of the existence of the divinity, as given by clarke. chap. v. examination of the proofs offered by descartes, malebranche, newton, &c. chap. vi. of pantheism; or of the natural ideas of the divinity. chap. vii. of theism--of the system of optimism--of final causes chap. viii. examination of the advantages which result from man's notions on the divinity;--of their influence upon morals;--upon politics;--upon science;--upon the happiness of nations, and that of individuals. chap. ix. theological notions cannot be the basis of morality.--comparison between theological ethics and natural morality--theology prejudicial to the human mind. chap. x. man can form no conclusion from the ideas which are offered him of the divinity.--of their want of just inference.--of the inutility of his conduct. chap. xi defence of the sentiments contained in this work.--of impiety.--do there exist atheists? chap. xii. is what is termed atheism, compatible with morality? chap. xiii. of the motives which lead to what is falsely called atheism.--can this system be dangerous?--can it be embraced by the illiterate? chap. xiv. a summary of the code of nature. a brief sketch of the life and writings of m. de mirabaud mirabaud's system of nature translated from the original by samuel wilkinson part ii. on the divinity:--proofs of his existence:--of his attributes: of his influence over the happiness of man. chap. i. _the origin of man's ideas upon the divinity._ if man possessed the courage, if he had the requisite industry to recur to the source of those opinions which are most deeply engraven on his brain; if he rendered to himself a faithful account of the reasons which make him hold these opinions as sacred; if he coolly examined the basis of his hopes, the foundation of his fears, he would find that it very frequently happens, those objects, or those ideas which move him most powerfully, either have no real existence, or are words devoid of meaning, which terror has conjured up to explain some sudden disaster; that they are often phantoms engendered by a disordered imagination, modified by ignorance; the effect of an ardent mind distracted by contending passions, which prevent him from either reasoning justly, or consulting experience in his judgment; that this mind often labours with a precipitancy that throws his intellectual faculties into confusion; that bewilders his ideas; that consequently he gives a substance and a form to chimeras, to airy nothings, which he afterwards idolizes from sloth, reverences from prejudice. a sensible being placed in a nature where every part is in motion, has various feelings, in consequence of either the agreeable or disagreeable effects which he is obliged to experience from this continued action and re-action; in consequence he either finds himself happy or miserable; according to the quality of the sensations excited in him, he will love or fear, seek after or fly from, the real or supposed causes of such marked effects operated on his machine. but if he is ignorant of nature, if he is destitute of experience, he will frequently deceive himself as to these causes; for want of either capability or inclination to recur back to them, he will neither have a true knowledge of their energy, nor a clear idea of their mode of acting: thus until reiterated experience shall have formed his ideas, until the mirror of truth shall have shewn him the judgment he ought to make, he will be involved in trouble, a prey to incertitude, a victim to credulity. man is a being who brings with him nothing into the world save an aptitude to feeling in a manner more or less lively according to his individual organization: he has no innate knowledge of any of the causes that act upon him: by degrees his faculty of feeling discovers to him their various qualities; he learns to judge of them; time familiarizes him with their properties; he attaches ideas to them, according to the manner in which they have affected him; these ideas are correct or otherwise, in a ratio to the soundness of his organic structure: his judgment is faulty or not, as these organs are either well or ill-constituted; in proportion as they are competent to afford him sure and reiterated experience. the first moments of man are marked by his wants; that is to say, the first impulse he receives is to conserve his existence; this he would not be able to maintain without the concurrence of many analogous causes: these wants in a sensible being, manifest themselves by a general languor, a sinking, a confusion in his machine, which gives him the consciousness of a painful sensation: this derangement subsists, is even augmented, until the cause suitable to remove it re-establishes the harmony so necessary to the existence of the human frame. want, therefore, is the first evil man experiences; nevertheless it is requisite to the maintenance of his existence. was it not for this derangement of his body, which obliges him to furnish its remedy, he would not be warned of the necessity of preserving the existence he has received. without wants man would be an insensible machine, similar to a vegetable; like that he would be incapable of preserving himself; he would not be competent to using the means required to conserve his being. to his wants are to be ascribed his passions; his desires; the exercise of his corporeal functions; the play of his intellectual faculties: they are his wants that oblige him to think; that determine his will, that induce him to act; it is to satisfy them or rather to put an end to the painful sensations excited by their presence, that according to his capacity, to the natural sensibility of his soul, to the energies which are peculiar to himself, he gives play to his faculties, exerts the activity of his bodily strength, or displays the extensive powers of his mind. his wants being perpetual, he is obliged to labour without relaxation, to procure objects competent to satisfy them. in a word, it is owing to his multiplied wants that man's energy is kept in a state of continual activity: as soon as he ceases to have wants, he falls into inaction--becomes listless--declines into apathy--sinks into a languor that is incommodious to his feelings or prejudicial to his existence: this lethargic state of weariness lasts until new wants, by giving him fresh activity, rouse his dormant faculties--throw off his stupor--re-animate his vigour, and destroy the sluggishness to which he had become a prey. from hence it will be obvious that evil is necessary to man; without it he would neither be in a condition to know that which injures him; to avoid its presence; or to seek his own welfare: without this stimulus, he would differ in nothing from insensible, unorganized beings: if those evanescent evils which he calls _wants_, did not oblige him to call forth his faculties, to set his energies in motion, to cull experience, to compare objects, to discriminate them, to separate those which have the capabilities to injure him, from those which possess the means to benefit him, he would be insensible to happiness--inadequate to enjoyment. in short, _without evil man would be ignorant of good_; he would be continually exposed to perish like the leaf on a tree. he would resemble an infant, who, destitute of experience, runs the risque of meeting his destruction at every step he takes, unguarded by his nurse. what the nurse is to the child, experience is to the adult; when either are wanting, these children of different lustres generally go astray: frequently encounter disaster. without evil he would be unable to judge of any thing; he would have no preference; his will would be without volition, he would be destitute of passions; desire would find no place in his heart; he would not revolt at the most disgusting objects; he would not strive to put them away; he would neither have stimuli to love, nor motives to fear any thing; he would be an insensible automaton; he would no longer be a man. if no evil had existed in this world, man would never have dreamt of those numerous divinities, to whom he has rendered such various modes of worship. if nature had permitted him easily to satisfy all his regenerating wants, if she had given him none but agreeable sensations, his days would have uninterruptedly rolled on in one perpetual uniformity; he would never have discovered his own nakedness; he would never have had motives to search after the unknown causes of things--to meditate in pain. therefore man, always contented, would only have occupied himself with satisfying his wants; with enjoying the present, with feeling the influence of objects, that would unceasingly warn him of his existence in a mode that he must necessarily approve; nothing would alarm his heart; every thing would be analogous to his existence: he would neither know fear, experience distrust, nor have inquietude for the future: these feelings can only be the consequence of some troublesome sensation, which must have anteriorly affected him, or which by disturbing the harmony of his machine, has interrupted the course of his happiness; which has shewn him he is naked. independent of those wants which in man renew themselves every instant; which he frequently finds it impossible to satisfy; every individual experiences a multiplicity of evils--he suffers from the inclemency of the seasons--he pines in penury--he is infected with plague--he is scourged by war--he is the victim of famine--he is afflicted with disease--he is the sport of a thousand accidents, &c. this is the reason why all men are fearful; why the whole human race are diffident. the knowledge he has of pain alarms him upon all unknown causes, that is to say, upon all those of which he has not yet experienced the effect; this experience made with precipitation, or if it be preferred, by instinct, places him on his guard against all those objects from the operation of which he is ignorant what consequences may result to himself. his inquietude is in proportion; his fears keep pace with the extent of the disorder which these objects produce in him; they are measured by their rarity, that is to say, by the inexperience he has of them; by the natural sensibility of the soul; and by the ardour of his imagination. the wore ignorant man is, the less experience he has, the more he is susceptible of fear; solitude, the obscurity of a forest, silence, and the darkness of night, desolate ruins, the roaring of the wind, sudden, confused noises, are objects of terror to all who are unaccustomed to these things. the uninformed man is a child whom every thing astonishes; who trembles at every thing he encounters: his alarms disappear, his fears diminish, his mind becomes calm, in proportion as experience familiarizes him, more or less, with natural effects; his fears cease entirely, as soon as he understands, or believes he understands, the causes that act; or when he knows how to avoid their effects. but if he cannot penetrate the causes which disturb him, if he cannot discover the agents by whom he suffers, if he cannot find to what account to place the confusion he experiences, his inquietude augments; his fears redouble; his imagination leads him astray; it exaggerates his evil; paints in a disorderly manner these unknown objects of his terror; magnifies their powers; then making an analogy between them and those terrific objects, with whom he is already acquainted, he suggests to himself the means he usually takes to mitigate their anger; to conciliate their kindness; he employs similar measures to soften the anger, to disarm the power, to avert the effects of the concealed cause which gives birth to his inquietudes, which fills him with anxiety, which alarms his fears. it is thus his weakness, aided by ignorance, renders him superstitious. there are very few men, even in our own day, who have sufficiently studied nature, who are fully apprised of physical causes, or with the effects they must necessarily produce. this ignorance, without doubt, was much greater in the more remote ages of the world, when the human mind, yet in its infancy, had not collected that experience, taken that expansion, made those strides towards improvement, which distinguishes the present from the past. savages dispersed, erratic, thinly scattered up and down, knew the course of nature either very imperfectly or not at all; society alone perfects human knowledge: it requires not only multiplied but combined efforts to unravel the secrets of nature. this granted, all natural causes were mysteries to our wandering ancestors; the entire of nature was an enigma to them; all its phenomena was marvellous, every event inspired terror to beings who were destitute of experience; almost every thing, they saw must have appeared to them strange, unusual, contrary to their idea of the order of things. it cannot then furnish matter for surprise, if we behold men in the present day trembling at the sight of those objects which have formerly filled their fathers with dismay. _eclipse, comets, meteors_, were, in ancient days, subjects of alarm to all the people of the earth: these effects, so natural in the eyes of the sound philosopher, who has by degrees fathomed their true causes, have yet the right, possess the power, to alarm the most numerous, to excite the fears of the least instructed part of modern nations. the people of the present day, as well as their ignorant ancestors, find something marvellous, believe there is a supernatural agency in all those objects to which their eyes are unaccustomed; they consider all those unknown causes as wonderful, that act with a force of which their mind has no idea it is possible the known agents are capable. the ignorant see wonders _prodigies, miracles_, in all those striking effects of which they are unable to render themselves a satisfactory account; all the causes which produce them they think _supernatural_; this, however, really implies nothing more than that they are not familiar to them, or that they have not hitherto witnessed natural agents, whose energy was equal to the production of effects so rare, so astonishing, as those with which their sight has been appalled. besides the ordinary phenomena to which nations were witnesses without being competent to unravel the causes, they have in times very remote from ours, experienced calamities, whether general or local, which filled them with the most cruel inquietude; which plunged them into an abyss of consternation. the traditions of all people, the annals of all nations, recal, even at this day, melancholy events, physical disasters, dreadful catastrophes, which had the effect of spreading universal terror among our forefathers, but when history should be silent on these stupendous revolutions, would not our own reflection on what passes under our eyes be sufficient to convince us, that all parts of our globe have been, and following the course of things, will necessarily be again violently agitated, overturned, changed, overflowed, in a state of conflagration? vast continents have been inundated, seas breaking their limits have usurped the dominion of the earth; at length retiring, these waters have left striking, proofs of their presence, by the marine vestiges of shells, skeletons of sea fish, &c. which the attentive observer meets with at every step, in the bowels of those fertile countries we now inhabit--subterraneous fires have opened to themselves the most frightful volcanoes, whose craters frequently issue destruction on every side. in short, the elements unloosed, have at various times, disputed among themselves the empire of our globe; this exhibits evidence of the fact, by those vast heaps of wreck, those stupendous ruins spread over its surface. what, then, must have been the fears of mankind, who in those countries believed he beheld the entire of nature armed against his peace, menacing with destruction his very abode? what must have been the inquietude of a people taken thus unprovided, who fancied they saw nature cruelly labouring to their annihilation? who beheld a world ready to be dashed into atoms; who witnessed the earth suddenly rent asunder; whose yawning chasm was the grave of large cities, whole provinces, entire nations? what ideas must mortals, thus overwhelmed with terror, form to themselves of the irresistible cause that could produce such extended effects? without doubt they did not attribute these wide spreading calamities to nature; neither did they conceive they were mere physical causes; they could not suspect she was the author, the accomplice of the confusion she herself experienced; they did not see that these tremendous revolutions, these overpowering disorders, were the necessary result of her immutable laws; that they contributed to the general order by which she subsists; that, in point of fact, there was nothing more surprising in the inundation of large portions of the earth, in the swallowing up an entire nation, in a volcanic conflagration spreading destruction over whole provinces, than there is in a stone falling to the earth, or the death of a fly; that each equally has its spring in the necessity of things. it was under these astounding circumstances, that nations, bathed in the most bitter tears, perplexed with the most frightful visions, electrified with terror, not believing there existed on this mundane ball, causes sufficiently powerful to operate the gigantic phenomena that filled their minds with dismay, carried their streaming eyes towards heaven, where their tremulous fears led them to suppose these unknown agents, whose unprovoked enmity destroyed, their earthly felicity, could alone reside. it was in the lap of ignorance, in the season of alarm, in the bosom of calamity, that mankind ever formed his first notions of the _divinity_. from hence it is obvious that his ideas on this subject are to be suspected, that his notions are in a great measure false, that they are always afflicting. indeed, upon whatever part of our sphere we cast our eyes, whether it be upon the frozen climates of the north, upon the parching regions of the south, or under the more temperate zones, we every where behold the people when assailed by misfortunes, have either made to themselves national gods, or else have adopted those which have been given them by their conquerors; before these beings, either of their own creation or adoption, they have tremblingly prostrated themselves in the hour of calamity, soliciting relief; have ignorantly attributed to blocks of stone, or to men like themselves, those natural effects which were above their comprehension; the inhabitants of many nations, not contented with the national gods, made each to himself one or more gods, which he supposed presided exclusively over his own household, from whom he supposed he derived his own peculiar happiness, to whom he attributed all his domestic misfortunes. the idea of these powerful agents, these supposed distributors of good and evil, was always associated with that of terror; their name was never pronounced without recalling to man's wind either his own particular calamities or those of his fathers. in many places man trembles at this day, because his progenitors have trembled for thousands of years past. the thought of his gods always awakened in man the most afflicting ideas. if he recurred to the source of his actual fears, to the commencement of those melancholy impressions that stamp themselves in his mind when their name is announced, he would find it in the conflagrations, in the revolutions, in those extended disasters, that have at various times destroyed large portions of the human race; that overwhelmed with dismay those miserable beings who escaped the destruction of the earth; these in transmitting to posterity, the tradition of such afflicting events, have also transmitted to him their fears; have delivered down to their successors, those gloomy ideas which their bewildered imaginations, coupled with their barbarous ignorance of natural causes, had formed to them of the anger of their irritated gods, to which their alarm falsely attributed these sweeping disasters. if the gods of nations had their birth in the bosom of alarm, it was again in that of despair that each individual formed the unknown power that he made exclusively for himself. ignorant of physical causes, unpractised in their mode of action, unaccustomed to their effects, whenever he experienced any serious misfortune, whenever he was afflicted with any grievous sensation, he was at a loss how to account for it; he therefore attributed it to his household gods, to whom he made an immediate supplication for assistance, or rather for forbearance of further affliction: this disposition in man has been finely pourtrayed by aesop in his fable of "the waggoner and hercules." the motion which in despight of himself was excited in his machine, his diseases, his troubles, his passions, his inquietude, the painful alterations his frame underwent, without his being able to fathom the true causes; at length death, of which the aspect in so formidable to a being strongly attached to existence, were effects he looked upon either as supernatural, or else he conceived they were repugnant to his actual nature; he attributed them to some mighty cause, which maugre all his efforts, disposed of him at each, moment. thus palsied with alarm, benumbed with terror, he pensively meditated upon his sorrows; agitated with fear, he sought for means to avert the calamities that threatened him with destruction; his imagination, thus rendered desperate by his endurance of evils which he found inevitable, formed to him those phantoms which he called gods; before whom he trembled from a consciousness of his own weakness; thus disposed, he endeavoured by prostration, by sacrifices, by prayers, to disarm the anger of these imaginary beings to which his trepidation had given birth; whom he ignorantly imagined to be the cause of his misery, whom his fancy painted to him as endowed with the power of alleviating his sufferings: it was thus in the extremity of his grief, in the exacerbation of his mind, weighed down with misfortune, that unhappy man fashioned those chimeras which filled him with the most gloomy ideas, which he transmitted to his posterity, as the surest means of avoiding the evils to which he had been himself subjected. man never judges of those objects of which he is ignorant, but through the medium of those which come within his knowledge: thus man, taking himself for the model, ascribed will, intelligence, design, projects, passions; in a word, qualities analogous to his own, to all those unknown causes of which he experienced the action. as soon as a visible or supposed cause affects him in an agreeable manner, or in a mode favourable to his existence, he concludes it to be good, to be well intentioned towards him: on the contrary, he judges all those to be bad in their nature, evilly disposed, to have the intention of injuring him, which cause him any painful sensations. he attributes views, plans, a system of conduct like his own, to every thing which to his limited ideas appears of itself to produce connected effects; to act with regularity; to constantly operate in the same manner; that uniformly produces the same sensations in his own person. according to these notions, which he always borrows from himself, from his own peculiar mode of action, he either loves or fears those objects which have affected him; he in consequence approaches them with confidence or timidity; seeks after them or flies from them in proportion as the feelings they have excited are either pleasant or painful. having travelled thus far, he presently addresses them; he invokes their aid; prays to them for succour; conjures them to cease his afflictions; to forbear tormenting him; as he finds himself sensible to presents, pleased with submission, he tries to win them to his interests by humiliation, by sacrifices; he exercises towards them the hospitality he himself loves; he gives them an asylum; he builds them a dwelling; he furnishes them with costly raiment; he makes their altars smoke with delicious food; he proffers to their acceptance the earliest flowers of spring; the finest fruits of autumn; the rich grain of summer; in short he sets before them all those things which he thinks will please them the most, because he himself places the highest value on them. these dispositions enable us to account for the formation of tutelary gods, of lares, of larvae, which every man makes to himself in savage and unpolished nations. thus we perceive that weak superstitious mortals, ignorant of truth, devoid of experience, regard as the arbiters of their fate, as the dispensers of good and evil, animals, stones, unformed inanimate substances, which the effort of their heated imaginations transform into gods, whom they invest with intelligence, whom they clothe with desires, to whom they give volition. another disposition which serves to deceive the savage man, which will equally deceive those whom reason shall not enlighten on these subjects, is his attachment to omens; or the fortuitous concurrence of certain effects, with causes which have not produced them; the co-existence of these effects with certain causes, which have not the slightest connection with them, has frequently led astray very intelligent beings; nations who considered themselves very enlightened; who have either been disinclined or unable to disentangle the one from the other: thus the savage attributes bounty or the will to render him service, to any object whether animate or inanimate, such as a stone of a certain form, a rock, a mountain, a tree, a serpent, an owl, &c. if every time he encounters these objects in a certain position, it should so happen that he is more than ordinarily successful in hunting, that he should take an unusual quantity of fish, that he should be victorious in war, or that he should compass any enterprize whatever that he may at that moment undertake: the same savage will be quite as gratuitous in attaching malice, wickedness, the determination to injure him, to either the same object in a different position, or any others in a given posture, which way have met his eyes on those days when he shall have suffered some grievous accident, have been very unsuccessful in his undertakings, unfortunate in the chace, disappointed in his draught of fish: incapable of reasoning he connects these effects with causes, that reflection would convince him have nothing in common with each other; that are entirely due to physical causes, to necessary circumstances, over which neither himself nor his omens have the least controul: nevertheless he finds it much easier to attribute them to these imaginary causes; he therefore _deifies_ them; looks upon them as either his guardian angels, or else as his most inveterate enemies. having invested them with supernatural powers, he becomes anxious to explain to himself their mode of action; his self-love prevents his seeking elsewhere for the model: thus he assigns them all those motives that actuate himself; he endows them with passions; he gives them design--intelligence--will--imagines they can either injure him or benefit him, as he may render them propitious or otherwise to his views: he ends with worshipping them; with paying them divine honours; he appoints them priests; or at least always consults them before he undertakes any object of moment: such is their influence, that if they put on the evil position, he will lay aside the most important undertaking. the savage in this is never more than an infant, that is angry with the object that displeases him; just like the dog who gnaws the stone by which he has been wounded, without recurring to the hand by which it was thrown. such is the foundation of man's faith, in either happy or unhappy omens: devoid of experience, unaccustomed to reason with precision, fearing to call in the evidence of truth, he looks upon them either as gods themselves, or else as warnings given him by his other gods, to whom he attributes the faculties of sagacity and foresight, of which he is himself miserably deficient. ignorance, when involved in disaster, when immersed in trouble, believes a stone, a reptile, a bird, much better instructed than himself. the slender observation of the ignorant only serves to render him more superstitious; he sees certain birds announce by their flight, by their cries, certain changes in the weather, such as cold, heat, rain, storms; he beholds at certain periods, vapours arise from the bottom of some particular caverns? there needs nothing further to impress upon him the belief, that these beings possess the knowledge of future events; enjoy the gifts of prophecy: he looks upon them as supernatural agents, employed by his gods: it is thus he becomes the dupe to his own credulity. if by degrees the truth flashing occasionally on his mind, experience and reflection arrive at undeceiving him, with respect to the power, the intelligence, the virtues actually residing in these objects; he at least supposes them put in activity by some secret, some hidden cause; that they are the instruments, employed by some invisible agent, who is either friendly or inimical to his welfare. to this concealed agent, therefore, he addresses himself; pays him his vows; emplores his assistance; deprecates his wrath; seeks to propitiate him to his interests; is willing to soften his anger; for this purpose he employs the same means, of which he avails himself, either to appease or gain over the beings of his own species. societies in their origin, seeing themselves frequently afflicted by nature, supposed either the elements, or the concealed powers who regulated them, possessed a will, views, wants, desires, similar to their own. from hence, the sacrifices imagined to nourish them; the libations poured out to them; the steams, the incense to gratify their olfactory nerves. their superstition led them to believe these elements or their irritated movers were to be appeased like irritated man, by prayers, by humiliation, by presents. their imagination was ransacked to discover the presents that would be most acceptable in their eyes; to ascertain the oblations that would be most agreeable, the sacrifices that would most surely propitiate their kindness: as these did not make known their inclinations, man differed with his fellow on those most suitable; each followed his own disposition; or rather each offered what was most estimable in his own eyes; hence arose differences never to be reconciled the bitterest animosities; the most unconquerable aversions; the most, destructive jealousies! thus some brought the fruits of the earth, others offered sheaves of corn: some strewed flowers over their fanes; some decorated them with the most costly jewels; some served them with meats; others sacrificed lambs, heifers, bulls; at length such was their delirium, such the wildness of their imaginations, that they stained their altars with human gore, made oblations of young children immolated virgins, to appease the anger of these supposed deities. the old men, as having the most experience, were usually charged with the conduct of these peace-offerings, from whence, the name priest; [greek letters], _presbos_, in the greek meaning an old man. these accompanied them with ceremonies, instituted rites, used precautions by consulting omens; adopted formalities, retraced to their fellow citizens the notions transmitted to them by their forefathers; collected the observations made by their ancestors; repeated the fables they had received; added commentaries of their own; subjoined supplications to the idols at whose shrine they were sacrificing. it is thus the sacerdotal order was established; thus that public worship was established; by degrees each community formed a body of tenets to be observed by the citizens; these were transmitted from race to race; held sacred out of reverence for their fathers; at length it was deemed sacrilege to doubt these pandects in any one particular; even the errors, that had crept into them with time, were beheld with reverential awe; he that ventured to reason upon them, was looked upon as an enemy to the commonwealth; as one whose impiety drew down upon them the vengeance of these adored beings, to which alone imagination had given birth; not contented with adopting the rituals, with following the ceremonies invented by themselves, one community waged war against another, to oblige it to receive their particular creeds; which the old men who regulated them, declared would infallibly win them the favor of their tutelary deities: thus very often to conciliate their favor, the victorious party immolated on the altars of their gods, the bodies of their unhappy captives; frequently they carried their savage barbarity the length of exterminating whole nations, who happened to worship gods different from their own: thus it frequently happened, that the friends of the serpent, when victorious, covered his altars with the mangled carcases of the worshippers of the stone, whom the fortune of war had placed in their hands: such were the unformed, the precarious elements of which rude nations every where availed themselves to compose their superstitions: they were always a system of conduct invented by imagination: conceived in ignorance, organized in misfortune, to render the unknown powers, to whom they believed nature was submitted, either favorable to their views, or to, induce them to cease those afflictions, which natural causes, for the wisest purposes, were continually heaping upon them; thus some irascible, at the same time placable being, was always chosen for the basis of the adopted superstition; it was upon these puerile tenets, upon these absurd notions, that the old men or the priests rested their doctrines; founded their rights; established their authority: it was to render these fanciful beings friendly to the race of man, that they erected, temples, raised altars, loaded them with wealth; in short, it was from such rude foundations, that arose the magnificent structure of superstition; under which man trembled for thousands of years: which governed the condition of society, which determined the actions of the people, gave the tone to the character, deluged the earth with blood, for such a long series of ages. but although these superstitions were originally invented by savages, they still have the power of regulating the fate of many civilized nations, who are not less tenacious of their chimeras, than their rude progenitors. these systems, so ruinous in their principles, have been variously modified by the human mind, of which it is the essence, to labour incessantly on unknown objects; it always, commences by attaching to these, a very first-rate importance, which it afterwards never dares coolly to examine. such was the course of man's imagination, in the successive ideas which he either formed to himself, or which he received from his fathers, upon the divinity. the first theology of man was grounded on fear, modelled by ignorance: either afflicted or benefitted by the elements, he adored these elements themselves; by a parity of reasoning, if reasoning it can be called, he extended his reverence to every material, coarse object; he afterwards rendered his homage to the agents he supposed presiding over these elements; to powerful genii; to inferior genii; to heroes; to men endowed with either great or striking qualities. time, aided by reflection, with here and there a slight corruscation of truth, induced him in some places to relinquish his original ideas; he believed he simplified the thing by lessening the number of his gods, but he achieved nothing by this towards attaining to the truth; in recurring from cause to cause man finished by losing sight of every thing; in this obscurity, in this dark abyss, his mind still laboured, he formed new chimeras, he made new gods, or rather he formed a very complex machinery; still, as before, whenever he could not account for any phenomenon that struck his sight, he was unwilling to ascribe it to physical causes; and the name of his divinity, whatever that might happen to be, was always brought in to supply his own ignorance of natural causes. if a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the divinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word _gods_ has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of natural, the source of known causes ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods; thus giving a vague definition to an unknown cause, at which either his idleness, or his limited knowledge, obliges him to stop. when, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon, the novelty or the extent of which strikes him with wonder, but of which his ignorance precludes him from unravelling the true cause, or which he believes the natural powers with which he is acquainted are inadequate to bring forth; does he, in fact, do any thing more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe? ignorance may be said to be the inheritance of the generality of men; these attribute to their gods not only those uncommon effects that burst upon their senses with an astounding force, but also the most simple events, the causes of which are the most easy to be known to whoever shall be willing to meditate upon them. in short, man has always respected those unknown causes, those surprising effects which his ignorance prevented him from fathoming. but does this afford us one single, correct idea of the _divinity_? can it be possible we are acting rationally, thus eternally to make him the agent of our stupidity, of our sloth, of our want of information on natural causes? do we, in fact, pay any kind of adoration to this being, by thus bringing him forth on every trifling occasion, to solve the difficulties ignorance throws in our way? of whatever nature this great cause of causes may be, it is evident to the slightest reflection that he has been sedulous to conceal himself from our view; that he has rendered it impossible for us to have the least acquaintance with him, except through the medium of nature, which he has unquestionably rendered competent to every thing: this is the rich banquet spread before man; he is invited to partake, with a welcome he has no right to dispute; to enjoy therefore is to obey; to be happy is to render that worship which must make him most acceptable; _to be happy himself is to make others happy; to make others happy is to be virtuous; to be virtuous he must revere truth: to know what truth is, he must examine with caution, scrutinize with severity, every opinion he adopts:_ this granted, is it at all consistent with the majesty of the divinity, is it not insulting to such a being to clothe him with our wayward passions; to ascribe to him designs similar to our narrow view of things; to give him our filthy desires; to suppose he can be guided by our finite conceptions; to bring him on a level with frail humanity, by investing him with our qualities, however much we may exaggerate them; to indulge an opinion that he can either act or think as we do; to imagine he can in any manner resemble such a feeble play-thing, as is the greatest, the most distinguished man? no! it is to degrade him in the eye of reason; to violate every regard for truth; to set moral decency at defiance; to fall back into the depth of cimmerian darkness. let man therefore sit down cheerfully to the feast; let him contentedly partake of what he finds; but let him not worry the divinity with his useless prayers, with his shallow-sighted requests, to solicit at his hands that which, if granted, would in all probability be the most injurious for himself; these supplications are, in fact, at once to say, that with our limited experience, with our slender knowledge, we better understand what is suitable to our condition, what is convenient to our welfare, than the mighty _cause of all causes_ who has left us in the hands of nature: it is to be presumptuous in the highest degree of presumption; it is impiously to endeavour to lift up a veil which it is evidently forbidden man to touch; that even his most strenuous efforts attempt in vain. it remains, then, to inquire, if man can reasonably flatter himself with obtaining a perfect knowledge of the power of nature; of the properties of the beings she contains; of the effects which may result from their various combinations? do we know why the magnet attracts iron? are we better acquainted with the cause of polar attraction? are we in a condition to explain the phenomena of light, electricity, elasticity? do we understand the mechanism by which that modification of our brain, which we tall volition, puts our arm or our legs into motion? can we render to ourselves an account of the manner in which our eyes behold objects, in which our ears receive sounds, in which our mind conceives ideas? all we know upon these subjects is, that they are so. if then we are incapable of accounting for the most ordinary phenomena, which nature daily exhibits to us, by what chain of reasoning do we refuse to her the power of producing other effects equally incomprehensible to us? shall we be more instructed, when every time we behold an effect of which we are not in a capacity to develope the cause, we may idly say, this effect is produced by the power, by the will of god? undoubtedly it is the great _cause of causes_ must have produced every thing; but is it not lessening the true dignity of the divinity, to introduce him as interfering in every operation of nature; nay, in every action of so insignificant a creature as man? as a mere agent executing his own eternal, immutable laws; when experience, when reflection, when the evidence of all we contemplate, warrants the idea, that this ineffable being has rendered nature competent to every effect, by giving her those irrevocable laws, that eternal, unchangeable system, according to which all the beings she contains must eternally act? is it not more worthy the exalted mind of the great parent of parents, _ens entium_, more consistent with truth, to suppose that his wisdom in giving these immutable, these eternal laws to the macrocosm, foresaw every thing that could possibly be requisite for the happiness of the beings contained in it; that therefore he left it to the invariable operation of a system, which never can produce any effect that is not the best possible that circumstances however viewed will admit: that consequently the natural activity of the human mind, which is itself the result of this eternal action, was purposely given to man, that he might endeavour to fathom, that he might strive to unravel, that he might seek out the concatenation of these laws, in order to furnish remedies against the evils produced by ignorance. how many discoveries in the great science of natural philosophy has mankind progressively made, which the ignorant prejudices of our forefathers on their first announcement considered as impious, as displeasing to the divinity, as heretical profanations, which could only be expiated by the sacrifice of the enquiring individuals; to whose labour their posterity owes such an infinity of gratitude? even in modern days we have seen a socrates destroyed, a gallileo condemned, whilst multitudes of other benefactors to mankind have been held in contempt by their uninformed cotemporaries, for those very researches into nature which the present generation hold in the highest veneration. _whenever ignorant priests are permitted to guide the opinions of nations, science can make but a very slender progress:_ natural discoveries will be always held inimical to the interest of bigotted superstitious men. it may, to the minds of infatuated mortals, to the shallow comprehension of prejudiced beings, appear very pious to reply on every occasion our gods do this, our gods do that; but to the contemplative philosopher, to the man of reason, to the real adorers of the great _cause of causes_, it will never be convincing, that a sound, a mere word, can attach the reason of things; can have more than a fixed sense; can suffice to explain problems. the word god is for the most part used to denote the impenetrable cause of those effects which astonish mankind; which man is not competent to explain. but is not this wilful idleness? is it not inconsistent with our nature? is it not being truly impious, to sit down with those fine faculties we have received, and give the answer of a child to every thing we do not understand; or rather which our own sloth, or our own want of industry has prevented us from knowing? ought we not rather to redouble our efforts to penetrate the cause of those phenomena which strike our mind? is not this, in fact, the duty we owe to the great, the universal parent? when we have given this answer, what have we said? nothing but what every one knows. could the great _cause of causes_ make the whole, without also making its part? but does it of necessity follow that he executes every trifling operation, when he has so noble an agent as his own nature, whose laws he has rendered unchangeable, whose scale of operations can never deviate from the eternal routine he has marked out for her and all the beings she embraces? whose secrets, if sought out, contain the true balsam of life--the sovereign remedy for all the diseases of man. when we shall be ingenuous with ourselves, we shall be obliged to agree that it was uniformly the ignorance in which our ancestors were involved, their want of knowledge of natural causes, their unenlightened ideas on the powers of nature, which gave birth to the gods they worshipped; that it is, again, the impossibility which the greater part of mankind find to withdraw, themselves out of this ignorance, the difficulty they consequently find to form to themselves simple ideas of the formation of things, the labour that is required to discover the true sources of those events, which they either admire or fear, that makes them believe these ideas are necessary to enable them to render an account of those phenomena, to which their own sluggishness renders them incompetent to recur. here, without doubt, is the reason they treat all those as irrational who do not see the necessity of admitting an unknown agent, or some secret energy, which for want of being acquainted with nature, they have placed out of herself. the phenomena of nature necessarily breed various sentiments in man: some he thinks favorable to him, some prejudicial, while the whole is only what it can be. some excite his love, his admiration, his gratitude; others fill him with trouble, cause aversion, drive him to despair. according to the various sensations he experiences, he either loves or fears the causes to which he attributes the effects, which produce in him these different passions: these sentiments are commensurate with the effects he experiences; his admiration is enhanced, his fears are augmented, in the same ratio as the phenomena which strikes his senses are more or less extensive, more or less irresistible or interesting to him. man necessarily makes himself the centre of nature; indeed he can only judge of things, as he is himself affected by them; he can only love that which he thinks favorable to his being; he hates, he fears every thing which causes him to suffer: in short, as we have seen in the former volume, he calls confusion every thing that deranges the economy of his machine; he believes all is in order, as soon as he experiences nothing but what is suitable to his peculiar mode of existence. by a necessary consequence of these ideas, man firmly believes that the entire of nature was made for him alone; that it was only himself which she had in view in all her works; or rather that the powerful cause to which this nature was subordinate, had only for object man and his convenience, in all the stupendous effects which are produced in the universe. if there existed on this earth other thinking beings besides man, they would fall exactly into similar prejudices with himself; it is a sentiment founded upon that predilection which each individual necessarily has for himself; a predilection that will subsist until reason, aided by experience, in pointing out the truth, shall have rectified his errors. thus, whenever man is contented, whenever every thing is in order with respect to himself, he either admires or loves the causes to which he believes he is indebted for his welfare; when he becomes discontented with his mode of existence, he either fears or hates the cause which he supposes has produced these afflicting effects. but his welfare confounds itself with his existence; it ceases to make itself felt when it has become habitual, when it has been of long continuance; he then thinks it is inherrent to his essence; he concludes from it that he is formed to be always happy; he finds it natural that every thing should concur to the maintenance of his being. it is by no means the same when he experiences a mode of existence that is displeasing to himself: the man who suffers is quite astonished at the change which his taken place in his machine; he judges it to be contrary to the entire of nature, because it is incommodious to his own particular nature; he, imagines those events by which he is wounded, to be contrary to the order of things; he believes that nature is deranged every time she does not procure for him that mode of feeling which is suitable to his ideas: he concludes from these suppositions that nature, or rather that the agent who moves her; is irritated against him. it is thus that man, almost insensible to good, feels evil in a very lively manner; the first he believes natural, the other he thinks opposed to nature. he is either ignorant, or forgets, that he constitutes part of a whole, formed by the assemblage of substances, of which some are analogous, others heterogeneous; that the various beings of which nature is composed, are endowed with a variety of properties, by virtue of which they act diversely on the bodies who find themselves within the sphere of their action; that some have an aptitude to attraction, whilst it is of the essence of others to repel; that even those bodies that attract at one distance, repel at another; that the peculiar attractions and repulsions of the particles of bodies perpetually oppose, invariably counteract the general ones of the masses of matter: he does not perceive that these beings, as destitute of goodness, as devoid of malice, act only according to their respective essences; follow the laws their properties impose upon them; without being in capacity to act otherwise than they do. it is, therefore, for want of being acquainted with these things, that he looks upon the great author of nature, the great _cause of causes_, as the immediate cause of those evils to which he is submitted; that he judges erroneously when he imagines that the divinity is exasperated against him. the fact is, man believes that his welfare is a debt due to him from nature; that when he suffers evil she does him an injustice; fully persuaded that this nature was made solely for himself, he cannot conceive she would make him, who is her lord paramount, suffer, if she was not moved thereto by a power who is inimical to his happiness; who has reasons with which he is unacquainted for afflicting, who has motives which he wishes to discover, for punishing him. from hence it will be obvious, that evil, much more than good, is the true motive of those researches which man has made concerning the divinity--of those ideas which he has formed to himself--of the conduct he has held towards him. the admiration of the works of nature, or the acknowledgement of its goodness, seem never alone to have determined the human species to recur painfully by thought to the source of these things; familiarized at once with all those effects which are favourable to his existence, he does not by any means give himself the same trouble to seek the causes, that he does to discover those which disquiet him, or by which he is afflicted. thus, in reflecting upon the divinity, it was generally upon the cause of his evils that man meditated; his meditations were fruitless, because the evil he experiences, as well as the good he partakes, are equally necessary effects of natural causes, to which his mind ought rather to have bent its force, than to have invented fictitious causes of which he never could form to himself any but false ideas; seeing that he always borrowed them, from his own peculiar mariner of existing, acting, and feeling. obstinately refusing to see any thing, but himself, he never became acquainted with that universal nature of which he constitutes such a very feeble part. the slightest reflection, however, would have been sufficient to undeceive him on these erroneous ideas. everything tends to prove that good and evil are modes of existence that depend upon causes by which a man is moved; that a sensible being is obliged to experience them. in a nature composed of a multitude of beings infinitely varied, the shock occasioned by the collision of discordant matter must necessarily disturb the order, derange the mode of existence of those beings who have no analogy with them: these act in every thing they do after certain laws, which are in themselves immutable; the good or evil, therefore, which man experiences, are necessary consequences of the qualities inherent to the beings, within whose sphere of action he is found. our birth, which we call a benefit, is an effect as necessary as our death, which we contemplate as an injustice of fate: it is of the nature of all analogous beings to unite themselves to form a whole: it is of the nature of all compound beings to be destroyed, or to dissolve themselves; some maintain their union for a longer period than others; some disperse very quickly, as the ephemeron; some endure for ages, as the planets; every being in dissolving itself gives birth to new beings; these are destroyed in their turn; to execute the eternal, the immutable laws of a nature that only exists by the continual changes that all its parts undergo. thus nature cannot be accused of malice, since every thing that takes place in it is necessary--is produced by an invariable system, to which every other being, as well as herself, is eternally subjected. the same igneous matter that in man is the principle of life, frequently becomes the principle of his destruction, either by the conflagration of a city, the explosion of a volcano, or his mad passion for war. the aqueous fluid that circulates through his machine, so essentially necessary to his actual existence, frequently becomes too abundant, and terminates him by suffocation; is the cause of those inundations which sometimes swallow up both the earth and its inhabitants. the air, without which he is not able to respire, is the cause of those hurricanes, of those tempests, which frequently render useless the labour of mortals. these elements are obliged to burst their bonds, when they are combined in a certain manner; their necessary but fatal consequences are those ravages, those contagions, those famines, those diseases, those various scourges, against which man, with streaming eyes and violent emotions, vainly implores the aid of those powers who are deaf to his cries: his prayers are never granted; but the same necessity which afflicted him, the same immutable laws which overwhelmed him with trouble, replaces things in the order he finds suitable to his species: a relative order of things which was, is, and always will be the only standard of his judgment. man, however, made no such simple reflections: he either did not or would not perceive that every thing in nature acted by invariable laws; he continued stedfast in contemplating the good of which he was partaker, as a favor; in considering the evil he experienced, as a sign of anger in this nature, which he supposed to be animated by the same passions as himself or at least that it was governed by secret agents, who acted after his own manner, who obliged it to execute their will, that was sometimes favourable, sometimes inimical to the human species. it was to these supposed agents, with whom in the sunshine of his prosperity he was but little occupied, that in the bosom of his calamity he addressed his prayers; he thanked them, however, for their favours, fearing lest their ingratitude might farther provoke their fury: thus when assailed by disaster, when afflicted with disease, he invoked them with fervor: he required them to change in his favor the mode of acting which was the very essence of beings; he was willing that to make the slightest evil he experienced cease, that the eternal chain of things might be broken; and the unerring, undeviating course of nature might he arrested. it was upon such ridiculous pretensions, that were founded those supplications, those fervent prayers, which mortals, almost always discontented with their fate, never in accord in their respective desires, addressed to their gods. they were unceasingly upon their knees before the altars, were ever prostrate before the power of the beings, whom they judged had the right of commanding nature; who they supposed to have sufficient energy to divert her course; who they considered to possess the means to make her subservient to their particular views; thus each hoped by presents, by humiliation, to induce them to oblige this nature, to satisfy the discordant desires of their race. the sick man, expiring in his bed, asks that the humours accumulated in his body should in an instant lose those properties which renders them injurious to his existence; that by an act of their puissance, his gods should renew or recreate the springs of a machine worn out by infirmities. the cultivator of a low swampy country, makes complaint of the abundance of rain with which his fields are inundated; whilst the inhabitant of the hill, raises his thanks for the favors he receives, solicits a continuance of that which causes the despair of his neighbour. in this, each is willing to have a god for himself, and asks according to his momentary caprices, to his fluctuating wants, that the invariable essence of things, should be continually changed in his favour. from this it must be obvious, that man every moment asks a _miracle_ to be wrought in his support. it is not, therefore, at all surprising that he displayed such ready credulity, that he adopted with such facility the relation of the marvellous deeds which were universally announced to him as the acts of the power, or the effects of the benevolence, of the various gods which presided over the nations of the earth: these wonderful tales, which were offered to his acceptance, as the most indubitable proofs of the empire of these gods over nature, which man always found deaf to his entreaties, were readily accredited by him; in the expectation, that if he could gain them over to his interest, this nature, which he found so sullen, so little disposed to lend herself to his views, would then be controuled in his own favor. by a necessary consequence of these ideas, nature was despoiled of all power; she was contemplated only as a passive instrument, who acted at the will, under the influence of the numerous, all-powerful agents to whom the various superstitions had rendered her subordinate. it was thus for want of contemplating nature under her true point of view, that man has mistaken her entirely, that he believed her incapable of producing any thing by herself; that he ascribed the honor of all those productions, whether advantageous or disadvantageous to the human species, to fictitious powers, whom he always clothed with his own peculiar dispositions, only he aggrandized their force. in short, it was upon the ruins of nature, that man erected the imaginary colossus of superstition, that he reared the _altars of a jupiter, the temples of an apollo_. if the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them. as soon as man becomes enlightened, his powers augment, his resources increase in a ratio with his knowledge; the sciences, the protecting arts, industrious application, furnish him assistance; experience encourages his progress, truth procures for him the means of resisting the efforts of many causes, which cease to alarm him as soon as he obtains a correct knowledge of them. in a word, his terrors dissipate in proportion as his mind becomes enlightened, because his trepidation is ever commensurate with his ignorance, and furnishes this great lesson, that _man, instructed by truth, ceases to be superstitious_. chap. ii. _of mythology, and theology_. the elements of nature were, as we have shewn, the first divinities of man; he has generally commenced with adoring material beings; each individual, as we have already said, as may be still seen in savage nations, made to himself a particular god, of some physical object, which he supposed to be the cause of those events, in which he was himself interested; he never wandered to seek out of visible nature, the source either of what happened to himself, or of those phenomena to which he was a witness. as he every where saw only material effects, he attributed them to causes of the same genus; incapable in his infancy of those profound reveries, of those subtle speculations, which are the fruit of time, the result of leisure, he did not imagine any cause distinguished from the objects that met his sight, nor of any essence totally different from every thing he beheld. the observation of nature was the first study of those who had leisure to meditate: they could not avoid being struck with the phenomena of the visible world. the rising and setting of the sun, the periodical return of the seasons, the variations of the atmosphere, the fertility and sterility of the earth, the advantages of irrigation, the damage caused by floods, the useful effects of fire, the terrible consequences of conflagration, were proper and suitable objects to occupy their thoughts. it was natural for them to believe that those beings they saw move of themselves, acted by their own peculiar energies; according as their influence over the inhabitants of the earth was either favorable or otherwise, they concluded them to have either the power to injure them, or the disposition to confer benefits. those who first acquired the knowledge of gaining an ascendancy over man, then savage, wandering, unpolished, or dispersed in woods, with but little attachment to the soil, of which he had not yet learned to reap the advantage, were always more practised observers--individuals more instructed in the ways of nature, than the people, or rather the scattered hordes, whom they found ignorant and destitute of experience: their superior knowledge placed them in a capacity to render these services--to discover to them useful inventions, which attracted the confidence of the unhappy beings to whom they came to offer an assisting hand; savages who were naked, half famished, exposed to the injuries of the weather, obnoxious to the attacks of ferocious beasts, dispersed in caverns, scattered in forests, occupied with hunting, painfully labouring to procure themselves a very precarious subsistence, had not sufficient leisure to make discoveries calculated to facilitate their labour, or to render it less incessant. these discoveries are generally the fruit of society: isolated beings, detached families, hardly ever make any discoveries--scarcely ever think of making any. the savage is a being who lives in a perpetual state of infancy, who never reaches maturity unless some one comes to draw him out of his misery. at first repulsive, unsociable, intractable, he by degrees familiarizes himself with those who render him service; once gained by their kindness, he readily lends them his confidence; in the end he goes the length of sacrificing to them his liberty. it was commonly from the bosom of civilized nations that have issued those personages who have carried sociability, agriculture, art, laws, gods, superstition, forms of worship, to those families or hordes as yet scattered; who united them either to the body of some other nations, or formed them into new nations, of which they themselves became the leaders, sometimes the king, frequently the high priest, and often their god. these softened their manners--gathered them together--taught them to reap the advantages of their own powers--to render each other reciprocal assistance--to satisfy their wants with greater facility. in thus rendering their existence more comfortable, thus augmenting their happiness, they attracted their love; obtained their veneration, acquired the right of prescribing opinions to them, made them adopt such as they had either invented themselves, or else drawn up in the civilized countries from whence they came. history points out to us the most famous legislators as men, who, enriched with useful knowledge they had gleaned in the bosom of polished nations, carried to savages without industry, needing assistance, those arts, of which, until then, these rude people were ignorant: such were the bacchus's, the orpheus's, the triptolemus's, the numa's, the zamolixis's; in short, all those who first gave to nations their gods--their worship--the rudiments of agriculture, of science, of superstition, of jurisprudence, of religion, &c. it will perhaps be enquired, if those nations which at the present day we see assembled, were all originally dispersed? we reply, that this dispersion may have been produced at various times, by those terrible revolutions, of which it has before been remarked our globe has more than once been the theatre; in times so remote, that history has not been able to transmit us the detail. perhaps the approach of more than one comet may have produced on our earth several universal ravages, which have at each time annihilated the greater portion of the human species. these hypotheses will unquestionably appear bold to those who have not sufficiently meditated on nature, but to the philosophic enquirer they are by no means inconsistent. there may not only have been one general deluge, but even a great number since the existence of our planet; this globe itself may have been a new production in nature; it may not always have occupied the place it does at present. whatever idea may be adopted on this subject, if it is very certain that, independent of those exterior causes, which are competent to totally change its face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this globe contains within itself, a cause adequate to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal and sensible motion of the earth, it has one extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by which every thing must eventually be changed in it: this is the motion from whence depends the _precession_ of the _equinoctial points_, observed by _hipparchus_ and other mathematicians, now well understood by astronomers; by this motion, the earth must at the end of several thousand years change totally: this motion will at length cause the ocean to occupy that space which at present forms the lands or continents. from this it will be obvious that our globe, as well as all the beings in nature, has a continual disposition to change. this motion was known to the ancients, and was what gave rise to what they called their great year, which the egyptians fixed at thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five years: the sabines at thirty-six thousand four hundred and twenty-five, whilst others have extended it to one hundred thousand, some even to seven hundred and fifty-three thousand years. again, to those general revolutions which our planet has at different times experienced, way he added those that have been partial, such as inundations of the sea, earthquakes, subterraneous conflagrations, which have sometimes had the effect of dispersing particular nations, and to make them forget all those sciences with which they were, before acquainted. it is also probable that the first volcanic fires, having had no previous vent, were more central, and greater in quantity, before they burst the crust of earth; as the sea washed the whole, it must have rapidly sunk down into every opening, where, falling on the boiling lava, it was instantly expanded into steam, producing irresistible explosion: whence it is reasonable to conclude, that the primaeval earthquakes wore more widely extended, and of much greater force, than those which occur in our days. other vapours may be produced by intense heat, possessing a much greater elasticity, from substances that evaporate, such as mercury, diamonds, &c.; the expansive force of these vapours would be much greater than the steam of water, even at red hot heat consequently they, way have had sufficient energy to raise islands, continents, or even to have detached the moon from the earth; if the moon, as has been supposed by some philosophers, was thrown out of the great cavity which now contains the south sea; the immense quantity of water flowing in from the original ocean, and which then covered the earth, would much contribute to leave the continents and islands, which might be raised at the same time, above the surface of the water. in later days we have accounts of huge stones falling, from the firmament, which may have been thrown by explosion from some distant earthquake, without having been impelled with a force sufficient to cause them to circulate round the earth, and thus produce numerous small moons or satellites. those who were able to escape from the ruin of the world, filled with consternation, plunged in misery, were but little conditioned to preserve to their posterity a knowledge, effaced by those misfortunes, of which they had been both the victims and the witnesses: overwhelmed with dismay, trembling with fear, they were not able to hand down the history of their frightful adventures, except by obscure traditions; much less to transmit to us the opinions, the systems, the arts, the sciences, anterior to these petrifying revolutions of our sphere. there have been perhaps men upon the earth from all eternity; but at different periods they may have been nearly annihilated, together with their monuments, their sciences, and their arts; those who outlived these periodical revolutions, each time formed a new race of men, who by dint of time, labour, and experience, have by degrees withdrawn from oblivion the inventions of the primitive races. it is, perhaps, to these periodical revolutions of the human species, that is to be ascribed the profound ignorance in which we see man yet plunged, upon those objects that are the most interesting to him. this is, perhaps, the true source of the imperfection of his knowledge--of the vices of his political institutions--of the defect in his religion--of the growth of superstition, over which terror has always presided; here, in all probability, is the cause of that puerile inexperience, of those jejune prejudices, which almost every where keep man in a state of infancy, and which render him so little capable of either listening to reason or of consulting truth. to judge by the slowness of his progress, by the feebleness of his advance, in a number of respects, we should be inclined to say, the human race has either just quitted its cradle, or that he was never destined to attain the age of virility--to corroborate his reason. however it may be with these conjectures, whether the human race may always have existed upon the earth, whether it may have been a recent production of nature, whether the larger animals we now behold were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, who have increased in bulk with the progression of time, or whether, as the egyptian philosophers thought, mankind were originally hermaphrodites, who like the _aphis_ produced the sexual distinction after some generations, which was also the opinion of plato, and seems to have been that of moses, who was educated amongst these egyptians, as may be gathered from the th and th verses of the first chapter of genesis: "so god created man in his own image, in the image of god created he him; male and female created he them--and god blessed them, and god said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth:" it is not therefore presuming too much to suppose, as the egyptians were a nation very fond of explaining their opinions by hieroglyphics, that that part which describes eve as taken out of adam's rib, was an hieroglyphic emblem: showing that mankind was in the primitive state of both sexes, united, who was afterwards divided into males and females. however, i say, this may be, it is extremely easy to recur to the origin of many existing nations: we shall find them always in the savage state; that is, to say, dispersed; composed of families detached from each other; of wandering, hordes; these were collected together, approximated at the voice of some missionary or legislator, from whom they received great benefits, who gave them gods, opinions, and laws. these personages, of whom the people newly congregated readily acknowledged the superiority, fixed the national gods, leaving to each individual, those which he had formed to himself, according to his own peculiar ideas, or else substituting others brought from those regions, from whence they themselves had emigrated. the better to imprint their lessons on the minds of their new subjects, these men became the guides, the priests, the sovereigns, the masters of these infant societies; they formed discourses by which they spoke to the imagination of their willing auditors. poetry seem best adapted to strike the mind of these rude people, to engrave on their memory those ideas with which they were willing to imbue them: its images, its fictions, its numbers, its rhyme its harmony, all conspired to please their fancy, to render permanent the impressions it made: thus, the entire of nature, as well as all its parts, was personified, by its beautiful allegories: at its soothing voice, trees, stones, rocks, earth, air, fire, water, by imagination took intelligence, held conversation with man, and with themselves; the elements were deified by its songs, every thing was figuratively detailed in harmonious lays. the sky, which according to the then philosophy, was an arched concave, spreading over the earth, which was supposed to be a level plain; (for the doctrine of _antipodes_ is of rather modern date) was itself made a god; was considered a more suitable residence, as making a greater distinction for these imaginary deities than the earth on which man himself resided. thus the firmament was filled with deities. time, under the name of saturn, was pictured as the son of heaven; or coelus by earth, called terra, or thea; he was represented as an inexorable divinity--naturally artful, who devoured his own children--who revenged the anger of his mother upon his father; for which purpose she armed him with a scythe, formed of metals drawn from her own bowels, with which he struck coelus, in the act of uniting himself to thea, and so mutilated him, that he was ever after incapacitated to increase the number of his children: he was said to have divided the throne with janus king of italy, his reign seems to have been so mild, so beneficent, that it was called the _golden age_; human victims were sacrificed on his altars, until abolished by hercules, who substituted small images of clay. festivals in honor of this god, called saturnalia, were instituted long antecedent to the foundation of rome they were celebrated about the middle of december, either on the th, th, or th; they lasted in latter times several days, originally but one. universal liberty prevailed at the celebration, slaves were permitted to ridicule their masters--to speak freely on every subject--no criminals were executed--war never declared; the priests made their human offerings with their heads uncovered; a circumstance peculiar to the saturnalia, not adopted at other festivals. the igneous matter, the etherial electric fluid, that invisible fire which vivifies nature, that penetrates all beings, that fertilizes the earth, which is the great principle of motion, the source of heat, was deified under the name of jupiter: his combination with every being in nature was expressed by his metamorphoses--by the frequent adulteries imputed to him. he was armed with thunder, to indicate he produced meteors, to typify the electric fluid that is called lightning. he married the winds, which were designated under the name of juno, therefore called the goddess of the winds, their nuptials were celebrated with great solemnity; all the gods, the entire brute creation, the whole of mankind attended, except one young woman named chelone, who laughed at the ceremonies, for which impiety she was changed by mercury into a tortoise, and condemned to perpetual silence. he was the most powerful of all the gods, and considered as the king and father both of gods and men: his worship was very extended, performed with greater solemnity, than that of any other god. upon his altars smoked goats, sheep, and white bulls, in which he is said to have particularly delighted; the oak was rendered sacred to him, because he taught mankind to live upon acorns; he had many oracles where his precepts were delivered, the most celebrated of these were at dodona and ammon in lybia; he was supposed to be invisible to the inhabitants of the earth; the lacedemonians erected his statue with four heads, thereby indicating, that he listened readily to the solicitations of every quarter of the earth. minerva is represented as having no mother, but to have come completely armed from his brains, when his head was opened by vulcan; by which it is meant to infer that wisdom is the result of this ethereal fluid. thus, following the same fictions, the sun, that beneficent star which has such a marked influence over the earth, became an osiris, a belus, a mithras, an adonis, an apollo. nature, rendered sorrowful by his periodical absence, was an isis, an astarte, a venus, a cybele. astarte had a magnificent temple at hieropolis served by three hundred priests, who were always employed in offering sacrifices. the priests of cybele, called corybantes, also galli, were not admitted to their sacred functions without previous mutilation. in the celebration of their festivals these priests used all kinds of indecent expressions, beat drums, cymbals, and behaved just like madmen: his worship extended all over phrygia, and was established in greece under the name of _eleusinian mysteries_. in short, every thing was personified: the sea was under the empire of neptune; fire was adored by the egyptians under the name of serapis; by the persians, under that of ormus or oromaze; and by the romans, under that of vesta and vulcan. such was the origin of mythology: it may be said to be the daughter of natural philosophy, embellished by poetry; only destined to describe nature and its parts. if antiquity is consulted, it will be perceived without much trouble, that these famous sages, those legislators, those priests, those conquerors, who were the instructors of infant nations, themselves adored active nature, or the great whole considered relatively to its different operations or qualities; that this was what they caused the ignorant savages whom they had gathered together to adore. it was the great whole they deified; it was its various parts which they made their inferior gods; it was from the necessity of her laws they made fate. the greeks called it nature, a divinity who had a thousand names. varro says, "i believe that god is the soul of the universe, and that the universe is god." cicero says "that in the mysteries of samothracia, of lemnos, of eleusis, it was nature much more than the gods, they explained to the initiated." pliny says, "we must believe that the world, or that which is contained under the vast extent of the heavens, is the divinity; even eternal, infinite, without beginning or end." it was these different modes of considering nature that gave birth to polytheism, to idolatry. allegory masqued its mode of action: it was at length parts of this great whole, that idolatry represented by statues and symbols. to complete the proofs of what has been said; to shew distinctly that it was the great whole, the universe, the nature of things, which was the real object of the worship of pagan antiquity, hardly any thing can be more decisive than the beginning of the hymn of orpheus addressed to the god pan. "o pan! i invoke thee, o powerful god! o universal nature! the heavens, the sea, the earth, who nourish all, and the eternal fire, because these are thy members, o all powerful pan," &c. nothing can be more suitable to confirm these ideas, than the ingenious explanation which is given of the fable of pan, as well as of the figure under which he is represented. it is said, "pan, according to the signification of his name, is the emblem by which the ancients have designated the great assemblage of things or beings: he represents the universe; and, in the mind of the wisest philosophers of antiquity, he passed for the greatest and most ancient of the gods. the features under which he is delineated form the portrait of nature, and of the savage state in which she was found in the beginning. the spotted skin of the leopard, which serves him for a mantle, imagined the heavens filled with stars and constellations. his person was compounded of parts, some of which were suitable to a reasonable animal, that is to say, to man; and others to the animal destitute of reason, such as the goat. it is thus," says he, "that the universe is composed of an intelligence that governs the whole, and of the prolific, fruitful elements of fire, water, earth, air. pan, loved to drink and to follow the nymphs; this announces the occasion nature has for humidity in all her productions, and that this god, like nature, is strongly inclined to propagation. according to the egyptians, and the most ancient grecian philosophers, pan had neither father nor mother; he came out of demogorgon at the same moment with the destinies, his fatal sisters; a fine method of expressing that the universe was the work of an unknown power, and that it was formed after the invariable relations, the eternal laws of necessity; but his most significant symbol, that most suitable to express the harmony of the universe, is his mysterious pipe, composed of seven unequal tubes, but calculated to produce the nicest, the most perfect concord. the orbs which compose the seven planets of our solar system, are of different diameters; being bodies of unequal mass, they describe their revolutions round the sun in various periods; nevertheless it is from the order of their motion that results the harmony of the spheres," &c. here then is the great macrocosm, the mighty whole, the assemblage of things adored and deified by the philosophers of antiquity; whilst the uninformed stopped at the emblem under which this nature was depicted; at the symbols under which its various parts, its numerous functions were personified; his narrow mind, his barbarous ignorance, never permitted him to mount higher; they alone were deemed worthy of being, initiated into the mysteries, who knew the realities masqued under these emblems. indeed, it is not to be doubted for an instant, that the wisest among the pagans adored nature; which ethnic theology designated under a great variety of nomenclature, under an immense number of different emblems. apuleius, although a decided platonist, accustomed to the mysterious, unintelligible notions of his master, calls "nature the parent of all; the mother of the elements, the first offspring of the world;" again, "the mother of the stars, the parent of the seasons, and the governess of the whole world."--she was worshipped by many under the appellation of the _mother of the gods_. indeed, the first institutors of nations, and their immediate successors in authority, only spoke to the people by fables, allegories, enigmas, of which they reserved to themselves the right of giving an explanation: this, in fact, constituted the mysteries of the various worship paid to the pagan divinities. this mysterious tone they considered necessary, whether it was to mask their own ignorance, or whether it was to preserve their power over the uninformed, who for the most part only respect that which is above their comprehension. their explications were generally dictated either by interest, or by a delirious imagination, frequently by imposture; thus from age to age, they did no more than render nature and its parts, which they had originally depicted, more unknown, until they completely lost sight of the primitive ideas; these were replaced by a multitude of fictitious personages, under whose features this nature had primarily been represented to them. the people, either unaccustomed to think, or deeply steeped in ignorance, adored these personages, without penetrating into the true sense of the emblematical fables recounted to them. these ideal beings, with material figures, in whom they believed there resided a mysterious virtue, a divine power, were the objects of their worship, the source of their fears, the fountain of their hopes. the wonderful, the incredible actions ascribed to these fancied divinities, were an inexhaustible fund of admiration, which gave perpetual play to the fancy; which delighted not only the people of those days, but even the children of latter ages. thus were transmitted from age to age, those marvellous accounts, which, although necessary to the existence of the power usurped by the ministers of these gods, did, in fact, nothing more than confirm the blindness of the ignorant: these never supposed that it was nature, its various operations, its numerous component parts--that it was the passions of man and his diverse faculties that lay buried under an heap of allegories; they did not perceive that the passions and faculties of human nature were used as emblems, because man was ignorant of the true cause of the phenomena he beheld. as strong passions seemed to hurry man along, in despite of himself, they either attributed these passions to a god, or deified them; frequently they did both: it was thus love became a deity; that eloquence, poetry, industry, were transformed into gods, under the names of hermes, mercury, apollo; the stings of conscience were called the furies: the people, bowed down in stupid ignorance, had no eyes but for these emblematical persons, under which nature was masked: they attributed to their influence the good, to their displeasure the evil, which they experienced: they entered into every kind of folly, into the most delirious acts of madness, to render them propitious to their views; thus, for want of being acquainted with the reality of things, their worship frequently degenerated into the most cruel extravagance, into the most ridiculous folly. thus it is obvious, that every thing proves nature and its various parts to have every where been the first divinities of man. natural philosophers studied these deities, either superficially or profoundly,--explained some of their properties, detailed some of their modes of action. poets painted them to the imagination of mortals, either in the most fascinating colours, or under the most hideous deformities; embodied them--furnished them with reasoning faculties--recounted their exploits--recorded their will. the statuary executed sometimes with the most enrapturing art, the ideas of the poets,--gave substance to their shadows--form to their airy nothings. the priest decorated these united works with a thousand marvellous qualities--with the most terrible passions--with the most inconceivable attributes; gave them, "a local habitation and a name." the people adored them; prostrated themselves before these gods, who were neither susceptible of love or hatred, goodness, or malice; they became persecuting, malevolent, cruel, unjust, in order to render themselves acceptable to powers generally described to them under the most odious features. by dint of reasoning upon these emblems, by meditating upon nature, thus decorated, or rather disfigured, subsequent speculators no longer recollected the source from whence their predecessors had drawn their gods, nor the fantastic ornaments with which they had embellished them. natural philosophers and poets were transformed by leisure into metaphysicians and theologians; tired with contemplating what they could have understood, they believed they had made an important discovery by subtilly distinguishing nature from herself--from her own peculiar energies--from her faculty of action. by degrees they made an incomprehensible being of this energy, which as before they personified, this they called the mover of nature, divided it into two, one congenial to man's happiness, the other inimical to his welfare; these they deified in the same manner as they had before done nature with her various parts. these abstract, metaphysical beings, became the sole object of their thoughts; were the subject of their continual contemplation; they looked upon them as realities of the highest importance: thus nature quite disappeared; she was despoiled of her rights; she was considered as nothing more than an unwieldy mass, destitute of power; devoid of energy, as an heap of ignoble matter purely passive: who, incapable of acting by herself, was not competent to any of the operations they beheld, without the direct, the immediate agency of the moving powers they had associated with her: which they had made the fulcrum necessary to the action of the lever. they either did not or would not perceive, that the _great cause of causes, ens entium, parent of parents_, had, in unravelling chaotic matter, with a wisdom for which man can never be sufficiently grateful, with a sagacity which he can never sufficiently admire, foreseen every thing that could contribute not only to his own individual happiness, but also to that of all the beings in nature; that he had given this nature immutable laws, according to which she is for ever regulated; after which she is obliged invariably to act; that he has described for her an eternal course, from which it is not permitted her to deviate, even for an instant; that she is therefore, rendered competent to the production of every phenomena, not only that he beholds, but of an infinity that he has never yet contemplated; that she needs not any exterior energy for this purpose, having received her powers from a hand far superior to any the feeble weak imagination of man is able to form; that when this nature appears to afflict him, it is only from the contraction of his own views, from the narrowness of his own ideas, that he judges; that, in fact, what he considers the evils of nature, are the greatest possible benefits he can receive, if he was but in a condition to be acquainted with previous causes, with subsequent effects. that the evils resulting to him from his own vices, have equally their remedies in this nature, which it is his duty to study; which if he does he will find, that the same omnipotent goodness, who gave her irrefragable laws, also planted in her bosom, balsams for all his maladies, whether physical or moral: but that it is not given him to know what this great, this universal cause is, for purposes of which he ought not to dispute the wisdom, when he contemplates the mighty wonders that surround him. thus man ever preferred an unknown power, to that of which he was enabled to have some knowledge, if he had only deigned to consult his experience; but he presently ceases to respect that which he understands; to estimate those objects which are familiar to him: he figures to himself something marvellous in every thing he does not comprehend; his mind, above all, labours to seize upon that which appears to escape his consideration; in default of experience, he no longer consults any thing, but his imagination, which feeds him with chimeras. in consequence, those speculators who have subtilly distinguished nature from her own powers, have successively laboured to clothe the powers thus separated with, a thousand incomprehensible qualities: as they did not see this power, which is only a mode, they made it a spirit--an intelligence--an incorporeal being; that is to say, of a substance totally different from every thing of which we have a knowledge. they never perceived that all their inventions, that all the words which they imagined, only served to mask their real ignorance; that all their pretended science was limited to saying, in what manner nature acted, by a thousand subterfuges which they themselves found it impossible to comprehend. man always deceives himself for want of studying nature; he leads himself astray, every time he is disposed to go out of it; he is always quickly necessitated to return; he is even in error when he substitutes words which he does not himself understand, for things which he would much better comprehend if he was willing to look at them without prejudice. can a theologian ingenuously believe himself more enlightened, for having substituted the vague words spirit, incorporeal substance, &c. to the more intelligible terms nature, matter, mobility, necessity? however this may be, these obscure words once imagined, it was necessary to attach ideas to them; in doing this, he has not been able to draw them from any other source than the beings of this despised nature, which are ever the only beings of which he is enabled to have any knowledge. man, consequently, drew them up in himself; his own soul served for the model of the universal soul, of which indeed according to some it only formed a portion; his own mind was the standard of the mind that regulated nature; his own passions, his own desires, were the prototypes of those by which he actuated this being; his own intelligence was that from which he formed that of the mover of nature; that which was suitable to himself, he called the order of nature; this pretended order was the scale by which he measured the wisdom of this being; in short, those qualities which he calls perfections in himself, were the archetypes in miniature, of the perfections of the being, he thus gratuitously supposed to be the agent, who operated the phenomena of nature. it was thus, that in despite of all their efforts, the theologians were, perhaps always will be, true anthropomorphites. a sect of this denomination appeared in , in egypt, they held the doctrine that their god had a bodily shape. indeed it is very difficult, if not impossible to prevent man from making himself the sole model of his divinity. montaigne says "man is not able to be other than he is, nor imagine but after his capacity; let him take what pains he may, he will never have a knowledge of any soul but his own." xenophanes said, "if the ox or the elephant understood either sculpture or painting, they would not fail to represent the divinity under their own peculiar figure that in this, they would have as much reason as polyclitus or phidias, who gave him the human form." it was said to a very celebrated man that "god made man after his own image;" "man has returned the compliment," replied the philosopher. indeed, man generally sees in his god, nothing but a man. let him subtilize as he will, let him extend his own powers as he may, let him swell his own perfections to the utmost, he will have done nothing more than make a gigantic, exaggerated man, whom he will render illusory by dint of heaping together incompatible qualities. he will never see in such a god, but a being of the human species, in whom he will strive to aggrandize the proportions, until he has formed a being totally inconceivable. it is according to these dispositions that he attributes intelligence, wisdom, goodness, justice, science, power, to his divinity, because he is himself intelligent; because he has the idea of wisdom in some beings of his own species; because he loves to find in them ideas favourable to himself: because he esteems those who display equity; because he has a knowledge, which he holds more extensive in some individuals than himself; in short, because he enjoys certain faculties which depend on his own organization. he presently extends or exaggerates all these qualities in forming his god; the sight of the phenomena of nature, which he feels he is himself incapable of either producing or imitating, obliges him to make this difference between the being he pourtrays and himself; but he knows not at what point to stop; he fears lest he should deceive himself, if he should see any limits to the qualities he assigns, the word infinite, therefore, is the abstract, the vague term which he uses to characterize them. he says that his power is infinite, which signifies that when he beholds those stupendous effects which nature produces, he has no conception at what point his power can rest; that his goodness, his wisdom, his knowledge are infinite: this announces that he is ignorant how far these perfections ma be carried in a being whose power so much surpasses his own; that he is of infinite duration, because he is not capable of conceiving he could have had a beginning or can ever cease to be; because of this he considers a defect in those transitory beings of whom he beholds the dissolution, whom he sees are subjected to death. he presumes the cause of those effects to which he is a witness, of those striking phenomena that assail his sight, is immutable, permanent, not subjected to change, like all the evanescent beings whom he knows are submitted to dissolution, to destruction, to change of form. this mover of nature being always invisible to man, his mode of action being, impenetrable, he believes that, like his soul or the concealed principle which animates his own body, which he calls spiritual, a spirit, is the moving power of the universe; in consequence he makes a spirit the soul, the life, the principle of motion in nature. thus when by dint of subtilizing, he has arrived at believing the principle by which his body is moved is a spiritual, immaterial substance, he makes the spirit of the universe immaterial in like manner: he makes it immense, although without extent; immoveable, although capable of moving nature: immutable, although he supposes him to be the author of all the changes, operated in the universe. the idea of the unity of god, which cost socrates his life, because the athenians considered those atheists who believed but in one, was the tardy fruit of human meditation. plato himself did not dare to break entirely the doctrine of _polytheism_; he preserved venus, an all-powerful jupiter, and a pallas, who was the goddess of the country. the sight of those opposite, frequently contradictory effects, which man saw take place in the world, had a tendency to persuade him there must be a number of distinct powers or causes independent of each other. he was unable to conceive that the various phenomena he beheld, sprung from a single, from an unique cause; he therefore admitted many causes or gods, acting upon different principles; some of which he considered friendly, others as inimical to his race. such is the origin of that doctrine, so ancient, so universal, which supposed two principles in nature, or two powers of opposite interests, who were perpetually at war with each other; by the assistance of which he explained, that constant mixture of good and evil, that blending of prosperity with misfortune, in a word, those eternal vicissitudes to which in this world the human being, is subjected. this is the source of those combats which all antiquity has supposed to exist between good and wicked gods, between an osiris and a typhoeus; between an orosmadis and an arimanis; between a jupiter and the titanes; in these rencounters man for his own peculiar interest always gave the palm of victory to the beneficent deity; this, according to all the traditions handed down, ever remained in possession of the field of battle; it was so far right, as it is evidently for the benefit of mankind that the good should prevail over the wicked. when, however, man acknowledged only one god, he generally supposed the different departments of nature were confided to powers subordinate to his supreme orders, under whom the sovereign of the gods discharged his care in the administration of the world. these subaltern gods were prodigiously multiplied; each man, each town, each country, had their local, their tutelary gods; every event, whether fortunate or unfortunate, had a divine cause; was the consequence of a sovereign decree; each natural effect, every operation of nature, each passion, depended upon a divinity, which a theological imagination, disposed to see gods every where, mistaking nature, either embellished or disfigured. poetry tuned its harmonious lays, on these occasions, exaggerated the details, animated its pictures; credulous ignorance received the portraits with eagerness--heard the doctrines with submission. such is the origin of polytheism: indeed the greek word _theos_, [greek letters], is derived from _theaomai_, [greek letters], which implies to contemplate, or take a view of secret or hidden things. such are the foundations, such the titles of the hierarchy, which man established between himself and his gods, because he generally believed he was incapable of the exalted privilege of immediately addressing himself to the incomprehensible being whom he had acknowledged for the only sovereign of nature, without even having any distinct idea on the subject: such is the true genealogy of those inferior gods whom the uninformed place as, a proportional means between themselves and the first of all other causes. in consequence, among the greeks and the romans, we see the deities divided into two classes, the one were called great gods, because the whole world were nearly in accord in deifying the most striking parts of nature, such as the sun, fire; the sea, time, &c. these formed a kind of aristocratic order, who were distinguished from the minor gods, or from the multitude of ethnic divinities, who were entirely local; that is to say, were reverenced only in particular countries, or by individuals; as in rome, where every citizen had his familiar spirit, called lares; and household god, called penates. nevertheless, the first rank of these pagan divinities, like the latter, were submitted to fate, that is, to destiny, which obviously is nothing more than nature acting by immutable, rigorous, necessary laws; this destiny was looked upon as the god of gods; it is evident, that this was nothing more than necessity personified; that therefore it was a weakness in the heathens to fatigue with their sacrifices, to solicit with their prayers, those divinities whom they themselves believed were submitted to the decrees of an inexorable destiny, of which it was never possible for them to alter the mandates. _but man_, generally, _ceases to reason, whenever his theological notions are either brought into question, or are the subject of his inquiry_. what has been already said, serves to show the common source of that multitude of intermediate powers, subordinate to the gods, but superior to man, with which he filled the universe: they were venerated under the names of nymphs, demi-gods, angels, daemons, good and evil genii, spirits, heroes, saints, &c. among the romans they were called _dei medioxumi_, intermediate angels; they were looked upon as intercessors, as mediators, as powers whom it was necessary to reverence, in order either to obtain their favour, appease their anger, or divert their malignant intentions; these constitute different classes of intermediate divinities, who became either the foundation of their hopes, the object of their fears, the means of consolation, or the source of dread to those very mortals who only invented them when they found it impossible to form to themselves distinct, perspicuous ideas of the incomprehensible being who governed the world in chief; or when they despaired of being able to hold communication with him directly. meditation and reflection diminished the number of those deities which composed the ethnic polytheism: some who gave the subject more consideration than others, reduced the whole to one all-powerful jupiter; but still they painted this being in the most hideous colours, gave him the most revolting features, because they were still obstinately bent on making man, his action and his passions, the model: this folly led them into continual perplexities, because it heaped together contradictory, incompatible, extravagant qualities; it was quite natural it should do so: the limited views, the superficial knowledge, the irregular desires of frail, feeble mortals, were but little calculated to typify the mind of the real divinity; of that great _cause of causes_, that _parent of parents_, from whom every thing must have emanated. although they persuaded themselves it was sinning to give him rivals, yet they described him as a jealous monarch who could not bear a division of empire; thus taking the vanity of earthly princes for their emblem, as if it was possible such a being could have a competitor like a terrestrial monarch. not having contemplated the immutable laws with which he has invested nature, to which every thing it contains is subjected, which are the result of the most perfect wisdom, they were puzzled to account for the contrariety of those effects which their weak minds led them to suppose as evils; seeing that sometimes those who fulfilled in the most faithful manner their duties in this life, were involved in the same ruin with the boldest, the most inconsiderate violaters: thus in making him the immediate agent, instead of the first author, the executive instead of the formative power, they caused him to appear capricious, as unreasonably vindictive against his creatures, when they ought to have known that his wisdom was unlimited, his kindness without bounds, when he infused into nature that power which produces these apparently contradictory effects; which, although they seem injurious to man's interests, are, if he was but capacitated to judge fairly, the most beneficial advantages that he can possibly derive. thus they made the divinity appear improvident, by continually employing him to destroy the work of his own hands: they, in fact, taxed him with impotence, by the perpetual non-performance of those projects of which their own imbecillity, their own erring judgment, had vainly supposed him to be the contriver. to solve these difficulties, man created enemies to the divinity, who although subordinate to the supreme god, were nevertheless competent to disturb his empire, to frustrate his views. can any thing be worse conceived, can any thing be more truly derogatory to the great _parent of parents_, than thus to make him resemble a king, who is surrounded with adversaries, willing to dispute with him his diadem? such, however, is the origin of the _fable of the titanes_, or of the _rebellious angels_, whose presumption caused them to be plunged into the abyss of misery--who were changed into _demons_, or into evil genii: these according to their mythology, had no other functions, than to render abortive the projects of the divinity; to seduce, to raise to rebellion, those who were his subjects. miserable invention, feeble subterfuge, for the vices of mankind, although decorated with all the beauty of language. can then sublimity of versification, the harmony of numbers, reconcile man to the idea that the puny offspring of natural causes is adequate for a single instant to dispute the commands, to thwart the desires, to render nugatory the decrees of a being whose wisdom is of the most polished perfection; whose goodness is boundless; whose power must be more capacious than the human mind can possibly conceive? in consequence of this _fable of the titanes_, the monarch of nature was represented as perpetually in a scuffle with the enemies he had himself created; as unwilling totally to subdue those with whom these fabulists have described him as dividing his authority--partaking his supreme power. this again was borrowed from the conduct of earthly monarchs, who, when they find a potent enemy, make a treaty with him; but this was quite unnecessary for the great _cause of causes_; and only shows that man is utterly incapable of forming any other ideas than those which he derives from the situation of those of his own race, or of the beings by whom he is surrounded. according to this fable the subjects of the universal monarch were never properly submitted to his authority; like an earthly king, he was in a continual state of hostility, and punished those who had the misfortune to enter into the conspiracies of the enemies of his glory: seeing that human legislators put forth laws, issued decrees, they established similar institutions for the divinity; established oracles; his ministers pretended, through these mysterious mediums, to convey to the people his heavenly mandates, to unveil his concealed intentions: the ignorant multitude received these without examination, they did not perceive that it was man, and not the divinity, who thus spoke to them; they did not feel that it must be impossible for weak creatures to act contrary to the will of god. the _fable of the titanes, or rebellious angels_, is extremely ancient; very generally diffused over the world; it serves for the foundation of the theology of the brachmins of hindostan: according to these, all living bodies are animated by _fallen angels_, who under these forms expiate their rebellion. these contradictory notions were the basis of nearly all the superstitions of the world; by these means they imagined they accounted for the origin of evil--demonstrated the cause why the human species experience misery. in short, the conduct of the most arbitrary tyrants of the earth was but too frequently brought forth, too often acted upon, in forming the character of the divinity, held forth to the worship of man: their imperfect jurisprudence was the source from whence they drew that which they ascribed to their god. pagan theology was remarkable for displaying in the character of their divinities the most dissolute vices; for making them vindictive; for causing them to punish with extreme rigour those, crimes which the oracles predicted; to doom to the most lasting torments those who sinned without knowing their transgression; to hurl vengeance on those who were ignorant of their obscure will, delivered in language which set comprehension at defiance; unless it was by the priest who both made and fulminated it. it was upon these unreasonable notions, that the theologians founded the worship which man ought to render to the divinity. do not then let us be at all surprised if the superstitious man was in a state of continual alarm: if he experienced trances--if his mind was ever in the most tormenting dread; the idea of his gods recalled to him unceasingly, that of a pitiless tyrant who sported with the miseries of his subjects; who, without being conscious of their own wrong, might at each moment incur his displeasure: he could not avoid feeling that although they had formed the universe entirely for man, yet justice did not regulate the actions of these powerful beings, or rather those of the priests; but he also believed that their elevated rank placed them infinitely above the human species, that therefore they might afflict him at their pleasure. it is then for want of considering good and evil as equally necessary; it is for want of attributing them to their true causes, that man has created to himself fictitious powers, malicious divinities, respecting whom it is found so difficult to undeceive him. nevertheless, in contemplating nature, he would have been able to have perceived, that _physical evil_ is a necessary consequence of the peculiar properties of some beings; he would have acknowledged that plague, contagion, disease, are due to physical causes under particular circumstances; to combinations, which, although extremely natural, are fatal to his species; he would have sought--in the bosom of nature herself the remedies suitable to diminish these evils, or to have caused the cessation of those effects under which he suffered: he would have seen in like manner that _moral evil_ was the necessary consequence of defective institutions; that it was not to the divinity, but to the injustice of his fellows he ought to ascribe those wars, that poverty, those famines, those reverses of fortune, those multitudinous calamities, those vices, those crimes, under which he so frequently groans. thus to rid himself of these evils he would not have uselessly extended his trembling hands towards shadows incapable of relieving him; towards beings who were not the authors of his sorrows; he would have sought remedies for these misfortunes in a more rational administration of justice--in more equitable laws--in more i reasonable institutions--in a greater degree of benevolence towards his fellow man--in a more punctual performance of his own duties. as these gods were generally depicted to man as implacable to his frailties as they denounced nothing but the most dreadful punishments against those who involuntarily offended, it is not at all surprising that the sentiment of fear prevailed over that of love: the gloomy ideas presented to his mind were calculated to make him tremble, without making him better; an attention to this truth will serve to explain the foundation of that fantastical, irrational, frequently cruel worship, which was paid to these divinities; he often committed the most cruel extravagancies against his own person, the most hideous crimes against the person of others, under the idea that in so doing, he disarmed the anger, appeased the justice, recalled the clemency, deserved the mercy of his gods. in general, the superstitious systems of man, his human and other sacrifices, his prayers, his ceremonies, his customs; have had only for their object either to divert the fury of his gods, whom he believed he had offended; to render them propitious to his own selfish views; or to excite in them that good disposition towards himself, which his own perverse mode of thinking made him imagine they bestowed exclusively on others: on the other hand, the efforts, the subtilties of theology, have seldom had any other end, than to reconcile in the divinities it has pourtrayed, those discordant ideas which its own dogmas has raised in the minds of mortals. from what has preceded, it may fairly be concluded that ethnic theology undermined itself by its own inconsistencies; that the art of composing chimeras may therefore with great justice be defined to be that of combining those qualities which are impossible to be reconciled with each other. chap. iii. _of the confused and contradictory ideas of theology._ every thing that has been said, proves pretty clearly, that, in despite of all his efforts, man has never been able to prevent himself from drawing together from his own peculiar nature, the qualities he has assigned to the being who governs the universe. the contradictions necessarily resulting from the incompatible assemblage of these human qualities, which cannot become suitable to the same subject, seeing that the existence of one destroys the existence of the other, have been shewn:--the theologians themselves have felt the insurmountable difficulties which their divinities presented to reason: they were so substantive, that as they felt the impossibility of withdrawing themselves out of the dilemma, they endeavoured to prevent man from reasoning, by throwing his mind into confusion--by continually augmenting the perplexity of those ideas, already so discordant, which they offered him of the gods. by these means they enveloped them in mystery, covered them with dense clouds, rendered them inaccessible to mankind: thus they themselves became the interpreters, the masters of explaining, according either to their fancy or their interest, the ways of those enigmatical beings they made him adore. for this purpose they exaggerated them more and more--neither time nor space, nor the entire of nature could contain their immensity--every thing became an impenetrable mystery. although man has originally borrowed from himself the traits, the colours, the primitive lineaments of which he composed his gods; although he has made them jealous, powerful, vindictive monarchs, yet his theology, by force of dreaming, entirely lost sight of human nature. in order to render his divinities still more different from their creatures, it assigned them, over and above the usual qualities of man, properties so marvellous, so uncommon, so far removed from every thing of which his mind could form a conception, that he lost sight of them himself. from thence he persuaded himself these qualities were divine, because he could no longer comprehend them; he believed them worthy of his gods, because no man could figure to himself any one distinct idea of them. thus theology obtained the point of persuading man he must believe that which he could not conceive; that he must receive with submission improbable systems; that he must adopt, with pious deference, conjectures contrary to his reason; that this reason itself was the most agreeable sacrifice he could make on the altars of his gods, who were unwilling he should use the gift they had bestowed upon him. in short, it had made mortals implicitly believe that they were not formed to comprehend the thing of all others the most important to themselves. thus it is evident that superstition founded its basis upon the absurd principle that man is obliged to accredit firmly that which he is in the most complete impossibility of comprehending. on the other hand, man persuaded himself that the gigantic, the truly incomprehensible attributes which were assigned to these celestial monarchs, placed between them and their slaves a distance so immense, that these could not be by any means offended with the comparison; that these distinctions rendered them still greater; made them more powerful, more marvellous, more inaccessible to observation. man always entertains the idea, that what he is not in a condition to conceive, is much more noble, much wore respectable, than that which he has the capacity to comprehend. the more a thing is removed from his reach, the more valuable it always appears. these prejudices in man for the marvellous, appear to have been the source that gave birth to those wonderful, unintelligible qualities with which superstition clothed these divinities. the invincible ignorance of the human mind, whose fears reduced him to despair, engendered those obscure, vague notions, with which mythology decorated its gods. he believed he could never displease them, provided he rendered them incommensurable; impossible to be compared with any thing, of which he had a knowledge; either with that which was most sublime, or that which possessed the greatest magnitude, from hence the multitude of negative attributes with which ingenious dreamers have successively embellished their phantoms, to the end that they might more surely form a being distinguished from all others, or which possessed nothing in common with that which the human mind had the faculty of being acquainted with: they did not perceive that after all their endeavours, it was nothing wore than exaggerated human qualities, which they thus heaped together, with no more skill than a painter would display who should delineate all the members of the body of the same size, taking a giant for dimension. the theological attributes with which metaphysicians decorated these divinities, were in fact nothing but pure negations of the qualities found in man, or in those beings of which he has a knowledge; by these attributes their gods were supposed exempted from every thing which they considered weakness or imperfection in him, or in the beings by whom he is surrounded: they called every quality infinite, which has been shewn is only to affirm, that unlike man, or the beings with whom he is acquainted, it is not circumscribed by the limits of space; this, however, is what he can never in any manner comprehend, because he is himself finite. hobbes in his _leviathan_, says, "whatsoever we imagine is finite. therefore there is no idea, or conception of any thing we call infinite. no man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, infinite force, or infinite power. when we say any thing is infinite, we signify only, that we are not able to conceive the ends and bound of the thing named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability." sherlock says, "the word infinite is only a negation, which signifies that which has neither end, nor limits, nor extent, and, consequently, that which has no positive and determinate nature, and is therefore nothing;" he adds, "that nothing but custom has caused this word to be adopted, which without that, would appear devoid of sense, and a contradiction." when it is said these gods are eternal, it signifies they have not had, like man or like every thing that exists, a beginning, and that they will never have an end: to say they are immutable, is to say, that unlike himself or every thing which he sees, they are not subject to change: to say they are immaterial, is to advance, that their substance or essence is of a nature not conceivable by himself, but which must from that very circumstance be totally different from every thing of which he has cognizance. it is from the confused collection of these negative qualities, that has resulted the theological gods; those metaphysical wholes of which it is impossible for man to form to himself any correct idea. in these abstract beings every thing is infinity,--immensity,-- spirituality,--omniscience,--order,--wisdom,--intelligence,-- omnipotence. in combining these vague terms, or these modifications, the ethnic priests believed they formed something, they extended these qualities by thought, and they imagined they made gods, whilst they only composed chimeras. they imagined that these perfections or these qualities must be suitable to their gods, because they were not suitable to any thing of which they had a knowledge; they believed that incomprehensible beings must have inconceivable qualities. these were the materials of which theology availed itself to compose those inexplicable shadows before which they commanded the human race to bend the knee. nevertheless, experience soon proved that beings so vague, so impossible to be conceived, so incapable of definition, so far removed from every thing of which man could have any knowledge, were but little calculated to fix his restless views; his mind requires to be arrested by qualities which he is capacitated to ascertain; of which he is in a condition to form a judgment. thus after it had subtilized these metaphysical gods, after it had rendered them so different in idea, from every thing that acts upon the senses, theology found itself under the necessity of again assimilating them to man, from whom it had so far removed them: it therefore again made them human by the moral qualities which it assigned them; it felt that without this it would not be able to persuade mankind there could possibly exist any relation between him and such vague, ethereal, fugitive, incommensurable beings; that it would never be competent to secure for them his adoration. it began to perceive that these marvellous gods were only calculated to exercise the imagination of some few thinkers, whose minds were accustomed to labour upon chimerical subjects, or to take words for realities; in short it found, that for the greater number of the material children of the earth it was necessary to have gods more analogous to themselves, more sensible, more known to them. in consequence these divinities were re-clothed with human qualities; theology never felt the incompatibility of these qualities with beings it had made essentially different from man, who consequently could neither have his properties, nor be modified like himself. it did not see that gods who were immaterial, destitute of corporeal organs, were neither able to think nor to act as material beings, whose peculiar organizations render them susceptible of the qualities, the feelings the will, the virtues, that are found in them. the necessity it felt to assimilate the gods to their worshippers, to make an affinity between them, made it pass over without consideration these palpable contradictions--this want of keeping in their portrait: thus ethnic theology obstinately continued to unite those incompatible qualities, that discrepancy of character, which the human mind attempted in vain either to conceive or to reconcile: according to it, pure spirits were the movers of the material world; immense beings were enabled to occupy space, without however excluding nature; immutable deities were the causes of those continual changes operated in the world: omnipotent beings did not prevent those evils which were displeasing to them; the sources of order submitted to confusion: in short, the wonderful properties of these theological beings every moment contradicted themselves. there is not less discrepancy, less incompatibility, less discordance in the human perfections, less contradiction in the moral qualities attributed to them, to the end that man might be enabled to form to himself some idea of these beings. these were all said to be _eminently_ possessed by the gods, although they every moment contradicted each other: by this means they formed a kind of patch-work character, heterogeneous beings, discrepant phenomena, entirely inconceivable to man, because nature had never constructed any thing like them, whereby he was enabled to form a judgment. man was assured they were eminently good--that it was visible in all their actions. now goodness is a known quality, recognizable in some beings of the human species; this is, above every other, a property he is desirous to find in all those upon whom he is in a state of dependence; but he is unable to bestow the title of good on any among his fellows, except their actions produce on him those effects which he approves--that he finds in unison with his existence--in conformity with his own peculiar modes of thinking. it was evident, according to this reasoning, these ethnic gods did not impress him with this idea; they were said to be equally the authors of his pleasures, as of his pains, which were to be either secured or averted by sacrifices: thus when man suffered by contagion, when he was the victim of shipwreck, when his country was desolated by war, when he saw whole nations devoured by rapacious earthquakes, when he was a prey to the keenest sorrows, he at least was unable to conceive the bounty of those beings. how could he perceive the beautiful order which they had introduced into the world, while he groaned under such a multitude of calamities? how was he able to discern the beneficence of men whom he beheld sporting as it were with his species? how could he conceive the consistency of those who destroyed that which he was assured they had taken such pains to establish, solely for his own peculiar happiness? but had his mind been properly enlightened, had he been taught to know, that nature, acting by unerring laws, produces all the phenomena he beholds as a necessary consequence of her primitive impulse--that like the rest of nature he was himself subjected to the general operation--that no peculiar exemption had been made in his behalf--that sacrifices were useless--that the great _parent of parents_, equally mindful of all his creatures, had set in action with the most consummate wisdom an invariable system, the apparent, casual evils of which were ever counterbalanced by the resulting good; that without repining, it was his duty, his interest, to submit; at the same time to examine with sedulity, to search with earnestness, into the recesses of this nature for remedies to the sorrows he endured. if he had been thus instructed, we should never behold him arraigning either the kindness, the wisdom, or the consistency of the gods; he would neither have ascribed his sufferings to the malicious interference of inferior deities, so derogatory to the divine majesty of the _great cause of causes_, nor would he have taxed with either inconsistency or unkindness, that nature which cannot act otherwise than she does. perhaps of all the ideas that can be infused into the mind of man, none is more really subversive of his true happiness, none more incompatible with the reality of things, than that which persuades him he is himself a privileged being, the king of a nature where every thing is submitted to laws, the extent of which his finite mind cannot possibly conceive. even admitting it should ultimately turn out to be a fact, he has yet no one positive evidence to justify the assumption; experience, which after all must always prove the best criterion for his judgment, daily proves, that in every thing he is subjected, like every other part of nature, to those invariable decrees from which nothing that he beholds is exempted. feeble monarch! of whom a grain of sand, some atoms of bile, some misplaced humours, destroy at once the existence and the reign: yet thou pretendest every thing was made for thee! thou desirest that the entire of nature should be thy domain, and thou canst not even defend thyself from the slightest of her shocks! thou makest to thyself a god for thyself alone; thou supposest that he unceasingly occupieth himself only for thy peculiar happiness; thou imaginest every thing was made solely for thy pleasure; and, following up thy presumptuous ideas, thou hast the audacity to call nature good or bad as thy weak intellect inclines: thou darest to think that the kindness exhibited towards thee, in common with other beings, is contradicted by the evil genii thy fancy has created! dost thou not see that those beasts which thou supposest submitted to thine empire, frequently devour thy fellow-creatures; that fire consumeth them; that the ocean swalloweth them up; that those elements of which thou sometimes admirest the order, which sometimes thou accusest of confusion, frequently sweep them off the face of the earth; dost thou not see that all this is necessarily what it must be; that thou art not in any manner consulted in any of this phenomena? indeed, according to thine own ideas, if thou wast to examine them with care, dost thou not admit that thy gods are the universal cause of all; that they maintain the whole by the destruction of its parts. are they not then according to thyself, the gods of nature--of the ocean--of rivers--of mountains--of the earth, in which they occupiest, so very small a space--of all those other globes that thou seest roll in the regions of space--of those orbs that revolve round the sun that enlighteneth thee?--cease, then, obstinately to persist in beholding nothing but thy sickly self in nature; do not flatter thyself that the human race, which reneweth itself, which disappeareth like the leaves on the trees, can absorb all the care, can ingross all the tenderness of that universal being, who, according to thyself, properly understood, ruleth the destiny of all things. submit thyself in silence to mandates which thy unavailing prayers; can never change; to a wisdom which thy imbecility cannot fathom; to the unerring shafts of a fate, which nothing but thine own vanity, aided by thy perverse ignorance, could ever question, being the best possible good that can befall thee! which if thou couldst alter, thou wouldst with thy defective judgment render worse! what is the human race compared to the earth? what is this earth compared to the sun? what is our sun compared to those myriads of suns which at immense distances occupy the regions of space? not for the purpose of diverting thy weak eyes; not with a view to excite thy stupid admiration, as thou vainly imaginest; since multitudes of them are placed out of the range of thy visual organs: but to occupy the place which necessity hath assigned them. mortal, feeble and vain! restore thyself to thy proper sphere; acknowledge every where the effect of necessity; recognize in thy benefits, behold in thy sorrows, the different modes of action of those various beings endowed with such a variety of properties, which surround thee; of which the macrocosm is the assemblage; and do not any longer suppose that this nature, much less its great cause, can possess such incompatible qualities as would be the result of human views or of visionary ideas, which have no existence but in thyself. as long as theologians shall continue obstinately bent to make man the model of their gods; as long ask they shall pertinaciously undertake to explain the nature of these gods, which they will never be able to do, but after human ideas, although they may associate the most heterogeneous properties, the most discrepant functions; so long, i say, experience will contradict at every moment the beneficent views they, attach to their divinities; it will be in vain that they call them good: man, reasoning thus, will never be able to find good but in those objects which impel him in a manner favourable to his actual mode of existence; he always finds confusion in that which fills him with grievous sensations; he calls evil every thing that painfully affects him, even cursorily; those beings that produce in him two modes of feeling, so very opposite to each other, he will naturally conclude are sometimes favourable, sometimes unfavourable to him; at least, if he will not allow that they act necessarily, consequently are neither one nor the other, he will say that a world where he experiences so much evil cannot be submitted to men who are perfectly good; on the other hand, he will also assume that a world in which man receives so many benefits, cannot be governed by those who are without kindness. thus he is obliged to admit of two principles equally powerful, who are in hostility with each other; or rather, he must agree that the same persons are alternately kind and unkind; this after all is nothing more than avowing they cannot be otherwise than they are; in this case it would be useless to sacrifice to them--to make solicitation; seeing it would be nothing but _destiny_--the necessity of things submitted invariable rules. in order to justify these beings, constructed upon mortal principles, from injustice, in consequence of the evils the human species experience, the theologian is reduced to the necessity of calling them punishments inflicted for the transgressions of man. but then these general calamities include all men. some, at least, may be supposed not to have offended. thus he involves contradictions he finds it difficult to reconcile; to effectuate this he makes his _anthropomorphites_ immaterial--incorporeal; that is, he says they are the negation of every thing of which he has a knowledge; consequently, beings who can have no relation with corporeal beings: and this avails him no better, as will be evident by reasoning on the subject. to offend any one, is to diminish the sum of his happiness; it is to afflict him, to deprive him of something, to make him experience a painful sensation. how is it possible man can operate on such beings; how can the physical actions of a material substance have any influence over an immaterial substance, devoid of parts, having no point of contact. how can a corporeal being make an incorporeal being experience incommodious sensations? on the other hand, _justice_, according to the only ideas man can ever form of it, supposes, a permanent disposition to render to each what is due to him; the theologian will not admit that the beings he has jumbled together owe any thing to man; he insists that the benefits they bestow are all the gratuitous effects of their own goodness; that they have the right to dispose of the work of their hands according to their own pleasure; to plunge it if they please into the abyss of misery; in short, that their volition is the only guide of their conduct. it is easy to see, that according to man's idea of justice, this does not even contain the shadow of it; that it is, in fact, the mode of action adopted by what he calls the most frightful tyrants. how then can he be induced to call men just who act after this manner? indeed, while he sees innocence suffering, virtue in tears, crime triumphant, vice recompensed, and at the same time, is told the beings whom theology has invented are the authors, he will never be able to acknowledge them to have _justice_. but he will find no such contradictory qualities in nature, where every thing is the result of immutable laws: he will at once perceive that these transient evils produce more permanent good; that they are necessary to the conservation of the whole, or else result from modifications of matter, which it is competent for him to change, by altering his own mode of action; a lesson that nature herself teaches him when he is willing to receive her instructions. but to form gods with human passions, is to make them appear unjust; to say that such beings chastise their friends for their own i good, is at once to upset all the ideas he has either of kindness or unkindness: thus the incompatible human qualities ascribed to these beings, do in fact destroy their existence. if it be insisted they have the knowledge and power of man, only that they are more extended, then it becomes a very natural reply, to say, since they know every thing, they ought at least to restrain mischief; because this would be the observation of man upon the action of his fellows;--if it be urged these qualities are similar to the same qualities possessed by man, then it may be fairly asked in what do they differ? to this, if any answer be given, be what it may, it will still be only changing the language: it will be invariably another method of expressing the same thing; seeing that man with all his ingenuity, will never be able to describe properties but after himself or those of the beings by whom he is surrounded. where is the man filled with kindness, endowed with humanity, who does not desire with all his heart to render his fellow creatures happy? if these beings, as the theologians assert, really have man's qualities augmented, would they not, by the same reasoning, exercise their infinite power to render them all happy? nevertheless, in despite of these theologists, we scarcely find any one who is perfectly satisfied with his condition on earth: for one mortal that enjoys, we behold a thousand who suffer; for one rich man who lives in the midst of abundance, there are thousands of poor who want common necessaries: whole nations groan in indigence, to satisfy the passions of some avaricious princes, of some few nobles, who are not thereby rendered more contented--who do not acknowledge themselves more fortunate on that account. in short, under the dominion of these beings, the earth is drenched with the tears of the miserable. what must be the inference from all this? that they are either negligent of, or incompetent to, his happiness. but the mythologists will tell you coolly, that the judgments of his gods are impenetrable! how do we understand this term? not to be taught--not to be informed--impervious--not to be pierced: in this case it would be an unreasonable question to inquire by what authority do you reason upon them? how do you become acquainted with these impenetrable mysteries? upon what foundation do you attribute virtues which you cannot penetrate? what idea do you form to yourself of a justice that never resembles that of man? or is it a truth that you yourself are not a man, but one of those impenetrable beings whom you say you represent? to withdraw themselves from this, they will affirm that the justice of these idols are tempered with mercy, with compassion, with goodness: these again are human qualities: what, therefore, shall we understand by them? what idea do we attach to mercy? is it not a derogation from the severe rules of an exact, a rigorous justice, which causes a remission of some part of a merited punishment? here hinges the great incompatibility, the incongruity of those qualities, especially when augmented by the word _omni_; which shews how little suitable human properties are to the formation of divinities. in a prince, clemency is either a violation of justice, or the exemption from a too severe law: nevertheless, man approves of clemency in a sovereign, when its too great facility does not become prejudicial to society; he esteems it, because it announces humanity, mildness, a compassionate, noble soul; qualities he prefers in his governors to rigour, cruelty, inflexibility: besides, human laws are defective; they are frequently too severe; they are not competent to foresee all the circumstances of every case: the punishments they decree are not always commensurate with the offence: he therefore does not always think them just: but he feels very well, he understands distinctly, that when the sovereign extends his mercy, he relaxes from his justice--that if mercy he merited, the punishment ought not to take place--that then its exercise is no longer clemency, but justice: thus he feels, that in his fellow creatures these two qualities cannot exist at the same moment. how then is he to form his judgment of beings who are represented to possess both in the extremest degree? is it not, in fact, announcing these beings to be men like ourselves, who act with our imperfections on an enlarged scale? they then say, well, but in the next world these idols will reward you for all the evils you suffer in this: this, indeed, is something to look to, if it could be contemplated alone; unmixed with all they have formerly asserted: if we could also find that there was an unison of thinking on this point--if there was a reasonable comprehensible view of it held forth: but alas! here again human pleasures, human feelings, are the basis on which these rewards are rested; only they are promised in a way we cannot comprehend them; houris, or females who are to remain for ever virgins, notwithstanding the knowledge of man, are so opposed to all human comprehension, so opposite to all experience, are such mystic assertions, that the human mind cannot possibly embrace an idea of them: besides this is only promised by one class of these beings; others affirm it will be altogether different: in short, the number of modes in which this hereafter reward is promised to him, obliges man to ask himself one plain question, which is the real history of these blissful abodes? at this question he staggers--he seeks for advice: each assures him that the other is in error--that his peculiar mode is that which will really have place; that to believe the other is a crime. how is he to judge now? take what course he will, he runs the chance of being wrong; he has no standard whereby to measure the correctness of these contradictory assurances; his mind is held suspended; he feels the impossibility of the whole being right; he knows not that which he ought to elect! again, they have positively asserted these beings owe nothing to man: how then is he to expect in a future life, a more real happiness than he enjoys in the present? this they parry, by assuring him it is founded upon their promises, contained in their revealed oracles. granted: but is he quite certain these oracles have emanated from themselves? if they are so different in their detail, may there not be reasonable ground for suspecting some of them are not authentic? if there is, which are the spurious, which are the genuine? by what rule is he to guide himself in the choice; how, with his frail methods of judging, is he to scrutinize oracles delivered by such powerful beings--to discriminate the true from the false? the ministers of each will give you an infallible method, one that, is according to their own asseveration, cannot err; that is, by an implicit belief in the particular doctrine each promulgates. thus will be perceived the multitude of contradictions, the extravagant hypotheses which these human attributes, with which theology clothes its divinities, must necessarily produce. beings embracing at one time so many discordant qualities will always be undefinable--can only present a train of ideas calculated to displace each other; they will consequently ever remain beings of the imagination. these beings, say their ministers, created the heavens, the earth, the creatures who inhabit it, to manifest their own peculiar glory; they have neither rivals, nor equals in nature; nothing which can be compared with them. glory is, again, a human passion: it is in man the desire of giving his fellow-creatures an high opinion of him; this, passion is laudable when it stimulates him to undertake great projects--when it determines him to perform useful actions--but it is very frequently a weakness attached to his nature; it is nothing more than a desire to be distinguished from those beings with whom he compares himself, without exciting him to one noble, one generous act. it is easy to perceive that beings who are so much elevated above men, cannot be actuated by such a defective passion. they say these beings are jealous of their prerogatives. jealousy is another human passion, not always of the most respectable kind: but it is rather difficult to conceive the existence of jealousy with profound wisdom, unlimited power, and the perfection of justice. thus the theologians by dint of heaping quality on quality, aggrandizing each as is added, seem to have reduced themselves to the situation of a painter, who spreading all his colours upon his canvas together, after thus blending them into an unique mass, loses sight of the whole in the composition. they will, nevertheless, reply to these difficulties, that goodness, wisdom, justice, are in these beings qualities so pre-eminent, so distinct, have so little affinity with these same qualities in man, that they are totally dissimilar--have not the least relation. admit this to be the case, how then can he form to himself any idea of these perfections, seeing they are totally unlike those with which he is acquainted? they surely cannot mean to insinuate that they are the reverse of every thing he understands; because that would, in effect, bring them to a precise point which would not need any explanation; it is therefore a matter of certainty this cannot be the case: then if these qualities, when exercised by the beings they have described, are only human actions so obscured, so hidden, as not to be recognizable by man, how can weak mortals pretend to announce them, to have a knowledge of them, to explain them to others? does then theology impart to the mind the ineffable boon of enabling it to conceive that which no man is competent to understand? does it procure for its agents the marvellous faculty of having distinct ideas of beings composed of so many contradictory properties? does it, in fact, make the theologian himself one of these incomprehensible beings. they will impose silence, by saying the oracles have spoken; that through these mystical means they have made themselves known to mortals. the next question would naturally be, when, where, or to whom have these oracles spoken? where are these oracles? an hundred voices raise themselves in the same moment; hands of briaraeus are immediately stretched forth to shew them in a number of discordant collections, which each maintains, with an equal degree of vehemence, is the true code--the only doctrine man ought to believe: he runs them over, finds they scarcely agree in any one particular; but that in all the heaviest penalties are denounced against those who doubt the smallest part of any one of them. these beings of consummate wisdom are made to speak an obscure, irrational language; some of them, although their goodness is proclaimed, have been cruel and sanguinary; others, although their justice is held forth, have been partial, unjust, capricious; some, who are represented as all merciful, destine to the most hideous punishments the unhappy victims to their wrath: examine any one of them more closely, he will find that they have never in any two countries held literally the same language: that although they are said to have spoken in many places, that they have always spoken variously: what is the necessary result? the human mind, incapable of reconciling such manifest contradictions, unable to obtain from their ministers any corroborative evidence, that is not disputed by the others, falls into the strangest perplexity; is involved in doubts, entangled in a labyrinth to which no clue is to be found. thus the relations, which are supposed to exist between man and these theological idols, can only be founded on the moral qualities of these beings: if these are not known to him, if he cannot in any manner comprehend them, they cannot by any ingenuity of argument serve him for models. in order that they may be imitated, it is needful that these qualities were cognizable by the being who is to imitate them. how can he imitate that goodness, that justice, that mercy, which does not resemble either his own, or any thing he can conceive? if these beings partake in nothing of that which forms man--if the properties they do possess, although different, are not within the reach of his comprehension--if, he cannot embrace the most distant idea of them, which the theologian assures him he cannot, how is it possible he can set about imitating them? how follow a conduct suitable to please them--to render himself acceptable in their sight? what can in effect be the motive of that worship, of that homage, of that obedience, which these beings are said to exact--which he is informed he should offer at their altars, if he does not establish it upon their goodness--their veracity--their justice: in short, upon qualities which he is competent to understand? how can he have clear, distinct ideas of those qualities, if they are no longer of the same nature as those which he has learned to reverence in the beings of his own species? to this they will reply, because none of them ever admit the least doubt of the rectitude of their own individual creed, that there can be no proportion between these idols and mortals, who are the work of their hands; that it is not permitted to the clay to demand of the potter who has formed it, "why ye have fashioned me thus;"--but if there can be no common measure between the workman and his work--if there can be no analogy between them, because the one is immaterial, the other corporeal, how do they reciprocally act upon each other? how can the gross organs of the one, comprehend the subtile quality of the other? reasoning in the only way he is capable, and it surely will never be seriously argued that he is not to reason, will he not perceive that the earthen vase could only have received the form which it pleased the potter to give; that if it is formed badly, if it is rendered inadequate to the use for which it was designed, the vase is not in this instance to be blamed; the potter certainly has the power to break it; the vase cannot prevent him; it will neither have motives nor means to soften his anger; it will be obliged to submit to its destiny; but he will not be able to prevent his mind from thinking the potter harsh in thus punishing the vase, rather than by forming it anew, by giving it another figure, render it competent to the purposes he intended. according to these notions the relations between man and these theological beings have no existence, they owe nothing to him, are dispensed from shewing him either goodness or justice; that man, on the contrary, owes them every thing: but contradictions appear at every step. if these have promised by their oracles any thing to man, it is rather difficult for him to believe, that what is so solemnly promised does not belong to him if he fulfils the condition of the promise. the difference a theologian may choose to find in these relations will hardly be convincing to a reasonable mind. the duties of man towards these beings can, according to their own shewing, have no other foundation than the happiness he expects from them: thus the relation has a reciprocity, it is founded upon their goodness, upon their justice, it demands obedience on his part, a conduct suitable to the benefits he receives. thus, in whatever manner the theological system is viewed, it destroys itself. will theology never feel that the more it endeavours to exaggerate the human qualities, the less it exalts the beings it pictures; the more incomprehensible it renders them, the more it contributes to swell its own ocean of contradictions; that to take human passions, mortal faculties at all, is perhaps the worst means it can pursue to form a perfect being; but that if it must persist in this method, then the further they remove them from man, the more they debase him, the more they weaken the relations subsisting between them: that in thus aggregating human properties, it should carefully abstain from associating in these pictures those qualities which man finds detestable in his fellows. thus, despotism in man is looked upon as an unjust, unreasonable power; if it introduces such a quality into its portraits, it cannot rationally suppose them suitable to cultivate the esteem, to attract the voluntary homage of the human race: if, however, the canvas be examined, we shall frequently be struck, with perceiving this the leading feature; we shall equally find a want of keeping through the whole; that shadows are introduced, where lights ought to prevail; that the colouring is incongruous--the design without harmony. the discrepancy of conduct which theology imputes to these idols, is not less remarkable than the contrariety of qualities it ascribes to them, or the inconsistency of the passions with which it invests them; sometimes, according to this, they are the friends to reason, desirous of the happiness of society; sometimes they are inimical to virtue; interdict the use of reason; flattered with seeing society disturbed, they sometimes afflict man without his being able to guess the cause of their displeasure; sometimes they are favourable to mankind--at others, indisposed towards the human species: sometimes they are represented as permitting crimes for the pleasure of punishing them--at others, they exert all their power to arrest crime in its birth; sometimes they elect a small number to receive eternal happiness, predestinating the rest to perpetual misery--to everlasting torments; at others, they throw open the gates of mercy to all who choose to enter them; sometimes they are pourtrayed as destroying the universe--at others, as establishing the most beautiful order in the planet we inhabit; sometimes they are held forth as countenancing deception--at others, as having the highest reverence for truth--as holding deceit in abomination. this, again, is the necessary result of the human faculties, the mortal passions, the frail qualities of which they compose the beings they hold forth to the admiration, to the worship, to the homage of the world. perhaps the most fatal consequences have arisen from founding the moral character of these divinities upon that of man. those who first had the confidence to tell man that in these matters it was not permitted him to consult his reason, that the interests of society demanded its sacrifice, evidently proposed to themselves to make him the sport of their own wantonness--to make him the blind instrument of their own unworthiness. it is from this radical error that has sprung all those extravagances which the various superstitions have introduced upon the earth: from hence has flowed that sacred fury which has frequently deluged it with blood: here is the cause of those inhuman persecutions which have so often desolated nations: in short, all those horrid tragedies which have been acted on the vast theatre of the world, by command of the different ministers of the various systems, whose gods they have said ordained these shocking spectacles. the theologians themselves have thus been the means, of calumniating the gods they pretended to serve, under the pretext of exalting their name--of covering them with glory; in this they may have been said to be true atheists, since they seem only to have been anxious to destroy the idols they themselves had raised, by the actions they have attributed to them--which has debased them in the eye of reason--rendered their existence more than doubtful to the man of humanity. indeed, it would require more than human credulity to accredit the assertion that these beings ever could order the atrocities committed in their name. every time they have been willing to disturb the harmony of mankind--whenever they have been desirous to render him unsociable, they have cried out that their gods ordained that he should be so. thus they render mortals uncertain, make the ethical system fluctuate by founding it upon changeable, capricious idols, whom they represent much more frequently cruel and unjust, than filled with bounty and benevolence. however it may be, admitting if they will for a moment that their idols possess all the human virtues in an infinite degree of perfection, we shall quickly be obliged to acknowledge that they cannot connect them with those metaphysical, theological, negative attributes, of which we have already spoken. if these beings are spirits that are immaterial, how can they be able to act like man, who is a corporeal being? pure spirits, according to the only idea man can form of them, having no organs, no parts, cannot see any thing; can neither hear our prayers, attend to our solicitations, nor have compassion for our miseries. they cannot be immutable, if their dispositions can suffer change: they cannot be infinite, if the totality of nature, without being them, can exist conjointly with them: they cannot be omnipotent, if they either permit or do not prevent evil: they cannot be omnipresent, if they are not every where: they must therefore be in the evil as well as in the good. thus in whatever manner they are contemplated, under whatever point of view they are considered, the human qualities which are assigned to them, necessarily destroy each other; neither can these same properties in any possible manner combine themselves with the supernatural attributes given to them by theology. with respect to the revealed will of these idols, by means of their oracles, far from being a proof of their good will, of their commisseration for man, it would rather seem evidence of their ill-will. it supposes them capable of leaving mankind for a considerable season unacquainted with truths highly important to their interests; these oracles communicated to a small number of chosen men, are indicative of partiality, of predilections, that are but little compatible with the common father of the human race. these oracles were ill imagined, since they tend to injure the immutability ascribed to these idols, by supposing that they permitted man to be ignorant at one time of their will, whilst at another time they were willing he should be instructed on the subject. moreover, these oracles frequently predicted offences for which afterwards severe punishments were inflicted on those who did no more than fulfil them. this, according to the reasoning of man, would be unjust. the ambiguous language in which they were delivered, the almost impossibility of comprehending them, the inexplicable mysteries they contained, seemed to render them doubtful; at least they are not consistent with the ideas man is capable of forming of infinite perfection: but the fact clearly is, they were thus rendered capable of application to the contingency of events--could be made to suit almost any circumstances: this would render it not a very improbable conjecture, that these oracles were solely delivered by the priests themselves. it these were tried by the only test of which he has any knowledge--his reason, it would naturally occur to the mind of man, that mystery could never, on any occasion, be used in the promulgation of substantive decrees meant to operate on the obedience, to actuate the moral conduct of man: it is quite usual with most legislators to render their laws as explicit as possible, to adapt them to the meanest understanding; in short, it would be reckoned want of good faith in a government, to throw a thick, mysterious veil over the announcement of that conduct which it wished its citizens to adopt; they would be apt to think such a procedure was either meant to cover its own peculiar ignorance, or else to entrap them into a snare; at best, it would be considered as furnishing a never-failing source of dispute, which a wise government would endeavour to avoid. it will thus be obvious, that the ideas which theology has at various times, under various systems, held forth to man, have for the most part been confused, discordant, incompatible, and have had a general tendency to disturb the repose of mankind. the obscure notions, the vague speculations of these multiplied creeds, would be matter of great indifference, if man was not taught to hold them as highly important to his welfare--if he did not draw from them conclusions pernicious to himself--if he did not learn from these theologians that he must sharpen his asperity against those who do not contemplate them in the same point of view with himself: as he perhaps, then, will never have a common standard, a fixed rule, a regular graduated scale, whereby to form his judgment on these points--as all efforts of the imagination must necessarily assume divers shapes, undergo a variety of modifications, which can never be assimilated to each other, it was little likely that mankind would at all times be able to understand each other on this subject; much less that they would be in accord in the opinions they should adopt. from hence that diversity of superstitions which in all ages have given rise to the most irrational disputes; which have engendered the most sanguinary wars; which have caused the most barbarous massacres; which have divided man from his fellow by the most rancorous animosities, that will perhaps never be healed; because he has been impelled to consider the peculiar tenets he adopted, not only as immediately essential to his individual welfare, but also as intimately connected with the happiness, closely interwoven with the tranquillity of the nation of which he was a citizen. that such contrariety of sentiment, such discrepancy of opinion should exist, is not in the least surprising; it is, in fact, the natural result of those physical causes to which, as long as he exists, he is at all times submitted. the man of a heated imagination cannot accommodate himself to the god of a phlegmatic, tranquil being: the infirm, bilious, discontented, angry mortal, cannot view him under the same aspect as he who enjoys a sounder constitution,--as the individual of a gay turn, who enjoys the blessing of content, who wishes to live in peace. an equitable, kind, compassionate, tender-hearted man, will not delineate to himself the same portrait of his god, as the man who is of an harsh, unjust, inflexible, wicked character. each individual will modify his god after his own peculiar manner of existing, after his own mode of thinking, according to his particular mode of feeling. a wise, honest, rational man will always figure to himself his god as humane and just. nevertheless, as fear usually presided at the formation of those idols man set up for the object of his worship; as the ideas of these beings were generally associated with that of terror as the recollections of sufferings, which he attributed to them, often made him tremble; frequently awakened in his mind the most afflicting, reminiscence; as it sometimes filled him with inquietude, sometimes inflamed his imagination, sometimes overwhelmed him with dismay, the experience of all ages proves, that these vague idols became the most important of all considerations--was the affair which most seriously occupied the human race: that they every where spread consternation--produced the most frightful ravages, by the delirious inebriation resulting from the opinions with which they intoxicated the mind. indeed, it is extremely difficult to prevent habitual fear, which of all human passions is the most incommodious, from becoming a dangerous leaven; which in the long run will sour, exasperate, and give malignancy to the most moderate temperament. if a misanthrope, in hatred of his race, had formed the project of throwing man into the greatest perplexity,--if a tyrant, in the plenitude of his unruly desire to punish, had sought out the most efficacious means; could either the one or the other have imagined that which was so well calculated to gratify their revenge, as thus to occupy him unceasingly with objects not only unknown to him, but which no two of them should ever see with precisely the same eyes; which notwithstanding they should be obliged to contemplate as the centre of all their thoughts--as the only model of their conduct--as the end of all their actions--as the subject of all their research--as a thing of more importance to them than life itself; upon which all their present felicity, all their future happiness, must necessarily depend? could the gods themselves, in their solicitude to punish the impious prometheus, for having stolen fire from the sun, have imagined a more certain method of executing their wishes? was not pandora's box, though stuffed with evils, trifling when compared with this? that at least left hope, to the unfortunate epimetheus; this effectually cut it off. if man was subjected to an absolute monarch, to a sultan who should keep himself secluded from his subjects; who followed no rule but his own desires; who did not feel himself bound by any duty; who could for ever punish the offences committed against him; whose fury it was easy to provoke; who was irritated even by the ideas, the thoughts of his subjects; whose displeasure might be incurred without even their own knowledge; the name of such a sovereign would assuredly be sufficient to carry trouble, to spread terror, to diffuse consternation into the very souls of those who should hear it pronounced; his idea would haunt them every where--would unceasingly afflict them--would plunge them into despair. what tortures would not their mind endure to discover this formidable being, to ascertain the secret of pleasing him! what labour would not their imagination bestow, to discover what mode of conduct might be able to disarm his anger! what fears would assail them, lest they might not have justly hit upon the means of assuaging his wrath! what disputes would they not enter into upon the nature, the qualities of a ruler, equally unknown to them all! what a variety of means would not be adopted, to find favour in his eyes; to avert his chastisement! such is the history of the effects superstition has produced upon the earth. man has always been panic-struck, because the systems adopted never enable him to form any correct opinion, any fixed ideas, upon a subject so material to his happiness; because every thing conspired either to give his ideas a fallacious turn, or else to keep his mind in the most profound ignorance; when he was willing to set himself right, when he was sedulous to examine the path which conducted to his felicity, when he was desirous of probing opinions so consequential to his peace, involving so much mystery, yet combining both his hopes and his fears, he was forbidden to employ the only proper method,--his reason, guided by his experience; he was assured this would be an offence the most indelible. if he asked, wherefore his reason had then been given him, since he was not to use it in matters of such high behest? he was answered, those were mysteries of which none but the initiated could be informed; that it sufficed for him to know, that the reason which he seemed so highly to prize, which he held in so much esteem, was his most dangerous enemy--his most inveterate, most determined foe. where can be the propriety of such an argument? can it really be that reason is dangerous? if so, the turks are justified in their predilection for madmen: but to proceed, he is told that he must believe in the gods, not question the mission of their priests; in short, that he had nothing to do with the laws they imposed, but to obey them: when he then required that these laws might at least be made comprehensible to him; that he might be placed in a capacity to understand them; the old answer was returned, that they were _mysteries_; he must not inquire into them. but where is the necessity for mystery in points of such vast importance? he might, indeed, from time to time consult these oracles, when he was able to make the sacrifices demanded; he would then receive precepts for his conduct: these were always, however, given in such vague, indeterminate terms, that he had scarcely the chance of acting right. at different times the same oracles delivered different opinions: thus he had nothing, steady; nothing permanent, whereby to guide his steps; like a blind man left to himself in the streets, he was obliged to grope his way at the peril of his existence. this will serve to shew the urgent necessity there is for truth to throw its radiant lustre on systems big with so much importance; that are so calculated to corroborate the animosities, to confirm the bitterness of soul, between those whom nature intended should always act as brothers. by the magical charms with which these idols were surrounded, the human species has remained either as if it was benumbed, in a state of stupid apathy, or else he has become furious with fanaticism: sometimes, desponding with fear, man cringed like a slave who bends under the scourge of an inexorable master, always ready to strike him; he trembled under a yoke made too ponderous for his strength: he lived in continual dread of a vengeance he was unceasingly striving to appease, without ever knowing when he had succeeded: as he was always bathed in tears, continually enveloped in misery--as he was never permitted to lose sight of his fears--as he was continually exhorted to nourish his alarm, he could neither labour for his own happiness nor contribute to that of others; nothing could exhilirate him; he became the enemy of himself, the persecutor of his fellow-creatures, because his felicity here below was interdicted; he passed his time in heaving the most bitter sighs; his reason being forbidden him, he fell into either a state of infancy or delirium, which submitted him to authority; he was destined to this servitude from the hour he quitted his mother's womb, until that in which he was returned to his kindred dust; tyrannical opinion bound him fast in her massive fetters; a prey to the terrors with which he was inspired, he appeared to have come upon the earth for no other purpose than to dream--with no other desire than to groan--with no other motives than to sigh; his only view seemed to be to injure himself; to deprive himself of every rational pleasure, to embitter his own existence; to disturb the felicity of others. thus, abject, slothful, irrational, he frequently became wicked, under the idea of doing honour to his gods; because they instilled into his mind that it was his duty to avenge their cause, to sustain their honour, to propagate their worship. mortals were prostrate from race to race, before vain idols to which fear had given birth in the bosom of ignorance, during the calamities of the earth; they tremblingly adored phantoms which credulity had placed in the recesses of their own brain, where they found a sanctuary which time only served to strengthen; nothing could undeceive them; nothing was competent to make them feel, it was themselves they adored--that they bent the knee before their own work--that they terrified themselves with the extravagant pictures they had themselves delineated; they obstinately persisted in prostrating themselves, in perplexing themselves, in trembling; they even made a crime of endeavouring to dissipate their fears; they mistook the production of their own folly; their conduct resembled that of children, who having disfigured their own features, become afraid of themselves when a mirror reflects the extravagance they have committed. these notions so afflicting for themselves, so grievous to others, have their epoch from the calamities of man; they will continue, perhaps augment, until their mind, enlightened by discarded reason, illumined by truth, shall set in their true colours these various systems; until reflection guided by experience, shall attach no more importance to them, than is consistent with the happiness of society; until man, bursting the chains of superstition--recalling to mind the great end of his existence--taking a rational view of that which surrounds him, shall no longer refuse to contemplate nature under her true character; shall no longer persist in refusing to acknowledge she contains within herself the cause of that wonderful phenomena which strikes on the dazzled optics of man: until thoroughly persuaded of the weakness of their claim to the homage of mankind, he shall make one pious, simultaneous, mighty effort, and _overthrow the altars of moloch and his priests_. chap. iv. _examination of the proofs of the existence of the divinity, as given by clarke._ the unanimity of man in acknowledging the divinity, is commonly looked upon as the strongest proof of his existence. there is not, it is said, any people on the earth who have not some ideas, whether true or false, of an all-powerful agent who governs the world. the rudest savages as well as the most polished nations, are equally obliged to recur by thought to the first cause of every thing that exists; thus it is affirmed, the cry of nature herself ought to convince us of the existence of the godhead, of which she has taken pains to engrave the notion in the minds of men: they therefore conclude, that the idea of god is innate. perhaps there is nothing of which man should be more sedulously careful than permitting a promiscuous assemblage of right with wrong--of suffering false conclusions to be drawn from true propositions; this will not improbably be found to be pretty much the case in this instance; the existence of the great _cause of causes_, the _parent of parents_, does not, i think, admit of any doubt in the mind of any one who has reasoned: but, if this existence did not rest upon better foundations than the unanimity of man on this subject, i am fearful it would not be placed upon so solid a rock as those who make this asseveration may imagine: the fact is, man is not generally agreed upon this point; if he was, superstition could have no existence; the idea of god cannot be _innate_, because, independent of the proofs offered on every side of the almost impossibility of innate ideas, one simple fact will set such an opinion for ever at rest, except with those who are obstinately determined not to be convinced by even their own arguments: if this idea was innate, it must be every where the same; seeing that that which is antecedent to man's being, cannot have experienced the modifications of his existence, which are posterior. even if it were waived, that the same idea should be expected from all mankind, but that only every nation should have their ideas alike on this subject, experience will not warrant the assertion, since nothing can be better established than that the idea is not uniform even in the same town; now this would be an insuperable quality in an innate idea. it not unfrequently happens, that in the endeavour to prove too much, that which stood firm before the attempt, is weakened; thus a bad advocate frequently injures a good cause, although he may not be able to overturn the rights on which it is rested. it would, therefore, perhaps, come nearer to the point if it was said, "that the natural curiosity of mankind have in all ages, and in all nations, led him to seek after the primary cause of the phenomena he beholds; that owing to the variations of his climate, to the difference of his organization, the greater or less calamity he has experienced, the variety of his intellectual faculties, and the circumstances under which he has been placed, man has had the most opposite, contradictory, extravagant notions of the divinity, but that he has uniformly been in accord in acknowledging both the existence, and the wisdom of his work--nature." if disengaged from prejudice, we analyze this proof, we shall see that the universal consent of man, so diffused over the earth, actually proves little more than that he has been in all countries exposed to frightful revolutions, experienced disasters, been sensible to sorrows of which he has mistaken the physical causes; that those events to which he has been either the victim or the witness, have called forth his admiration or excited his fear; that for want of being acquainted with the powers of nature, for want of understanding her laws, for want of comprehending her infinite resources, for want of knowing the effects she must necessarily produce under given circumstances, he has believed these phenomena were due to some secret agent of which he has had vague ideas--to beings whom he has supposed conducted themselves after his own manner; who were operated upon by similar motives with himself. the consent then of man in acknowledging a variety of gods, proves nothing, except that in the bosom of ignorance he has either admired the phenomena of nature, or trembled under their influence; that his imagination was disturbed by what he beheld or suffered; that he has sought in vain to relieve his perplexity, upon the unknown cause of the phenomena he witnessed, which frequently obliged him to quake with terror: the imagination of the human race has laboured variously upon these causes, which have almost always been incomprehensible to him; although every thing confessed his ignorance, his inability to define these causes, yet he maintained that he was assured of their existence; when pressed, he spoke of a spirit, (a word to which it was impossible to attach any determinate idea) which taught nothing but the sloth, which evidenced nothing but the stupidity of those who pronounced it. it ought, however, not to excite any surprise that man is incapable of forming any substantive ideas, save of those things which act, or which have heretofore acted upon his senses; it is very evident that the only objects competent to move his organs are material,--that none but physical beings can furnish him with ideas,--a truth which has been rendered sufficiently clear in the commencement of this work, not to need any further proof. it will suffice therefore to say that the idea of god is not an innate, but an acquired notion; that it is the very nature of this notion to vary from age to age; to differ in one country from another; to be viewed variously by individuals. what do i say? it is, in fact, an idea hardly ever constant in the same mortal. this diversity, this fluctuation, this change, stamps it with the true character of an acquired opinion. on the other hand, the strongest proof that can be adduced that these ideas are founded in error, is, that man by degrees has arrived at perfectioning all the sciences which have any known objects for their basis, whilst the science of theology has not advanced; it is almost every where at the same point; men seem equally undecided on this subject; those who have most occupied themselves with it, have effected but little; they seem, indeed, rather to have rendered the primitive ideas man formed to himself on this head more obscure,--to have involved in greater mystery all his original opinions. as soon as it is asked of man, what are the gods before whom he prostrates himself, forthwith his sentiments are divided. in order that his opinions should be in accord, it would be requisite that uniform ideas, analogous sensations, unvaried perceptions, should every where have given birth to his notions upon this subject: but this would suppose organs perfectly similar, modified by sensations which have a perfect affinity: this is what could not happen: because man, essentially different by his temperament, who is found under circumstances completely dissimilar, must necessarily have a great diversity of ideas upon objects which each individual contemplates so variously. agreed in some general points, each made himself a god after his own manner; he feared him, he served him, after his own mode. thus the god of one man, or of one nation, was hardly ever that of another man, or of another nation. the god of a savage, unpolished people, is commonly some material object, upon which the mind has exercised itself but little; this god appears very ridiculous in the eyes of a more polished community, whose minds have laboured more intensely upon the subject. a spiritual god, whose adorers despise the worship paid by the savage to a coarse, material object, is the subtle production of the brain of thinkers, who, lolling in the lap of polished society quite at their leisure, have deeply meditated, have long occupied themselves with the subject. the theological god, although for the most part incomprehensible, is the last effort of the human imagination; it is to the god of the savage, what an inhabitant of the city of sybaris, where effiminacy and luxury reigned, where pomp and pageantry had reached their climax, clothed with a curiously embroidered purple habit of silk, was to a man either quite naked, or simply covered with the skin of a beast perhaps newly slain. it is only in civilized societies, that leisure affords the opportunity of dreaming--that ease procures the facility of reasoning; in these associations, idle speculators meditate, dispute, form metaphysics: the faculty of thought is almost void in the savage, who is occupied either with hunting, with fishing, or with the means of procuring a very precarious subsistence by dint of almost incessant labour. the generality of men, however, have not more elevated notions of the divinity, have not analyzed him more than the savage. a spiritual, immaterial god, is formed only to occupy the leisure of some subtle men, who have no occasion to labour for a subsistence. theology, although a science so much vaunted, considered so important to the interests of man, is only useful to those who live at the expense of others; or of those who arrogate to themselves the privilege of thinking for all those who labour. this science becomes, in some polished societies, who are not on that account more enlightened, a branch of commerce extremely advantageous to its professors; equally unprofitable to the citizens; above all when these have the folly to take a very decided interest in their unintelligible system--in their discordant opinions. what an infinite distance between an unformed stone, an animal, a star, a statue, and the abstracted deity, which theology hath clothed with attributes under which it loses sight of him itself! the savage without doubt deceives himself in the object to which he addresses his vows; like a child he is smitten with the first object that strikes his sight--that operates upon him in a lively manner; like the infant, his fears are alarmed by that from which he conceives he has either received an injury or suffered disgrace; still his ideas are fixed by a substantive being, by an object which he can examine by his senses. the laplander who adores a rock,--the negro who prostrates himself before a monstrous serpent, at least see the objects they adore. the idolater falls upon his knees before a statue, in which he believes there resides some concealed virtue, some powerful quality, which he judges may be either useful or prejudicial to himself; but that subtle reasoner, called a metaphysician, who in consequence of his unintelligible science, believes he has a right to laugh at the savage, to deride the laplander, to scoff at the negro, to ridicule the idolater, doth not perceive that he is himself prostrate before a being of his own imagination, of which it is impossible he should form to himself any correct idea, unless, like the savage, he re-enters into visible nature, to clothe him with qualities capable of being brought within the range of his comprehension. for the most part the notions on the divinity, which obtain credit even at the present day, are nothing more than a general terror diversely acquired, variously modified in the mind of nations, which do not tend to prove any thing, save that they have received them from their trembling, ignorant ancestors. these gods have been successively altered, decorated, subtilized, by those thinkers, those legislators, those priests, who have meditated deeply upon them; who have prescribed systems of worship to the uninformed; who have availed themselves of their existing prejudices, to submit them to their yoke; who have obtained a dominion over their mind, by seizing on their credulity,--by making them participate in their errors,--by working on their fears; these dispositions will always be a necessary consequence of man's ignorance, when steeped in the sorrows of his heart. if it be true, as asserted, that the earth has never witnessed any nation so unsociable, so savage, to be without some form of religious worship--who did not adore some god--but little will result from it respecting the divinity. the word god, will rarely be found to designate more than the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded. thus, this notion so generally diffused, upon which so much stress is laid; will prove little more than that man in all generations has been ignorant of natural causes,--that he has been incompetent, from some cause or other, to account for those phenomena which either excited his surprise or roused his fears. if at the present day a people cannot be found destitute of some kind of worship, entirely without superstition, who do not acknowledge a god, who have not adopted a theology more or less subtle, it is because the uninformed ancestors of these people have all endured misfortunes--have been alarmed by terrifying effects, which they have attributed to unknown causes--have beheld strange sights, which they have ascribed to powerful agents, whose existence they could not fathom; the details of which, together with their own bewildered notions, they have handed down to their posterity who have not given them any kind of examination. it will readily be allowed, that the universality of an opinion by no means proves its truth. do we not see a great number of ignorant prejudices, a multitude of barbarous errors, even at the present day, receive the almost universal sanction of the human race? are not nearly all the inhabitants of the earth imbued with the idea of magic--in the habit of acknowledging occult powers--given to divination--believers in enchantment--the slaves to omens--supporters of witchcraft--thoroughly persuaded of the existence of ghosts? if some of the most enlightened persons are cured of these follies, they still find very zealous partizans in the greater number of mankind, who accredit them with the firmest confidence. it would not, however, be concluded by men of sound sense, in many instances not by the theologian himself, that therefore these chimeras actually have existence, although sanctioned with the credence of the multitude. before copernicus, there was no one who did not believe that the earth was stationary, that the sun described his annual revolution round it. was, however, this universal consent of man upon a principle of astronomical science, which endured for so many thousand years, less an error on that account? yet to have doubted the truth of such a generally-diffused opinion, one that had received the sanction of so many learned men--that was clothed with the sacred vestments of so many ages of credulity--that had been adopted by moses, acknowledged by solomon, accredited by the persian magi--that elijah himself had not refuted--that had obtained the fiat of the most respectable universities, the most enlightened legislators, the wisest kings, the most eloquent ministers; in short, a principle that embraced all the stability that could be derived from the universal consent of all ranks: to have doubted, i say, of this, would at one period have been held as the highest degree of profanation, as the most presumptuous scepticism, as an impious blasphemy, that would have threatened the very existence of that unhappy country from whose unfortunate bosom such a venomous, sacrilegious mortal could have arisen. it is well known what opinion was entertained of gallileo for maintaining the existence of the antipodes. pope gregory excommunicated as atheists all those who gave it credit. thus each man has his god: but do all these gods exist? in reply it will be said, somewhat triumphantly, each man hath his ideas of the sun, do all these suns exist? however narrow may be the pass by which superstition imagines it has thus guarded its favourite hypothesis, nothing will perhaps be more easy than the answer: the existence of the sun is a fact verified by the daily use of the senses; all the world see the sun; no one bath ever said there is no sun; nearly all mankind have acknowledged it to be both luminous and hot: however various may be the opinions of man, upon this luminary, no one has ever yet pretended there was more than one attached to our planetary system. but we may perhaps be told, there is a wide difference between that which can be contemplated by the visual organs, which can be understood by the sense of feeling, and that which does not come under the cognizance of any part of the organic structure of man. we must confess theology here has the advantage; that we are unable to follow it through its devious sinuosities; amidst its meandering labyrinths: but then it is the advantage of those who see sounds, over those who only hear them; of those who hear colours, over those who only see them; of the professors of a science, where every thing is built upon laws inverted from those common to the globe we inhabit; over those common understandings, who cannot be sensible to any thing that does not give an impulse to some of their organs. if man, therefore, had the courage to throw aside his prejudices, which every thing conspires to render as durable as himself--if divested of fear he would examine coolly--if guided by reason he would dispassionately view the nature of things, the evidence adduced in support of any given doctrine; he would, at least, be under the necessity to acknowledge, that the idea of the divinity is not innate--that it is not anterior to his existence--that it is the production of time, acquired by communication with his own species--that, consequently, there was a period when it did not actually exist in him: he would see clearly, that he holds it by tradition from those who reared him: that these themselves received it from their ancestors: that thus tracing it up, it will be found to have been derived in the last resort, from ignorant savages, who were our first fathers. the history of the world will shew that crafty legislators, ambitious tyrants, blood-stained conquerors, have availed themselves of the ignorance, the fears, the credulity of his progenitors, to turn to their own profit an idea to which they rarely attached any other substantive meaning than that of submitting them to the yoke of their own domination. without doubt there have been mortals who have dreamed they have seen the divinity. mahomet, i believe, boasted he had a long conversation with the deity, who promulgated to him the system of the mussulmans. but are there not thousands, even of the theologians, who will exhaust their breath, and fatigue their lungs with vociferating this man was a liar; whose object was to take advantage of the simplicity, to profit by the enthusiasm, to impose on the credulity of the arabs; who promulgated for truths, the crazy reveries of his own distempered imagination? nevertheless, is it not a truth, that this doctrine of the crafty arab, is at this day the creed of millions, transmitted to them by their ancestors, rendered sacred by time, read to them in their mosques, adorned with all the ceremonies of superstitious worship; of which the inhabitants of a vast portion of the earth do not permit themselves for an instant to doubt the veracity; who, on the contrary, hold those who do not accredit it as dogs, as infidels, as beings of an inferior rank, of meaner capacities than themselves? indeed that man, even if he were a theologian, would not experience the most gentle treatment from the infuriated mahometan, who should to his face venture to dispute the divine mission of his prophet. thus the ancestors of the turk have transmitted to their posterity, those ideas of the divinity which they manifestly received from those who deceived them; whose impositions, modified from age to age, subtilized by the priests, clothed with the reverential awe inspired by fear, have by degrees acquired that solidity, received that corroboration, attained that veteran stability, which is the natural result of public sanction, backed by theological parade. the word god is, perhaps, among the first that vibrate on the ear of man; it is reiterated to him incessantly; he is taught to lisp it with respect; to listen to it with fear; to bend the knee when it is reverberated: by dint of repetition, by listening to the fables of antiquity, by hearing it pronounced by all ranks and persuasions, he seriously believes all men bring the idea with them into the world; he thus confounds a mechanical habit with instinct; whilst it is for want of being able to recal to himself the first circumstances under which his imagination was awakened by this name; for want of recollecting all the recitals made to him during the course of his infancy; for want of accurately defining what was instilled into him by his education; in short, because his memory does not furnish him with the succession of causes that have engraven it on his brain, that he believes this idea is really inherent to his being; innate in all his species. iamblicus, indeed, who was a pythagorean philosopher not in the highest repute with the learned world, although one of those visionary priests in some estimation with theologians, (at least if we may venture to judge by the unlimited draughts they have made on the bank of his doctrines) who was unquestionably a favourite with the emperor julian, says, "that anteriorly to all use of reason, the notion of the gods is inspired by nature, and that we have even a sort of feeling of the divinity, preferable to the knowledge of him." it is, however, uniformly by habit, that man admires, that he fears a being, whose name he has attended to from his earliest infancy. as soon as he hears it uttered, he without reflection mechanically associates it with those ideas with which his imagination has been filled by the recitals of others; with those sensations which he has been instructed to accompany it. thus, if for a season man would be ingenuous with himself, he would concede that in the greater number of his race, the ideas of the gods, and of those attributes with which they are clothed, have their foundation, take their rise in, are the fruit of the opinions of his fathers, traditionally infused into him by education--confirmed by habit--corroborated by example--enforced by authority. that it very rarely happens he examines these ideas; that they are for the most part adopted by inexperience, propagated by tuition, rendered sacred by time, inviolable from respect to his progenitors, reverenced as forming part of those institutions he has most learned to value. he thinks he has always had them, because he has had them from his infancy; he considers them indubitable, because he is never permitted to question them--because he never has the intrepidity to examine their basis. if it had been the destiny of a brachman, or a mussulman, to have drawn his first breath on the shores of africa, he would adore, with as much simplicity, with as much fervour, the serpent reverenced by the negroes, as he does the god his own metaphysicians have offered to his reverence. he would be equally indignant if any one should presumptuously dispute the divinity of this reptile, which he would have learned to venerate from the moment he quitted the womb of his mother, as the most zealous, enthusiastic fakir, when the marvellous wonders of his prophet should be brought into question; or as the most subtile theologian when the inquiry turned upon the incongruous qualities with which he has decorated his gods. nevertheless, if this serpent god of the negro should be contested, they could not at least dispute his existence. simple as may be the mind of this dark son of nature, uncommon as may be the qualities with which he has clothed his reptile, he still may be evidenced by all who choose to exercise their organs of sight; not so with the theologian; he absolutely questions the existence of every other god but that which he himself has formed; which is questioned in its turn by his brother metaphysician. they are by no means disposed to admit the proofs offered by each other. descartes, paschal, and doctor samuel clarke himself, have been accused of atheism by the theologians of their time. subsequent reasoners have made use of their proofs, and even given them as extremely valid. doctor bowman published a work, in which he pretends all the proofs hitherto brought forward are crazy and fragile: he of course substitutes his own; which in their turn have been the subject of animadversion. thus it would appear these theologians are not more in accord with themselves than they are with turks or pagans. they cannot even agree as to their proofs of existence: from age to age new champions arise, new evidence is adduced, the old discarded, or treated with contempt; profound philosophers, subtle metaphysicians, are continually attacking each other for their ignorance on a point of the very first importance. amidst this variety of discussion, it is very difficult for simple winds, for those who steadily search after truth, who only wish to understand what they believe, to find a point upon which they can fix with reliance--a standard round which they may rally without fear of danger--a common measure that way serve them for a beacon to avoid the quicksands of delusion--the sophistry of polemics. men of very great genius have successively miscarried in their demonstrations; have been held to have betrayed their cause by the weakness of the arguments by which they have supported it; by the manner in which they have attempted to establish their positions. thus many of them, when they believed they had surmounted a difficulty, had the mortification to find they had only given birth to an hundred others. they seem, indeed, not to be in a capacity to understand each other, or to agree among themselves, when they reason upon the nature and qualities of beings created by such a variety of imaginations, which each contemplates diversely, upon which the natural self-love of each disputant induces him to reject with vehement indignation every thing that does not fall in with his own peculiar mode of thinking--that does not quadrate either with his superstition or his ignorance, or sometimes with both. the opponents of clarke charge him with begging the question in his work on _the being and attributes of god_. they say he has pretended to prove this existence _a priori_, which they deem impossible, seeing there is nothing anterior to the first of causes; that therefore it can only be proved _a posteriori_, that is to say, by its effects. law, in his _inquiry into the ideas of space, time, immensity, &c_. has attacked him very triumphantly, for this manner of proof, which is stated to be so very repugnant to the school-men. his arguments have been treated with no more ceremony by thomas d'aquinas, john scott, and others of the schools. at the present day i believe he is held in more respect--that his authority outweighs that of all his antagonists together. be that as it may, those who have followed him have done nothing more than either repeat his ideas, or present his evidence under a new form. tillotson argues at great length, but it would be rather difficult to understand which side of the question he adopts on this momentous subject; whether he is a necessitarian, or among the opposers of fatalism. speaking of man, he says, "he is liable to many evils and miseries, which he can neither prevent or redress; he is full of wants, which he cannot supply, and compassed about with infirmities which he cannot remove, and obnoxious to dangers which he can never sufficiently provide against: he is apt to grieve for what he cannot help, and eagerly to desire what he is never able to obtain." if the proofs of clarke, who has drawn them up in twelve propositions, are examined with attention, i think they may be fairly shielded from the reproach with which they have been loaded; it does not appear that he has proved his positions _a priori,_ but _a posteriori,_ according to rule. it seems clear, however, that he has mistaken the proof of the existence of the effects, for the proof of the existence of the cause: but here he seems to have more reason than his critics, who in their eagerness to prove that clarke has not conformed to the rules of the schools, would entirely overlook the best, the surest foundation whereon to rest the existence of the _great cause of causes,_ that _parent of parents_, whose wisdom shines so manifestly in nature, of which clarke's work may be said to be such a masterly evidence. we shall follow, step by step, the different propositions in which this learned divine developes the received opinions upon the divinity; which, when applied to nature, will be found to be so accurate, so correct, as to leave no further room to doubt either the existence or the wisdom of her great author, thus proved through her own existence. dr. clarke sets out with saying: "_ st. something has existed from all eternity_." this proposition is evident--hath no occasion for proofs. matter has existed from all eternity, its forms alone are evanescent; matter is the great engine used by nature to produce all her phenomena, or rather it is nature herself. we have some idea of matter, sufficient to warrant the conclusion that this has always existed. first, that which exists, supposes existence essential to its being. that which cannot, annihilate itself, exists necessarily; it is impossible to conceive that that which cannot cease to exist, or that which cannot annihilate itself, could ever have had a beginning. if matter cannot be annihilated, it could not commence to be. thus we say to dr. clarke, that it is matter, it is nature, acting by her own peculiar energy, of which no particle is ever in an absolute state of rest, which hath always existed. the various material bodies which this nature contains often change their form, their combination, their properties, their mode of action: but their principles or elements are indestructible--have never been able to commence. what this great scholar actually understands, when he makes the assertion "that an eternal duration is now actually past," is not quite so clear; yet he affirms, "that not to believe it would be a real and express contradiction." we may, however, safely admit his argument, "that when once any proposition is clearly demonstrated to, be true, it ought not to disturb us that there be perhaps some perplexing difficulties on the other side, which merely for want of adequate ideas of the manner of the existence of the things demonstrated, are not easily to be cleared." _ nd, "there has existed from eternity some one unchangeable and independent being."_ we may fairly inquire what is this being? is it independent of its own peculiar essence, or of those properties which constitute it such as it is? we shall further inquire, if this being, whatever it may be, can make the other beings which it produces, or which it moves, act otherwise than they do, according to the properties which it has given them? and in this case we shall ask, if this being, such as it way be supposed to be, does not act necessarily; if it is not obliged to employ indispensible means to fulfil its designs, to arrive at the end which it either has, or may be supposed to have in view? then we shall say, that nature is obliged to act after her essence; that every thing which takes place in her is necessary; but that she is independent of her forms. a man is said to be independent, when he is determined in his actions only by the general causes which are accustomed to move him; he is equally said to be dependent on another, when he cannot act but in consequence of the determination which this last gives him. a body is dependent on another body when it owes to it its existence, and its mode of action. a being existing from eternity cannot owe his existence to any other being; he cannot then be dependent upon him, except he owes his action to him; but it is evident that an eternal or self-existent being contains in his own nature every thing that is necessary for him to act: then, matter being eternal, is necessarily independent in the sense we have explained; of course it hath no occasion for a mover upon which it ought to depend. this eternal being is also immutable, if by this attribute be understood that he cannot change his nature; but if it be intended to infer by it that he cannot change his mode of action or existence, it is without doubt deceiving themselves, since even in supposing an immaterial being, they would be obliged to acknowledge in him different modes of being, different volitions, different ways of acting; particularly if he was not supposed totally deprived of action, in which case he would be perfectly useless. indeed it follows of course that to change his mode of action he must necessarily change his manner of being. from hence it will be obvious, that the theologians, in making their gods immutable, render them immoveable, consequently they cannot act. an immutable being, could evidently neither have successive volition, nor produce successive action; if this being hath created matter, or given birth to the universe, there must have been a time in which he was willing that this matter, this universe, should exist; and this time must have been preceded by another time, in which he was willing that it might not yet exist. if god be the author of all things, as well as of the motion and of the combinations of matter, he is unceasingly occupied in producing and destroying; in consequence, he cannot be called immutable, touching his mode of existing. the material world always maintains itself by motion, and the continual change of its parts; the sum of the beings who compose it, or of the elements which act in it, is invariably the same; in this sense the immutability of the universe is much more easy of comprehension, much more demonstrable than that of an other being to whom, they would attribute all the effects, all the mutations which take place. nature is not more to be accused of mutability, on account of the succession of its forms, than the eternal being is by the theologians, by the diversity of his decrees. here we shall be able to perceive that, supposing the laws by which nature acts to be immutable, it does not require tiny of these logical distinctions to account for the changes that take place: the mutation which results, is, on the contrary, a striking proof of the immutability of the system which produces them; and completely brings mature under the range of this second proposition as stated by dr. clarke. _ dly, "that unchangeable and independent being which has existed from eternity without any eternal cause of its existence, must be self-existent, that is, necessarily existing."_ this proposition is merely a repetition of the first; we reply to it by inquiring, why matter, which is indestructible, should not be self-existent? it is evident that a being who had no beginning, must be self-existent; if he had existed by another, he would have commenced to be; consequently he would not be eternal. _ thly, "what the substance or essence of that being which is self-existent, or necessarily existing, is, we have no idea; neither is it at all possible for us to comprehend it."_ dr. clarke would perhaps have spoken more correctly if he had said his essence is impossible to be known: nevertheless, we shall readily concede that the essence of matter is incomprehensible, or at least that we conceive it very feebly by the manner in which we are affected by it; but without this we should be less able to conceive the divinity, who would then be impervious on any side. thus it must necessarily be concluded, that it is folly to argue upon it, since it is by matter alone we can have any knowledge of him; that is to say, by which we can assure ourselves of his existence,--by which we can at all guess at his qualities. in short we must conclude, that every thing related of the divinity, either proves him material, or else proves the impossibility in which the human mind will always find itself, of conceiving any being different from matter; without extent, yet omnipresent; immaterial, yet acting upon matter; spiritual, yet producing matter; immutable, yet putting every thing in activity, &c. indeed it must be allowed that the incomprehensibility of the divinity does not distinguish him from matter; this will not be more easy of comprehension when we shall associate it with a being much less comprehensible than itself; we have some slender knowledge of it through some of its parts. we do not certainly know the essence of any being, if by that word we are to understand that which constitutes its peculiar nature. we only know matter by the sensations, the perceptions, the ideas which it furnishes; it is according to these that we judge it to be either favorable or unfavourable, following the particular disposition of our organs. but when a being does not act upon any part of our organic structure, it does not exist for us; we cannot, without exhibiting folly, without betraying our ignorance, without falling into obscurity, either speak of its nature, or assign its qualities; our senses are the only channel by which we could have formed the slightest idea of it; these not having received any impulse, we are, in point of fact, unacquainted with its existence. the incomprehensibility of the divinity ought to convince man that it is a point at which he is bound to stop; indeed he is placed in a state of utter incapacity to proceed: this, however, would not suit with those speculators who are willing to reason upon him continually, to shew the depth of their learning,--to persuade the uninformed they understand that which is incomprehensible to all men; by which they expect to be able to submit him to their own views. nevertheless, if the divinity be incomprehensible, it would not be straining a point beyond its tension, to conclude that a priest, or metaphysician, did not comprehend him better than other men: it is not, perhaps, either the wisest or the surest way to become acquainted with him, to represent him to ourselves, by the imagination of a theologian. _ thly, "though the substance, or essence of the self-existent being, is in itself absolutely incomprehensible to us, yet many of the essential attributes of his nature are strictly demonstrable, as well as his existence. thus, in the first place, the self-existent being must of necessity be eternal."_ this proposition differs in nothing from the first, except dr. clarke does not here understand that as the self-existent being had no beginning, he can have no end. however this may be, we must ever inquire, why this should not be matter? we shall further observe, that matter not being capable of annihilation, exists necessarily, consequently will never cease to exist; that the human mind has no means of conceiving how matter should originate from that which is not itself matter: is it not obvious, that matter is necessary; that there is nothing, except its powers, its arrangement, its combinations, which are contingent or evanescent? the general motion is necessary, but the given motion is not so; only during the season that the particular combinations subsist, of which this motion is the consequence, or the effect: we may be competent to change the direction, to either accelerate or retard, to suspend or arrest, a particular motion, but the general motion can never possibly be annihilated. man, in dying, ceases to live; that is to say, he no longer either walks, thinks, or acts in the mode which is peculiar to human organization: but the matter which composed his body, the matter which formed his mind, does not cease to move on that account: it simply becomes susceptible of another species of motion. _ thly, "the self-existent being must of necessity be infinite and omnipresent."_ the word infinite presents only a negative idea--which excludes all bounds: it is evident that a being who exists necessarily, who is independent, cannot be limited by any thing which is out of himself; he must consequently be his own limits; in this sense we may say he is infinite. touching what is said of his omnipresence, it is equally evident that if there be nothing exterior to this being, either there is no place in which he must not be present, or that there will be only himself and the vacuum. this granted, i shall inquire if matter exists; if it does not at least occupy a portion of space? in this case, matter, or the universe, must exclude every other being who is not matter, from that place which the material beings occupy in space. in asking whether the gods of the theologians be by chance the abstract being which they call the vacuum or space, they will reply, no! they will further insist, that their gods, who are not matter, penetrate that which is matter. but it must be obvious, that to penetrate matter, it is necessary to have some correspondence with matter, consequently to have extent; now to have extent, is to have one of the properties of matter. if the divinity penetrates matter, then he is material; by a necessary deduction he is inseparable from matter; then if he is omnipresent, he will be in every thing. this the theologian will not allow: he will say it is a mystery; by which i shall understand that he is himself ignorant how to account for his own positions; this will not be the case with making nature act after immutable laws; she will of necessity be every where, in my body, in my arm, in every other material being, because matter composes them all. the divinity who has given this invariable system, will without any incongruous reasoning, without any subterfuge, be also present every where, inasmuch as the laws he has prescribed will unchangeably act through the whole; this does not seem inconsistent with reason to suppose. _ th, "the self-existent being must of necessity be but one."_ if there he nothing exterior to a being who exists necessarily, it must follow that he is unique. it will be obvious that this proposition is the same with the preceding one; at least, if they are not willing to deny the existence of the material world. _ th, "the self-existent and original cause of all things, must be an intelligent being."_ here dr. clarke most unquestionably assigneth a human quality: intelligence is a faculty appertaining to organized or animated beings, of which we have no knowledge out of these beings. to have intelligence, it is necessary to think; to think, it is requisite to have ideas; to have ideas, supposes senses; when senses exist they are material; when they are material, they cannot be a pure spirit, in the language of the theologian. the necessary being who comprehends, who contains, who produces animated beings, contains, includes, and produceth intelligence. but has the great whole a peculiar intelligence, which moveth it, which maketh it act, which determineth it in the mode that intelligence moves and determines animated bodies; or rather, is not this intelligence the consequence of immutable laws, a certain modification resulting from certain combinations of matter, which exists under one form of these combinations, but is wanting under another form? this is assuredly what nothing is competent absolutely, and demonstrably to prove. man having placed himself in the first rank in the universe, has been desirous to judge of every thing after what he saw within himself, because he hath pretended that in order to be perfect it was necessary to be like himself. here is the source of all his erroneous reasoning upon nature--the foundation of his ideas upon his gods. he has therefore concluded, perhaps not with the most polished wisdom, that it would be indecorous in himself, injurious to the divinity, not to invest him with a quality which is found estimable in man--which he prizes highly--to which he attaches the idea of perfection--which he considers as a manifest proof of superiority. he sees his fellow-creature is offended when he is thought to lack intelligence; he therefore judges it to be the same with the divinity. he denies this quality to nature, because he considers her a mass of ignoble matter, incapable of self-action; although she contains and produces intelligent beings. but this is rather a personification of an abstract quality, than an attribute of the deity, with whose perfections, with whose mode of existence, he cannot by any possible means become acquainted according to the fifth proposition of dr. clarke himself. it is in the earth that is engendered those living animals called worms; yet we do not say the earth is a living creature. the bread which man eats, the wine that he drinks, are not themselves thinking substances; yet they nourish, sustain, and cause those beings to think, who are susceptible of this modification of their existence. it is likewise in nature, that is formed intelligent, feeling, thinking beings; yet it cannot be rationally said, that nature feels, thinks, and is intelligent after the manner of these beings, who nevertheless spring out of her bosom. how! cries the metaphysician, the subtilizing philosopher, what! refuse to the divinity, those qualities we discover in his creatures? must, then, the work be more perfect than the workman? shall god, who made the eye, not himself see? shall god, who formed the ear, not himself hear! this at a superficial view appears insuperable: but are the questioners, however triumphantly they may make the inquiry, themselves aware of the length this would carry them, even if their queries were answered with the most unqualified affirmative? have they sufficiently reflected on the tendency of this mode of reasoning? if this be admitted as a postulatum, are they prepared to follow it in all its extent? suppose their argument granted, what is to be done with all those other qualities upon which man does not set so high a value? are they also to be ascribed to the divinity, because we do not refuse him qualities possessed by his creatures? by a parity of reasoning we should attach faculties that would be degrading to the divinity. thus it ever happens with those who travel out of the limits of their own knowledge; they involve themselves in perpetual contradictions which they can never reconcile; which only serve to prove that in arguing upon points, on which universal ignorance prevails, the result is constantly that all the deductions made from such unsteady principles, must of necessity be at war with each other, in hostility with themselves. thus, although we cannot help feeling the profound wisdom, that must have dictated the system we see act with such uniformity, with such constancy, with such astonishing power, we cannot form the most slender idea of the particular nature of that wisdom; because if we were for an instant to assimilate it to our own, weak and feeble as it is, we should from that instant be in a state of contradiction; seeing we could not then avoid considering the evil we witness, the sorrow we experience, as a dereliction of this wisdom, which at least proves one great truth, _that we are utterly incapable of forming an idea of the divinity_. but in contemplating things as our own experience warrants in whatever we do understand, in considering nature as acting by unchangeable laws, we find good and evil necessarily existing, without at all involving the wisdom of the great _cause of causes_; who thus has no need to remedy that, which the further progress of the eternal system will regulate of itself, or which industry and patient research on our parts will enable us to discover the means of futurely avoiding. _ th, "the self-existent and original cause of all things, is not a necessary agent, but a being endued with liberty and choice._" man is called free, when he finds within himself motives that determine him to action, or when his will meets no obstacle to the performance of that to which his motives have determined him. the necessary being of which question is here made, doth he find no obstacles to the execution of the projects which are attributed to him? is he willing, adopting their own hypothesis, that evil should be committed, or can he not prevent it? in this latter case he is not free; if his will does meet with obstacles, if he is willing to permit evil; then he suffers man to restrain his liberty, by deranging his projects; if he has not these projects, then they are themselves in error who ascribe them to him. how will the metaphysicians draw themselves out of this perplexing intricacy? the further a theologian goes, whilst considering his gods as possessed of human qualities, as acting by mortal motives, the more he flounders--the greater the mass of contradiction he heaps together: thus if it be asked of him, can god reward crime, punish virtue, he will immediately answer, no! in this answer he will have truth: but then this truth, and the freedom which is ascribed to him, cannot, according to human ideas, exist together; because if this being cannot love vice, cannot hate virtue, and it is evident he cannot, he is in fact not more free than man himself. again, god is said to have made a covenant with his creatures; now it is the very essence of a covenant to restrict choice; and that being must be considered a necessary agent who is under the necessity of fulfilling any given act. as it is impossible to suppose the divinity can act irrationally, it must be conceded that as he made these laws, he is himself obliged to follow them: because if he was not, as we must again suppose he does nothing without a good reason, he would thereby imply, that the mode of action he adopted would be wiser; which would again involve a contradiction. the theologians fearing, without doubt, to restrain the liberty of the divinity, have supposed it was necessary that he should not be bound by his own laws, in which they have shewn somewhat more ignorance of their subject than they imagined. _ th, "the self-existent being, the supreme cause of all things, must of necessity have infinite power."_ as nature is adequate to produce every thing we see--as she contains the whole united power of the universe, her power has consequently no limits: the being who conferred this power cannot have less. but if the ideas of the theologians were adopted, this power would not appear quite so unlimited; since, according to them, man is a free agent, consequently has the means of acting contrary to this power, which at once sets a boundary to it. an equitable monarch is perhaps nothing less than he is a free agent; when he believes himself bound to act conformably to the laws, which he has sworn to observe, or which he cannot violate without wounding his justice. the theologian is a man who may be very fairly estimated neuter; because he destroys with one hand what he establishes with the other. _ th, "the supreme cause and author of all things, must of necessity be infinitely wise."_ as nature produces all things by certain immutable laws, it will require no great difficulty to allow that she may be infinitely wise: indeed, whatever side of the argument may be taken, this fact will result as a necessary consequence. it will hardly admit of a question that all things are produced by nature: if, therefore, we do not allow her wisdom to be first rate, it would be an insult to the divinity, who gave her her system. if the theologian himself is to take the lead, he also admits that nature operates under the immediate auspices of his gods; whatever she does, must then, according to his own shewing, be executed with the most polished wisdom. but the theologian is not satisfied with going thus far: he will insist, not only that he knows what these things are, but also that he knows the end they have in view: this, unfortunately, is the rock he splits upon. according to his own admission, the ways of god are impenetrable to man. if we grant his position, what is the result? why, that it is at random he speaks. if these ways are impenetrable, by what means did he acquire his knowledge of them? how did he discover the end proposed by the deity? if they are not impenetrable, they then can be equally known to other men as to himself. the theologian would be puzzled to shew he has any more privileges in nature than his fellow mortals. again, if he has asserted these things to be impenetrable, when they are not so, he is then in the situation that he has himself placed mahomet: he is no longer worthy of being attended to, because he has swerved from veracity. it certainly is not very consistent with the sublime idea of the divinity that he should be clothed with that weak, vain passion of man, called glory: the being who had the faculty of producing such a system as it operated in nature, could hardly be supposed to have such a frivolous passion as we know this to be in our fellows: and as we can never reason but after what we do know, it would appear nothing can be more inconsistent than thus continually heaping together our own feeble, inconsistent views, and then supposing the great _cause of causes_ acts by such futile rules. _ th, "the supreme cause and author of all things must of necessity be a being of infinite goodness, justice, and truth, and all other moral perfections, such as become the supreme governor and judge of the world."_ we must again repeat that these are human qualities drawn from the model of man himself; they only suppose a being of the human species, who should be divested of what we call imperfections: this is certainly the highest point of view in which our finite minds are capable of contemplating the divinity: but as this being has neither species nor cause, consequently no fellow creatures, he must necessarily be of an order so different to man, that human faculties can in no wise be appropriately assigned to him. the idea of perfection, as man understands it, is an abstract, metaphysical, negative idea, of which he has no archetype whereby to form a judgment: he would call that a perfect being, who, similar to himself, was wanting in those qualities which he finds prejudicial to him; but such a being would after all be no wore than a man. it is always relatively to himself, to his own mode of feeling and of thinking, that a thing is either perfect or imperfect; it is according to this, that in his eyes a thing is more or less useful or prejudicial; agreeable or disagreeable. justice includes all moral perfections. one of the most prominent features of justice, in the ideas of man, is the equity of the relations subsisting between beings, founded upon their mutual wants. according to the theologian, his gods owe nothing to man. how then does he measure out his ideas of justice? for a monarch to say he owed nothing to his subjects, would be considered, even by this theologian himself, as rank injustice; because he would expect the fulfilment of duties on their part, without exercising those which devolved upon himself. duties, according to the only idea man can form of them, must be reciprocal. it is rather stretching the human capabilities, to understand the relations between a pure spirit and material beings--between finity and infinity--between eternal beings and those which are transitory: thus it is, that metaphysics hold forth an inconceivable being by the very attributes with which they clothe him; for either he has these attributes, or he has them not: whether he has them or has them not, man can only understand them after his own powers of comprehension. if he does at all understand them, he cannot have the slightest idea of justice unaccompanied by duties, which are the very basis, the superstructure, the pillars upon which this virtue rests. whether we are to view it as self-love or ignorance in the theologian, that he thus dresses up his gods after himself, it certainly was not the happiest effort of his imagination to work by an inverse rule: for, according to himself, the qualities he describes are all the negation of what he calls them. doctor clarke himself stumbles a little upon these points; he insists upon free agency, and uses this extraordinary method to support his argument; he says, "god is, by necessity, a free agent: and he can no more possibly cease to be so, than he can cease to exist. he must of necessity, every moment choose to act, or choose to forbear acting; because two contradictories cannot possibly be true at once. man also is by necessity, not in the nature of things, but through god's appointment, a free agent. and it is no otherwise in his power to cease to be such, than by depriving himself of life." will doctor clarke permit us to put one simple question: if to be obligated to do a certain given thing, is to be free, what is it to be coerced? or if two contradictories cannot be true at once, by what rule of logic are we to measure the idea of that freedom which arises out of necessity. supposing necessity to be what dr. johnson, (using milton as his authority) says it is, "compulsion," "fatality," would it be considered a man was less restrained in his actions because he was only compelled to do what was right? the restraint would undoubtedly he beneficial to him, but it would not therefore render him more a free agent. if the divinity cannot love wickedness, cannot hate goodness, (and surely the theologians themselves will not pretend he can,) then the power of choice has no existence as far as these two things are concerned; and this upon clarke's own principle, because two contradictories cannot be true at once. nothing could, i think, appear a greater contradiction, than the idea that the _great cause of causes_ could by any possibility love vice: if such a monstrous principle could for a moment have existence, there would be an end of all the foundations of religion. the doctor is very little happier in reasoning upon _immateriality_. he says, by way of illustrating his argument, "that it is possible to infinite power to create an immaterial cogitative substance, endued with a power of beginning motion, and with a liberty of will or choice." again, "that immaterial substances are not impossible; or, that a substance immaterial is not a contradictory notion. now, whoever asserts that it is contradictory, must affirm that whatever is not matter is nothing; and that, to say any thing exists which is not matter, is saying that there exists something which is nothing, which in other words is plainly this,--that whatever we have not an idea of, is nothing, and impossible to be." it could, i am apt to believe, never have entered into any reasonable mind that a thing was impossible because he could have no idea of it:--many things, on the contrary, are possible, of which we have not the most slender notion: but it does not, i presume, flow consecutively out of this admission, that therefore every thing is, which is not impossible. doctor clarke then, rather begs the question on this occasion. in the schools it is never considered requisite to prove a negative; indeed, this is ranked by logicians amongst those things impossible to be, but it is considered of the highest importance to soundness of argument, to establish the affirmative by the most conclusive reasoning. taking this for granted, we will apply the doctor's own reasoning. he says, "nothing is that of which every thing, can truly be affirmed. so that the idea of nothing, if i may so speak, is absolutely the negative of all ideas; the idea, therefore, either of a finite or infinite nothing is a contradiction in terms." to affirm, of a thing with truth, it must be necessary to be acquainted with that thing. to have ideas, as we have already proved, it is necessary to have perceptions; to have perceptions, it is requisite to have sensations; to have sensations, requires organs. an idea cannot be, and not be, at the same moment: the idea of substance, it will scarcely be denied, is that of a thing solid, real, according to dryden; capable of supporting accidents, according to watts; something of which we can say that it is, according to davies; body, corporeal nature, according to newton; the idea of immaterial, according to hooker, is incorporeal. how then am i to understand immaterial substance? is it not, according to these definitions, that which cannot couple together? if a thing be immaterial, it cannot be a substance; if a substance, it cannot be immaterial: those i apprehend will not have many ideas, who do not see this is a complete negative of all ideas. if, therefore, on the outset, the doctor cannot find words, by which he can convey the idea of that of which he is so desirous to prove the existence, by what chain of reasoning does he flatter himself that he is to be understood? he will endeavour to draw out of this dilemma, by assuring as there are things which we can neither see nor touch, but which do not the less exist on that account. granted: but from thence we can neither reason upon them, nor assign them qualities; we must at least either feel them or something like them, before we can have any idea of them: this, however, would not prove they were not substances, nor that substances can be immaterial. a thing may with great possibility exist of which we have no knowledge, and yet be material; but i maintain until we have a knowledge of it, it exists not for us, any more than colours exist for a man born blind; the man who has sight knows they do exist, can describe them to his dark neighbour; from this description the blind man may form some idea of them by analogy with what he himself already knows; or, perhaps, having a finer tact than his neighbour, he may be enabled to distinguish them by their surfaces; it would, therefore, be bad reasoning in the man born blind, to deny the existence of colours; because although these colours may have no relation with the senses in the absence of sight, they have with those who have it in their power to see and to know them: this blind man, however, would-appear a little ridiculous if he undertook to define them with all their gradations of shade; with all their variations under different masses of light. again, if those who were competent to discriminate these modifications of matter called colours, were to define them to this blind man, as those modifications of matter called sound, would the blind man be able to have any conception of them? it certainly would not be wise in him to aver, that such a thing as colorific sound had no existence, was impossible; but at least he would be very justifiable in saying, they appeared contradictions, because he had some ideas of sound which did not at all aid him in forming those of colour; he would not, perhaps, be very inconclusive if he suspected the competency of his informer to the definition attempted, from his inability to convey to him in any distinct, understood terms, his own ideas of colours. the theologian is a blind man, who would explain to others who are also blind, the shades and colours of a portrait whose original he has not even stumbled upon in the dark. there is nothing incongruous in supposing that every thing which has existence is matter; but it requires the complete inversion of all our ideas, to conceive that which is immaterial; because, in point of fact, this would be a quality of which "nothing can with truth be affirmed." it is, indeed true, that plato, who was a great creator of chimeras, says, "those who admit nothing but what they can see and feel, are stupid ignorant beings, who refuse to admit the reality of the existence of invisible things." with all due deference to such an authority, we may still venture to ask, is there then no difference, no shade, no gradation, between an admission of possibilities and the proof of realities. theology would then be the only science in which it is permitted to conclude that a thing is, as soon as it is possible to be. will the assertion of either clarke or plato stand absolutely in place of all evidence? would they themselves permit such to be convincing if used against them? the theologians evidently hold this platonic, this dogmatical language; they have dreamed the dreams of their master; perhaps if they were examined a little, they would be found nothing more than the result of those obscure notions, those unintelligible metaphysics, adopted by the egyptian, chaldean, and assyrian priests, among whom plato drew up his philosophy. if, however, philosophy means that which we are led to suppose it does, by the great john locke, it is "a system by which natural effects are explained." taken in this sense we shall be under the necessity of agreeing, that the platonic doctrines in no wise merit this distinction, seeing he has only drawn the human mind from the contemplation of visible nature, to plunge it into the unfathomable depths of invisibility--of intangibility--of suppositious speculation, where it can find little other food except chimeras or conjecture. such a philosophy is rather fantastical, yet it would seem we are required to subscribe to its positions without being allowed to compare them with reason, to examine them through the medium of experience, to try the gold by the action of fire: thus we have in abundance the terms spirits, incorporeal substances, invisible powers, supernatural effects, innate ideas, mysterious virtues, possessed by demons, &c. &c. which render our senses entirely useless, which put to flight every thing like experience; while we are gravely told that "nothing is that, of which no thing can truly be affirmed." whoever may be willing to take the trouble of reading the works of plato and his disciples, such as proclus, iamblicus, plotinus, and others, will not fail to find in them almost every doctrine, every metaphysical subject of the theologian; in fact, the theurgy of many of the modern superstitions, which for the most part seems to be little more than a slight variation of that adopted by the ethnic priests. dreamers have not had that variety in their follies, that has generally been imagined. that some of these things should be extensively admitted, by no means affords proof of their existence. nothing appears more facile than to make mankind admit the greatest absurdities, under the imposing name of mysteries; after having imbued him from his infancy with maxims calculated to hoodwink his reason--to lead him astray--to prevent him from examining that which he is told he must believe. of this there cannot well exist a more decisive proof than the great extent of country, the millions of human beings who faithfully and without examination have adopted the idle dreams, the rank absurdities, of that arch impostor mahomet. however this may be, we shall be obliged again to reply to plato, and to those of his followers who impose upon us the necessity of believing that which we cannot comprehend, that, in order to know that a thing exists, it is at least necessary to have some idea of it; that this idea can only come to us by the medium of our senses; that consequently every thing of which our senses do not give us a knowledge, is in fact nothing for us; and can only rest upon our faith; upon that admission which is pretty generally, even by the theologian himself, considered as rather a sandy foundation whereon to erect the altar of truth: that if there be an absurdity in not accrediting the existence of that which we do not know, there is no less extravagance in assigning it qualities; in reasoning upon its properties; in clothing it with faculties, which may or may not be suitable to its mode of existence; in substituting idols of our own creation; in combining incompatible attributes, which will neither bear the test of experience nor the scrutiny of reason; and then endeavouring to make the whole pass current by dint of the word infinite, which we will now examine. infinite, according to dennis, means "boundless, unlimited." doctor clarke thus describes it:--he says, "the self-existent being must be a most simple, unchangeable incorruptible being; without parts, figure, motion, divisibility, or any other such properties as we find in matter. for all these things do plainly and necessarily imply finiteness in their very notion, and are utterly inconsistent with complete infinity." ingenuously, is it possible for man to form any true notion of such a quality? the theologians themselves acknowledge he cannot. further, the doctor allows, "that as to the particular manner of his being infinite, or every where present, in opposition to the manner of created things being present in such or such finite places, this is as impossible for our finite understandings to comprehend or explain, as it is for us to form an adequate idea of infinity." what is this, then, but that which no man can explain or comprehend? if it cannot be comprehended, it cannot be detailed; if it cannot be detailed, it is precisely "that of which nothing can with truth be affirmed;" and this is dr. clarke's own explanation of nothing. indeed, is not the human mind obliged by its very nature to join limited quantities to other quantities, which it can only conceive as limited, in order to form to itself a sort of confused idea of something beyond its own grasp, without ever reaching the point of infinity, which eludes every attempt at definition? then it would appear that it is an abstraction, a mere negation of limitation. our learned adversary seems to think it strange that the existence of incorporeal, immaterial substances, the essence of which we are not able to comprehend, should not be generally accredited. to enforce this belief, he says, "there is not so mean and contemptible a plant or animal, that does not confound the most enlarged understanding, upon earth: nay, even the simplest and plainest of all inanimate beings have their essence or substance hidden from us in the deepest and most impenetrable obscurity." we shall reply to him, _first_, that the idea of an immaterial substance; or being without extent, is only an absence of ideas, a negation of extent, as we have already shewn; that when we are told a being is not matter, they speak to us of that which is not, and do not teach us that which is; because by insisting that a being is such, that it cannot act upon any of our senses, they, in fact, inform us that we have no means of assuring ourselves whether such being exists or not. _secondly_, we shall avow without the least hesitation, that men of the greatest genius, of the most indefatigable research, are not acquainted with the essence of stones, plants, animals, nor with the secret springs which constitute some, which make others vegetate or act: but then at least we either feel them or see them; our senses have a knowledge of them in some respects; we can perceive some of their effects; we have something whereby to judge of them, either accurately or inaccurately; we can conceive that which is matter, however varied, however subtle, however minute, by analogy with other matter; but our senses cannot compass that which is immaterial on any side; we cannot by any possible means understand it; we have no means whatever of ascertaining its existence; consequently we cannot even form an idea of it; such a being is to us an occult principle, or rather a being which imagination has composed, by deducting from it every known quality. if we are ignorant of the intimate combination of the most material beings, we at least discover, with the aid of experience, some of their relations with ourselves: we have a knowledge of their surface, their extent, their form, their colour, their softness, their density; by the impressions they make on our senses, we are capable of discriminating them--of comparing them--of judging of them in some manner--of seeing them--of either avoiding or courting them, according to the different modes in which we are affected by them; we cannot apply any of these tests to immaterial beings; to spirits; neither can those men who are unceasingly talking to mankind of these inconceivable things. _thirdly_, we have a consciousness of certain modifications in ourselves, which we call sentiment, thought, will, passions: for want of being acquainted with our own peculiar essence; for want of precisely understanding the energy of our own particular organization, we attribute these effects to a concealed cause, distinguished from ourselves; which the theologians call a spiritual cause, inasmuch as it appears to act differently from our body. nevertheless, reflection, experience, every thing by which we are enabled to form any kind of judgment, proves that material effects can only emanate from material causes. we see nothing in the universe but physical, material effects, these can only be produced by analogous causes; it is, then certainly more rational to attribute them to nature herself, of which we may know something, if we will but deign to meditate her with attention, rather than to spiritual causes, of which we must for ever remain ignorant, let us study them as long as we please. if incomprehensibility be not a sufficient reason for absolutely denying the possibility of immateriality, it certainly is not of a cogency to establish its existence; we shall always be less in a capacity to comprehend a spiritual cause, than one that is material; because materiality is a known quality; spirituality is an occult, an unknown quality; or rather it is a mode of speech of which we avail ourselves to throw a veil over our own ignorance. we are repeatedly told that our senses only bring us acquainted with the external of things; that our limited ideas are not capable of conceiving immaterial beings: we agree frankly to this position; but then our senses do not even shew us the external of these immaterial substances, which the theologians will nevertheless attempt to define to us; upon which they unceasingly dispute among themselves; upon which even until this day they are not in perfect unison with each other. the great john locke in his familiar letters, says, "i greatly esteem all those who faithfully defend their opinions; but there are so few persons who, according to the manner they do defend them, appear fully convinced of the opinions they profess, that i am tempted to believe there are more sceptics in the world than are generally imagined." abady, one of the most strenuous supporters of immaterialism, says, "the question is not what incorporeity is, but whether it be." to settle this disputable point, it were necessary to have some data whereon to form our judgment; but how assure ourselves of the existence of that, of which we shall never be competent to have a knowledge? if we are not told what this is; if some tangible evidence be not offered to the human mind; how shall we feel ourselves capacitated to judge whether or not its existence be even possible? how form an estimate of that picture whose colours elude our sight, whose design we cannot perceive, whose features have no means of becoming familiar to our mind, whose very canvas refuses itself to our all research, of which the artist himself can afford no other idea, no other description, but that it is, although he himself can neither shew us how or where! we have seen the ruinous foundations upon which men have hitherto erected this fanciful idea of immateriality; we have examined the proofs which they have offered, if proofs they can be called, in support of their hypothesis; we have sifted the evidence they have been willing to have accredited, in order to establish their position; we have pointed out the numberless contradictions that result from their want of union on this subject, from the irreconcileable qualities with which they clothe their imaginary system. what conclusion, then, ought fairly, rationally, consistently, to be drawn from the whole? can we, or can we not admit their argument to be conclusive, such as ought to be received by beings who think themselves sane? will it allow any other inference than that it has no existence; that immateriality is a quality hitherto unproved; the idea of which the mind of man has no means of compassing? still they will insist, "there are no contradictions between the qualities which they attribute to these immaterial substances; but there is a difference between the understanding of man and the nature of these substances." this granted, are they nearer the point at which they labour? what standard is it necessary man should possess, to enable him to judge of these substances? can they shew the test that will lead to an acquaintance with them? are not those who have thus given loose to their imagination, who have given birth to this system, themselves men? does not the disproportion, of which they speak with such amazing confidence, attach to themselves as well as to others? if it needs an infinite mind to comprehend infinity--to form an idea of incorporeity--can the theologian himself boast he is in a capacity to understand it? to what purpose then is it they speak of these things to others? why do they attempt descriptions of that which they allow to be indescribable? man, who will never be an infinite being, will never be able to conceive infinity; if, then, he has hitherto been incompetent to this perfection of knowledge, can he reasonably flatter himself he will ever obtain it; can he hope under any circumstances to conquer that which according to the shewing of all is unconquerable? nevertheless it is pretended, that it is absolutely necessary to know these substances: but how prove the necessity of having a knowledge of that which is impossible to be known? we are then told that good sense and reason are sufficient to convince us of its existence: this is taking new ground, when the old has been found untenable: for we are also told that reason is a treacherous guide; one that frequently leads us astray; that in religious matters it ought not to prevail: at least then they ought to shew us the precise time when we must resume this reason. shall we consult it again, when the question is, whether what they relate is probable; whether the discordant qualities which they unite are consistently combined; whether their own arguments have all that solidity which they would themselves wish them to possess? but we have strangely mistaken them if they are willing that we should recur to it upon these points; they will instead, insist we ought blindly to be directed by that which they vouchsafe to inform us; that the most certain road to happiness is to submit in all things to that which they have thought proper to decide on the nature of things, of which they avow their own ignorance, when they assert them to be beyond the reach of mortals. thus it would appear that when we should consent to accredit these mysteries, it would never arise of our own knowledge; seeing this can no otherwise obtain but by the effect of demonstrable evidence; it would never arise from any intimate conviction of our minds; but it would be entirely on the word of the theologian himself, that we should ground our faith; that we should yield our belief. if these things are to the human species what colours are to the man born blind, they have at least no existence with relation to ourselves. it will avail the blind man nothing to tell him these colours have no less existence, because he cannot see them. but what shall we say of that portrait whose colours the blind man attempts to explain, whose features he is willing we should receive upon his authority, whose proportions are to be taken from his description, merely because we know he cannot behold them? the doctor, although unwilling to relinquish his subject, removes none of the difficulty when he asks, "are our five senses, by an absolute necessity in the nature of the thing, all and the only possible ways of perception? and is it impossible and contradictory there should be any being in the universe, indued with ways of perception different from these that are the result of our present composition? or are these things, on the contrary, purely arbitrary; and the same power that gave us these, may have given others to other beings, and might, if he had pleased have given to us others in this present state?" it seems perfectly unnecessary to the true point of the argument to reason upon what can or cannot be done: i therefore reply, that the fact is, we have but five senses: by the aid of these man is not competent to form any idea whatever of immateriality; but he is also in as absolute a state of ignorance, upon what might be his capabilities of conception, if he had more senses. it is rather acknowledging a weakness in his evidence, on the part of the doctor, to be thus obliged to rest it upon the supposition of what might be the case, if man was a being different to what he is; in other words, that they would be convincing to mankind if the human race were not human beings. therefore to demand what the divinity could have done in such a case, is to suppose the thing in question, seeing we cannot form an idea how far the power of the divinity extends: but we may be reasonably allowed to use the theological argument in elucidation; these men very gravely insist, upon what authority must be best known to themselves, "that god cannot communicate to his works that perfection which he himself possesses;" at the same moment they do not fail to announce his omnipotence. will it require any capacity, more than is the common lot of a child, to comprehend the absurd contradiction of the two assertions? as beings possessing but five senses, we must then, of necessity, regulate our judgment by the information they are capable of affording us: we cannot, by any possibility, have a knowledge of those, which confer the capacity to comprehend beings, of an order entirely distinguished from that in which we occupy a place. we are ignorant of the mode in which even plants vegetate, how then be acquainted with that which has no affinity with ourselves? a man born blind, has only the use of four senses; he has not the right, however, of assuming it as a fact, there does not exist an extra sense for others; but he may very reasonably, and with great truth aver, that he has no idea of the effects which would be produced in him, by the sense which he lacks: notwithstanding, if this blind man was surrounded by other men, whose birth had also left them devoid or sight, might he not without any very unwarrantable presumption, be authorized to inquire of them by what right, upon what authority, they spoke to him of a sense they did not themselves possess; how they were enabled to reason, to detail the minutiae of that sensation upon which their own peculiar experience taught them nothing? in short, we can again reply to dr. clarke, and to the theologians, that following up their own systems, the supposition is impossible, and ought not to be made, seeing that the divinity, who according to their own shewing, made man, was not willing that he should have more than five senses; in other words, that he should be nothing but what he actually is; they all found the existence of these immaterial substances upon the necessity of a power that has the faculty to give a commencement to motion. but if matter has always existed, of which there does not seem to exist a doubt, it has always had motion, which is as essential to it as its extent, and flows from its primitive properties. indeed the human mind, with its five senses, is not more competent to comprehend matter devoid of motion, than it is to understand the peculiar quality of immateriality: motion therefore exists only in and by matter; mobility is a consequence of its existence; not that the great whole can occupy other parts of space than it actually does; the impossibility of that needs no argument, but all its parts can change their respective situations--do continually change them; it is from thence results the preservation, the life of nature, which is always as a whole immutable: but in supposing, as is done every day, that matter is inert, that is to say, incapable of producing any thing by itself, without the assistance of a moving power, which sets it in motion, are we by any means enabled to conceive that material nature receives this activity from an agent, who partakes in nothing of material substance? can man really figure to himself, even in idea, that that which has no one property of matter, can create matter, draw it from its own peculiar source, arrange it, penetrate it, give it play, guide its course? is it not, on the contrary, more rational to the mind, more consistent with truth, more congenial to experience, to suppose that the being who made matter is himself material: is there the smallest necessity to suppose otherwise? can it make man either better or worse, that he should consider the whole that exists as material? will it in any manner make him a worse subject to his sovereign; a worse father to his children; a more unkind husband; a more faithless friend? motion, then, is co-eternal with matter: from all eternity the particles of the universe have acted and reacted upon each other, by virtue of their respective energies; of their peculiar essences; of their primitive elements; of their various combinations. these particles must have combined in consequence of their affinity; they must have been either attracted or repelled by their respective relations with each other; in virtue of these various essences, they must have gravitated one upon the other; united when they were analagous; separated when that analogy was dissolved, by the approach of heterogeneous matter; they must have received their forms, undergone a change of figure, by the continual collision of bodies. in a material world the acting powers must be material: in a whole every part of which is essentially in motion, there is no occasion for a power distinguished from itself; the whole must be in perpetual motion by its own peculiar energy. the general motion, as we have elsewhere proved, has its birth from the individual motion, which beings ever active must uninterruptedly communicate to each other. thus every cause produces its effect; this effect in its turn becomes a cause, which in like manner produces an effect; this constitutes the eternal chain of things, which although perpetually changing in its detail, suffers no change in its whole. theology, after all, has seldom done more than personify this eternal series of motion; the principle of mobility inherent to matter: it has clothed this principle with human qualities, by which it has rendered it unintelligible: in applying these properties, they have taken no means of understanding how far they were suitable or not: in their eagerness to make them assimilate, they have extended them beyond their own conception; they have heaped them together without any judgment; and they have been surprised when these qualities, contradictory in themselves, did not enable them satisfactorily to account for all the phenomena they beheld; from thence they have wrangled; accused each other of imbecility; yet infuriated themselves against whoever had the temerity to question that which they did not themselves understand; in short, they have acted like a man who should insist that all other men should have precisely the same vision that he himself had dreamed. be this as it may, the greater portion of what either dr. clarke or the theologians tell us, becomes, in some respects, sufficiently intelligible as soon as applied to nature--to matter: it is eternal, that is to say, it cannot have had a commencement, it never will have an end; it is infinite, that is to say, we have no conception of its limits. nevertheless, human qualities, which must be always borrowed from ourselves, and with others we have a very slender acquaintance, cannot be well suitable to the entire of nature; seeing that these qualities are in themselves modes of being, or modes which appertain only to particular beings: not to the great whole which contains them. thus, to resume the answers which have been given to dr. clarke, we shall say: _first_, we can conceive that matter has existed from all eternity, seeing that we cannot conceive it to have been capable of beginning. _secondly_, that matter is independent, seeing there is nothing exterior to itself; that it is immutable, seeing it cannot change its nature, although it is unceasingly changing its form and its combinations. _thirdly_, that matter is self-existent, since not being able to conceive it can be annihilated, we cannot possibly conceive it can have commenced to exist. _fourthly_, that we do not know the essence, or the true nature of matter, although we have a knowledge of some of its properties; of some of its qualities: according to the mode in which they act upon us. _fifthly_, that matter not having had a beginning, will never have an end, although its numerous combinations, its various forms, have necessarily a commencement and a period. _sixthly_, that if all that exists, or every thing our mind can conceive is matter, this matter is infinite; that is to say, cannot be limited by any thing; that it is omnipresent, seeing there is no place exterior to itself, indeed, if there was a place exterior to it, that would be a vacuum. _seventhly_, that nature is unique, although its elements or its parts may be varied to infinity, indued with properties extremely opposite; with qualities essentially different. _eighthly_, that matter, arranged, modified, and combined in a certain mode, produces in some beings what we call intelligence, which is one of its modes of being, not one of its essential properties, _ninthly_, that matter is not a free agent, since it cannot act otherwise than it does, in virtue of the laws of its nature, or of its existence; that consequently, heavy bodies must necessarily fall; light bodies by the same necessity rise; fire must burn; man must experience good and evil, according to the quality of the beings whose action he experiences. _tenthly_, that the power or the energy of matter, has no other bounds than those which are prescribed by its own existence. _eleventhly_, that wisdom, justice, goodness, &c. are qualities peculiar to matter combined and modified, as it is found in some beings of the human species; that the idea of perfection is an abstract, negative, metaphysical idea, or mode of considering objects, which supposes nothing real to be exterior to itself. _twelfthly_, that matter is the principle of motion, which it contains within itself: since matter alone is capable of either giving or receiving motion: this is what cannot be conceived of immateriality or simple beings destitute of parts, devoid of extent, without mass, having no ponderosity, which consequently cannot either move itself or other bodies. chap. v. _examination of the proofs offered by descartes, malebranche, newton, &c_. if the evidence of clarke did not prove satisfactory--if the theologians of his day disputed the manner in which he handled his subject--if they were disposed to think he had not established his argument upon proper foundations, it did not seem probable that either the system of descartes, the sublime reveries of malebranche, or the more methodical mode adopted by newton, were at all likely to meet with a better reception; the same objections will lie against them all, that they have not demonstrated the existence of their immaterial substances; although they have incessantly spoken of them, as if they were things of which they had the most intimate knowledge. unfortunately this is a rock which the most sublime geniuses have not been competent to avoid: the most enlightened men have done little more than stammer upon a subject which they have all concurred in considering of the highest importance; which they unceasingly hold forth as the most necessary for man to know; without at the same time considering he is not in a condition to occupy himself with objects inaccessible to his senses--which his mind, consequently, can never grasp--which his utmost research cannot bring into that tangible shape by which alone he can be enabled to form a judgment. to the end that we may be convinced of that want of solidity which the greatest men have not known how to give to the proofs they have offered, but which they have successively imagined has established their positions, let us briefly examine what the most celebrated philosophers, what the most subtile metaphysicians have said. for this purpose we will begin with descartes, the restorer of philosophy among the moderns, to whose sublime errors we are indebted for the effulgent truths of the newtonian system. this great man himself tells us, "all the strength of argument which i have hitherto used to prove the existence of immaterial substances, consists in this, that i acknowledge it would not be possible, my nature was such as it is, that is to say, that i should have in me the idea of immateriality, if this incorporeity did not truly exist; this same immateriality, of which the idea is in me, possesses all those high perfections of which our mind can have some slight idea, without however being able to comprehend them." in another place he says, "we must necessarily conclude from this alone, that because i exist, and have the idea of immateriality, that is to say, of a most perfect being, the existence is therefore most evidently demonstrated." there are not, perhaps, many except descartes himself, to whom this would appear quite so conclusive; who would be impressed with the conviction which he seems to imagine is so very substantive. _first_, we shall reply to descartes, it is not a warrantable deduction, that because we have an idea of a thing, we must therefore conclude it exists; to give validity to such a mode of reasoning would be productive of the greatest mischief; would, in fact, tend to subvert all human institutions. our imagination presents us with the idea of a sphinx, or of an hippogriff, besides a thousand other fantastical beings; are we, on that authority, to insist that these things really exist? is the mere circumstance of our having an idea of various parts of nature, discrepantly jumbled together, without any other evidence as to the assemblage, a sufficient warrantry for calling upon mankind to accredit the existence of such heterogeneous masses? if a philosopher of the most consummate experience, of the greatest celebrity, one who enjoyed the confidence of mankind above every other, was to detail the faculties and perfections of these visionary beings, although he should hold them forth as the perfection of all natural combinations, would, i say, any reasonable being lend himself to the asseveration? _secondly_, it is obvious that the mere circumstance of existence, does not prove the absolute existence of any thing anterior to itself; although in man, as well as the other beings of nature, it is evidence that something has existed before him. if this argument was to be admitted, are they aware how far it, would carry them? to maintain that the existence of one being demonstrably proves the existence of an anterior being, would be, in fact, denying that any thing was self-existent. the fallacy of such a position is too glaring to need refutation. _thirdly_, it is not possible he should have a distinct, positive idea of immateriality, of which be, as well as the theologian, labours to prove the existence. it is impossible for man, for a material being, to form to himself a correct idea, or indeed any idea, of incorporeity; of a substance without extent, acting upon nature, which is corporeal; a truth which it may not be presuming too much to say we have already sufficiently proved. _fourthly_, it is equally impossible for man to have any clear, decided idea of perfection, of infinity, of immensity, and other theological attributes. to descartes we must therefore reply as we have done to dr. clarke on his twelfth proposition. thus nothing can well be less conclusive than the proofs upon which descartes rests the existence of immateriality. he gives it thought and intelligence, but how conceive these qualities without a subject to which they may adhere? he pretends that we cannot conceive it but "as a power which applies itself successively to the parts of the universe." again, he says, "that an immaterial substance cannot be said to have extent, but as we say of fire contained in a piece of iron, which has not, properly speaking, any other extension than that of the iron itself." according to these notions we shall be justified in taxing him with having announced in a very clear, in a most unequivocal manner, that this is nature herself: this indeed is a pure spinosism; it was decidedly on the principles of descartes that spinosa drew up his system; in fact it flows out of it consecutively. we might, therefore, with great reason, accuse descartes of atheism, seeing that he very effectually destroys the feeble proofs he adduces in support of his own hypothesis; we have solid foundation for insisting that his system overturns the idea of the creation, because if from the modification we subtract the subject, the modification itself disappears: and if, according to the cartesians, this immateriality is nothing without nature, they are complete spinosians, with another name. if incorporeity is the motive-power of this nature, it no longer exists independently; it, in fact, exists no longer than the subject to which it is inherent subsists. thus no longer existing independently, it will exist only while the nature which it moves shall endure; without matter, without a subject to move, to preserve, what is to become of it, according to this doctrine, or rather according to this elucidation of a system which is in itself untenable? it will be obvious from this, that descartes, far from establishing on a rocky foundation the existence of this immateriality, totally destroys his own system. the same thing will necessarily happen to all those who reason upon his principles; they will always finish by confuting him, and by contradicting themselves. the same want of just inference, the same discrepancy, will obtrude themselves in the principles of the celebrated father malebranche; which, if considered with the slightest attention, appear to conduct directly to spinosism; in fact, can any thing be more in unison with the language of spinosa himself, than to say, as does malebranche, "that the universe is only an emanation from god; that we see every thing in god, that every thing we see is only god; that god alone does every thing that is done; that all the action, with every operation that takes place in nature, is god himself; in a word, that god is every being and the only being." is not this formally asserting that nature herself is god? moreover, at the same time malebranche assures us we see every thing in god, he pretends that it is not yet clearly demonstrated that matter and bodies have existence; that faith alone teaches us these mysteries, of which, without it, we should not have any knowledge whatever. in reply, it might be a very fair question, how the existence of the being who created matter can be demonstrated, if the existence of this matter itself be yet a problem? he himself acknowledges "that we can have no distinct demonstration of the existence of any other being than of that which is necessary;" he further adds, "that if it be closely examined, it will be seen, that it is not even possible to know with certitude, if god be or be not truly the creator of a material, of a sensible world." according to these notions, it is evident, that, following up the system of malebranche, man has only his faith to guarantee the existence of the world; yet faith itself supposes its existence; if it be not, however, certain that it does exist, and the bishop of cloyne, dr. berkeley, has also held this in doubt, how shall we be persuaded that we must believe the oracles which have been delivered to a visionary world? on the other hand, these notions of malebranche completely overturns all the theological doctrines of free agency. how can the liberty of man's action be reconciled with the idea that it is the divinity who is the immediate mover of nature; who actually gives impulse to matter and bodies, without whose immediate interference nothing takes place; who pre-determines his creatures to every thing they do? how can it be pretended, if this doctrine is to be accredited, that human souls have the faculty of forming thoughts--have the power of volition--are in a condition to move themselves--have the capacity to modify their existence? if it be supposed with the theologians, that the conservation of the creatures in the universe is a continued creation, must it not appear, that being thus perpetually recreated, they are enabled to commit evil? it will then be a self-evident fact, that, admitting the system of malebranche, god does every thing, and that his creatures are no more than passive instruments in his hands. under this idea they could not be answerable for their sins, because they would have no means of avoiding them. under this notion they could neither have merit or demerit; they would be like a sharp instrument in their own hands, which whether it was applied to a good or to an evil purpose, it would attach to themselves, not to the instrument: this would annihilate all religion: it is thus that theology is continually occupied with committing suicide. let us now see, if the immortal newton, the great luminary of science, the champion of astronomical truth, will afford us clearer notions, more distinct ideas, more certain evidence of the existence of immaterial substances. this great man, whose comprehensive genius unravelled nature, whose capacious mind developed her laws, seems to have bewildered himself, the instant he lost sight of them. a slave to the prejudices of his infancy, he had not the courage to hold the lamp of his own enlightened understanding to the agent theology has so gratuitously associated with nature; he has not been able to allow that her own peculiar powers were adequate to the production of that beautiful phenomena, he has with such masterly talents so luminously explained. in short, the sublime newton himself becomes an infant when he quits physics, when he lays aside demonstration, to lose himself in the devious sinuosities, in the inextricable labyrinths, in the delusive regions of theology. this is the manner in which he speaks of the divinity: "this god," says he, "governs all, not as the soul of the world, but as the lord and sovereign of all things. it is in consequence of his sovereignty that he is called the lord god, [greek letters], _pantokrator_, the universal emperor. indeed the word god is relative and relates itself with slaves; the deity is the dominion or the sovereignty of god, not over his own body, as those think who look upon god as the soul of the world, but over slaves." from this it will be seen that newton, as well as the theologians, makes the divinity a pure spirit, who presides over the universe as a monarch, as a lord paramount; that is to say, what man defines in earthly governors, despot, absolute princes, powerful monarchs, whose governments have no model but their own will, who exercise an unlimited power over their subjects, transformed into slaves; whom they usually compel to feel in a very grievous manner the weight of their authority. but according to the ideas of newton, the world has not existed from eternity, the staves of god have been formed in the course of time; from this it would be a just inference, that before the creation of the world the god of newton was a sovereign without subjects. let us see if this truly great philosopher is more in unison with himself in the subsequent ideas which he delivers on this subject. "the supreme god," he says, "is an eternal, infinite, and absolutely perfect being; but however perfect a being may be, if he has no sovereignty he is not the supreme god. the word god signifies lord, but every lord is not god; it is the sovereignty of the spiritual being which constitutes god; it is the true sovereignty which constitutes the true god; it is the supreme sovereignty which constitutes the supreme god; it is a false sovereignty which constitutes a false god. from true sovereignty, it follows, that the true god is living, intelligent, and powerful; and from his other perfections, it follows, that he is supremely or sovereignly perfect. he is eternal, infinite, omniscient; that is to say, he exists from eternity, and will never have an end; he governs all, and he knows every thing that is done, or that can be done. he is neither eternity nor infinity, but he is eternal and infinite; he is not space or duration, but he exists and is present." the term here used is _adest_, which appears to have been placed there to avoid saying that god is contained in space. in all this unintelligible series, nothing is to be found but incredible efforts to reconcile the theological attributes, the abstract with the human qualities, which have been ascribed to the divinity; we see in it negative qualities, which can no longer be suitable to man, given, however, to the sovereign of nature, whom he has supposed a king. however it may be, this picture always supposes the supreme god to have occasion for subjects to establish his sovereignty. it makes god stand in need of man for the exercise of his empire; without these, according to the text, he would not be a king; he could have had no empire when there was nothing: but if this description of newton was just, if it really represented the divinity, we might be very fairly permitted to ask, does not this spiritual king exercise his spiritual empire in vain, upon refractory beings, who do not at all times do that which he is willing they should; who are continually struggling against his power; who spread disorder in his states? this spiritual monarch, who is master of the minds, of the souls, of the wills, of the passions of his slaves, does he leave them the freedom of revolting against him? this infinite monarch, who fills every thing with his immensity, who governs all, does he also govern the man who sins; does he direct his actions; is he in him when he offends his god? the devil, the false god, the evil principle, hath he not, according to this, a more extensive empire than the true god, whose projects, if we are to believe the theologians, he is unceasingly overturning? in earthly governments the true sovereign is generally considered to be him whose power in a state influences the greater number of his subjects. if, then, we could suppose him to be omnipresent, that is, present in all places, should we not say he was the sad witness to all the outrages committed against his authority, and we should not entertain a very exalted opinion of his power if he permitted them to continue. this, it is true, would be arguing upon a monarch of this world, still it would be the language held by observers. is the spirituality of the divinity well supported by those who say he fills all space, who from that instant give him extent, ascribe to him volume, make him correspond with the various points of space? this is the very reverse of an immaterial substance. "god is one," continues newton, "and he is the same for ever, and every where, not only by his virtue alone, or by his energy, but also by his substance." but how are we to conceive that a being who is in continual activity, who produces all the changes which beings undergo, can always be himself the same? what is to be understood by either this virtue or this energy? these are relative terms, which do not present any clear, distinct idea to our mind, except as they apply to man: what are we, however, to understand by the divine substance? if this substance be spiritual, that is, devoid of extent, how can there exist in it any parts? how can it give impulse to matter, how set it in motion? how can it even be conceived by mortals? nevertheless newton informs us, "that all things are contained in him, and are moved in him, but without reciprocity of action: god experiences nothing by the motion of bodies; these experience no resistance whatever by his omnipresence." it would here appear that he clothes the divinity with that which bears the character of vacuum--of nothing; without that, it would be almost impossible not to have a reciprocal action or relation between these substances, which are either penetrated or encompassed on all sides. it must be obvious, that in this instance our scientific author does not distinctly understand himself. he proceeds, "it is an incontestible truth, that god exists necessarily, and the same necessity obliges to exist always and every where: from whence it follows, that he is in every thing similar to itself; he is all eyes, all ears, all brains, all arms, all feeling, all intelligence, all action; but in a mode by no means human, by no means corporeal, and which is totally unknown to us. in the same manner as a blind man has no idea of colours, it is that we have no idea of the mode in which god feels and understands." the necessary existence of the divinity is precisely the thing in question; it is this existence that it was needful to have verified by proofs as clear, by evidence as distinct, by demonstration as strong, as gravitation and attraction. one would have hardly thought it possible the expansive capabilities of newton would not have compassed it. but oh, unrivalled genius! so mighty, so powerful, so colossal, while yet you was a geometrician; so insignificant, so weak, so inconsistent; when you became a theologian; that is to say, when you reasoned upon that which can neither be calculated, nor submitted to experience; how could you think of speaking to us on a subject which, by your own confession is to you just what a picture is to a man born blind? wherefore quit nature, which had already explained to you so much? why seek in imaginary spaces those causes, those powers, that energy, which she would have distinctly pointed out to you, had you been willing to have consulted her with your usual sagacity? the gigantic, the intelligent newton, suffers himself to be hoodwinked--to be blinded by prejudice; he has not courage to look a question fairly in the face, when that question involves notions which habit has rendered sacred to him; he turns his eyes from truth, he casts behind him his experience, he lulls to sleep his reason, when it becomes necessary to probe opinions full of contradictions, yet fraught with the best interests of humanity. let us, however, continue to examine how far the most transcendent genius is capable of leading himself astray, when once he abandons experience, when once he chains up his reason, when once he suffers himself to be guided by his imagination. "god," continues the father of modern philosophy, "is totally destitute of body and of corporeal figure; here is the reason why he cannot be either seen, touched, or understood; and ought not to be adored under any corporeal form." what idea, however, can be formed of a being who is resembled by nothing of which we have any knowledge? what are the relations that can be supposed to exist between such very dissimilar beings? when man renders this being his adoration, does he not, in fact, in despite of himself, make him a being similar to his own species; does he not suppose that, like himself, he is sensible to homage--to be won by presents--gained by flattery; in short, he is treated like a king of the earth, who exacts the respect, demands the fealty, requires the obedience of all who are submitted to him. newton adds, "we have ideas of his attributes, but we do not know that it is any one substance; we only see the figures and the colours of bodies; we only hear sounds; we only touch the exterior surfaces; we only scent odours; we only taste flavours: no one of our senses, no one of our reflections, can shew us the intimate nature of substances: we have still less ideas of god." if we have an idea of the attributes of god, it is only because we clothe him with those which belong to ourselves; which we never do more than aggrandize, which we only augment or exaggerate; we then mistake them for those qualities with which we were at first acquainted. if in all those substances which are pervious to our senses, we only know them by the effects they produce on us, after which we assign them qualities, at least these qualities are something tangible, they give birth to clear and distinct ideas. this superficial knowledge, however slender it may be, with which our senses furnish us, is the only one we can possibly have; constituted as we are, we find ourselves under the necessity of resting contented with it, and we discover that it is sufficient for our wants; but we have not even the most superficial idea of immateriality, or a substance distinguished from all those with which we have the slightest acquaintance. nevertheless, we hear men hourly reasoning upon it, disputing about its properties, advancing its faculties, as if they had the most demonstrable evidence of the fact; tearing each other in pieces, because the one does not readily admit what the other asserts, upon a subject which no man is competent to understand. our author goes on "we only have a knowledge of god by his attributes, by his properties, by the excellent and wise arrangement which he has given to all things, and by their final causes: we admire him in consequence of his perfections." i repeat, that we have no real knowledge of the divinity; that we borrow his attributes from ourselves; but it is evident these cannot be suitable to the universal being, who neither can have the same nature nor the same properties as particular beings; it is nevertheless after ourselves that we assign him intelligence, wisdom, perfection, in subtracting from them what we call defects. as to the order, or the arrangement of the universe, man finds it excellent, esteems it the perfection of wisdom, as long as it is favorable to his species; or when the causes which are co-existent with himself do not disturb his own peculiar existence; otherwise he is apt to complain of confusion, and final causes vanish: he then attributes to an immutable god, motives equally borrowed from his own peculiar mode of action, for deranging the beautiful order he so much admires in the universe. thus it is always in himself, that is, in his own individual mode of feeling, that he draws up the ideas of the order, the wisdom, the excellence, the perfection which he ascribes to the deity; whilst the good as well as the evil which take place in the world, are the necessary consequence of the essence of things; of the general, immutable laws of nature; in short, of the gravitation, of the repulsion of matter; of those unchangeable laws of motion, which newton himself has so ably thrown into light; but which he has by a strange fatuity forborne to apply when the question was concerning the cause of these phenomena, which prejudice has refused to the capabilities of nature. he goes on, "we revere, and we adore god, on account of his sovereignty: we worship him like his slaves; a god destitute of sovereignty, of providence, and of final causes, would be no more than nature and destiny." it is true that superstition enjoins man to adore its gods like ignorant slaves, who tremble under a master whom they know not; he certainly prays to them on all occasions, sometimes requesting nothing less than an entire change in the essence of things, to gratify his capricious desires, and it is perhaps well for him they are not competent to grant his request: in the origin, as we have shewn, these gods were nothing more than nature acting by necessary laws, clothed under a variety of fables; or necessity personified under a multitude of names. however this may be, we do not believe that true religion, that sterling worship which renders man grateful, whilst it exalts the majesty of the divinity, requires any such meanness from man that he should act like a slave; he is rather expected to sit down to the banquet prepared for him, with all the dignity of an invited guest; under the cheering consciousness of a welcome that is never accorded to slaves; nothing is required at his hands, but that he should conduct himself temperately in the banquetting-house; that he should be grateful for the good cheer he receives; that he should have virtue; (which we have already sufficiently explained is to render himself useful, by making others happy); that he should not by pertinaciously setting up whimsical opinions, and insisting on their adoption by his neighbour, disturb the harmony of the feast; that he should be sufficiently intelligent to know when he is really felicitous, and not seek to put down the gaiety of his fellow guests; but that he should rise from the board satisfied with himself, contented with others; in short, to comprise the whole in a trite axiom of one of the greek philosophers, he should learn the invaluable secret, "to _bear_ and _forbear_." but to proceed. newton tells us, "that from a physical and blind necessity, which should preside every where, and be always the same, there could not emanate any variety in the beings; the diversity which we behold, could only have its origin in the ideas and in the will of a being which exists necessarily;" but wherefore should not this diversity spring out of natural causes, from matter acting upon matter; the action of which either attracts and combines various yet analogous elements, or else separates beings by the intervention of those substances which have not a disposition to unite? is not bread the result of the combination of flour, yeast and water? as for the blind necessity, as it is elsewhere said, we must acknowledge it is that of which we are ignorant, either of its properties or its energies; of which being blind ourselves we have no knowledge of its mode of action. philosophers explain all the phenomena that occur by the properties of matter; and though they feel the want of a more intimate acquaintance with natural causes, they do not therefore the less believe them deducible from these properties or these causes. are, therefore, the philosophers atheists, because they do not reply, it is god who is the author of these effects? is the industrious workman, who makes gunpowder, to be challenged as an atheist, because he says the terrible effects of this destructive material, which inspired the native americans with such awe, which raised in their winds such wonder, are to be ascribed to the junction of the apparently harmless substances of nitre, charcoal and sulpher, set in activity by the accession of trivial scintillations, produced from the collision of steel with flint, merely because some bigoted _priest of the sun_, who is ignorant of the composition, chooses to think it is not possible such a striking phenomenon could be the work of any thing short of the secret agents, whom he has himself appointed to govern the world? "it is allegorically said that god sees, hears, speaks, smiles, loves, hates, desires, gives, receives, rejoices, grows angry, fights, makes, or fashions, &c. because all that is said of god, is borrowed from the conduct of man, by an imperfect analogy." man has not been able to act otherwise, for want of being acquainted with nature and her eternal course: whenever he has imagined a peculiar energy which he has not been able to fathom, he has given it the name of god; and he has then made him act upon the self-same principles, as he himself would adopt, according to which he would act if he was the master. it is from this proneness to _theanthropy_, that has flowed all those absurd, and frequently dangerous ideas, upon which are founded the superstitions of the world; who all adore in their gods either natural causes of which they are ignorant, or else powerful mortals of whose malice they stand in awe. the sequel will shew the fatal effects that have resulted to mankind from the absurd ideas they have very frequently formed to themselves of the divinity; that nothing could be more degrading to him, more injurious to themselves, than the idea of comparing him to an absolute sovereign, to a despot, to a tyrant. for the present let us continue to examine the proofs offered in support of their various systems. it is unceasingly repeated that the regular action, the invariable order, which reigns in the universe, the benefits heaped upon mortals, announce a wisdom, an intelligence, a goodness, which we cannot refuse to acknowledge, in the cause which produces these marvellous effects. to this we must reply, that it is unquestionably true that not only these things, but all the phenomena he beholds, indicate the existence of something gifted very superiorly to erring man; the great question, however, is one that perhaps will never be solved, what is this being? is this question answered by heaping together the estimable qualities of man? speaking with relation to ourselves, which is all that the theologian really does, although in such numerous regions he pretends to do a great deal more, we can apply the terms goodness, wisdom, intelligence, the best with which we are acquainted, to this being for the want of having those that may be appropriate; but i maintain, this does not, in point of fact, afford us one single idea of the _great cause of causes_; we admire his works; and knowing that what we approve highly in our own species, we attribute to their being wise, we say the divinity displays wisdom. so far it is well; but this, after all, is a human quality. if we consult experience, we shall presently be convinced that our wisdom does not bear the least affinity to the actions attributed to the divinity. to get at this a little closer, we must endeavour to find out what we do not call wisdom in man; this will help us to form an estimate, how very incompetent we are to describe the qualities of a being that differs so very materially from ourselves. we most certainly should not call him a wise man, who having built a beautiful residence, should himself set it on fire; and thus destroy what he had laboured so much to bring to perfection: yet this happens every day in nature, without its being in any manner a warrantry for us to charge her with folly. if therefore we were to form our judgments after our own puny ideas of wisdom, what should we say? why, in point of fact, just what the man does, who, thinking he has had too much rain, implores fine weather? which, properly translated, is neither more nor less than giving the divinity to understand he best knows what is proper for himself. the just, the only fair inference to be drawn from this, is, that we positively know nothing about the matter; that those who pretend they do, would, if it was upon any other subject, he suspected of having an unsound mind. we do not mean to insist that we are in the right, but we mean to aver that the object of this work is not so much either to build up new systems, or to put down old ones, as by shewing man the inconclusiveness of his reasonings upon matters not accessible to his comprehension--to induce him to be more tolerant to his neighbour--to invite him to be less rancorous against those who do not see with his eyes--to hold forth to him motives for forbearance, against those whose system of faith may not exactly harmonize with his own--to render him less ferocious in support of opinions, which, if he will but discard his prejudices, he may find not so solidly bottomed as he imagines. all we know is scarcely more than that the motion we witness in the universe is the necessary consequence of the laws of matter; that the uniformity of this motion is evidence of their immutability; that it is not too much to say it cannot cease to act in the manner it does, as long as the same causes operate, governed by the same circumstances. we evidently see that motion, however regular in our mind, that order, however beautiful to our admiring optics, yields to what we term disorder, to that which we designate frightful confusion, as soon as new causes, not analogous to the preceding, either disturb or suspend their action. we further know that a better knowledge of nature, the consequence of time, the result of patient, laborious, physical researches, with the comparison of facts and the application of experience, has enabled man in many instances to divert from himself the evil effects of inevitable causes, which anterior to these discoveries overwhelmed his unhappy progenitors with ruin. how far these salutary developements are to be carried by industry, what may be achieved by honesty, what light is to be gathered from the recession of prejudice, the wisest among men is not competent to decide. certain it is, that phenomena which for ages were supposed to denounce the anger of the deity against mankind, are now well understood to be common effects of natural causes. order, as we have elsewhere shewn, is only the effects which result to ourselves from a series of motion; there cannot be any disorder relatively to the great whole; in which all that takes place is necessary; in which every thing is determined by laws which nothing can change. the order of nature may be damaged or destroyed relatively to ourselves, but it is never contradicted relatively to herself, since she cannot act otherwise than she does: if we attribute to her the evils we sustain, we are equally obliged to acknowledge we owe to her the good we experience. it in said, that animals furnish a convincing proof of the powerful cause of their existence; that the admirable harmony of their parts, the mutual assistance they lend each other, the regularity with which they fulfill their functions, the preservation of these parts, the conservation of such complicated wholes, announce a workman who unites wisdom with power; in short, whole tracts of anatomy and botany have been copied to prove nothing more than that these things exist, for of the power that produced them there cannot remain a doubt. we shall never learn more from these erudite tracts, save that there exists in nature certain elements with an aptitude to attraction; a disposition to unite, suitable to form wholes, to induce combinations capable of producing very striking effects. to be surprised that the brain, the heart, the arteries, the veins, the eyes, the ears of an animal, act as we see them--that the roots of plants attract juices, or that trees produce fruit, is to be surprised that a tree, a plant, or an animal exists at all. these beings would not exist, or would no longer be that which we know they are, if they ceased to act as they do: this is what happens when they die. if the formation, the combination, the modes of action, variously possessed by these beings, if their conservation for a season, followed by their destruction or dissolution, prove any thing, it is the immutability of those laws which operate in nature: we cannot doubt the power of nature; she produces all the animals we behold, by the combination, of matter, continually in motion; the harmony that subsists between the component parts of these beings, is a consequence of the necessary laws of their nature, and of that which results from their combination. as soon as this accord ceases, the animal is necessarily destroyed: from this we must conclude that every mutation in nature is necessary; is only a consequence of its laws; that it could not be otherwise than it is, under the circumstances in which it is placed. man, who looks upon himself as the _chef d'oeuvre_, furnishes more than any other production a proof of the immutability of the laws of nature: in this sensible, intelligent, thinking being, whose vanity leads him to believe himself the sole object of the divine predilection, who forms his god after his own peculiar model, we see only a more inconstant, a more brittle machine; one more subject to be deranged by its extreme complication, than the grosser beings: beasts destitute of our knowledge, plants that vegetate, stones devoid of feeling, are in many respects beings more highly favored than man: they are at least exempted from the sorrows of the mind--from the torments of reflection--from that devouring, chagrin to which he is so frequently a prey. who is he who would not be a plant or a stone, every time reminiscence forces upon his imagination the irreparable loss of a beloved object? would it not be better to be an inanimate mass, than a restless, turbulent, superstitious being, who does nothing but tremble under the imaginary displeasure of beings of his own creation; who to support his own gloomy opinions, immolates his fellow creatures at the shrine of his idol; who ravages the country, and deluges the earth with the blood of those who happen to differ from him on a speculative point of an unintelligible creed? beings destitute of life, bereft of feeling, without memory, not having the faculties of thought, at least are not afflicted by the idea of either the past, the present, or the future; they do not at any rate believe themselves in danger of becoming eternally unhappy, because they way have reasoned badly; or because they happened to be born in a land where truth has never yet shed its refulgent beams on the darkened mind of perplexed mortals. let it not then be said that we cannot have an idea of a work, without also having an idea of the workman, as distinguished from his work: the savage, when he first beheld the terrible operation of gunpowder, did not form the most distant idea that it was the work of a man like himself. nature is not to be contemplated as a work of this kind; she is self-existent. in her bosom every thing is produced: she is an immense elaboratory, provided with materials, who makes the instruments of which she avails herself in her operations. all her works are the effects of her own energies; of those agents which she herself produces; of those immutable laws by which she sets every thing in activity. eternal, indestructible elements, ever in motion, combine themselves variously, and thus give birth to all beings, to all the phenomena which fill the weak eyes of erring mortals with wonder and dismay; to all the effects, whether good or bad, of which man experiences the influence; to all the vicissitudes he undergoes, from the moment of his birth until that of his death; to order and to confusion, which he never discriminates but by the various modes in which he is affected: in short, to all those miraculous spectacles with which he occupies his meditation--upon which he exercises his reason--which frequently spread consternation over the surface of the earth. these elements need nothing when circumstances favour their junction, save their own peculiar properties, whether individual or united, with the motion that is essential to them, to produce all those phenomena which powerfully striking the senses of mankind, either fill him with admiration, or stagger him with alarm. but supposing for a moment that it was impossible to conceive the work, without also conceiving the workman, who watches over his work, where must we place this workman? shall it be interior or exterior to his production? is he matter and motion, or is he only space or the vacuum? in all these cases either he would be nothing, or he would be contained in nature: as nature contains only matter and motion, it must be concluded that the agent who moves it is material; that he is corporeal; if this agent be exterior to nature, then we can no longer form any idea of the place which he occupieth: neither can we better conceive an immaterial being; nor the mode in which a spirit without extent can act upon matter from which it is separated. these unknown spaces, which imagination has placed beyond the visible world, can have no existence for a being, who with difficulty sees down to his feet; he cannot paint to his mind any image of the power which inhabit them; but if he is compelled to form some kind of a picture, he must combine at random the fantastical colours which he is ever obliged to draw from the world he inhabits: in this case he will really do no more than reproduce in idea, part or parcels of that which he has actually seen; he will form a whole which perhaps has no existence in nature, but which it will be in vain he strives to distinguish from her; to place out of her bosom. when he shall be ingenuous with himself, when he shall be no longer willing to delude others, he will be obliged to acknowledge, that the portrait he has painted, although in its combination it resembles nothing in the universe, is nevertheless in all its constituent members an exact delineation of that which nature presents to our view. hobbes in his _leviathan_ says, "the universe, the whole mass of things, is corporeal, that is to say, body; and hath the dimensions of magnitude, namely, length, breadth, and depth: also every part of body is likewise body, and hath the like dimensions; and consequently every part of the universe is body; and that which is not body, is no part of the universe; and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing; and consequently no where: nor does it follow from hence, that spirits are nothing, for they have dimensions, and are therefore really bodies; though that name in common speech be given to such bodies only as are visible, or palpable, that is, that have some degree of opacity: but for spirits they call them incorporeal; which is a name of more honour, and may therefore with more piety be attributed to god himself, in whom we consider not what attribute expresseth best his nature, which is incomprehensible; but what best expresseth our desire to honour him." it will be insisted that if a statue or a watch were shewn to a savage, who had never before seen either, he would not be able to prevent himself from acknowledging that these things were the works of some intelligent agent of greater ability, possessing more industry than himself: it will be concluded from thence, that we are in like manner obliged to acknowledge that the universe, that man, that the various phenomena, are the works of an agent, whose intelligence is more comprehensive, whose power far surpasses our own. granted: who has ever doubted it? the proposition is self-evident; it cannot admit of even a cavil. nevertheless we reply, in the _first place_, that it is not to be doubted that nature is extremely powerful; diligently industrious: we admire her activity every time we are surprised by the extent, every time we contemplate the variety, every time we behold those complicated effects which are displayed in her works; or whenever we take the pains to meditate upon them: nevertheless, she is not really more industrious in one of her works than she is in another; she is not fathomed with more ease in those we call her most contemptible productions, than she is in her most sublime efforts: we no more understand how she has been capable of producing a stone or a metal, than the means by which she organized a head like that of the illustrious newton. we call that man industrious who can accomplish things which we cannot; nature is competent to every thing: as soon therefore as a thing exists, it is a proof she has been capable of producing it: but it is never more than relatively to ourselves that we judge beings to be industrious: we then compare them to ourselves; and as we enjoy a quality which we call intelligence, by the assistance of which we accomplish things, by which we display our diligence, we naturally conclude from it, that those works which most astonish us, do not belong to her, but are to be ascribed to an intelligent being like ourselves, but in whom we make the intelligence commensurate with the astonishment these phenomena excite in us; that is to say, in other words, to our own peculiar ignorance, and the weakness incident to our nature. in the _second place_, we must observe, that the savage, to whom either the statue or the watch is brought, will or will not have ideas of human industry: if he has ideas of it, he will feel that this watch or this statue, way be the work of a being of his own species, enjoying faculties of which he is himself deficient: if he has no idea of it, if he has no comprehension of the resources of human art, when he beholds the spontaneous motion of the watch, he will be impressed with the belief that it is an animal, which cannot be the work of man. multiplied experience confirms this mode of thinking which is ascribed to the savage. the peruvians mistook the spaniards for gods, because they made use of gunpowder, rode on horseback, and came in vessels which sailed quite alone. the inhabitants of the island of tenian being ignorant of fire before the arrival of europeans, the first time they saw it, conceived it to be an animal who devoured the wood. thus it is, that the savage, in the same manner as many great and learned men, who believe themselves much more acute, will attribute the strange effects that strike his organs, to a genius or to a spirit; that is to say, to an unknown power; to whom he will ascribe capabilities of which he believes the beings of his own species are entirely destitute: by this he will prove nothing, except that he is himself ignorant of what man is capable of producing. it is thus that a raw unpolished people raise their eyes to heaven, every time they witness some unusual phenomenon. it is thus that the people denominate all those strange effects, with the natural causes of which they are ignorant, miraculous, supernatural, divine; but these are not by reasonable persons therefore considered proofs of what they assert: as the multitude are generally unacquainted with the cause of any thing, every object becomes a miracle in their eyes; at least they imagine god is the immediate cause of the good they enjoy--of the evil they suffer. in short, it is thus that the theologians themselves solve every difficulty that starts in their road; they ascribe to god all those phenomena, of the causes of which either they are themselves ignorant, or else unwilling that man should be acquainted with the source. in the _third place_, the savage, in opening the watch, and examining its parts, will perhaps feel, that this machinery announces a work which can only be the result of human labour. he will perhaps perceive, that they very obviously differ from the immediate productions of nature, whom he has not observed to produce wheels made of polished metal. he will further notice, perhaps, that these parts when separated, no longer act as they did when they were combined; that the motion he so much admired, ceases when their union is broken. after these observations, he will attribute the watch to the ingenuity of man; that is to say, to a being like himself, of whom he has some ideas, but whom he judges capable to construct machines to which he is himself utterly incompetent. in short, he will ascribe the honour of his watch to a being known to him in some respects, provided with faculties very far superior to his own; but he will be at an immense distance from the belief, that this material work, whose ingenuity pleases him so much, can be the effect of an immaterial cause; or of an agent destitute of organs, without extent; whose action upon material beings cannot be within, the sphere of his comprehension. nevertheless, man, when he cannot embrace the causes of things, does not scruple to insist that they are impossible to be the production of nature, although he is entirely ignorant how far the powers of this nature extend; to what her capabilities are equal. in viewing the world, we must acknowledge material causes for many of those phenomena which take place in it; those who study nature are continually adding fresh discoveries to this list of physical causes; science, as she enriches the intellectual stores of human enjoyment, every day throws a broader light on the energies of nature, which _prejudice_, aided by its almost inseparable companion, _ignorance_, would for ever bind down in the fetters of impotence. let us not, however, be told, that pursuing this hypothesis, we attribute every thing to a blind cause--to the fortuitous concurrence of atoms--to chance. those only are called blind causes of which we know not either the combination, the laws, or the power. those effects are called fortuitous, with whose causes man is unacquainted; to which his experience affords him no clue; which his ignorance prevents him from foreseeing. all those effects, of which he does not see the necessary connection with their causes, he attributes to chance. nature is not a blind cause; she never acts by chance; nothing that she does would ever be considered fortuitous, by him who should understand her mode of action--who had a knowledge of her resources--who was intelligent in her ways. every thing that she produces is strictly necessary--is never more than a consequence of her eternal, immutable laws; all is connected in her by invisible bonds; every effect we witness flows necessarily from its cause, whether we are in a condition to fathom it, or whether we are obliged to let it remain hidden from our view. it is very possible there should be ignorance on our part; but the words spirit, intelligence, will not remedy this ignorance; they will rather redouble it, by arresting our research; by preventing us from conquering those impediments which obstruct us in probing the natural causes of the effects, with which our visual faculties bring us acquainted. this may serve for an answer to the clamour of those who raise perpetual objections to the partizans of nature, by unceasingly accusing them with attributing every thing to chance. chance is a word devoid of sense, which furnishes no substantive idea; at least it indicates only the ignorance of its employers. nevertheless, we are triumphantly told, it is reiterated continually, that a regular work cannot be ascribed to the concurrence of chance. never, we are informed, will it be possible to arrive at the formation of a poem such as the iliad, by means of letters thrown together promiscuously or combined at random. we agree to it without hesitation; but, ingenuously, are the letters which compose a poem thrown with the hand in the manner of dice? it would avail as much to say, we could not pronounce a discourse with the feet. it is nature, who combines according to necessary laws, under given circumstances, a head organized in a mode suitable to bring forth a poem: it is nature who assembles the elements, which furnish man with a brain competent to give birth to such a work: it is nature, who, through the medium of the imagination, by means of the passions, in consequence of the temperament which she bestows upon man, capacitates him to produce such a masterpiece of fancy; such a never-fading effort of the mind: it is his brain modified in a certain manner, crowded with ideas, decorated with images, made fruitful by circumstances, that alone can become the matrix in which a poem can be conceived--in which the matter of it can be digested: this is the only womb whose activity could usher to an admiring world, the sublime stanzas which develope the story of the unfortunate priam, and immortalize their author. a head organized like that of homer, furnished with the same vigour, glowing with the same vivid imagination, enriched with the same erudition, placed under the same circumstances, would necessarily, and not by chance, produce the poem of the iliad; at least, unless it be denied that causes similar in every thing must produce effects perfectly identical. we should without doubt be surprised, if there were in a dice-box a hundred thousand dice, to see a hundred thousand sixes follow in succession; but if these dice were all cogged or loaded, our surprise would cease: the particles of matter may be compared to cogged dice, that is to say, always producing certain determinate effects under certain given circumstances; these particles being essentially varied in themselves, countless in their combinations, they are cogged in myriads of different modes. the head of homer, or of virgil, was no more than an assemblage of particles, possessing peculiar properties; or if they will, of dice cogged by nature; that is to say, of beings so combined, of matter so wrought, as to produce the beautiful poems of the iliad or the aeneid. as much may be said of all other productions: indeed, what are men themselves but cogged dice--machines into which nature has infused the bias requisite to produce effects of a certain description? a man of genius produces a good work, in the same manner as a tree of a good species, placed in a prolific soil, cultivated with care, grafted with judgment, produces excellent fruit. then is it not either knavery or puerility, to talk of composing a work by scattering letters with the hand; by promiscuously mingling characters; or gathering together by chance, that which can only result from a human brain, with a peculiar organization, modified after a certain manner? the principle of human generation does not develope itself by chance; it cannot be nourished with effect, expanded into life, but in the womb of a woman: a confused heap of characters, a jumble of symbols, is nothing more than an assemblage of signs, whose proper arrangement is adequate to paint human ideas; but in order that these ideas may be correctly delineated, it is previously requisite that they should have been conceived, combined, nourished, connected, and developed in the brain of a poet; where circumstances make them fructify, mature them, and bring them forth in perfection, by reason of the fecundity, generated by the genial warmth and the peculiar energy of the matrix, in which these intellectual seeds shall have been placed. ideas in combining, expanding, connecting, and associating themselves, form a whole, like all the other bodies of nature: this whole affords us pleasure, becomes a source of enjoyment, when it gives birth to agreeable sensations in the mind; when it offers to our examination pictures calculated to move us in a lively manner. it is thus that the history of the trojan war, as digested in the head of homer, ushered into the world with all the fascinating harmony of numbers peculiar to himself, has the power of giving a pleasurable impulse to heads, who by their analogy with that of this incomparable grecian, are in a capacity to feel its beauties. from this it will be obvious, that nothing can be produced by chance; that no effect can exist without an adequate cause for its existence; that the one must ever be commensurate with the other. all the works of nature grow out of the uniform action of invariable laws, whether our mind can with facility follow the concatenation of the successive causes which operate; or whether, as in her more complicated productions, we find ourselves in the impossibility of distinguishing the various springs which she sets in motion to give birth to her phenomena. to nature, the difficulty is not more to produce a great poet, capable of writing an admirable poem, than to form a glittering stone or a shining metal which gravitates towards a centre. the mode she adopts to give birth to these various beings, is equally unknown to us, when we have not meditated upon it; frequently the most sedulous attention, the most patient investigation affords us no information; sometimes, however, the unwearied industry of the philosopher is rewarded, by throwing into light the most mysterious operations. thus the keen penetration of a newton, aided by uncommon diligence, developed the starry system, which, for so many thousand years, had eluded the research of all the astronomers by whom he was preceded. thus the sagacity of a harvey giving vigour to his application, brought out of the obscurity in which for almost countless centuries it had been buried, the true course pursued by the sanguinary fluid, when circulating through the veins and arteries of man, giving activity to his machine, diffusing life through his system, and enabling him to perform those actions which so frequently strike an astonished world with wonder and regret. thus gallileo, by a quickness of perception, a depth of reasoning peculiar to himself, held up to an admiring world, the actual form and situation of the planet we inhabit; which until then had escaped the observation of the most profound geniuses--the most subtle metaphysicians--the whole host of priests; which when first promulgated was considered so extraordinary, so contradictory to all the then received opinions, either sacred or profane, that he was ranked as an atheist, as an impious blasphemer, to hold communion with whom, would secure to the communers a place in the regions of everlasting torment; in short, it was held an heresy of such an indelible dye, that notwithstanding the infallibility of his sacred function, pope gregory, who then filled the papal chair, excommunicated all those who had the temerity to accredit so abominable a doctrine. man is born by the necessary concurrence of those elements suitable to his construction; he increases in bulk, corroborates his system, expands his powers, in the same manner as a plant or a stone; which as well as himself, are augmented in their volume, invigorated in their capabilities, by the addition of homogeneous matter, that exists within the sphere of their attraction. man feels, thinks, receives ideas, acts after a certain manner, that is to say, according to his organic structure, which is peculiar to himself; that renders him susceptible of modifications, of which the stone and the plant are utterly incapable. on the other hand, the organization of these beings is of a nature to enable them to receive other modifications, which man is not more capacitated to experience, than the stone or the plant are those which constitute him what he is. in consequence of this peculiar arrangement, the man of genius produces works of merit; the plant when it is healthy yields delicious fruits the stone when it is placed in a suitable matrix possesses a glittering brilliance which dazzles the eyes of mortals; each in their sphere of action both surprise and delight us; because we feel that they excite in us sensations, that harmonize with what we call order; in consequence of the pleasure they infuse, by the rarity, by the magnitude, and by the variety of the effects which they occasion us to experience. nevertheless, that which is found most admirable in the productions of nature, that which is most esteemed in the actions of man, most highly valued in animals, most sought after in vegetation, most in request among fossils, is never more than the natural effects of the different particles of matter, diversely arranged, variously combined, submitted to numerous modifications; from matter thus united result organs, brains, temperament, taste, talents, all the multifarious properties, all the multitudinous qualities, which discriminate the beings whose multiplied activity make up the sum of what is designated animated nature. nature then produces nothing but what is necessary; it is not by fortuitous combinations, by chance throws, that she exhibits to our view the beings we behold; all her throws are sure, all the causes she employs have infallibly their effects. whenever she gives birth to extraordinary, marvellous, rare beings, it is, that the requisite order of things the concurrence of the necessary productive causes, happens but seldom. as soon as those beings exist, they are to be ascribed to nature, equally with the most familiar of her productions; to nature every thing is equally possible, equally facile, when she assembles together the instruments or the causes necessary to act. thus it seems presumption in man to set limits to the powers of nature, which he so very imperfectly understands. the combinations, or if they will, the throws that she makes in an eternity of existence, can easily produce all the beings that have existed: her eternal march must necessarily bring forth, again and again, the most astonishing circumstances; the most rare occurrences; those most calculated to rouse the wonder, to elicit the admiration of beings, who are only in a condition to give them a momentary consideration; who can get nothing more than a glimpse, without ever having either the leisure or the means to search into causes, which lie hid from their weak eyes, in the depths of cimmerian obscurity. countless throws during eternity, with elements and combinations varied almost to infinity, quite with relation to man, suffice to produce every thing of which he has a knowledge, with multitudes of other effects, of which he will never have the least conception. thus, we cannot too often repeat to the metaphysicians, to the supporters of immateriality, to the inconsistent theologians, who commonly ascribe to their adversaries the most ridiculous opinions, in order to obtain an easy, short-lived triumph in the prejudiced eyes of the multitude; or in the stagnant minds of those who never examine deeply; that chance is nothing but a word, as well as many other words, imagined solely to cover the ignorance of those to whom the course of nature is inexplicable--to shield the idleness of others who are too slothful to seek into the properties of acting causes. it is not chance that has produced the universe, it is self-existent; nature exists necessarily from all eternity: she is omnipotent because every thing is produced by her energies; she is omnipresent, because she fills all space; she is omniscient, because every thing can only be what it actually is; she is immovable, because as a whole she cannot be displaced; she is immutable, because her essence cannot change, although her forms may vary; she is infinite, because she cannot have any bounds; she is all perfect, because she contains every thing: in short, she has all the abstract qualities of the metaphysician, all the moral faculties of the theologian, without involving any contradiction, since that which is the assemblage of all, must of necessity contain the properties of all. however concealed may be her ways, the existence of nature is indubitable; her mode of action is in some respects known to us. experience amply demonstrates we might, if we were more industrious, become better acquainted with her secrets; but with an immaterial substance, with a pure spirit, the mind of man can never become familiar: he has no means by which he can picture to himself this incomprehensible, this inconceivable quality: in despite therefore of the roundness of assertion adopted by the theologian, notwithstanding all the subtilties of the metaphysician, it will always be for man, while he remains such as he now is, in the language of doctor samuel clarke, that, _of which nothing can with truth be affirmed_. chap. vi. _of pantheism; or of the natural ideas of the divinity._ the false principle that matter is not self-existent; that by its nature it is in an impossibility to move itself; consequently incompetent to the production of those striking phenomena which arrest our wondering eyes in the wide expanse of the universe; it will be obvious, to all who seriously attend to what has preceded, is the origin of the proofs upon which theology rests the existence of immateriality. after these suppositions, as gratuitous as they are erroneous, the fallacy of which we have exposed elsewhere, it has been believed that matter did not always exist, but that its existence, as well as its motion, is a production of time; due to a cause distinguished from itself; to an unknown agent to whom it is subordinate. as man finds in his own species a quality which he calls intelligence, which presides over all his actions, by the aid of which he arrives at the end he proposes to himself; he has clothed this invisible agent with this quality, which he has extended beyond the limits of his own conception: he magnified it thus, because, having made him the author of effects of which he found himself incapable, he did not conceive it possible that the intelligence he himself possessed, unless it was prodigiously amplified, would be sufficient to account for those productions, to which his erring judgment led him to conclude the natural energy of physical causes were not adequate. as this agent was invisible, as his mode of action was inconceivable, he made him a spirit, a word that really means nothing more than that he is ignorant of his essence, or that he acts like the breath of which he cannot trace the motion. thus, in speaking of spirituality, he designated an occult quality, which he deemed suitable to a concealed being, whose mode of action was always imperceptible to the senses. it would appear, however, that originally the word spirit was not meant to designate immateriality; but a matter of a more subtile nature than that which acted coarsely on the organs: still of a nature capable of penetrating the grosser matter--of communicating to it motion--of instilling into it active life--of giving birth to those combinations--of imparting to them those modifications, which his organic structure rendered him competent to discover. such was, as has been shewn, that all-powerful jupiter, who in the theology of the ancients, was originally destined to represent the etherial, subtile matter that penetrates, vivifies, and gives activity to all the bodies of which nature is the common assemblage. it would be grossly deceiving ourselves to believe that the idea of spirituality, such as the subtilty of dreaming metaphysicians present it in these days, was that which offered itself to our forefathers in the early stages of the human mind. this immateriality, which excludes all analogy with any thing but itself--which bears no resemblance to any thing of which man is capacitated to have a knowledge, was, as we have already observed, the slow, the tardy fruit of his imagination, after he had quitted experience, and renounced his reason. men reared in luxurious leisure, unceasingly meditating, without the assistance of those natural helps with which attentive observation would have furnished them, by degrees arrived at the formation of this incomprehensible quality, which is so fugitive, that although man has been compelled to reverence it, to accredit it against all the evidence of his senses, they have never yet been enabled to give any other explanation of its nature, than by using a term to which it is impossible to attach any intelligible idea. seraphis said, with tears in his eyes, "that in making him adopt the opinion of spirituality, they had deprived him of his god." many fathers of the church have given a human form to the divinity, and treated all those as heretics who made him spiritual. thus by dint of reasoning, by force of subtilizing, the word spirit no longer presents any one image upon which the mind can fix itself; when they are desirous to speak of it, it becomes impossible to understand them, seeing that each visionary paints it after his own manner; and in the portrait he forms, consults only his own temperament, follows nothing but his own imagination, adopts nothing but his own peculiar reveries; the only point in which they are at all in unison, is in assigning to it inconceivable qualities, which they naturally enough believe are best suited to the incomprehensible beings they have delineated: from the incompatible heap of these qualities, generally resulted a whole, whose existence they thus rendered impossible. in short, this word, which has occupied the research of so many learned and intelligent men; which is considered of such importance to mankind, has been, in consequence of theological reveries, always fluctuating: these never bearing the least resemblance to each other, it has become destitute of any fixed sense, a mere sound, to which each who echoes it affixes his own peculiar ideas, which are never in harmony with those of his neighbour; which indeed are not even steady in himself, but like the camelion, assume the colour of every differing circumstance. this unintelligible word has been substituted for the more intelligible one of matter; man, when clothed with power, has entertained the most rancorous antipathies, pursued the most barbarous persecutions, against those who have not been enabled to contemplate this changeable idea under the same point of view with himself. there have, however, been men who had sufficient courage to resist this torrent of opinion--to oppose themselves to this delirium; who have believed, that the object which was announced as the most important for mortals, as the sole object worthy of their thoughts, demanded an attentive examination; who apprehended that if experience could be of any utility, if judgment could afford any advantage, if reason was of any use whatever, it must, most unquestionably be, to consider this quality so opposed to every thing in nature, which was said to regulate all the beings which she contains. these quickly saw they could not subscribe to the general opinion of the uninformed, who never examine any thing, who take every thing upon the credit of others; much less was it consistent with sound sense to agree with their guides, who, either deceivers or deceived, forbade others to submit it to the scrutiny of reason; who were themselves frequently in an utter incapacity to pass it under such an ordeal. thus some thinkers, disgusted with the obscure and contradictory notions which others had through habit mechanically attached to this incomprehensible property, had the temerity to shake off the yoke which had been imposed upon them from their infancy: calling reason to their aid against those terrors with which they alarmed the ignorant, revolting at the hideous descriptions under which they attempted to defend their hypothesis, they had the intrepidity to tear the veil of delusion; to rend asunder the barriers of imposture; they considered with calm resolution, this formidable prejudice, contemplated with a serene eye this unsupported opinion, examined with cool deliberation this fluctuating notion, which had become the object of all the hopes, the source of all the fears, the spring of all the quarrels which distracted the mind, and disturbed the harmony of blind, confiding mortals. the result of these inquiries has uniformly been, a conviction that no rational proof has ever been adduced in support of this hypothesis; that from the nature of the thing itself, none can be offered; that an incorporeity is inconceivable to corporeal beings; that these only behold nature acting after invariable laws, in which every thing is material; that all the phenomena of which the world is the theatre, spring out of natural causes; that man as well as all the other beings is the work or this nature, is only an instrument in her hand, obliged to accomplish the eternal decrees of an imperious necessity. whatever efforts the philosopher makes to penetrate the secrets of nature, he never finds more, as we have many times repeated, than matter; various in itself, diversely modified in consequence of the motion it undergoes. its whole, as well as its parts, displays only necessary causes producing necessary effects, which flow necessarily one out of the other: of which the mind, aided by experience, is more or less competent to discover the concatenation. in virtue of their specific properties, all the beings that come under our review, gravitate towards a centre--attract analogous matter--repel that which is unsuitable to combination--mutually receive and give impulse--acquire qualities--undergo modifications which maintain them in existence for a season--are born and dissolved by the operation of an inexorable decree, that obliges every thing, we behold to pass into a new mode of existence. it is to these continued vicissitudes that are to be ascribed all the phenomena, whether trivial or of magnitude; ordinary or extraordinary; known or unknown; simple or complicated; which are operated in the universe. it is by these mutations alone that we have any knowledge of nature: she is only mysterious to those who contemplate her through the veil of prejudice: her course is always simple to those who look at her without prepossession. to attribute the effects to which we are witnesses, to nature, to matter, variously combined with the motion that is inherent to it, is to give them an intelligible and known cause; to attempt to penetrate deeper, is to plunge ourselves into imaginary regions, where we find only a chaos of obscurities--where we are lost in an unfathomable abyss of incertitude. let us then be content with contemplating nature, who, being self-existent, must in her essence possess motion; which cannot be conceived without properties, from which result perpetual action and re-action; or those continual efforts which give birth to such a numerous train of circumstances; in which a single molecule cannot be found, that does not necessarily occupy the place assigned to it, by immutable and necessary laws--that is for an instant in an absolute state of repose. what necessity can there exist to seek out of matter for a power to give it play, since its motion flows as necessarily out of its existence as its bulk, its form, its gravity, &c. since nature in inaction would no longer be nature? if it be demanded, how can we figure to ourselves, that matter by its own peculiar energy can produce all the effects we witness? i shall reply, that if by matter it is obstinately determined to understand nothing but a dead, inert mass, destitute of every property, incapable of moving itself, we shall no longer have a single idea of matter; we shall no longer be able to account for any thing. as soon, however, as it exists, it must have properties; as soon as it has properties, without which it could not exist, it must act by virtue of those properties; since it is only by its action we can have a knowledge of its existence, be conscious of its properties. it is evident that if by matter be understood that which it is not, or if its existence be denied, those phenomena which strike our visual organs cannot be attributed to it. but if by nature be understood (that which she really is), an heap of existing matter, possessing various properties, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that nature must be competent to move herself; by the diversity of her motion, must have the capability, independent of foreign aid, to produce the effects we behold; we shall find that nothing can be made from nothing; that nothing is made by chance; that the mode of action of every particle of matter, however minute, is necessarily determined by its own peculiar, or by its individual properties. we have elsewhere said, that that which cannot be annihilated--that which in its nature is indestructible--cannot have been inchoate, cannot have had a beginning to its existence, but exists necessarily from all eternity; contains within itself a sufficient cause for its own peculiar existence. it becomes then perfectly useless to seek out of nature a cause for her action which is in some respects known to us; with which indefatigable research may, judging of the future by the past, render us more familiar. as we know some of the general properties of matter; as we can discover some of its qualities, wherefore should we seek its motion in an unintelligible cause, of which we are not in a condition to become acquainted with any one of its properties? can we conceive that immateriality could ever draw matter from its own source? impossible; it is not within the grasp of human intellect. if creation is an eduction from nothing, there must have been a time when matter had not existence; there must consequently be a time when it will cease to be: this latter is acknowledged by many theologians themselves to be impossible. do those who are continually talking of this mysterious act of omnipotence, by which a mass of matter has been, all at once, substituted to nothing, perfectly understand what they tell us? is there a man on earth who conceives that a being devoid of extent can exist, become the cause of the existence of beings who have extent--act upon matter--draw it from his own peculiar essence--set it in motion? in truth, the more we consider theology, the more we must be convinced that it has invented words destitute of sense; substituted sounds to intelligible realities. for want of consulting experience, for want or studying nature, for want of examining the material world, we have plunged ourselves into an intellectual vacuum, which we have peopled with chimeras, we have not stooped to consider matter, to study its different periods, to follow it through its numerous, changes. we have either ridiculously or knavishly confounded dissolution, decomposition, the separation of the elementary particles of bodies, with their radical destruction; we have been unwilling to see that the elements are indestructible; although the forms are fleeting, and depend upon transitory combination. we have not distinguished the change of figure, the alteration of position, the mutation of texture, to which matter is liable, from its annihilation, which is impossible; we have falsely concluded, that matter was not a necessary being--that it commenced to exist--that this existence was derived from that which possessed nothing in common with itself--that that which was not substance, could give birth to that which is. thus an unintelligible name has been substituted for matter, which furnishes us with true ideas of nature; of which at each instant we experience the influence, of which we undergo the action, of which we feel the power, and of which we should have a much better knowledge, if our abstract opinions did not continually fasten a bandage over our eyes. indeed the most simple notions of philosophy shew us, that, although bodies change and disappear, nothing is however lost in nature; the various produce of the decomposition of a body serves for elements, supplies materials, forms the basis, lays the foundation for accretions, contributes to the maintenance of other bodies. the whole of nature subsists, and is conserved only by the circulation, the transmigration, the exchange, the perpetual displacement of insensible atoms--the continual mutation of the sensible combinations of matter. it is by this palingenesia, this regeneration, that the great whole, the mighty macrocosm subsists; who, like the saturn of the ancients, is perpetually occupied with devouring her own children. it will not then be inconsistent with observation, repugnant to reason, contrary to good sense, to acknowledge that matter is self-existent; that it acts by an energy peculiar to itself; that it will never be annihilated. let us then say, that matter is eternal; that nature has been, is, and ever will be occupied with producing and destroying; with doing and undoing; with combining and separating; in short, with following a system of laws resulting from its necessary existence. for every thing that she doth, she needs only to combine the elements of matter; these, essentially diverse, necessarily either attract or repel each other; come into collision, from whence results either their union or dissolution; by the same laws that one approximates, the other recedes from their respective spheres of action. it is thus that she brings forth plants, fossils, animals, men; thus she gives existence to organized, sensible, thinking beings, as well as to those who are destitute of either feeling or thought. all these act for the season of their respective duration, according to immutable laws, determined by their various properties; arising out of their configuration; depending on their masses; resulting from their ponderosity, &c. here is the true origin of every thing which is presented to our view; this indicates the mode by which nature, according to her own peculiar powers, is in a state to produce all those astonishing effects which assail our wondering eyes; all that phenomena to which mankind is the witness; as well as all the bodies who act diversely upon the organs with which he is furnished, of which he can only judge according to the manner in which these organs are affected. he says they are good, when they are analogous to his own mode of existence--when they contribute to the maintenance of the harmony of his machine: he says they are bad, when they disturb this harmony. it is thus he ascribes views, ideas, designs, to the being he supposes to be the power by which nature is moved; although all the experience we are able to collect, unequivocally proves, that she acts after an invariable, eternal code of laws. nature is destitute of those views which actuate man; she acts necessarily, because she exists: her system is immutable, and founded upon the essence of things. it is the essence of the seed of the male, composed of primitive elements, which serve for the basis of an organized being, to unite itself with that of the female; to fructify it; to produce, by this combination, a new organized being; who, feeble in his origin, not having yet acquired a sufficient quantity of material particles to give him consistence, corroborates himself by degrees; strengthens himself by the daily accretion of analogous matter; is nourished by the modifications appropriate to his existence: matured by the continuation of circumstances calculated to give vigour to his frame; thus he lives, thinks, acts, engenders in his turn other organized beings similar to himself. by a consequence of his temperament and of physical laws, this generation does not take place, except when the circumstances necessary to its production find themselves united. thus this procreation is not operated by chance; the animal does not fructify, but with an animal of his own species, because this is the only one analogous to himself, who unites the qualities, who combines the circumstances, suitable to produce a being resembling himself; without this he would not produce any thing, or he would only give birth to a being who would be denominated a monster, because it would be dissimilar to himself. it is of the essence of the grain of plants, to be impregnated by the pollen or seed of the stygma of the flower; in this state of copulation they in consequence develope themselves in the bowels of the earth; expand by the aid of water; shoot forth by the accession of heat; attract analogous particles to corroborate their system: thus by degrees they form a plant, a shrub, a tree, susceptible of that life, filled with that motion, capable of that action which is suitable to vegetable existence. it is of the essence of particular particles of earth, homogeneous in their nature, when separated by circumstances, attenuated by water, elaborated by heat, to unite themselves in the bosom of mountains, with other atoms which are analogous; to form by their aggregation, according to their various affinities, those bodies possessing more or less solidity; having more or less purity, which are called diamonds, chrystals, stones, metals, minerals. it is of the essence of exhalations raised by the heat of the atmosphere, to combine, to collect themselves, to dash against each other, and either by their union or their collision to produce meteors, to generate thunder. it is of the essence of some inflammable matter to gather itself together, to ferment in the caverns of the earth, to increase its active force by augmenting its heat, and then explode, by the accession of other matter suitable to the operation, with that tremendous force which we call earthquakes; by which mountains are destroyed; cities overturned; the inhabitants of the plains thrown into a state of consternation; these full of alarm, unused to meditate on natural effects, unconscious of the extent of physical powers, stretch forth their hands in dismay, heave the most desponding sighs, utter aloud their complaints, and earnestly implore a cessation of those evils, which nature, acting by necessary laws, obliges them to experience as necessarily as she does those benefits by which she fills them with the most extravagant joy. in short, it is of the essence of certain climates to produce men so organized, whose temperament is so modified, that they become either extremely useful or very prejudicial to their species, in the same manner as it is the property of certain portions of the land, to bring forth either delicious fruits or dangerous poisons. in all this nature acts necessarily; she pursues an undeviating course, which we are bound to consider the perfection of wisdom; because she exists necessarily, has her modes of action determined by certain, invariable laws, which themselves flow out of the constituent properties of the various beings she contains, and those circumstances, which the eternal motion she is in must necessarily bring about. it is ourselves who have a necessary aim, which is our own conservation; it is by this that we regulate all the ideas we form to ourselves of the causes acting in nature; it is according to this standard we judge of every thing we see or feel. animated ourselves, existing after a certain manner, possessing a soul endowed with rare and peculiar qualities, we, like the savage, ascribe a soul and animated life to every thing that acts upon us. thinking and intelligent ourselves, we give these, faculties to those beings whom we suppose to be more powerful than mortals; but as we see the generality of matter incapable of modifying itself, we suppose it must receive its impulse from some concealed agent, some external cause, which our imagination pictures as similar to ourselves. necessarily attracted by that which is advantageous to us, repelling by an equal necessity that which is prejudicial to our manner of existence; we cease to reflect that our modes of feeling are due to our peculiar organization, modified by physical causes: in this state, either of inattention or ignorance, we mistake the natural results of our own peculiar structure, for instruments employed by a being whom we clothe with our own passions--whom we suppose actuated by our own views--who, possessing our ideas, embraces a mode of thinking and acting similar to ourselves. if after this it be asked, what is the end of nature? we shall reply that on this head we are ignorant; that it is more than probable no man will ever fathom the secret; but we shall also say, it is evidently to exist, to act, to conserve her whole. if then it be demanded, wherefore she exists? we shall again reply, of this we know nothing at present, possibly never shall; but we shall also say, she exists necessarily, that her operations, her motion, her phenomena, are the necessary consequences of her necessary existence. there necessarily exists something; this is nature or the universe, this nature necessarily acts as she does. if it be wished to substitute any other word for nature, the question will still remain as it did, as to the cause of her existence; the end she has in view. it is not by changing of terms that a geometrician can solve problems; one word will throw no more light on a subject than another, unless that word carries a certain degree of conviction in the ideas which it generates. as long as we speak of matter, if we cannot develope all its properties, we shall at least have fixed, determinate ideas; something tangible, of which we have a slight knowledge, that we can submit to the examination of our senses: but from the moment we begin to talk of immateriality, of incorporeity, from thence our ideas become confused; we are lost in a labyrinth of conjecture--we have no one means of seizing the subject on any side--we are, after the most elaborate arguments, after the most subtle reasoning, obliged to acknowledge we cannot form the most slender opinion respecting it, that has any thing substantive for its support. in short, that it is precisely that thing "of which every thing may be denied, but of which nothing can with truth be affirmed." let us clothe this incomprehensible being with whatever qualities we may, it will be always in ourselves we seek the model; they will be our own faculties that we delineate, our own passions that we describe. in like manner man, as long as he is ignorant, will always conjecture that it is for himself alone the universe was formed; not withstanding, he has nothing more to do, than to open his eyes in order to be undeceived. he will then see, that he undergoes a common destiny, equally partakes with all other beings of the benefits, shares with them without exception the evils of life; like them he is submitted to an imperious necessity, inexorable in its decrees; which is itself nothing more than the sum total of those laws which nature herself is obliged to follow. thus every thing proves that nature, or matter, exists necessarily; that it cannot in any moment swerve from those laws imposed upon it by its existence. if it cannot be annihilated, it cannot have been inchoate. the theologian himself agrees that it requires a miracle to annihilate an atom. but is it possible to derogate from the necessary laws of existence? can that which exists necessarily, act but according to the laws peculiar to itself? miracle is another word invented to shield our own sloth, to cover our own ignorance; it is that by which we wish to designate those rare occurrences, those solitary effects of natural causes, whose infrequency do not afford us means of diving into their springs. it is only saying by another expression, that an unknown cause hath by modes which we cannot trace, produced an uncommon effect which we did not expect, which therefore appears strange to us. this granted, the intervention of words, far from removing the ignorance in which we found ourselves with respect to the power and capabilities of nature, only serves to augment it, to give it more durability. the creation of matter becomes to our mind as incomprehensible, and appears as impossible as its annihilation. let us then conclude that all those words which do not present to the mind any determinate idea, ought to be banished the language of those who are desirous of speaking so as to be understood; that abstract terms, invented by ignorance, are only calculated to satisfy men destitute of experience; who are too slothful to study nature, too timid to search into her ways; that they are suitable only to content those enthusiasts, whose curious imagination pleases itself with making fruitless endeavours to spring beyond the visible world; who occupy themselves with chimeras of their own creation: in short, that these words are useful only to those whose sole profession it is to feed the ears of the uninformed with pompous sounds, that are not comprehended by themselves--upon the sense of which they are in a state of perpetual hostility with each other--upon the true meaning of which they have never yet been able to come to a common agreement; which each sees after his own peculiar manner of contemplating objects, in which there never was, nor probably never will be, the least harmony of feeling. man is a material being; he cannot consequently have any ideas, but of that which like himself is material; that is to say, of that which is in a capacity to act upon his organs, which has some qualities analogous with his own. in despite of himself, he always assigns material properties to his gods; the impossibility he finds in compassing them, has made him suppose them to be spiritual; distinguished from the material world. indeed he, must be content, either not to understand himself, or he must have material ideas of the divinity; the human mind may torture itself as long as it pleases, it will never, after all its efforts, be enabled to comprehend, that material effects can emanate from immaterial causes; or that such causes can have any relation with material beings. here is the reason why man, as we have seen, believes himself obliged to give to his gods, these morals which he so much so highly esteems, in those beings of his race, who are fortunate enough to possess them: he forgets that a being who is spiritual, adopting the theological hypothesis, cannot from thence either have his organization, or his ideas; that it cannot think in his mode, nor act after his manner; that consequently it cannot possess what he calls intelligence, wisdom, goodness, anger, justice, &c. as he himself understands those terms. thus, in truth, the moral qualities with which he has clothed the divinity, supposes him material, and the most abstract theological notions, are, after all, founded upon a direct, undeniable _anthropomorphism_. in despite of all their subtilties, the theologians cannot do otherwise; like all the beings of the human species, they have a knowledge of matter alone: they have no real idea of a pure spirit. when they speak of the intelligence, of the wisdom, of the designs of their gods, they are always those of men which they describe, that they obstinately persist in giving to beings, of which, according to their own shewing, to the evidence they themselves adduce, their essence does not render them susceptible; who if they had those qualities with which they clothe them, would from that very moment cease to be incorporeal; would be in the truest sense of the word, substantive matter. how shall we reconcile the assertion, that beings who have not occasion for any thing--who are sufficient to them selves--whose projects must be executed as soon as they are formed; can have volition, passions, desires? how shall we attribute anger to beings without either blood or bile? how can we conceive an omnipotent being (whose wisdom we admire in the striking order he has himself established in the universe,) can permit that this beautiful arrangement should be continually disturbed, either by the elements in discord, or by the crimes of human beings? in short, this being cannot have any one of the human qualities, which always depend upon the peculiar organization of man--upon his wants--upon his institutions, which are themselves always relative to the society in which he lives. the theologian vainly strives to aggrandize, to exaggerate in idea, to carry to perfection by dint of abstraction, the moral qualities of man; they are unsuitable to the divinity; in vain it is asserted they are in him of a different nature from what they are in his creatures; that they are perfect; infinite; supreme; eminent; in holding this language, they no longer understand themselves; they can have no one idea of the qualities they are describing, seeing that man can never have a conception of them, but inasmuch as they bear an analogy to the same qualities in himself. it is thus that by force of metaphysical subtilty, mortals have no longer any fixed, any determinate idea of the beings to which they have given birth. but little contented with understanding physical causes, with contemplating active nature; weary of examining matter, which experience proves is competent to the production of every thing, man has been desirous to despoil it of the energy which it is its essence to possess, in order to invest it in a pure spirit; in an immaterial substance; which he is under the necessity of re-making a material being, whenever he has an inclination either to form an idea of it to himself, or make it understood by others. in assembling the parts of man, which he does no more than enlarge, which he swells out to infinity, he believes he forms an immaterial being, who, for that reason, acquires the capability of performing all those phenomena, with the true causes of which he is ignorant; nevertheless those operations of which he does comprehend the spring, he as sedulously denies to be due to the powers of this being; time, therefore, according to these ideas, as he advances the progress of science, as he further developes the secrets of nature, is continually diminishing the number of actions ascribed to this being--is constantly circumscribing his sphere of action. it is upon the model of the human soul that he forms the soul of nature, or that secret agent from which she receives impulse. after having made himself double, he makes nature in like manner twofold, and then he supposes she is vivified by an intelligence, which he borrows from himself, placed in an impossibility of becoming acquainted with this agent, as well as with that which he has gratuitously distinguished from his own body; he has invented the word spiritual to cover up his ignorance; which is only in other words avowing it is a substance entirely unknown to him. from that moment, however, he has no ideas whatever of what he himself has done; because he first clothes it with all the qualities he esteems in his fellows, and then destroys them by an assurance, that they in no wise resemble the qualities he has been so anxious to bestow. to remedy this inconvenience, he concludes this spiritual substance much more noble than matter; that its prodigious subtilty, which he calls simplicity, but which is only the effect of metaphysical abstraction, secures it from decomposition, from dissolution, from all those revolutions, to which material bodies, as produced by nature, are evidently exposed. it is thus, that man always prefers the marvellous to the simple; the unintelligible to the intelligible; that which he cannot comprehend, to that which is within the range of his understanding; he despises those objects which are familiar to him; he estimates those alone with which he is incapable of having any intercourse: that of which he has only confused vague ideas, he concludes must contain something important for him to know--must have something supernatural in its construction. in short, he needs mystery to move his imagination--to exercise his mind--to feed his curiosity; which never labours harder, than when it is occupied with enigmas impossible to be guessed at; which from that very circumstance, he judges to be extremely worthy of his research. this, without doubt, is the reason he looks upon matter, which he has continually under his eyes, which he sees perpetually in action, eternally changing its form, as a contemptible thing--as a contingent being, that does not exist necessarily; consequently, that cannot exist independently: this is the reason why he has imagined a spirit, which he will never be able to conceive; which on that account he declares to be superior to matter; which he roundly asserts to be anterior to nature, and the only self-existent being. the human wind found food in these mystical ideas, they unceasingly occupied it; the imagination had play, it embellished them after its own manner: ignorance fed itself with the fables to which these mysteries gave rise; habit identified them with the existence of man himself: when each could ask the other concerning these ideas, without any one being in a capacity to return a direct answer, he felt himself gratified, he immediately concluded that the general impossibility of reply stamped them with the wondrous faculty of immediately interesting his welfare; of involving his most prominent interests, more than all the things put together, with which he had any possible means of becoming intimately acquainted. thus they became necessary to his happiness; he believed he fell into a vacuum without them; he became the decided enemy to all those who endeavoured to lead him back to nature, which he had learned to despise; to consider only as an impotent mass, an heap of inert matter, not possessing any energy but what it received from causes exterior to itself; as a contemptible assemblage of fragile combinations, whose forms were continually subject to perish. in distinguishing nature from her mover, man has fallen into the same absurdity as when he separated his soul from his body; life from the living being; the faculty of thought from the thinking being: deceived on his own peculiar nature, having taken up an erroneous opinion upon the energy of his own organs, he has in like manner been deceived upon the organization of the universe; he has distinguished nature from herself; the life of nature from living nature; the action of nature from active nature. it was this soul of the world--this energy of nature--this principle of activity, which man first personified, then separated by abstraction; sometimes decorated with imaginary attributes; sometimes with qualities borrowed from his own peculiar essence. such were the aerial materials of which man availed himself to construct the incomprehensible, immaterial substances, which have filled the world with disputes--which have divided man from his fellow--which to this day he has never been able to define, even to his own satisfaction. his own soul was the model. deceived upon the nature of this, he never had any just ideas of the divinity, who was, in his mind, nothing more than a copy exaggerated or disfigured to that degree, as to make him mistake the prototype upon which it had been originally formed. if, because man has distinguished himself from his own existence, it has been impossible for him ever to form to himself any true idea of his own nature; it is also because he has distinguished nature from herself, that both herself and her ways have been mistaken. man has ceased to study nature, that he might, recur by thought to a substance which possesses nothing in common with her; this substance he has made the mover of nature, without which she would not be capable of any thing; to whom every thing that takes place in her system, must be attributed; the conduct of this being has appeared mysterious, has been held up as marvellous, because he seemed to be a continual contradiction: when if man had but recurred to the immutability of the laws of nature, to the invariable system she pursues, all would have appeared intelligible; every thing would have been reconciled; the apparent contrariety would have vanished. by thus taking a wrong view of things, wisdom and intelligence appeared to be opposed by confusion and disorder; goodness to be rendered nugatory by evil; while all is only just what it must inevitably be, under the given circumstances. in consequence of these erroneous opinions, in the place of applying himself to the study of nature, to discover the method of obtaining her favors, or to seek the means of throwing aside his misfortunes; in the room of consulting his experience; in lieu of labouring usefully to his own happiness; he has been only occupied with expecting these things by channels through which they do not flow; he has been disputing upon objects be never can understand, while he has totally neglected that which was within the compass of his own powers; which he might have rendered propitious to his views, by a more industrious application of his own talent; by a patient investigation, for the purpose of drawing at the fountain of truth, the limpid balsam that alone can heal the sorrows or his heart. nothing could be well more prejudicial to his race, than this extravagant theory; which, as we shall prove, has become the source of innumerable evils. man has been for thousands of years trembling before idols of his own creation--bowing down before them with the most servile homage--occupied with disarming their wrath--sedulously employed in propitiating their kindness, without ever advancing a single step on the road he so much desires to travel. he will perhaps continue the same course for centuries to come, unless by some unlooked for exertion on his part, he shall happen to discard the prejudices which blind him; to lay aside his enthusiasm for the marvellous; to quit his fondness for the enigmatical; rally round the standard of his reason: unless, taking experience for his guide, he march undauntedly forward under the banner of truth, and put to the rout that host of unintelligible jargon, under the cumbrous load of which he has lost sight of his own happiness; which has but too frequently prevented him from seeking the only means adequate either to satisfy his wants, or to ameliorate the evils which he is necessarily obliged to experience. let us then re-conduct bewildered mortals to the altar of nature; let us endeavour to destroy that delusion which the ignorance of man, aided by a disordered imagination, has induced him to elevate to her throne; let us strive to dissipate that heavy mist which obscures to him the paths of truth; let us seek to banish from his mind those visionary ideas which prevent him from giving activity to his experience; let us teach him if possible not to seek out of nature herself, the causes of the phenomena he admires--to rest satisfied that she contains remedies for all his evils--that she has manifold benefits in store for those, who, rallying their industry, are willingly patiently to investigate her laws--that she rarely withholds her secrets from the researches of those who diligently labour to unravel them. let us assure him that reason alone can render him happy; that reason is nothing more than the science of nature, applied to the conduct of man in society; that this reason teaches that every thing is necessary; that his pleasures as well as his sorrows are the effects of nature, who in all her works follows only laws which nothing can make her revoke; that his interest demands he should learn to support with equanimity of mind, all those evils which natural means do not enable him to put aside. in short, let us unceasingly repeat to him, it is in rendering his fellow creature happy, that he will himself arrive at a felicity he will in vain expect from others, when his own conduct refuses it to him. nature is self-existent; she will always exist; she produces every thing; contains within herself the cause of every thing; her motion is a necessary consequence of her existence; without motion we could form no conception of nature; under this collective name we designate the assemblage of matter acting by virtue of its peculiar energies. every thing proves to us, that it is not out of nature man ought to seek the divinity. if we have only an incomplete knowledge of nature and her ways--if we have only superficial, imperfect ideas of matter, how shall we be able to flatter ourselves with understanding or having any certain notions of immateriality, of beings so much more fugitive, so much more difficult to compass, even by thought, than the material elements; so much more shy of access than either the constituent principles of bodies, their primitive properties, their various modes of acting, or their different manner of existing? if we cannot recur to first causes, let its content ourselves with second causes, with those effects which we can submit to experience, let us collect the facts with which we have an acquaintance; they will enable us to judge of what we do not know: let us at least confine ourselves to the feeble glimmerings of truth with which our senses furnish us, since we do not possess means whereby to acquire broader masses of light. do not let us mistake for real sciences, those which have no other basis than our imagination; we shall find that such can at most be but visionary: let us cling close to nature which we see, which we feel, of which we experience the action; of which at least we understand the general laws. if we are ignorant of her detail, if we cannot fathom the secret principles she employs in her most complicated productions, we are at least certain she acts in a permanent, uniform, analogous, necessary manner. let us then observe this nature; let us watch her movements; but never let us endeavour to quit the routine she prescribes for the beings of our species: if we do, we shall not only be obliged to return, but we shall also infallibly be punished with numberless errors, which will darken our mind, estrange us from reason; the necessary consequence will be countless sorrows, which we may otherwise avoid. let us consider we are sensible parts of a whole, in which the forms are only produced to be destroyed; in which combinations are ushered into life, that they may again quit it, after having subsisted for a longer or a shorter season. let us look upon nature as an immense elaboratory which contains every thing necessary for her action; who lacks nothing requisite for the production of all the phenomena she displays to our sight. let us acknowledge her power to be inherent in her essence; amply commensurate to her eternal march; fully adequate to the happiness of all the beings she contains. let us consider her as a whole, who can only maintain herself by what we call the discord of the elements; that she exists by the continual dissolution and re-union of her parts; that from this springs the universal harmony; that from this the general stability has its birth. let us then re-establish omnipotent nature, so long mistaken by man, in her legitimate rights. let us place her on that adamantine throne, which it is for the felicity of the human race she should occupy. let us surround her with those ministers who can never deceive, who can never forfeit our confidence--_justice and practical knowledge_. let us listen to her eternal voice; she neither speaks ambiguously, nor in an unintelligible language; she may be easily comprehended by the people of all nations; because _reason_ is her faithful interpreter. she offers nothing to our contemplation but immutable truths. let us then for ever impose silence on that enthusiasm which leads us astray; let us put to the blush that imposture which would riot on our credulity; let us discard that gloomy superstition, which has drawn us aside from the only worship suitable to intelligent beings. above all, never let us forget that the temple of happiness can only be reached through the groves of virtue, which surround it on every side; that the paths which lead to these beautiful walks can only be entered by the road of experience, the portals of which are alone opened to those who apply to them the key of truth: this key is of very simple structure, has no complicated intricacy of wards, and is easily formed on the anvil of social intercourse, merely by _not doing unto others that which you would not wish they should do unto you._ chap. vii. _of theism.--of the system of optimism.--of final causes_. very few men have either the courage or the industry to examine opinions, which every one is in agreement to acknowledge; there is scarcely any one who ventures to doubt their truth, even when no solid arguments have been adduced in their support. the natural supineness of man readily receives them without examination upon the authority of others--communicates them to his successors in the season of their infancy; thus is transmitted from race to race, notions which once having obtained the sanction of time, are contemplated as clothed with a sacred character, although perhaps to an unprejudiced mind, who should be bent on searching into their foundation, no proofs will appear, that they ever were verified. it is thus with immateriality: it has passed current from father to son for many ages, without these having done any thing more than habitually consign to their brain those obscure ideas which were at first attached to it, which it is evident, from the admission even of its advocates, can never be removed, to admit others of a more enlightened nature. indeed how can it possibly be, that light can be thrown upon an incomprehensible subject: each therefore modifies it after his own manner; each gives it that colouring that most harmonizes with his own peculiar existence; each contemplates it under that perspective which is the issue of his own particular vision: this from the nature of things cannot be the same in every individual: there must then of necessity be a great contrariety in the opinions resulting. it is thus also that each man forms to himself a god in particular, after his own peculiar temperament--according to his own natural dispositions: the individual circumstances under which he is found, the warmth of his imagination, the prejudices he has received, the mode in which he is at different times affected, have all their influence in the picture he forms. the contented, healthy man, does not see him with the same eyes as the man who is chagrined and sick; the man with a heated blood, who has an ardent imagination, or is subject to bile, does not pourtray him under the same traits as he who enjoys a more peaceable soul, who has a cooler fancy, who is of a more phlegmatic habit. this is not all; even the same individual does not view him in the same manner at different periods of his life: he undergoes all the variations of his machine--all the revolutions of his temperament--all those continual vicissitudes which his existence experiences. the idea of the divinity is said to be innate; on the contrary, it is perpetually fluctuating in the mind of each individual; varies every moment in all the beings of the human species; so much so, that there are not two who admit precisely the same deity; there is not a single one, who, under different circumstances, does not see him variously. do not then let us be surprised at the variety of systems adopted by mankind on this subject; it ought not to astonish us that there is so little harmony existing among men upon a point of such consequence; it ought not to appear strange that so much contradiction should prevail in the various doctrines held forth; that they should have such little consistency, such slender connection with each other; that the professors should dispute continually upon the rectitude of the opinions adopted by each: they must necessarily wrangle upon that which each contemplates so variously--upon which there is hardly a single mortal who is constantly in accord with himself. all men are pretty well agreed upon those objects which they are enabled to submit to the test of experience; we do not hear any disputes upon the principles of geometry; those truths that are evident, that are easily demonstrable, never vary in our mind; we never doubt that the part is less than the whole; that two and two make four; that benevolence is an amiable quality; that equity is necessary to man in society. but we find nothing but perpetual controversy upon all those systems which have the divinity for their object; they are full of incertitude; subject to continual variations: we do not see any harmony either in the principles of theology, or in the principles of its graduates. even the proofs offered of his existence have been the subject of cavil; they have either been thought too feeble, have been brought forward against rule, or else have not been taken up with sufficient zeal to please the various reasoners who advocate the cause; the corollaries drawn from the premises laid down, are not the same in any two nations, scarcely in two individuals; the thinkers of all ages, in all countries, are perpetually in rivalry with each other; unceasingly quarrel upon all the points of religion; can never agree either upon their theological hypotheses, or upon the fundamental truths which should serve for their basis; even the attributes, the very qualities ascribed, are as warmly contested by some, as they are zealously defended by others. these never-ending disputes, these perpetual variations, ought, at least, to convince the unprejudiced, that the ideas of the divinity have neither the generally-admitted evidence, nor the certitude which are attributed to them; on the contrary, these contrarieties in the opinions of the theologians, if submitted to the logic of the schools, might be fatal to the whole of them: according to that mode of reasoning, which at least has the sanction of our universities, all the probabilities in the world cannot acquire the force of a demonstration; a truth is not made evident but when constant experience, reiterated reflection, exhibits it always under the same point of view; the evidence of a proposition cannot be admitted unless it carries with it a substantive demonstration; from the constant relation which is made by well constituted senses, results that evidence, that certitude, which alone can produce full conviction: if the major proposition of a syllogism should be overturned by the minor, the whole falls to the ground. cicero, who is no mean authority on such a subject, says expressly, "no reasoning can render that false, which experience has demonstrated as evident." wolff, in his ontology, says; "that which is repugnant in itself, cannot possibly be understood; that those things which are in themselves contradictions, must always be deficient of evidence." st. thomas says, "being, is all that which is not repugnant to existence." however it may be with these qualities, which the theologians assign to their immaterial beings, whether they may be irreconcileable, or whether they are totally incomprehensible, what can result to the human species in supposing them to have intelligence and views? can an universal intelligence, whose care must be equally extended to every thing that exists, have more direct, more intimate relations with man, who only forms an insensible portion of the great whole? can we seriously believe that it is to make joyful the insects, to gratify the ants of his garden, that the monarch of the universe has constructed and embellished his habitation? would our feeble eyes, therefore, become stronger--would our narrow views of things be enlarged--should we be better capacitated to understand his projects--could we with more certitude divine his plans, enter into his designs--would our exility of judgment be competent to measure his wisdom, to follow the eternal order he has established? will those effects, which flow from his omnipotence, emanate from his providence--whether we estimate them as good, or whether we tax them as evil--whether we consider them beneficial, or view them as prejudicial--be less the necessary results of his wisdom, of his justice, of his eternal decrees? in this case can we reasonably suppose that a being, so wise, so just, so intelligent, will derange his system, change his plan, for such weak beings as ourselves? can we rationally believe we have the capacity to address worthy prayers, to make suitable requests, to point out proper modes of conduct to such a being? can we at all flatter ourselves that to please us, to gratify our discordant wishes, he will alter his immutable laws? can we imagine that at our entreaty he will take from the beings who surround us their essences, their properties, their various modes of action? have we any right to expect he will abrogate in our behalf the eternal laws of nature, that he will disturb her eternal march, arrest her ever-lasting course, which his wisdom has planned; which his goodness has conferred; which are, in fact, the admiration of mankind? can we hope that in our favour fire will cease to burn, when we approximate it too closely; that fever shall not consume our habit, when contagion has penetrated our system; that gout shall not torment us, when an intemperate mode of life shall have amassed the humours that necessarily result from such conduct; that an edifice tumbling in ruins shall not crush us by its fall, when we are within the vortex of its action? will our vain cries, our most fervent supplications, prevent a country from being unhappy, when it shall be devastated by an ambitious conqueror; when it shall be submitted to the capricious will of unfeeling tyrants, who bend it beneath the iron rod of their oppression? if this infinite intelligence gives a free course to those events which his wisdom has prepared; if nothing happens in this world but after his impenetrable designs; we ought silently to submit; we have in fact nothing to ask; we should be madmen to oppose our own weak intellect to such capacious wisdom; we should offer an insult to his prudence if we were desirous to regulate them. man must not flatter himself that he is wiser than his god; that he is in a capacity to make him change his will; with having power to determine him to take other means than those which he has chosen to accomplish his decrees. an intelligent divinity can only have taken those measures which embrace complete justice; can only have availed himself of those means which are best calculated to arrive at his end; if he was capable of changing them, he could neither be called wise, immutable, nor provident. if it was to be granted, that the divinity did for a single instant suspend those laws which he himself has given, if he was to change any thing in his plan, it would be supposing he had not foreseen the motives of this suspension; that he had not calculated the causes of this change; if he did not make these motives enter into his plan, it would be saying he had not foreseen the causes that render them necessary: if he has foreseen them without making them part of his system, it would be arraigning the perfection of the whole. thus in whatever manner these things are contemplated, under whatever point of view they are examined, it is evident that the prayers which man addresses to the divinity, which are sanctioned by the different modes of worship, always suppose he is supplicating a being whose wisdom and providence are defective; in fact, that his own is more appropriate to his situation. to suppose he is capable of change in his conduct, is to bring his omniscience into question; to vitally attack his omnipotence; to arraign his goodness; at once to say, that he either is not willing or not competent to judge what would be most expedient for man; for whose sole advantage and pleasure they will, notwithstanding, insist he created the universe: such are the inconsistent doctrines of theology; such the imbecile efforts of metaphysics. it is, however, upon these notions, extravagant as they may appear, ill directed as they assuredly are, inconclusive as they must be acknowledged by unprejudiced minds, that are founded all the superstitions and many of the religions of the earth. it is by no means an uncommon sight, to see man upon his knees before an all-wise god, whose conduct he is endeavouring to regulate; whose decrees he wishes to avert; whose plan he is desirous to reform. these inconsistent objects he is occupied with gaining, by means equally repugnant to sound sense; equally injurious to the dignity of the divinity: adopting his own sensations as the criterion of the feelings of the deity; in some places he tries to win him to his interests by presents; sometimes we behold even the princes of the earth attempting to direct his views, by offering him splendid garments, upon which their own fatuity sets an inordinate value, merely because they have laboured at them themselves; some strive to disarm his justice by the most splendid pageantry; others by practices the most revolting to humanity; some think his immutability will yield to idle ceremonies; others to the most discordant prayers; it not unfrequently happens that to induce him to change in their favour his eternal decrees, those who have opposite interests to promote, each returns him thanks for that which the others consider as the greatest curse that can befal them. in short, man is almost every where prostrate before an omnipotent god, who, if we were to judge by the discrepancy of their requests, never has rendered his creatures such as they ought to be; who to accomplish his divine views has never taken the proper measures, who to fulfil his wisdom has continual need of the admonitions of man, conveyed either in the form of thanks or prayers. we see, then, that superstition is founded upon manifest contradictions, which man must always fall into when he mistakes the natural causes of things--when he shall attribute the good or evil which he experiences to an intelligent cause, distinguished from nature, of which he will never be competent to form to himself any certain ideas. indeed, man will always be reduced, as we have so frequently repeated, to the necessity of clothing his gods with his own imbecile qualities: as he is himself a changeable being, whose intelligence is limited; who, placed in divers circumstances, appears to be frequently in contradiction with himself; although he thinks he honours his gods in giving them his own peculiar qualities, he in fact does nothing more than lend them his own inconstancy, cover them with his own weakness, invest them with his own vices. it is thus that in reasoning, he is unable to account for the necessity of things--that he imagines there is a confusion which his prayers will have a tendency to remove--that he thinks the evils of life more than commensurate with the good: he does not perceive that an undeviating system, by operating upon beings diversely organized, whose circumstances are different, whose modes of action are at variance, must of necessity sometimes appear to be inimical to the interests of the individual, while it embraces the general good of the whole. the theologian may subtilize, exaggerate, render as unintelligible as he pleases, the attributes with which he clothes his divinities, he will never be able to remove the contradictions which arise from the discordant qualities which he thus heaps together; neither will he be able to give man any other mode of judging than what arises from the exercise of his senses, such as they are actually found. he will never be able to furnish the idea of an immutable being, while he shall represent this being as capable of being irritated and appeased by the prayers of mortals. he will never delineate the features of omnipotence under the portrait of a being who cannot restrain the actions of his inferiors. he will never hold up a standard of justice, while he shall mingle it with mercy, however amiable the quality; or while he shall represent it as punishing those actions, which the perpetrators were under the necessity of committing. neither will he be able, under any circumstances, to make a finite mind comprehend infinity; much less when he shall represent this infinity as bounded by finity itself. from this it will be obvious, that immaterial substances, such as are depicted by the theologians, can only be looked upon as the offspring of a metaphysical brain, unsupported by any of those proofs which are usually required to establish the propositions laid down among men; all the qualities which they ascribe to them, are only those which are suitable to material substances; all the abstract properties with which they invest them, are incomprehensible by material beings; the whole taken together, is one confused mass of contradictions: they have held forth to man, that it highly imported to his interests to know, to understand these substances; he has consequently set his intellect in action to discover some means of compassing an end, said to be so consequential to his welfare; he has, however, been unable to make any progress, because no clue could be offered to him of the road he must pursue; all was mere assertion unsupported by evidence; the whole was enveloped in complete darkness, into which the least scintillation of light could never penetrate. notwithstanding, as soon as man believes himself greatly interested in knowing a thing, he labors to form to himself an idea of that, the knowledge of which he thinks so important; if insuperable obstacles impede his inquiries--if difficulties of a magnitude to alarm his industry intervene--if with immense labour he makes but little progress, then the slender success that attends his research, aided by a slothful disposition, while it wearies his diligence disposes him to credulity. it was thus, that a crafty ambitious arab, subtle and knavish in his manners, insinuating in his address, profiting by this credulous inclination, made his countrymen adopt his own fanciful reveries as permanent truths, of which it was not permitted them for an instant to doubt; following up these opinions with enthusiasm, he stimulated them on to become conquerors; obliging the conquered to lend themselves to his system, he gave currency to a creed, invented solely for the purpose of enslaving mankind, which now spreads over immense regions inhabited by a numerous population, although like other systems it does not escape sectarianism, having above seventy branches. thus ignorance, despair, sloth, the want of reflecting habits, place the human race in a state of dependance upon those who build up systems, while upon the objects which are the foundations, they have no one settled idea: once adopted, however, whenever these systems are brought into question, man either reasons in a very strange manner, or else is the dupe of very deceitful arguments: when they are agitated, and he finds it impossible to understand what is said concerning them when his mind cannot embrace the ambiguity of these doctrines, he imagines those who speak to him are better acquainted with the objects of their discourse than himself; these seizing the favourable opportunity, do not let it slip, they reiterate to him with stentorian lungs, "that the most certain way is to agree with what they tell him; to allow himself to be guided by them;" in short, they persuade him to shut his eyes, that he may with greater perspicuity distinguish the road he is to travel: once arrived at this influence, they indelibly fix their lessons; irrevocably chain him to the oar; by holding up to his view the punishments intended for him by these imaginary beings, in case he refuses to accredit, in the most liberal manner, their marvellous inventions; this argument, although it only supposes the thing in question, serves to close his mouth--to put an end to his research; alarmed, confused, bewildered, he seems convinced by this victorious reasoning--attaches to it a sacredness that fills him with awe--blindly conceives that they have much clearer ideas of the subject than himself--fears to perceive the palpable contradictions of the doctrines announced to him, until, perhaps, some being, more subtle than those who have enslaved him, by labouring the point incessantly, attacking him on the weak side of his interest, arrives at throwing the absurdity of his system into light, and finally succeeds by inducing him to adopt that of another set of speculators. the uninformed man generally believes his priests have more senses than himself; he takes them for superior beings; for divine men. he only sees that which these priests inform him he must contemplate; to every thing else his eyes are completely hoodwinked; thus the authority of the priests frequently decides, without appeal, that which is useful perhaps only to the priesthood. when we shall be disposed to recur to the origin of things, we shall ever find that it has been man's imagination, guided by his ignorance, under the influence of fear, which gave birth to his gods; that enthusiasm or imposture have generally either embellished or disfigured them; that credulity readily adopted the fabulous accounts which interested duplicity promulgated respecting them; that these dispositions, sanctioned by time, became habitual. tyrants finding their advantage in sustaining them, have usually established their power upon the blindness of mankind, and the superstitious fears with which it is always accompanied. thus, under whatever point of view it is considered, it will always be found that _error cannot be useful to the human species._ nevertheless, the happy enthusiast, when his soul is sensible of its enjoyments, when his softened imagination has occasion to paint to itself a seducing object, to which he can render thanks for the kindness he experiences, will ask, "wherefore deprive me of a being that i see under the character of a sovereign, filled with wisdom, abounding in goodness? what comfort do i not find in figuring to myself a powerful, intelligent, indulgent monarch, of whom i am the favorite; who continually occupies himself with my welfare--unceasingly watches over my safety--who perpetually administers to my wants--who always consents that under him i shall command the whole of nature? i believe i behold him constantly showering his benefits on man; i see his providence labouring for his advantage without relaxation; he covers the earth with verdure to delight him; he loads the trees with delicious fruits to gratify his palate; he fills the forests with animals suitable to his nourishment; he suspends over his head planets with innumerable stars, to enlighten him by day, to guide his erring steps by night; he extends around him the azure firmament to gladden his sight; he decorates the meadows with flowers to please his fancy; he causes crystal fountains to flow with limpid streams to slake his thirst; he makes rivulets meander through his lands to fructify the earth; he washes his residence with noble rivers, that yield him fish in abundance. ah! suffer me to thank thee, author of so many benefits: do not deprive me of my charming sensations. i shall not find my illusions so sweet, so consolatory in a severe destiny--in a rigid necessity--in a blind inanimate matter--in a nature destitute of intelligence, devoid of feeling." "wherefore," will say the unfortunate, from whom his destiny has rigorously withheld those benefits which have been lavished on so many others; "wherefore ravish from me an error that is dear to me? wherefore annihilate to me a being, whose consoling idea dries up the source of my tears--who serves to calm my sorrows? wherefore deprive me of an object which i represent to myself as a compassionate, tender father; who reproves me in this world, but into whose arms i throw myself with confidence, when the whole of nature appears to have abandoned me? supposing it no more than a chimera, the unhappy have occasion for it, to guarantee them against frightful despair: is it not cruel, is it not inhuman, to be desirous of plunging them into a vacuum, by seeking to undeceive them? is it not an useful error, preferable to those truths which deprive the mind of every consolation, which do not hold forth any relief from its sorrows?" thus will equally reason the negro, the mussulman, the brachman, and others. we shall reply to these enthusiasts, no! truth can never render you unhappy; it is this which really consoles us; it is a concealed treasure, much superior to all the superstitions ever invented by fear; it can cheer the heart; give it courage to support the burthens of life; make us smile under adversity; elevate the soul; render it active; furnishes it with means to resist the attacks of fate; to combat misfortunes with success. this will shew clearly that the good and evil of life are distributed with an equal hand, without respect to man's peculiar comforts; that all beings are equally regarded in the universe; that every thing is submitted to necessary laws; that man has no right whatever to think himself a being peculiarly favoured--who is exempted from the common operations of the eternal routine; that it is folly to think he is the only being considered--one for whose enjoyment alone every thing is produced; an attention to facts will suffice to put an end to this delusion, however pleasant may be the indulgence of such a notion; the most superficial glance of the eye will be sufficient to undeceive us in the idea, that he is the _final cause_ of the creation--the constant object of the labours of nature, or of its author. let us seriously ask him, if he does not witness good constantly blended with evil? if he does not equally partake of them with the other beings in nature? to be obstinately bent to see only the evil, is as irrational as to be willing only to notice the good. providence seems to be just as much occupied for one class of beings as for another. we see the calm succeed the storm; sickness give place to health; the blessings of peace follow the calamities of war; the earth in every country bring forth roots necessary for the nourishment of man, produce others suitable to his destruction. each individual of the human species is a compound of good and bad qualities; all nations present a varied spectacle of virtues, growing up beside vices; that which gladdens one being, plunges another into sadness--no event takes place that does not give birth to advantages for some, to disadvantages for others. insects find a safe retreat in the ruin of the palace, which crushes man in its fall; man by his death furnishes food for myriads of contemptible insects; animals are destroyed by thousands that he may increase his bulk; linger out for a season a feverish existence. we see beings engaged in perpetual hostility, each living at his neighbour's expence; the one banquetting upon that which causes the desolation of the other; some luxuriously growing into flesh upon the misery which wears others into skeletons--profiting by misfortunes, rioting upon disasters, which ultimately, reciprocally destroy them. the most deadly poisons spring up beside the most wholesome fruits the earth equally nourishes the fatal steel which terminates man's career, and the fruitful corn that prolongs his existence; the bane and its antidote are near neighbours, repose on the same bosom, ripen under the same sun, equally court the hand of the incautious stranger. the rivers which man believes flow for no other purpose than to irrigate his residence, sometimes swell their waters, overtop their banks, inundate his fields, overturn his dwelling, and sweep away the flock and shepherd. the ocean, which he vainly imagines was only collected together to facilitate his commerce supply him with fish, and wash his shores; often wrecks his ships, frequently bursts its boundaries, lays waste his lands, destroys the produce of his industry, and commits the most frightful ravages. the halcyon, delighted with the tempest, voluntarily mingles with the storm; rides contentedly upon the surge; rejoiced by the fearful howlings of the northern blast, plays with happy buoyancy upon the foaming billows, that have ruthlessly dashed in pieces the vessel of the unfortunate mariner; who, plunged into an abyss of misery, with tremulous emotion clings to the wreck; views with horrific despair, the premature destruction of his indulged hopes; sighs deeply at the thoughts of home; with aching heart, thinks of the cherished friends his streaming eyes will never more behold in an agony of soul dwells upon the faithful affection of an adored wife, who will never again repose her drooping head upon his manly bosom; grows wild with the appalling remembrance of beloved children, his wearied arms will never more encircle with parental fondness; then sinks for ever, the unhappy victim of circumstances that fill with glee the fluttering bird, who sees him yield to the overwhelming force of the infuriate waves. the conqueror displays his military skill, fights a sanguinary battle, puts his enemy to the rout, lays waste his country, slaughters thousands of his fellows, plunges whole districts into tears, fills the land with the moans of the fatherless, the wailings of the widow, in order that the crows may have a banquet--that ferocious beasts may gluttonously gorge themselves with human gore--that worms may riot in luxury. thus when there is a question concerning an agent we see act so variously; whose motives seem sometimes to be advantageous, sometimes disadvantageous for the human race; at least each individual will judge after the peculiar mode in which he is himself affected; there will consequently be no fixed point, no general standard in the opinions men will form to themselves. indeed our mode of judging will always be governed by our manner of seeing, by our way of feeling. this will depend upon our temperament, which itself springs out of our organization, and the peculiarity of the circumstances in which we are placed; these can never be the same for all the beings of our species. these individual modes of being affected, then, will always furnish the colours of the portrait which man may paint to himself of the divinity; it must therefore be obvious they can never be determinate--can have no fixity--can never be reduced to any graduated scale; the inductions which they may draw from them, can never be either constant or uniform; each will always judge after himself, will never see any thing but himself or his own peculiar situation in the picture he delineates. this granted, the man who has a contented, sensible soul, with a lively imagination, will paint the divinity under the most charming traits; he will believe that he sees in the whole of nature nothing but proofs of benevolence, evidence of goodness, because it will unceasingly cause him agreeable sensations. in his poetical extacy he will imagine he every where perceives the impression of a perfect intelligence--of an infinite wisdom--of a providence tenderly occupied with the welfare of man; self-love joining itself to these exalted qualities, will put the finishing hand to his persuasion, that the universe is made solely for the human race; he will strive in imagination to kiss with transport the hand from which he believes he receives so many benefits; touched with his kindness, gratified with the perfume of roses whose thorns he does not perceive, or which his extatic delirium prevents him from feeling, he will think he can never sufficiently acknowledge the necessary effects, which he will look upon as indubitable testimony of the divine predilection for man. completely inebriated with these feelings, this enthusiast will not behold those sorrows, will not notice that confusion of which the universe is the theatre: or if it so happens, he cannot prevent himself from being a witness, he will be persuaded that in the views of an indulgent providence, these calamities are necessary to conduct man to a higher state of felicity; the reliance which he has in the divinity, upon whom he imagines they depend, induces him to believe, that man only suffers for his good; that this being, who is fruitful in resources, will know how to make him reap advantage from the evils which he experiences in this world: his mind thus pre-occupied, from thence sees nothing that does not elicit his admiration call forth his gratitude; excite his confidence; even those effects which are the most natural, the most necessary, appear in his eyes miracles of benevolence; prodigies of goodness: he shuts his eyes to the disorders which could bring these amiable qualities into question: the most cruel calamities, the most afflicting events, the most heart-rending circumstances, cease to be disorders in his eyes, and do nothing, more than furnish him with new proofs of the divine perfections; he persuades himself that what appears defective or imperfect, is only so in appearance; he admires the wisdom, acknowledges the bounty of the divinity, even in those effects which are the most terrible for his race--most suitable to discourage his species--most fraught with misery for his fellow. it is, without doubt, to this happy disposition of the human mind, in some beings of his order, that is to be ascribed the system of _optimism_, by which enthusiasts, furnished with a romantic imagination, seem to have renounced the evidence of their senses: to find that even for man every thing is good in nature, where the good has constantly its concomitant evil, and where minds less prejudiced, less poetical, would judge that every thing is only that which it can be--that the good and the evil are equally necessary--that they have their source in the nature of things; moreover, in order to attribute any particular character to the events that take place, it would be needful to know the aim of the whole: now the whole cannot have an aim, because if it had a tendency, an aim, or end, it would no longer be the whole, seeing that that to which it tended would be a part not included. it will be asserted by some, that the evils which we behold in this world are only relative, merely apparent; that they prove nothing against the good: but does not man almost uniformly judge after his own mode of feeling; after his manner of co-existing with those causes by which he is encompassed; which constitute the order of nature with relation to himself; consequently, he ascribes wisdom and goodness to all that which affects him pleasantly, disorder to that state of things by which he is injured. nevertheless every thing which we witness in the world conspires to prove to us, that whatever is, is necessary; that nothing is done by chance; that all the events, good or bad, whether for us or for beings of a different order, are brought about by causes acting after certain and determinate laws; that nothing can he a sufficient warrantry in us to clothe with any one of our human qualities, either nature or the motive-power which has been given to her. with respect to those who pretend that supreme wisdom will know how to draw the greatest benefits for us, even out of the bosom of those calamities which it is permitted we shall experience in this world; we shall ask them, if they are themselves the confidents of the divinity; or upon what they found these assertions so flattering to their hopes? they will, without doubt, tell us they judge by analogy; that from the actual proofs of goodness and wisdom, they have a just right to conclude in favour of future bounty. would it not be a fair reply to ask, if they reason by analogy, and man has not been rendered completely happy in this world, what analogy informs them he will be so in another? if, according to their own shewing, man is sometimes made the victim of evil in his present existence, in order that he may attain a greater good, does not analogical reasoning, which they say they adopt, clearly warrant a deduction, that the same afflictions, for the same purposes, will be equally proper, equally requisite in the world to come? thus this language founds itself upon ruinous hypotheses, which have for their bases only a prejudiced imagination. it, in fact, signifies nothing more than that man once persuaded, without any evidence, of his future happiness, will not believe it possible he can be permitted to be unhappy: but might it not be inquired what testimony does he find, what substantive knowledge has he obtained of the peculiar good that results to the human species from those sterilities, from those famines, from those contagions, from those sanguinary conflicts, which cause so many millions of men to perish; which unceasingly depopulate the earth, and desolate the world we inhabit? is there any one who has sufficient compass of comprehension to ascertain the advantages that result from the evils that besiege us on all sides? do we not daily witness beings consecrated to misfortune, from the moment they quitted the womb of the parent who brought them into existence, until that which re-committed them to the earth, to sleep in peace with their fathers; who with great difficulty found time to respire; lived the constant sport of fortune; overwhelmed with affliction, immersed in grief, enduring the most cruel reverses? who is to measure the precise quantity of misery required to derive a certain portion of good? who is to say when the measure of evil will be full which it is necessary to suffer? the most enthusiastic optimists, the _theists_ themselves, the partizans of _natural religion_, as well as the most credulous and superstitious, are obliged to recur to the system of another life, to remedy the evils man is decreed to suffer in the present; but have they really any just foundation to suppose the next world will afford him a happiness denied him in this? if it is necessary to recur to a doctrine so little probable as that of a future existence, by what chain of reasoning do they establish their opinion, that when he shall no longer have organs, by the aid of which he is at present alone enabled either to enjoy or to suffer, he shall be able to compensate the evils he has endured; to enjoy a felicity, to partake of a pleasure this organic structure has refused him while on his pilgrimage through the land of his fathers. from this it will be seen, that the proofs of a sovereign intelligence, or of a magnified human quality drawn from the order, from the harmony, from the beauty of the universe, are never more than those which are derived from men who are organized and modified after a certain mode; or whose cheerful imagination is so constructed as to give birth to agreeable chimeras which they embellish according to their fancy: these illusions, however, must be frequently dissipated even in themselves, whenever their machine becomes deranged; when sorrows assail them, when misfortune corrodes their mind; the spectacle of nature, which under certain circumstances has appeared to them so delightful, so seducing, must then give place to disorder, must yield to confusion. a man of melancholy temperament, soured by misfortunes, made irritable by infirmities, cannot view nature and her author under the same perspective, as the healthy man of a sprightly humour, who is contented with every thing. deprived of happiness, the fretful man can only find disorder, can see nothing but deformity, can find nothing but subjects to afflict himself with; he only contemplates the universe as the theatre of malice, as the stage for tyrants to execute their vengeance; he grows superstitious, he gives way to credulity, and not unfrequently becomes cruel, in order to serve a master whom he believes he has offended. in consequence of these ideas, which have their growth in an unhappy temperament, which originate in a peevish humour, which are the offspring of a disturbed imagination, the superstitious are constantly infected with terror, are the slaves to mistrust, the creatures of discontent, continually in a state of fearful alarm. nature cannot have charms for them; her countless beauties pass by unheeded; they do not participate in her cheerful scenes; they look upon this world, so marvellous to the happy man, so good to the contented enthusiast, as a _valley of tears_, in which a vindictive fate has placed them only to expiate crimes committed either by themselves or by their fathers; they consider themselves as sent here for no other purpose than to be the sharers of calamity; the sport of a capricious fortune; that they are the children of sorrow, destined to undergo the severest trials, to the end that they may everlastingly arrive at a new existence, in which they shall be either happy or miserable, according to their conduct towards the ministers of a being who holds their destiny in his hands. these dismal notions have been the source of all the irrational systems that have ever prevailed; they have given birth to the most revolting practices, currency to the most absurd customs. history abounds with details of the most atrocious cruelties, under the imposing name of public worship; nothing has been considered either too fantastical or too flagitious by the votaries of superstition. parents have immolated their children; lovers have sacrificed the objects of their affection; friends have destroyed each other: the most bloody disputes have been fomented; the most interminable animosities have been engendered, to gratify the whim of implacable priests, who by crafty inventions have obtained an influence over the people; to please blind zealots, who have never been able either to give fixity to their ideas, or to define their own feelings. idle dreamers nourished with bile, intoxicated with theologic fury--atrabilarians, whose melancholic humour frequently disposes them to wickedness--visionaries, whose devious imaginations, heated with intemperate zeal, generally leads them to the extremes of fanaticism, working upon ignorance, whose usual bias is credulity, have incessantly disturbed the harmony of mankind, kindled the inextinguishable flame of discord, and in an almost uninterrupted succession, strewed the earth with the mangled carcasses of the multitudinous victims to mad-brained error, whose only crime has been their incapacity to dream according to the rules prescribed by these infuriate maniacs; although these have never been uniform--never assimilated in any two countries--never borne the same features in any two ages, nor even had the united concurrence of the persecuting contemporaries. it is then in the diversity of temperament, arising from variety of organization--in the contrariety of passions, springing out of this miscellany, modified by the most opposite circumstances, that must be sought the difference we find in the opinions of the theist, the optimist, the happy enthusiast, the zealot, the devotee, the superstitious of all denominations; they are all equally irrational--the dupes of their imagination--the blind children of error. what one contemplates under a favorable point of view, the other never looks upon but on the dark side; that which is the object of the most sedulous research to one set, is that which the others most seek to avoid: each insists he is right; no one offers the least shadow of substantive proof of what he asserts; each points out the great importance of his mission, yet cannot even agree with his colleagues in the embassy, either upon the nature of their instructions, or the means to be adopted. it is thus whenever man sets forth a false supposition, all the reasonings he makes on it are only a long tissue of errors, which entail on him an endless series of misfortunes; every time he renounces the evidence of his senses, it is impossible to calculate the bounds at which his imagination will stop; when he once quits the road of experience, when he travels out of nature, when he loses sight of his reason, to strike into the labyrinths of conjecture, it is difficult to ascertain where his folly will lead him--into what mischievous swamps this _ignis fatuus_ of the mind may beguile his wandering steps. it is certainly true, the ideas of the happy enthusiast will be less dangerous to himself, less baneful to others, than those of the atrabilarious fanatic, whose temperament may render him both cowardly and cruel; nevertheless the opinions of the one and of the other will not be less chimerical; the only difference will be, that of the first will produce agreeable, cheerful dreams; while that of the second will present the most appalling visions, terrific spectres, the fruit of a peevish transport of the brain: there will, however, never be more than a step between them all; the smallest revolution in the machine, a slight infirmity, an unforeseen affliction, suffices to change the course of the humours--to vitiate the temperament--to endanger the organization--to overturn the whole system of opinions of the happiest. as soon as the portrait is found disfigured, the beautiful order of things is overthrown relatively to himself; melancholy grapples him--pusillanimity benumbs his faculties--by degrees plunges, him into the rankest depths of gloomy superstition; he then degenerates into all those irregularities which are the dismal harvest of fanatic ignorance ploughed with credulity. those ideas, which have no archetype but in the imagination of man, must necessarily take their complexion from his own character; must be clothed with his own passions; must constantly follow the revolutions of his machine; be lively or gloomy; favourable or prejudicial; friendly or inimical; sociable or savage; humane or cruel; according as he whose brain they inhabit shall himself be disposed; in fact, they can never be more than the shadow of the substance he himself interposes between the light and the ground on which they are thrown. a mortal plunged from a state of happiness into misery, whose health merges into sickness, whose joy is changed into affliction, cannot in these vicissitudes preserve the same ideas; these naturally depend every instant upon the variations, which physical sensations oblige his organs to undergo. it will not therefore appear strange that these opinions should be fluctuating, when they depend upon the state of the nervous fluid, upon the greater or less portion of igneous matter floating in the sanguinary vessels. _theism_, or what is called _natural religion_, cannot have certain principles; those who profess it must necessarily be subject to vary in their opinions--to fluctuate in their conduct, which flows out of them. a system founded upon wisdom and intelligence, which can never contradict itself, when circumstances change will presently be converted into fanaticism; rapidly degenerate into superstition; such a system, successively meditated by enthusiasts of very distinct characters, must of necessity experience vicissitudes, and quickly depart from its primitive simplicity. the greater part of those philosophers who have been disposed to substitute theism for superstition, have not felt that it was formed to corrupt itself--to degenerate. striking examples, however, prove this fatal truth. theism is almost every where corrupted; it has by degrees given way to those superstitions, to those extravagant sects, to those prejudicial opinions with which the human species is degraded. as soon as man consents to acknowledge invisible powers out of nature, upon which his restless mind will never be able invariably to fix his ideas--which his imagination alone will be capable of painting to him; whenever he shall not dare to consult his reason relatively to those powers, it must necessarily be, that the first false step leads him astray, that his conduct as well as his opinions becomes in the long run perfectly absurd. those are usually called theists, who, undeceived upon the greater number of grosser errors to which the uninformed, the superstitiously ignorant, tend the most determined support, simply hold the notion of unknown agents endowed with intelligence, wisdom, power and goodness, in short, full of infinite perfections, whom they distinguish from nature, but whom they clothe after their own fashion; to whom they ascribe their own limited views; whom they make act according to their own absurd passions. the religion of abraham appears to have originally been a kind of theism, imagined to reform the superstition of the chaldeans; moses modified it, and gave it the judaical form. socrates was a theist, who lost his life in his attack on polytheism; his disciple aristocles, or plato, as he was afterwards called from his large shoulders, embellished the theism of his master, with the mystical colours which he borrowed from the egyptian and chaldean priests, which he modified in his own poetical brain, and preserved a remnant of polytheism. the disciples of plato, such as proclus, ammonius, jamblicus. plotinus, longinus, porphyrus, and others, dressed it up still more fantastically, added a great deal of superstitious mummery, blended it with magic, and other unintelligible doctrines. the first doctors of christianity were platonists, who combined the reformed judaism with the philosophy taught in academia. mahomet, in combating the polytheism of his country, seems to have been desirous of restoring the primitive theism of abraham, and his son ishmael; yet this has now seventy-two sects. thus it will be obvious, that theism has no fixed point, no standard, no common measure more than other systems: that it runs from one supposition to another, to find in what manner evil has crept into the world. indeed it has been for this purpose, which perhaps after all will never be satisfactorily explained, that the doctrine of free-agency was introduced; that the fable of prometheus and the box of pandora was imagined; that the history of the titanes was invented; notwithstanding, it must be evident that these things as well as all the other trappings of superstition, are not more difficult of comprehension than the immaterial substances of the theists; the mind who can admit that beings devoid of parts, destitute of organs, without bulk, can move matter, think like man, have the moral qualities of human nature, need not hesitate to allow that ceremonies, certain motions of the body, words, rites, temples, statues, can equally contain secret virtues; has no occasion to withhold its faith from the concealed powers of magic, theurgy, enchantments, charms, talismans, &c.; can shew no good reason why it should not accredit inspirations, dreams, visions, omens, soothsayers, metamorphoses, and all the host of occult sciences: when things so contradictory to the dictates of reason, so completely opposed to good sense are freely admitted, there can no longer be an thing which ought to possess the right to make credulity revolt; those who give sanction to the one, may without much hesitation believe whatever else is offered to their credence. it would be impossible to mark the precise point at which imagination ought to arrest itself--the exact boundary that should circumscribe belief--the true dose of folly that may be permitted them; or the degree of indulgence that can with safety be extended to those priests who are in the habit of teaching so variously, so contradictorily, what man ought to think on the subjects they handle so advantageously to themselves; who when it becomes a question what remuneration is due from mankind for their unwearied exertions in his favour, are, in spite of all their other differences, in the most perfect union; except perhaps when they come to the division of the spoil: in this, indeed, the apple of discord sometimes takes a tremendous roll. thus it will be clear that there can be no substantive grounds for separating the theists from the most superstitious; that it becomes impossible to fix the line of demarcation, which divides them from the most credulous of men; to shew the land-marks by which they can be discriminated from those who reason with the least conclusive persuasion. if the theist refuses to follow up the fanatic in every step of his cullibility, he is at least more inconsequent than the last, who having admitted upon hearsay an inconsistent, whimsical doctrine, also adopts upon report the ridiculous, strange means which it furnishes him. the first sets forth with an absurd supposition, of which he rejects the necessary consequences; the other admits both the principle and the conclusion. there are no degrees in fiction any more than in truth. if we admit the superstition, we are bound to receive every thing which its ministers promulgate, as emanating from its principle. none of the reveries of superstition embrace any thing more incredible than immateriality; these reveries are only corollaries drawn with more or less subtilty from unintelligible subjects, by those who have an interest in supporting the system. the inductions which dreamers have made, by dint of meditating on impenetrable materials, are nothing more than ingenious conclusions, which have been drawn with wonderful accuracy, from unknown premises, that are modestly offered to the sanction of mankind by enthusiasts, who claim an unconditional assent, because they assure us no one of the human race is in a capacity either to see, feel, or comprehend the object of their contemplation. does not this somewhat remind us of what rabelais describes as the employment of queen whim's officers, in his fifth book and twenty-second chapter? let us then acknowledge, that the man who is this most credulously superstitious, reasons in a more conclusive manner, or is at least more consistent in his credulity, than those, who, after having admitted a certain position of which they have no one idea, stop short all at once, and refuse to accredit that system of conduct which is the immediate, the necessary result of a radical and primitive error. as soon as they subscribe to a principle fatally opposed to reason, by what right do they dispute its consequences, however absurd they may be found? we cannot too often repeat, for the happiness of mankind, that the human mind, let it torture itself as much as it will, when it quits visible nature leads itself astray; for want of an intelligent guide it wanders in tracks that bewilder its powers, and is quickly obliged, to return into that with which it has at least some, acquaintance. if man mistakes nature and her energies, it is because he does not sufficiently study her--because he does not submit to the test of experience the phenomena he beholds; if he will obstinately deprive her of motion, he can no longer have any ideas of her. does, he, however, elucidate his embarrassments, by submitting her action to the agency of a being of which he makes himself the model? does he think he forms a god, when he assembles into one heterogeneous mass, his own discrepant qualities, magnified until his optics are no longer competent to recognize them, and then unites to them certain abstract properties of which he cannot form to himself any one conception? does he, in fact, do more than collect together that which becomes, in consequence of its association, perfectly unintelligible? yet, strange as it may appear, when he no longer understands himself--when his mind, lost in its own fictions, becomes inadequate to decipher the characters he has thus promiscuously assembled--when he has huddled together a heap of incomprehensible, abstract qualities, which he is obliged to acknowledge are the mere creatures of imagination, not within the reach of human intellect, he firmly persuades himself he has made a most accurate and beautiful portrait of the divinity; he ostentatiously displays his picture, demands the eulogy of the spectator, and quarrels with all those who do not agree to adulate his creative powers, by adopting the inconceivable being he holds forth to their worship; in short, to question the existence of his extravaganza, rouses his most bitter reproaches; elicits his everlasting scorn; entails on the incredulous his eternal hatred. on the other hand, what could we expect from such a being, as they have supposed him to be? what could we consistently ask of him? how make an immaterial being, who has neither organs, space, point, or contact, understand that modification of matter called voice? admit that this is the being who moves nature--who establishes her laws--who gives to beings their various essences--who endows them with their respective properties; if every thing that takes place is the fruit of his infinite providence--the proof of his profound wisdom, to what end shall we address our prayers to him? shall we solicit him to acknowledge that the wisdom and providence with which we have clothed him, are in fact erroneous, by entreating him to alter in our favour his eternal laws? shall we give him to understand our wisdom exceeds his own, by asking, him for our pleasure to change the properties of bodies--to annihilate his immutable decrees--to trace back the invariable course of things--to make beings act in opposition to the essences with which he has thought it right to invest them? will he at our intercession prevent a body ponderous and hard by its nature, such as a stone, for example, from wounding, in its fall a sensitive being such as the human frame? again, should we not, in fact, challenge impossibilities, if the discordant attributes brought into union by the theologians were correct; would not immutability oppose itself to omnipotence; mercy to the exercise of rigid justice; omniscience, to the changes that might be required in foreseen plans? in physics, in consequence of the general research after a perpetual motion, science has drawn forth the discovery, that by amalgamating metals of contrary properties, the contractile powers of one kind, under given circumstances which cause the dilation of the other, by their opposite tendencies neutralize the actual effects of each, taken separately, and thus produce an equality in the oscillations, that, neither possessed individually. it will perhaps, be insisted, that the infinite science of the creator of all things, is acquainted with resources in the beings he has formed, which are concealed from imbecile mortals; that consequently without changing any thing, either in the laws of nature, or in the essence of things, he is competent to produce effects which surpass the comprehension of our feeble understanding; that these, effects will in no wise be contrary to that order which he himself has established in nature. granted: but then i reply, _first_, that every thing which is conformable to the nature of things, can neither be called supernatural nor miraculous: many things are, unquestionably, above our comprehension; but then all that is operated in the world is natural--grows out of those immutable laws by which nature is regulated. in the _second_ place, it will be requisite to observe, that by the word miracle an effect is designed, of which, for want of understanding nature, she is believed incapable. in the _third_ place, it is worthy of remark, that the theologians, almost universally, insist that by miracle is meant not an extraordinary effort of nature, but an effect directly opposite to her laws, which nevertheless they equally challenge to have been prescribed by the divinity. buddaeus says, "a miracle is an operation by which the laws of nature, upon which depend the order and the preservation of the universe, are suspended." if, however, the deity, in those phenomena that most excite our surprise, does nothing more than give play to springs unknown to mortals, there is, then, nothing in nature, which, in this sense, may not be looked upon as a miracle; because the cause by which a stone falls is as unknown to us, as that which makes our globe turn on its own axis. thus, to explain the phenomena of nature by a miracle, is, in other words, to say we are ignorant of the actuating causes; to attribute them to the divinity, is to agree we do not comprehend the resources of nature: it is little better than accrediting magic. to attribute to a sovereignly intelligent, immutable, provident, wise being, those miracles by which he derogates from his own laws, is at one blow to annihilate all these qualities: it is an inconsistency that would shame a child. it cannot be supposed that omnipotence has need of miracles to govern the universe, nor to convince his creatures, whose minds and hearts must be in his own hands. the last refuge of the theologian, when driven off all other ground, is the possibility of every thing he asserts, couched in the dogma, "that nothing is impossible to the divinity." he makes this asseveration with a degree of self-complacency, with an air of triumph, that would almost persuade one he could not be mistaken; most assuredly, with those who dip no further than the surface, he carries complete conviction. but we must take leave to examine a little the nature of this proposition, and we do apprehend that a very slight degree of consideration will shew that it is untenable. in the _first_ place, as we have before observed, the possibility of a thing by no means proves its absolute existence: a thing may be extremely possible, and yet not be. _secondly_, if this was once to become an admitted argument, there would be, in fact, an end of all morality and religion. the bishop of chester, doctor john wilkins, says, "would not such men be generally accounted out of their wits, who could please themselves by entertaining actual hopes of any thing, merely upon account of the possibility of it, or torment themselves with actual fears of all such evils as are possible? is there any thing imaginable wore wild and extravagant amongst those in bedlam than this would be?" _thirdly_, the impossibility would reasonably appear to be on the other side, so far from nothing being impossible, every thing that is erroneous would seem to be actually so; the divinity could not possibly either love vice, cherish crime, be pleased with depravity, or commit wrong; this decidedly turns the argument against them; they must either admit the most monstrous of all suppositions, or retire from behind the shield with which they have imagined they rendered themselves invulnerable. to those who may be inclined to inquire, whether it would not be better that all things were operated by a good, wise, intelligent being, than by a blind nature, in which not one consoling quality is found; by a fatal necessity always inexorable to human intreaty? it may be replied, _first_, that our interest does not decide the reality of things, and that when this should be even wore advantageous than it is pointed out, it would prove nothing. _secondly_, that as we are obliged to admit some things are operated by nature, it is certainly on the side of probability that she performs the others; especially as her capabilities are more substantively proved by every age as it advances. _thirdly_, that nature duly studied furnishes every thing necessary to render us as, happy as our essence admits. when, guided by experience, we shall consult her, with cultivated reason; she will discover to us our duties, that is to say, the indispensable means to which her eternal and necessary laws have attached our preservation, our own happiness, and that of society. it is decidedly in her bosom that we shall find wherewith to satisfy our physical wants; whatever is out of nature, can have no existence relatively to ourselves. nature, then, is not a step-mother to us; we do not depend upon an inexorable destiny. let us therefore endeavour to become more familiar with her resources; she will procure us a multitude of benefits when we shall pay her the attention she deserves: when we shall feel disposed to consult her, she will supply us with the requisites to alleviate both our physical and moral evils: she only punishes us with rigour, when, regardless of her admonitions, we plunge into excesses that disgrace us. has the voluptuary any reason to complain of the sharp pains inflicted by the gout, when experience, if he had but attended to its counsels, has so often warned him, that the grossness of sensual indulgence must inevitably amass in his machine those humours which give birth to the agony he so acutely feels? has the superstitious bigot any cause for repining at the misery of his uncertain ideas, when an attentive examination of that nature, he holds of such small account, would have convinced him that the idols under whom he trembles, are nothing but personifications of herself, disguised under some other name? it is evidently by incertitude, discord, blindness, delirium, she chastises those who refuse to, acknowledge the justice of her claims. in the mean time, it cannot be denied, that a pure theism, or what is called natural religion, may not be preferable to superstition, in the same manner as reform has banished many of the abuses of those countries who have embraced it; but there is nothing short of an unlimited and inviolable liberty of thought, that can permanently assure the repose of the mind. the opinions of men are only dangerous when they are restrained, or when it is imagined necessary to make others think as we ourselves think. no opinions, not even those of superstition itself, would be dangerous, if the superstitious did not think themselves obliged to enforce their adoption, or had not the power to persecute those who refused. it is this prejudice, which, for the benefit of mankind, it is essential to annihilate; and if the thing be not achievable, then the next object which philosophy may reasonably propose to itself, will be to make the depositaries of power feel that they never ought to permit their subjects to commit evil for either superstitious or religious opinions. in this case, wars would be almost unheard of amongst men: instead of beholding the melancholy spectacle of man cutting the throat of his fellow man, because this cannot see with his eyes, we shall witness him essentially labouring to his own happiness by promoting that of his neighbour; cultivating the earth in peace; quietly bringing forth the productions of nature, instead of puzzling his brain with theological disputes, which can never be of the smallest advantage, except to the priests. it must be a self-evident truth, that an argument by men, upon that which is not accessible to man, _could only have been invented by knaves, who, like the professors of legerdemain, were determined to riot luxuriously on the ignorance and credulity of mankind._ chap. viii. _examination of the advantages which result from man's notions on the divinity.--of their influence upon mortals;--upon politics;--upon science;--upon the happiness of nations, and that of individuals._ the slender foundation of those ideas which men form to themselves of their gods, must have appeared obvious in what has preceded; the proofs which have been offered in support of the existence of immaterial substances, have been examined; the want of harmony that exists in the opinions upon this subject, which all concur in agreeing to be equally impossible to be known to the inhabitants of the earth, has been shewn; the incompatibility of the attributes with which, theology has clothed incorporeity, has been explained. it has been proved, that the idols which man sets up for adoration, have usually had their birth, either in the bosom of misfortune, when ignorance was at a loss to account for the calamities of the earth upon natural principles, or else have been the shapeless fruit of melancholy, working upon an alarmed mind, coupled with enthusiasm and an unbridled imagination. it has been pointed out how these prejudices, transmitted by tradition from father to son, grafting themselves upon infant minds, cultivated by education, nourished by fear, corroborated by habit, have been maintained by authority; perpetuated by example. in short, every thing must have distinctly evidenced to us, that the ideas of the gods, so generally diffused over the earth, has been little more than an universal delusion of the human race. it remains now to examine if this error has been useful. it needs little to prove error can never be advantageous for mankind; it is ever founded upon his ignorance, which is itself an acknowledged evil; it springs out of the blindness of his mind to acknowledged truths, and his want of experience, which it must be admitted are prejudicial to his interests: the more importance, therefore, he shall attach to these errors, the more fatal will be the consequences resulting from their adoption. bacon, the illustrious sophist, who first brought philosophy out of the schools, had great reason when he said, "the worst of all things is deified error." indeed, the mischiefs springing from superstition or religious errors, have been, and always will be, the most terrible in their consequences--the most extensive in their devastation. the more these errors are respected, the more play they give to the passions; the more value is attached to them, the more the mind is disturbed; the more they are insisted upon, the more irrational they render those, who are seized with the rage for proselytism; the more they are cherished, the greater influence they have on the whole conduct of our lives. indeed, there can he but little likelihood that he who renounces his reason, in the thing which he considers as most essential to his happiness, will listen to it on any other occasion. the slightest reflection will afford ample proof to this sad truth: in those fatal notions which man has cherished on this subject, are to be traced the true sources of all those prejudices, the fountain of all those sorrows, to which he is the victim. nevertheless, as we have elsewhere said, utility ought to be the only standard, the uniform scale, by which to form a judgment on either the opinions, the institutions, the systems, or the actions of intelligent beings; it is according to the measure of happiness which these things procure for us, that we ought either to cover them with our esteem, or expose them to our contempt. whenever they are useless it is our duty to despise them; as soon as they become pernicious, it is imperative to reject them; reason imperiously prescribes that our detestation should be commensurate with the evils which they cause. taking these principles for a land-mark, which are founded on our nature, which must appear incontestible to every reasonable being, with experience for a beacon, let us coolly examine the effects which these notions have produced on the earth. we have already, in more than one part of the work, given a glimpse of the doctrine of that morals, which having only for object the preservation of man, and his conduct in society, can have nothing, in common with imaginary systems: it has been shewn, that the essence of a sensitive, intelligent, rational being, properly meditated, would discover motives competent to moderate the fury of his passions--to induce him to resist his vicious propensities--to make him fly criminal habits--to invite him to render himself useful to those beings for whom his own necessities have a continual occasion; thus, to endear himself to his, fellow mortals, to become respectable in his own esteem. these motives will unquestionably be admitted to possess more solidity, to embrace greater, potency, to involve more truth, than those which are borrowed from systems that want stability; that assume more shapes than there are languages; that are not tangible to the tact of humanity; that must of necessity present a different perspective to all who shall view them through the medium of prejudice. from what has been advanced, it will be felt that education, which should make man in early life contract good habits, adopt favorable dispositions, fortified by a respect for public opinion, invigorated by ideas of decency, strengthened by wholesome laws, corroborated by the desire of meriting the friendship of others, stimulated by the fear of losing his own esteem, would be fully adequate to accustom him to a laudable conduct, amply sufficient to divert him from even those secret crimes, from which he is obliged to punish himself by remorse; which costs him the most incessant labour to keep concealed, by the dread of that shame, which must always follow their publicity. experience demonstrates in the clearest manner, that the success of a first crime disposes him to commit a second; impunity leads on to the third, this to a lamentable sequel that frequently closes a wretched career with the most ignominious exhibition; thus the first delinquency is the commencement of a habit: there is much less distance from this to the hundredth, than from innocence to criminality: the man, however, who lends himself to a series of bad actions, under even the assurance of impunity, is most woefully deceived, because he cannot avoid castigating himself: moreover, he cannot know at what point of iniquity he shall stop. it has been shewn, that those punishments which society, for its own preservation, has the right to inflict on those who disturb its harmony, are more substantive, more efficacious, more salutary in their effects, than all the distant torments held forth by the priests; they intervene a more immediate obstacle to the stubborn propensities of those obdurate wretches, who, insensible to the charms of virtue, are deaf to the advantages that spring from its practice, than can be opposed by the denunciations, held forth in an hereafter existence, which he is at the same moment taught may be avoided by repentance, that shall only take place when the ability to commit further wrong has ceased. in short, one would be led to think it obvious to the slightest reflection, that politics, founded upon the nature of man, upon the principles of society, armed with equitable laws, vigilant over morals, faithful in rewarding virtue, constant in visiting crime, would be more suitable to clothe ethics with respectability, to throw a sacred mantle over moral goodness, to lend stability to public virtue, than any authority that can be derived from contested systems, the conduct of whose professors frequently disgrace the doctrines they lay down, which after all seldom do more than restrain those whose mildness of temperament effectually prevents them from running into excess; those who, already given to justice, require no coercion. on the other hand, we have endeavoured to prove that nothing can be more absurd, nothing actually more dangerous, than attributing human qualities to the divinity which cannot but choose to find themselves in a perpetual contradiction. plato has said "that virtue consists in resembling god." but how is man to resemble a being, who, it is acknowledged, is incomprehensible to mankind--who cannot be conceived by any of those means, by which he is alone capable of having perceptions? if this being, who is shewn to man under such various aspects, who is said to owe nothing to his creatures, is the author of all the good, as well as all the evil that takes place, how can he be the model for the conduct of the human race living together in society? at most he can only follow one side of the character, because among his fellows, he alone is reputed virtuous who does not deviate in his conduct from justice; who abstains from evil; who performs with punctuality those duties he owes to his fellows. if it be taken up, and insisted he is not the author of the evil, only of the good, i say very well: that is precisely what i wanted to know; you thereby acknowledge he is not the author of every thing; we are no longer at issue; you are inconclusive to your own premises, consequently ought not to demand an implicit reliance on what you choose to assert. but, replies the subtle theologian, that is not the affair; you must seek it in the creed i have set forth--in the religion of which i am a pillar. very good: is it then actually in the system of fanatics, that man should draw up his ideas of virtue? is it in the doctrines which these codes hold forth, that he is to seek for a model? alas! do they not pourtray their idols: under the most unwholesome colours; do they not represent them as following their caprice in every thing, who love or hate, who choose or reject, who approve or condemn according to their whim, who delight in carnage, who send discord amongst men, who act irrationally, who commit wantonness, who sport with their feeble subjects, who lay continual snares for them, who rigorously interdict the use of their reason? what, let us seriously ask, would become of morality, if men proposed to themselves such portraits for models! it was, however, for the most part, systems of this temper that nations adopted. at was in consequence of these principles that what has been called religion in most countries, was far removed from being favourable to morality; on the contrary, it often shook it to its foundation--frequently left no vestige of its existence. it divided man, instead of drawing closer the bonds of union; in the place of that mutual love, that reciprocity of succour, which ought ever to distinguish human society, it introduced hatred and persecution; it made them seize every opportunity to cut each other's throat for speculative opinions, equally irrational; it engendered the most violent heart-burnings--the most rancorous animosities--the most sovereign contempt. the slightest difference in their received opinions rendered them the most mortal enemies; separated their interests for ever; made them despise each other; and seek every means to render their existence miserable. for these theological conjectures, nations become opposed to nations; the sovereign frequently armed himself against his subjects; subjects waged war with their sovereign; citizens gave activity to the most sanguinary hostility against each other; parents detested their offspring; children plunged the pointed steel, the barbed arrow, into the bosoms of those who gave them existence; husbands and wives disunited, became the scourges of each other; relations forgetting the ties of consanguinity, tore each other to pieces, or else reciprocally consigned them to oblivion; all the bonds of society were rent asunder; the social compact was broken up; society committed suicide: whilst in the midst of this fearful wreck--regardless of the horrid shrieks called forth by this dreadful confusion--unmindful of the havock going forward on all sides--each pretended that he conformed to the views of his idol, detailed to him by his priest--fulminated by the oracles. far from making himself any reproach, for the misery he spread abroad, each lauded his own individual conduct; gloried in the crimes he committed in support of his sacred cause. the same spirit of maniacal fury pervaded the rites, the ceremonies, the customs, which the worship, adopted by superstition, placed so much above all the social virtues. in one country, tender mothers delivered up their children to moisten with their innocent blood the altars of their idols; in another, the people assembled, performed the ceremony of consolation to their deities, for the outrages they committed against them, and finished by immolating to their anger human victims; in another, a frantic enthusiast lacerated his body, condemned himself for life to the most rigorous tortures, to appease the wrath of his gods. the jupiter of the pagans was a lascivious monster; the moloch of the phenicians was a cannibal; the savage idol of the mexican requires thousands of mortals to bleed on his shrine, in order to satisfy his sanguinary appetite. such are the models superstition holds out to the imitation of man; is it then surprising that the name of these despots became the signal for mad-brained enthusiasm to exercise its outrageous fury; the standard under which cowardice wreaked its cruelty; the watchword for the inhumanity of nations to muster their barbarous strength; a sound which spreads terror wherever its echo could reach; a continual pretext for the most barefaced breaches of public decorum; for the most shameless violation of the moral duties? it was the frightful character men gave of their gods, that banished kindness from their hearts--virtue from their conduct--felicity from their habitations--reason from their mind: almost every where it was some idol, who was disturbed by the mode in which unhappy mortals thought; this armed them with poignards against each other; made them stifle the cries of nature; rendered them barbarous to themselves; atrocious to their fellow creatures: in short, they became irrational, breathed forth vengeance, outraged humanity, every time that, instigated by the priest, they were inclined to imitate the gods of their idolatry, to display their zeal, to render themselves acceptable in their temples. it is not, then, in such systems, man ought to seek either for models of virtue, or rules of conduct suitable to live in society. he needs human morality, founded upon his own nature; built upon invariable experience; submitted to reason. the ethics of superstition will always he prejudicial to the earth; cruel masters cannot be well served, but by those who resemble them: what then becomes of the great advantages which have been imagined resulted to man, from the notions which have been unceasingly infused into him of his gods? we see that almost all nations acknowledge them; yet, to conform themselves to their views, they trampled under foot the clearest rights of nature--the most evident duties of humanity; they appeared to act as if it was only by madness the most incurable--by folly the most preposterous--by the most flagitious crimes, committed with an unsparing hand, that they hoped to draw down upon themselves the favor of heaven--the blessings of the sovereign intelligence they so much boast of serving with unabated zeal; with the most devotional fervor; with the most unlimited obedience. as soon, therefore, as the priests give them to understand their deities command the commission of crime, or whenever there is a question of their respective creeds, although they are wrapt in the most impenetrable obscurity, they make it a duty with themselves to unbridle their rancour--to give loose to the most furious passions; they mistake the clearest precepts of morality; they credulously believe the remission of their own sins will be the reward of their transgressions against their neighbour. would it not be better to be an inhabitant of soldania in africa, where never yet form of worship entered, or the name of god resounded, than thus to pollute the land with superstitious castigation--with the enmity of priests against each other? indeed, it is not generally in those revered mortals, spread over the earth to announce the oracles of the gods, that will be found the most sterling virtues. these men, who think themselves so enlightened, who call themselves the ministers of heaven, frequently preach nothing but hatred, discord, and fury in its name: the fear of the gods, far from having a salutary influence over their own morals, far from submitting them to a wholesome discipline, frequently do nothing more than increase their avarice, augment their ambition, inflate their pride, extend their covetousness, render them obstinately stubborn, and harden their hearts. we may see them unceasingly occupied in giving birth to the most lasting animosities, by their unintelligible disputes. we see them hostilely wrestling with the sovereign power, which they contend is subordinate to their own. we see them arm the chiefs of nations against the legitimate magistrates; distribute to the credulous multitude the most mortal weapons, to massacre each other in the prosecution of those futile controversies, which sacerdotal vanity clothes with the most interesting importance. do these men, who advance the beauty of their theories, who menace the people with eternal vengeance, avail themselves of their own marvellous notions to moderate their pride--to abate their vanity--to lessen their cupidity--to restrain their turbulence--to bring their vindictive humours under control? are they, even in those countries where their empire is established upon pillars of brass, fixed on adamantine rocks, decorated with the most curious efforts of human ingenuity--where the sacred mantle of public opinion shields them with impunity--where credulity, planted in the hot-bed of ignorance, strikes the roots of their authority into the very centre of the earth; are they, i would ask, the enemies to debauchery, the foes to intemperance, the haters of those excesses which they insist a severe god interdicts to his adorers? on the contrary, are they not seen to be emboldened in crime; intrepid in iniquity; committing the most shameful atrocities; giving free scope to their irregularities; indulging their hatred; glutting their vengeance; exercising the most savage cruelties on the miserable victims to their cowardly suspicion? in short, it may be safely advanced, without fear of contradiction, that scarcely any thing is more frequent, than that those men who announce these terrible creeds--who make men tremble under their yoke--who are unceasingly haranguing upon the eternity and dreadful nature of their punishments--who declare themselves the chosen ministers of their oracular laws--who make all the duties of morality centre in themselves; are those whom superstition least contributes to render virtuous; are men who possess the least milk of human kindness; the fewest feelings of tenderness; who are the most intolerant to their neighbours; the most indulgent to themselves; the most unsociable in their habits; the most licentious in their manners; the most unforgiving in their disposition. in contemplating their conduct, we should be tempted to accredit, that they were perfectly undeceived with respect to the idols whom they serve; that no one was less the dupe to those menaces which they so solemnly pronounce in their name, than themselves. in the hands of the priests of almost all countries, their divinities resembled the head of medusa, which, without injuring him who shewed it, petrified all others. the priests are generally the most crafty of men, and many among them are substantively wicked. does the idea of these avenging, these remunerating systems, impose upon some princes of the earth, who found their titles, who rest their power upon them; who avail themselves of their terrific power to intimidate their subjects; to make the people, often rendered unhappy by their caprice, hold them in reverence? alas! the theological, the supernatural ideas, adopted by the pride of some sovereigns, have done nothing more than corrupt politics--than metamorphose, them into an abject tyranny. the ministers of these idols, always tyrants themselves, or the cherishers of despots, are unceasingly crying out to monarchs that they are the images of the divinity. do they not inform the credulous multitude that heaven is willing they should groan under the most cruel bondage; writhe under the most multifarious injustice; that to suffer is their inheritance; that their princes have the indubitable right to appropriate the goods, dispose of the persons, coerce the liberty; command the lives of their subjects? do not some of these chiefs of nations, thus poisoned in the name of deified idols, imagine that every indulgence of their wayward humour is freely permitted to them? at once competitors, representatives, and rivals of the celestial powers, do they not, in some instances, exercise after their example the most arbitrary despotism? do they not, in the intoxication into which sacerdotal flattery has plunged them, think that like their idols, they are not accountable to man for their actions, that they owe nothing to the rest of mortals, that they are bound by no bonds but their own unruly will, to their miserable subjects? then it is evident that it is to theological notions, to the loose flattery of its ministers, that are to be ascribed the despotism, the tyrannical injustice, the corruption, the licentiousness of some princes, and the blindness of those people, to whom in heaven's name they interdict the love of liberty; who are forbid to labour effectually to their own happiness; to oppose themselves to violence, however flagrant; to exercise their natural rights, however conducive to their welfare. these intoxicated rulers, even while adoring their avenging gods, in the act of bending others to their worship, do not scruple to outrage them by their irregularities--by their want of moral virtue. what morality is this, but that of men who offer themselves as living images, as animated representatives of the divinity? are those monarchs, then, who are habitually unjust, who wrest without remorse the bread from the hands of a famished people, to administer to the profligacy of their insatiable courtiers--to pamper the luxury of the vile instruments of their enormities, atheists? are, then, those ambitious conquerors, who not contented with oppressing their own slaves, carry desolation, spread misery, deal out death among the subjects of others, atheists? do we not witness in some of those potentates who rule over nations by _divine right_, (a patent of power, which every usurper claims as his own) ambitious mortals, whose exterminating fury nothing can arrest; with hearts perfectly insensible to the sorrows of mankind; with minds without energy; with souls without virtue; who neglect their most evident duties, with which they do not even deign to become acquainted; powerful men, who insolently set themselves above the rules of equity; knaves who make a sport of honesty? generally speaking, is there the least sincerity in the alliances which these rulers form among themselves? do they ever last longer than for the season of their convenience? do we find substantive virtues adorn those who most abjectly submit themselves to all the follies of superstition? do they not tax each other as violators of property--as faithlessly aggrandizing themselves at the expence of their neighbour; in fact, do we not see them endeavouring to surprise, anxious to over-reach, ready to injure each other, without being arrested by the menaces of their creeds, or at all yielding to the calls of humanity? in general, they are too haughty to be humane; too inflated with ambition to be virtuous; they make a code for themselves, which they cannot help violating. charles the fifth used to say, "that being a warrior, it was impossible for him to have either conscience or religion." his general, the marquis de piscaire, observed, that "nothing was more difficult, than to serve at one and the same time, the god _mars_ and _jesus christ_." indeed, nothing can be more opposed to the true spirit of christianity than the profession of arms; notwithstanding the christian princes have the most numerous armies, and are in perpetual hostility with each other: perhaps the clergy themselves do not hold forth the most peaceable examples of the doctrine they teach; they sometimes wrangle for tithes, dispute for trifling enjoyments, quarrel for worldly opinion, with as much determined obstinacy, with as, much settled rancour, with as little charity, as could possibly inhabit the bosom of the most unenlightened pagan, whose ignorance they despise--whose superstition they rank as the grossest effort of idolatrous debasement. it might almost admit of doubt whether they would be quite pleased to see the mild maxims of the evangelists, the true christian meekness, rigidly followed--whether they might not think the complete working of their own system would clash with their own immediate interests? is it a demonstrable axiom that the ministers of the christian faith do not think soldiers are beings extremely well calculated to give efficacy to their doctrine--solidity to their advantages--durability to their claims? be this as it may, priests as well as monarchs have occasionally waged war for the most futile interests; impoverished a people from the anti-christian motives; wrested from each other with all the venom of furies, the bloody remnant of the nations they have laid waste; in fact, to judge by their conduct on certain occasions, it might have been a question if they were not disputing who should have the credit of making the greater number of miserable beings upon earth. at length, either wearied with their own fury, exhausted by their own devouring passions, or compelled by the stern hand of necessity, they have permitted suffering humanity to take breath; they have allowed the miseries concomitant on war, to cease for an instant their devastating havoc; they have made peace in the name of that god, whose decrees, as attested by themselves, they have been so wantonly outraging,--still ready, however, to violate their most solemn pledges, when the smallest interest could offer them a pretext. thus it will be obvious, in what manner the idea of the divinity operates on the priest, as well as upon those who are called his images; who insist they have no account to render but to him alone. among these representatives of the divine majesty, it is with difficulty during thousands of years we find some few who have equity, sensibility, virtue, or even the most ordinary talent. history points out some of these vicegerents of the deity, who in the exacerbation of their delirious rage, have insisted upon displacing him, by exalting themselves into gods; and exacting the most obsequious worship; who have inflicted the most cruel torments on those who have opposed themselves to their madness, and refused to acknowledge the divinity of their persons. these men, whose licentiousness knew no limits, from the impunity which attended their actions, notwithstanding they had learned to despise public opinion, to set decency at defiance, to indulge in the most shameless vice: in spite of the power they possessed; of the homage they received; of the terror they inspired: although they had learned to counterfeit, with great effect, the whole catalogue of human virtues; found it impossible, even with the addition of their enormous wealth, wrenched from the necessities of laborious honesty, to counterfeit the animating blush, which modest merit brings forth, when eulogized by some happy being whose felicity he has occasioned, by following the great law of nature--which says, "_love thy neighbour as thyself_." on the contrary, we see them grow listless with satiety; disgusted with their own inordinate indulgences; obliged to recur to strange pleasures, to awaken their benumbed faculties; to run headlong into the most costly follies, in the fruitless attempt to keep up the activity of their souls, the spring of which they had for ever relaxed, by the profligacy of their enjoyment. history, although it describes a multitude of vicious rulers, whose irregular propensities were of the most mischievous consequence to the human race, nevertheless, shews us but few who have been atheists. the annals of nations, on the contrary, offer to our view great numbers of superstitious princes, governed by their mistresses, led by unworthy favorites, leagued with priests, who passed their lives plunged in luxury; indulging the most effeminate pursuits; following the most childish pleasures; pleased with ostentatious show; slaves even to the fashion of the vestments that covered them; but strangers to every manly virtue; insensible to the sorrows of their subjects; although uniformly good to their hungry courtiers, invariably kind to those cringing sycophants who surrounded their persons, and poisoned their ears with the most fulsome flattery: in short, superstitious persecutors, who, to render themselves acceptable to their priests, to expiate their own shameful irregularities, added to all their other vices that of tyrannizing over the mind, of fettering the conscience, of destroying their subjects for their opinions, when they were in hostility with their own received doctrines. indeed, superstition in princes frequently allied itself with the most horrid crimes; they have almost all professed religion, although very few of them have had a just knowledge of morality--have practiced any useful substantive virtue. superstitious notions, on the contrary, often serve to render them more blind, to augment their evil inclinations; to set them at a greater distance from moral goodness. they for the most part believe themselves assured of the favor of heaven; they think they faithfully serve their gods, that the anger of their divinities is appeased, if for a short season they shew themselves attached to futile customs--lend themselves to absurd rites--perform some ridiculous duties, which superstition imposes on them, with a view to obtain their assistance in the prosecution of its own plans, very rarely in strict unison with their immediate interest. nero, the cruel, sanguinary, matricidal nero, his hands yet reeking with the blood of that unfortunate being who had borne him in her womb, who had, with agonizing pains, given the monster to the world that plunged the dagger in her heart, was desirous to be initiated into the _eleusinian mysteries_. the odious constantine himself, found in the priests, accomplices disposed to expiate his crimes. the infamous philip, whose ungovernable ambition caused him to be called the daemon of the south, whilst he assassinated his wife and son, caused the throats of the wretched batavians to be cut for their religious opinions. it is thus, that the priests of superstition sometimes persuade sovereigns they can atone for crimes, by committing others of a more atrocious kind--of an increased magnitude. it would be fair to conclude, from the conduct of so many princes, who had so much superstition, but so slender a portion of virtue, that the notion of their gods, far from being useful to them, only served to render them wore corrupt--to make them more abominable than they already were; that the idea of an avenging power, placed in the perspective of futurity, imposed but little restraint on the turbulence of deified tyrants, who were sufficiently powerful not to fear the reproaches of their subjects--who had the insensibility to be deaf to the censure of their fellows--who were gifted with an obduracy of soul, that prevented their having compassion for the miseries of mankind, from whom they fancied themselves so pre-eminently distinguished; which, in fact, they were, if crime can be allowed for the standard of distinction. neither heaven nor earth furnishes a balsam of sufficient efficacy to heal the inveterate wounds of beings cankered to this degree: for such chronic diseases, there is "no balm in gilead:" there is no curb sufficiently coercive to rein in the passions, to which superstition itself gives activity; which only makes them more unruly; renders them more inveterately rash. whenever men flatter themselves with easily expiating their sins--when they soothe themselves with the consolitary idea of appeasing the anger of the gods by a show of earnestness, they then deliver themselves up, with the most unrestrained freedom, to the bent of their criminal pursuits. the most dissolute men are frequently in appearance extremely attached to superstition: it furnishes them with a means of compensating by ceremonies, that of which they are deficient in morals: it is much easier for them to adopt a faith, to believe in a doctrine, to conform themselves to certain rituals, than to renounce their habits, resist their passions, or relinquish the pursuit of that pleasure, which results to unprincipled minds from the prosecution of the most diabolical schemes. under chiefs, depraved even by superstition, nations continued necessarily to be corrupted. the great conformed themselves to the vices of their masters; the example of these distinguished men, whom the uninformed erroneously believe to be happy, was followed by the people; courts thus became the sinks from whence issued the epidemic contagion of licentious indulgence. the law only held forth pictures of honesty; the dispensers of jurisprudence were partial, partook of the mania of the times, were labouring under the general disease; justice suffered her balance to rust, occasionally removed her bandage, although she always wore it in the presence of the poor; genuine ideas of equity had grown into disuse; distinct notions of right and wrong became troublesome and unfashionable; education was neglected; it served only to produce prejudiced beings, grounded in ignorance--devotees, always ready to injure themselves--fanatics, eager to shew their zeal ever willing to annoy their unfortunate neighbours. superstition, sustained by tyranny, ousted every other feeling, hoodwinked its destined victims, rendered those tractable whom it had the intention to despoil. whoever doubts of these truisms, has only to turn over the pages of history, he will find myriads of evidence to much more than is here stated. machiavel, in his _political discourses upon titus livius_, labours the point hard, to shew the utility of superstition to the roman republic: unfortunately, however, the examples he brings forward in its support, incontestibly prove that none but the senate profited by the infatuation of the people, who availed itself of their blindness more effectually to bend them to its yoke. thus it was that nations, destitute of equitable laws, deficient in the administration of justice, submitted to irrational government, continued in slavery by the monarch, chained up in ignorance by the priest, for want of enlightened institutions, deprived of reasonable education, became corrupt, superstitious, and flagitious. the nature of man, the just interests of society, the real advantage of the sovereign, the true happiness of the people, once mistaken, were completely lost sight of; the morality of nature, founded upon the essence of man living in society, was equally unknown; lay buried under an enormous load of prejudice, that no common efforts were competent to remove. it was entirely forgotten that man has wants; that society was formed that he might, with greater security, facilitate the means of satisfying them; that government, to be legitimate, ought to have for object, the happiness--for end, the means of maintaining the indivisibility of the community; that consequently it ought to give activity to springs, full play to motives suitable to have a favorable influence over sensible beings. it was quite overlooked, that virtue faithfully rewarded, vice as regularly visited, had an elastic force, of which the public authorities could efficaciously avail themselves, to determine their citizens to blend their interests; to work out their own felicity, by labouring to the happiness of the body of which they were members. the social virtues were unknown, the _amor patriae_ became a chimera. men thus associated, thus blinded by their superstitious bias, credulously believed their own immediate interest consisted in injuring each other; they were solely occupied with meriting the favor of those men, who fatally accreditted the doctrine of clerical flatterers, of silver-toned courtiers, which taught that they wore distinctly interested in injuring the whole. this is the mode in which the human heart has become perverted; here is the genuine source of moral evil; the hot-bed of that epidemical depravity, the cause of that hereditary corruption, the fountain of that inveterate delinquency, which pervaded the earth; rendering the abundance of nature nothing better than a curse; blasting the fairest prospects of humanity; degrading man below the beast of the forest; sinking his intellectual faculties in the most savage barbarity; rendering him the vile instrument of lawless ambition; the wretched tool by which the fetters of his species were firmly rivetted; obliging him to moisten his harvest with the bitter tears of the most abject slavery. for the purpose of remedying so many crying evils, grown insupportable, recourse was had to new superstitions. notwithstanding this alone had produced them, it was still imagined, that the menaces of heaven would restrain passions which every thing conspired to rouse in all hearts; fatuity persuaded monarchs that ideal, metaphysical barriers, terrible fables, distant phantoms, would be competent to curb those inordinate desires, to rein in that impetuous propensity to crime, that rendered society incommodious to itself; credulity fancied that invisible powers would be more efficacious, than those visible motives that evidently invited mortals to the commission of mischief. every thing was understood to be achieved, by occupying man's mind with gloomy chimeras, with vague, undefinable terrors, with avenging angels; and politics madly believed that its own interests grew out of the blind submission of its subjects, to the ministers of these delusive doctrines. what was the result? nations had only sacerdotal laws; theological morality; accommodated to the interests of the hierarchy--suitable to the views of subtle priests: who substituted reveries for realities, opinions for reason, rank fallacies for sterling truths; who made ceremonies supply the place of virtue; a pious blindness supersede the necessity of an enlightened understanding; undermined the sacredness of oaths, and placed fanaticism on the altars of sociability. by a necessary consequence of that confidence which the people were compelled to give to the ministers of superstition, two distinct authorities were established in each state, who were substantially at variance, in continual hostility with each other. the priest fought the sovereign with the formidable weapon of opinion; it generally proved sufficiently powerful to shake the most established thrones. thus, although the hierarchy was unceasingly admonishing the people to submit themselves to the divine authority of their sovereigns, because it was derived immediately from heaven, yet, whenever it so happened that the monarch did not repay their advocacy, by blindly yielding his own authority to the supervisance of the priests, these made no scruple of threatening him with loss of his temporalities; fulminated their anathemas, interdicted his dominions, and sometimes went the length of absolving his subjects from allegiance. superstition, in general, only upholds despotism, that it may with greater certainty direct its blows against its enemies; it overthrows it whenever it is found to clash with its interests. the ministers of invisible powers preach up obedience to visible powers, only when they find these humbly devoted to themselves. thus the sovereign was never at rest, but when abjectly cringing to his priest, he tractably received his lessons--lent himself to his frantic zeal--and piously enabled him to carry on the furious occupation of proselytism. these priests, always restless, full of ambition, burning with intolerance, frequently excited the sovereign to ravage his own states--encouraged him to tyranny: when, pursuing this sacerdotal mania, he feared to have outraged humanity, to have incurred the displeasure of heaven, he was quickly reconciled to himself, upon promise of undertaking some distant expedition, for the purpose of bringing some unfortunate nation within the pale of their own particular creed. when the two rival powers united themselves, morality gained nothing by the junction; the people were neither more happy, nor more virtuous; their morals, their welfare, their liberty, were equally overwhelmed by the combined powers. thus, superstitious princes always felt interested in the maintenance of theological opinions, which were rendered flattering to their vanity, favorable to their power. like the grateful perfumes of arabia, that are used to cover the ill scent of a deadly poison, the priest lulled them into security by administering to their sensualities; these, in return, made common cause with him: fully persuaded that the superstition which they themselves adopted, must be the most wholesome for their subjects, most conducive to their interests, those who refused to receive the boon, thus gratuitously forced upon them, were treated as enemies, held up to public scorn, and rendered the victims of punishment. the most superstitious sovereign became, either politically or through piety, the executioner of one part of his slaves; he was taught to believe it a sacred duty to tyrannize over the mind--to overwhelm the refractory--to crush the enemy of his priest, under an idea that he was therefore hostile to his own authority. in cutting the throats of these unfortunate sceptics, he imagined he at once discharged his obligations to heaven, and gave security to his own power. he did, not perceive, that by immolating victims to his priest, he in fact strengthened the arm of his most formidable foe--the real enemy to his authority--the rival of his greatness--the least subjected of his subjects. but the prevalence of these false notions, with which both the minds of the sovereign and the people were prepossessed, it was found that every thing in society concurred to gratify the avidity, to bolster the pride, to glut the vengeance of the sacerdotal order: every where, it was to be observed, that the most turbulent, the most dangerous, the most useless men, were those who were the most amply rewarded. the strange spectacle presented itself, of beholding those who were born the bitterest enemies to sovereign power, cherished by its fostering care--honoured at its hands: the most rebellious subjects were looked upon as the pillars of the throne; the corrupters of the people were rendered the exclusive masters of education; the least laborious of the citizens were richly rewarded for their idleness--munificently remunerated for the most futile speculations--held in respect for their fatal discord--gorged with benefits for their inefficacious prayers: they swept off the fat of the land for their expiations, so destructive to morals, so calculated to give permanency to crime. thus, by a strange fatuity, the viper that could, and frequently did, inflict the most deadly sting on the bosom of confiding credulity, was pampered and nourished by the unsuspecting hand of its destined victim. for thousands of years, nations as well as sovereigns were emulously despoiling themselves to enrich the expounders of superstition; to enable them to wallow in abundance: they loaded them with honors, decorated them with titles, invested them with privileges, granted them immunities, for no other purpose than to make them bad citizens, unruly subjects, mischievous beings, who revenged upon society the advantages they had received. what was the fruit that kings and people gathered from their imprudent kindness? what was the harvest these men yielded to their labour? did princes really become more powerful; were nations rendered more happy; did they grow more flourishing; did men become more rational? no! unquestionably, the sovereign lost the greater portion of his authority; he was the slave of his priest; and when he wished to preserve the remnant that was left, or to recover some part of what had been wrested from him, he was obliged to be continually wrestling against the men his own indulgence, his own weakness, had furnished with means, to set his authority at defiance: the riches of society were lavished to support the idleness, maintain the splendour, satiate the luxury of the most useless, the most arrogant, the most dangerous of its members. did the morals of the people improve under the pastoral care of these guides, who were so liberally rewarded? alas! the superstitious never knew them, their fanatic creed had usurped the place of every virtue; its ministers, satisfied with upholding the doctrines, with preserving the ceremonies so useful to their own interests, only invented fictitious crimes--multiplied painful penances--instituted absurd customs; to the end, that they might turn even the transgressions of their slaves to their own immediate profit. every where they exercised a monopoly of expiatory indulgences; they made a lucrative traffic of pretended pardons from above; they established a tariff, according to which crime was no longer contraband, but freely admitted upon paying the customs. those subjected to the heaviest impost, were always such as the hierarchy judged most inimical to its own stability; you might at a very easy rate obtain permission to attack the dignity of the sovereign, to undermine the temporal power, but it was enormously dear to be allowed to touch even the hem of the sacerdotal garments. thus heresy, sacrilege, &c. were considered crimes of a much deeper dye, that fixed an indelible stain on the perpetrator, alarmed the mind of the priestly order, much more seriously than the most inveterate villainy, the most determined delinquency, which more immediately involved the true interests of society. thence the ideas of the people were completely overturned, imaginary crimes terrified them, while real crimes had no effect upon their obdurate hearts. a man, whose opinions were at variance with the received doctrines, whose abstract systems did not harmonize with those of his priest, was more loathed than a corrupter of youth; more abhorred than an assassin; more hated than an oppressor; was held in greater contempt than a robber; was punished with greater rigor than the seducer of innocence. the acme of all wickedness, was to despise that which the priest was desirous should be looked upon as sacred. the celebrated gordon says, "the most abominable of heresies, is to believe there is any other god than the clergy." the civil laws concurred to aid this confusion of ideas; they inflicted the most serious penalties, punished in the most atrocious manner those unknown crimes which imagination had magnified into the most flagitious actions; heretics, infidels, were brought to the stake, and publicly burnt with the utmost refinement of cruelty; the brain was tortured to find means of augmenting the sufferings of the unhappy victims to sacerdotal fury; whilst calumniators of innocence, adulterers, depredators of every description, knaves of all kinds, were at a trifling cost absolved from their past iniquity, and opened a new account of future delinquency. under such instructors what could become of youth? the period of juvenility was shamefully sacrificed to superstition. man, from his earliest infancy, was poisoned with unintelligible notions; fed with mysteries; crammed with fables; drenched with doctrines, in which he was compelled to acquiesce without being able to comprehend. his brain was disturbed with phantoms, alarmed with chimeras, rendered frantic by visions. his genius was cramped with puerile pursuits, mechanical devotions, sacred trifles. superstition at length so fascinated the human mind, made such mere automata of mankind, that the people consented to address their gods in a dialect they did not themselves understand: women occupied their whole lives in singing latin, without comprehending a word of the language; the people assisted very punctually, without being competent to explain any part of the worship, under an idea that it was taken kindly they should thus weary themselves; that it was sufficient to shew their persons in the sacred temples, which were beautifully decorated to fascinate their senses. thus man wasted his most precious moments in absurd customs; spent his life in idle ceremonies; his bead was crowded with sophisms, his mind was loaded with errors; intoxicated with fanaticism, he was the declared enemy to reason; for ever prepossessed against truth, the energy of his soul was resisted by shackles too ponderous for its elasticity; the spring gave way, and he sunk into sloth and wretchedness: from this humiliating state he could never again soar; he could no longer become useful either to himself or to his associates: the importance he attached to his imaginary science, or rather the systematic ignorance which served for its basis, rendered it impossible for the most fertile soil to produce any thing but thorns; for the best proportioned tree to yield any thing but crabs. does a superstitious, sacerdotal education, form intrepid citizens, intelligent fathers of families, kind husbands, just masters, faithful servants, loyal subjects, pacific associates? no! it either makes peevish enthusiasts or morose devotees, who are incommodious to themselves, vexatious to others: men without principle, who quickly pour the waters of lethe over the terrors with which they have been disturbed; who know no moral obligation, who respect no virtue. thus superstition, elevated above every thing else, held forth the fanatical dogma, "better to obey the gods than men;" in consequence, man believed he must revolt against his prince, detach himself from his wife, detest his children, estrange himself from his friends, cut the throats of his fellow-citizens, every time they questioned the veracity of his faith: in short, a superstitious education, when it had its effect, only served to corrupt the juvenile heart--to fascinate youthful winds with its pageantry--to degrade the human soul--to make man mistake the duties he owed to himself, his obligations to society, his relations with the beings by whom he was surrounded. what advantages might not nations have reaped, if they would have employed on useful objects, those riches, which ignorance has so shamefully lavished on the expounders of superstition; which fatuity has bestowed on the most useless ceremonies? what might not have been the progress of genius, if it had enjoyed those ample remunerations, granted during so many ages to those priests who at all times opposed its elevation? what perfection might not science have attained, what height might not the arts have reached, if they had had the same succours that were held forth with a prodigal hand to enthusiasm and futility? upon what rocks might not morality have been rested, what solid foundations might not politics have found, with what majestic grandeur might not truth have illumined the human horizon, if they had experienced the same fostering cares, the same animating countenance, the same public sanction, which accompanied imposture--which was showered upon fanaticism--which shielded falsehood from the rude attack of investigation--which gave impunity to its ministers? it is then obvious, that superstitious, theological notions, have not produced any of those solid advantages that have been held forth; if may be doubted whether they were not always, and ever will remain, contrary to healthy politics, opposed to sound morality; they frequently change sovereigns into restless, jealous, mischievous, divinities; they transform their subjects into envious, wicked slaves, who by idle pageantry, by futile ceremonies, by an exterior acquiescence in unintelligible opinions, imagine themselves amply compensated for the evil they commit against each other. those who have never had the confidence to examine these sublimated opinions; those who feel persuaded that their duties spring out of these abstruse doctrines; those who are actually commanded to live in peace, to cherish each other, to lend mutual assistance, to abstain from evil, and to do good, presently lose sight of these sterile speculations, as soon as present interests, ungovernable passions, inveterate habits, or irresistible whims, hurry them away. where are we to look for that equity, that union of interest, that peace, that concord, which these unsettled notions, supported by superstition, backed with the full force of authority, promise to the societies placed under their surveillance? under the influence of corrupt courts, of time-serving priests, who, either impostors or fanatics, are never in harmony with each other, are only to be discerned vicious men, degraded by ignorance--enslaved by criminal habits--swayed by transient interests--guided by shameful pleasures--sunk in a vortex of dissipation; who do not even think of the divinity. in despite of his theological ideas, the subtle courtier continues to weave his dark plots, labours to gratify his ambition, seeks to satisfy his avidity, to indulge his hatred, to wreak his vengeance, to give full swing to all the passions inherent to the perversity of his being: maugre that frightful hell, of which the idea alone makes her tremble, the woman of intrigue persists in her amours; continues her harlotry, revels in her adulteries. notwithstanding their dissipated conduct, their dissolute manners, their entire want of moral principle, the greater part of those who swarm in courts, who crowd in cities, would recoil with horror, if the smallest doubt was exhibited of the truth of that creed which they outrage every moment, of their lives. what advantage, then, has resulted to the human race from those opinions, so universal, at the same time so barren? they seem rarely to have had any other kind of influence than to serve as a pretext for the most dangerous passions--as a mantle of security for the most criminal indulgences. does not the superstitious despot, who would scruple to omit the least part of the ceremonies of his persuasion, on quitting the altars at which he has been sacrificing, on leaving the temple where they have been delivering the oracles and terrifying crime in the name of heaven, return to his vices, reiterate his injustice, increase his political crimes, augment his transgressions against society? issuing from the sacred fane, their ears still ringing with the doctrines they have heard, the minister returns to his vexations, the courtier to his intrigues, the courtezan to her prostitution, the publican to his extortions, the merchant to his frauds, the trader to his tricks. will it be pretended that those cowardly assassins, those dastardly robbers, those miserable criminals, whom evil institutions, the negligence of government, the laxity of morals, continually multiply; from whom the laws, in many instances too sanguinary, frequently wrest their existence; will it, i say, be pretended that the malefactors who regularly furnish the gibbets, who daily crowd the scaffolds, are either incredulous or atheists? no! unquestionably, these unfortunate beings, these wretched outcasts, these children of turpitude, firmly believe in god; his name has been repeated to them from their infancy; they have been informed of the punishment destined for sinners: they have been habituated in early life to tremble at his judgments; nevertheless they have outraged society; their unruly passions, stronger than their fears, not having been coerced by visible motives, have not, for much more cogent reasons, been restrained by those which are invisible: distant, concealed punishments will never be competent to arrest those excesses which present and assured torments are incapable of preventing. in short, does not every day's experience furnish us the lesson, that men, persuaded that an all-seeing deity views them, hears them, encompasses them, do not on that account arrest their progress when the furor exists, either for gratifying their licentious passions, or committing the most dishonest actions? the same individual who would fear the inspection of the meanest of his fellows, whom the presence of another man would prevent from committing a bad action, from delivering himself up to some scandalous vice, freely sins, cheerfully lends himself to crime, when he believes no eyes beholds him but those of his god. what purpose, then, does the conviction of the omniscience, the ubiquity, the omnipotence of the divinity answer, if it imposes much less on the conduct of the human being, than the idea of being overlooked by the least of his fellow men? he who would not have the temerity to commit a crime, even in the presence of a child, will make no scruple of boldly committing it, when he shall have only his god for a witness. these facts, which are indubitable, ill serve for a reply to those who insist that the fear of god is more suitable to restrain the actions of men, than wholesome laws, with strict discipline. when man believes he has only his god to dread, he commonly permits nothing to interrupt his course. those persons who do not in the least suspect the power of superstitious notions, who have the most perfect reliance on their efficacy, very rarely, however, employ them, when they are desirous to influence the conduct of those who are subordinate to them; when they are disposed to re-conduct them to the paths of reason. in the advice which a father gives to his vicious, criminal son, he rather represents to him the present temporal inconveniencies to which his conduct exposes him, than the danger he encounters in offending an avenging god; he points out to him the natural consequences of his irregularities, his health damaged by debaucheries; the loss of his reputation by criminal pursuits; the ruin of his fortune by gambling; the punishments of society, &c. thus the deicolist himself, on the most important occasions of life, reckons more stedfastly upon the force of natural motives, than upon those supernatural inducements furnished by superstition: the same man, who vilifies the motives that an atheist can have to do good and abstain from evil, makes use of them himself on this occasion, because he feels they are the most substantive he can employ. almost all men believe in an avenging and remunerating god; yet nearly in all countries the number of the wicked bears a larger proportion than that of the good. if the true cause of this general corruption be traced, it will be more frequently found in the superstitious notions inculcated by theology, than in those imaginary sources which the various superstitions have invented to account for human depravity. man is always corrupt wherever he is badly governed; wherever superstition deifies the sovereign, his government becomes unworthy: this perverted and assured of impunity, necessarily render his people miserable; misery, when it exceeds the point of endurance, as necessarily renders them wicked. when the people are submitted to irrational masters, they are never guided by reason. if they are blinded by priests, who are either deceived or impostors, their reason become useless. tyrants, when combined with priests, have generally been successful in their efforts to prevent nations from becoming enlightened--from seeking after truth--from ameliorating their condition--from perfectioning their morals; and never has the union smiled upon liberty: the people, unable to resist the mighty torrent produced by the confluence of two such rivers, have usually sunk into the most abject slavery. it is only by enlightening the mass of mankind, by demonstrating truth, that we can promise to render him better; that we can indulge the hope of making him happy. it is by causing both sovereigns and subjects to feel their true relations with each other, that their actual interests will be improved; that their politics will be perfectioned: it will then be felt and accredited, that the true art of governing mortals, the sure method of gaining their affections, is not the art of blinding them, of deceiving them, or of tyrannizing over them. let us, then, good humouredly consult reason, avail ourselves of experience, interrogate nature; we shall, perhaps, find what is requisite to be done, in order to labour efficaciously to the happiness of the human race. we shall most assuredly perceive, that error is the true source of the evils which embitter our existence; that it is in cheering the hearts, in dissipating those vain phantoms which alarm the ignorant, in laying the axe to the root of superstition, that we can peaceably seek after truth; that it is only in the conflagration of this baneful tree, we can ever expect to light the torch which shall illumine the road to felicity. then let man study nature; observe her immutable laws; let him dive into his own essence; let him cure himself of his prejudices: these means will conduct him by a gentle declivity to that virtue, without which he must feel he can never be permanently happy in the world he inhabits. if man could once cease to fear, from that moment he would be truly happy. superstition is a domestic enemy which he always carries within himself: those who will seriously occupy themselves with this formidable phantom, must be content to endure continual agonies, to live in perpetual inquietude: if they will neglect the objects most worthy of interesting them, to run after chimeras, they will commonly pass a melancholy existence, in groaning, in praying, in sacrificing, in expiating faults, either real or imaginary, which they believe calculated to offend their priests; frequently in their irrational fury they will torment themselves, they will make it a duty to inflict on their own persons the most barbarous punishments: but society will reap no benefit from these mournful opinions--from the tortures of these pious irrationals; because their mind, completely absorbed by their gloomy reveries, their time dissipated in the most absurd ceremonies, will leave them no opportunity of being really advantageous to the community of which they are members. the most superstitions men are commonly misanthropists, quite useless to the world, and very injurious to themselves: if ever they display energy, it is only to devise means by which they can increase their own affliction; to discover new methods to torture their mind; to find out the most efficacious means to deprive themselves of those objects which their nature renders desirable. it is common in the world to behold penitents, who are intimately persuaded that by dint of barbarous inflictions on their own persons, by means of a lingering suicide, they shall merit the favor of heaven. madmen of this species are to be seen every where; superstition has in all ages, in all places, given birth to the most cruel extravagances, to the most injurious follies. if, indeed, these irrational devotees only injure themselves, and deprive society of that assistance which they owe to it, they without doubt do less mischief than those turbulent, zealous fanatics, who, infuriated with their superstitious ideas, believe themselves bound to disturb the world, to commit actual crimes, to sustain the cause of what they denominate the true faith. it not unfrequently happens that in outraging morality, the zealous enthusiast supposes he renders himself agreeable to his god. he makes perfection consist either in tormenting himself, or in rending asunder, in favour of his fanatical ideas, the most sacred ties that connect mortals with each other. let us, then, acknowledge, that the notions of superstition, are not more suitable to procure the welfare, to establish the content, to confirm the peace of individuals, than they are of the society of which they are members. if some peaceable, honest, inconclusive enthusiasts, find either comfort or consolation in them, there are millions who, more conclusive to their principles, are unhappy during their whole life; who are perpetually assailed by the most melancholy ideas; to whom their disordered imagination shews these notions, as every instant involving them in the most cruel punishments. under such formidable systems, a tranquil, sociable devotee, is a man who has not reasoned upon them. in short, every thing serves to prove, that superstitious opinions have the strongest influence over men; that they torment them unceasingly, divide them from their dearest connections, inflame their minds, envenom their passions, render them miserable without ever restraining their actions, except when their own temperament proves too feeble to propel them forward: all this holds forth one great lesson, that _superstition is incompatible with liberty, and can never furnish good citizens_. chap. ix. _theological notions cannot be the basis of morality.--comparison between theological ethics and natural morality.--theology prejudicial to the human mind._ felicity is the great end of human existence; a supposition therefore, to be actually useful to man, should render him happy. by what parity of reasoning can he flatter himself that an hypothesis, which does not facilitate his happiness in his present duration, may one day conduct him to permanent bliss? if mortals only sigh, tremble, and groan in this world, of which they have a knowledge, upon what foundation is it they expect a more felicitous existence hereafter, in a world of which they know nothing? if man is every where the child of calamity, the victim to necessary evil, the unhappy sufferer under an immutable system, ought he reasonably to indulge a greater confidence in future happiness? on the other hand, a supposition which should throw light on every thing, which should supply an easy solution to all the questions to which it could be applied, when even it should not be competent to demonstrate the certitude, would probably be true: but that system which should only obscure the clearest notions, render more insoluble the problems desired to be resolved by its means, would most assuredly be looked upon as fallacious; as either useless or dangerous. to be convinced of this principle, let us examine, without prejudice, if the theological ideas of the divinity have ever given the solution to any one difficulty. has the human understanding progressed a single step by the assistance of this metaphysical science? has it not, on the contrary, had a tendency to obscure the wore certain science of morals? has it not, in many instances, rendered the most essential duties of our nature problematical? has it not in a great measure confounded the notions of virtue and vice, of justice and injustice? indeed, what is virtue, in the eyes of the generality of theologians? they will instantly reply, "that which is conformable to the will of the incomprehensible beings who govern nature." but way it not be asked, without offence to the individual opinions of any one, what are these beings, of whom they are unceasingly talking, without having the capacity to comprehend them? how can we acquire a knowledge of their will? they will forthwith reply, with a confidence that is meant to strike conviction on uninformed minds, by recounting what they are not, without even attempting to inform us what they are. if they do undertake to furnish an idea of them, they will heap upon their hypothetical beings a multitude, of contradictory, incompatible attributes, with which they will form a whole, at once impossible for the human mind to conceive or else they will refer to oracles, by which they insist their intentions have been promulgated to mankind. if, however, they are requested to prove the authenticity of these oracles, which are at such variance with each other, they will refer to miracles in support of what they assert: these miracles, independent of the difficulty there must exist to repose in them our faith, when, as we have seen, they are admitted even by the theologians themselves, to be contrary to the intelligence, the immutability, to the omnipotency of their immaterial substances, are, moreover, warmly disputed by each particular sect, as being impositions, practised by the others for their own individual advantage. as a last resource, then, it will be necessary to accredit the integrity, to rely on the veracity, to rest on the good faith of the priests, who announce these oracles. on this again, there arises two almost insuperable difficulties, in the _first_ place, who shall assure us of their actual mission? are we quite certain none of them may be mistaken? how shall we be justified in giving credence to their powers? are they not these priests themselves, who announce to us that they are the infallible interpreters of a being whom they acknowledge they do not at all know? in the _second_ place, which set of these oracular developements are we to adopt? for to give currency to the whole, would, in point of fact, annihilate them entirely; seeing, that no two of them run in unison with each other. this granted, the priests, that is to say, men extremely suspicious, but little in harmony with each other, will be the arbiters of morality; they will decide (according to their own uncertain knowledge, after their various passions, in conformity to the different perspectives under which they view these things,) on the whole system of ethics; upon which absolutely rests the repose of the world--the sterling happiness of each individual. would this be a desirable state? would it be that from which humanity has the best founded prospect of that felicity, which is the desired object of his research? again; do we not see that either enthusiasm or interest is the only standard of their decisions? that their morals are as variable as their caprice? those who listen to them, very rarely discover to what line they will adhere. in their various writings, we have evidence of the most bitter animosities; we find continual contradictions; endless disputes upon what they themselves acknowledge to be the most essential points; upon those premises, in the substantive proof of which their whole system depends; the very beings they depict as their source of their various creeds, are pourtrayed as variable as themselves; as frequently changing their plans as these are their arguments. what results from all this to a rational man? it will be natural for him to conclude, that neither inconstant gods, nor vacillating priests, whose opinions are more fluctuating than the seasons, can be the proper models of a moral system, which should be as regular, as determinate, as invariable as the laws of nature herself; as that eternal march, from which we never see her derogate. no! arbitrary, inconclusive, contradictory notions, abstract, unintelligible speculations, can never be the sterling bases of the ethical science! they must be evident, demonstrable principles, deduced from the nature of man, founded upon his wants, inspired by rational education, rendered familiar by habit, made sacred by wholesome laws, that will flash conviction on our mind, render systems useful to mankind, make virtue dear to us--that will people nations with honest men--fill up the ranks with faithful subjects--crowd them with intrepid citizens. incomprehensible beings can present nothing to our imagination, save vague ideas, which will never embrace any common point of union amongst those who shall contemplate them. if these beings are painted as terrible, the mind is led astray; if changeable, it always precludes us from ascertaining the road we ought to pursue. the menaces held forth by those, who, in despite of their own assertions, say they are acquainted with the views, with the determination of these beings, will seldom do more than render virtue unpleasant; fear alone will then make us practise with reluctance, that which reason, which our own immediate interest, ought to make us execute with pleasure. the inculcation of terrible ideas will only serve to disturb honest persons, without in the least arresting the progress of the profligate, or diverting the course of the flagitious: the greater number of men, when they shall be disposed to sin, to deliver themselves up to vicious propensities, will cease to contemplate these terrific ideas, will only behold a merciful god, who is filled with goodness, who will pardon the transgressions of their weakness. man never views things but on that side which is most conformable to his desires. the goodness of god cheers the wicked; his rigour disturbs the honest man. thus, the qualities with which theology clothes its immaterial substances, themselves turn out disadvantageous to sound morality. it is upon this infinite goodness that the most corrupt men will have the audacity to reckon, when they are either hurried along by crime, or given up to habitual vice. if, then, they are reminded of their criminal courses, they reply, "god is good, his mercy is infinite, his clemency boundless:" thus it may be said that religion itself is pressed into the service of vice, by the children of turpitude. superstition, above all, rather abets crime than represses it, by holding forth to mortals that by the assistance of certain ceremonies, the performance of certain rites, the repetition of certain prayers, aided by the payment of certain sums of money, they can appease the anger of their gods, assuage the wrath of heaven, wash out the stains of their sins, and be received with open arms into the happy number of the elect--be placed in the blissful abodes of eternity. in short, do not the priests of superstition universally affirm, that they possess infallible secrets, for reconciling the most perverse to the pale of their respective systems? it must be concluded from this, that however these systems are viewed, in whatever manner they are considered, they cannot serve for the basis of morality, which in its very nature is formed to be invariably the same. irascible systems are only useful to those who find an interest in terrifying the ignorance of mankind, that they may advantage themselves of his fears--profit by his expiations. the nobles of the earth, who are frequently men not gifted with the most exemplary morals--who do not on all occasions exhibit the most perfect specimens of self-denial--who would not, perhaps, be at all times held up as mirrors of virtue, will not see these formidable systems, when they shall be inclined to listen to their passions; to lend themselves to the indulgence of their unruly desires: they will, however, feel no repugnance to make use of them to frighten others, to the end that they may preserve unimpaired their superiority; that they may keep entire their prerogatives; that they may more effectually bind them to servitude. like the rest of mankind, they will see their god under the traits of his benevolence; they will always believe him indulgent to those outrages they may commit against their fellows, provided they shew due respect for him themselves: superstition will furnish them with easy means to turn aside his wrath; its ministers seldom omit a profitable opportunity, to expiate the crimes of human nature. morality is not made to follow the caprices of the imagination, the fury of the passions, the fluctuating interests of men: it ought to possess stability; to be at all times the same, for all the individuals of the human race; it ought neither to vary in one country, nor in one race from another: neither superstition nor religion, has a privilege to make its immutability subservient to the changeable laws of their systems. there is but one method to give ethics this solidity; it has been more than once pointed out in the course of this work: it is only to be founded upon the nature of man, bottomed upon his duties, rested upon the relations subsisting between intelligent beings, who are in love, with their happiness, who are occupied with their own preservation, who live together in society that they may with greater facility ascertain these ends. in short we must take for the basis of morality the necessity of things. in weighing these principles, which are self evident, confirmed by constant experience, approved by reason, drawn from nature herself, we shall have an undeviating tone of conduct; a sure system of morality, that will never be in contradiction with itself. man will have no occasion to recur to theological speculations to regulate his conduct in the visible world. we shall then be capacitated to reply to those who pretend that without them there can be no morality. if we reflect upon the long tissue of errors, upon the immense chain of wanderings, that flow from the obscure notions these various systems hold forth--of the sinister ideas which superstition in all countries inculcates; it would be much more conformable to truth to say, that all sound ethics, all morality, either useful to individuals or beneficial to society, is totally incompatible with systems which never represent their gods but under the form of absolute monarchs, whose good qualities are continually eclipsed by dangerous caprices. consequently, we shall be obliged to acknowledge, that to establish morality upon a steady foundation, we must necessarily commence by at least quitting those chimerical systems upon which the ruinous edifice of supernatural morality has hitherto been constructed, which during such a number of ages, has been so uselessly preached up to a great portion of the inhabitants of the earth. whatever may have been the cause that placed man in his present abode, that gave him the faculties he possesses; whether the human species be considered as the work of nature, or whether it be supposed that he owes his existence to an intelligent being, distinguished from nature; the existence of man, such as he is, is a fact; we behold in him a being who thinks, who feels, who has intelligence, who loves himself, who tends to his own conservation, who in every moment of his duration strives to render his existence agreeable; who, the more easily to satisfy his wants and to procure himself pleasure, congregates in society with beings similar to himself; of whom his conduct can either conciliate the favour, or draw upon him the disaffection. it is, then, upon these general sentiments, inherent in his nature, which will subsist as long as his race shall endure, that we ought to found morality; which is only a science embracing, the duties of men living together in society. these duties have their spring in our nature, they are founded upon our necessities, because we cannot reach the goal of happiness, if we do not employ the requisite means: these means constitute the moral science. to be permanently felicitous, we must so comport ourselves as to merit the affection, so act as to secure the assistance of those, beings with whom we are associated; these will only accord us their love, lend us their esteem, aid us in our projects, labour to our peculiar happiness, but in proportion as our own exertions shall be employed for their advantage. it is this necessity, flowing naturally out of the relations of mankind, that is called moral obligation. it is founded upon reflection, rested upon those motives competent to determine sensible, intelligent beings, to pursue that line of conduct, which in best calculated to achieve that happiness towards which they are continually verging. these motives in the human species, never can be other than the desire, always regenerating, of procuring good and avoiding evil. pleasure and pain, the hope of happiness, or the fear of misery, are the only motives suitable to have an efficacious influence on the volition of sensible beings. to impel them towards this end, it is sufficient these motives exist and be understood to have a knowledge of them, it is only requisite to consider our own constitution: according to this, we shall find we can only love those actions, approve that conduct, from whence result actual and reciprocal utility; this constitutes virtue. in consequence, to conserve ourselves, to make our own happiness, to enjoy security, we are compelled to follow the routine which conducts to this end; to interest others in our own preservation, we are obliged to display an interest in theirs; we must do nothing that can have a tendency to interrupt that mutual co-operation which alone can lead to the felicity desired. such is the true establishment of moral obligation. whenever it is attempted to give any other basis to morality than the nature of man, we shall always deceive ourselves; none other can have the least stability; none can be more solid. some authors, even of great integrity, have thought, that to give ethics more respectability in the eyes of man, to render more inviolable those duties which his nature imposes on him, it was needful to clothe them with the authority of a being whom they have made superior to nature--whom they have rendered more powerful than necessity. theology, seizing on these ideas, with its own general want of just inference, has in consequence invaded morality; has endeavoured to connect it with its various systems. by some it has been imagined, this union would render virtue more sacred; that the fear attached to invisible powers, who govern nature, would lend more weight, would give more efficacy to its laws; in short, it has been believed that man, persuaded, of the necessity of the moral system, seeing it united with superstition, would contemplate superstition itself as necessary to his happiness. indeed it is the supposition that these systems are essential to morality, that sustains the theological ideas--that gives permanency to the greater part of all the creeds on earth; it is erroneously imagined that without them man would neither understand nor practise the duties he owes to others. this prejudice once established, gives currency to the opinion that the vague ideas growing out of these systems are in such a manner connected with morality, are so linked with the actual welfare of society, that they cannot be attacked without overturning the social duties that bind man to his fellow. it is thought that the reciprocity of wants, the desire of happiness, the evident interests of the community, would be mere skeleton motives, devoid of all active energy, if they did not borrow their substance from these various systems; if they were not invested with the force derived from these numerous creeds; if they were not clothed with the sanction of those ideas which have been made the arbiters of all things. nothing, however, is more borne out by the evidence of experience, nothing has more thoroughly impressed itself on the minds of reflecting men, than the danger always arising from connecting truth with fiction; the known with the unknown; the delirium of enthusiasm, with the tranquillity of reason. indeed what has resulted from the confused alliance, from the marvellous speculations, which theology has made with the most substantive realities? of mixing up its evanescent conjectures with the confirmed aphorisms of time? the imagination bewildered, has mistaken truth: superstition, by aid of its gratuitous suppositions, has commanded nature--made reason bow, under its bulky yoke,--submitted man to its own peculiar caprices; very frequently in the name of its gods obliged him to stifle his nature, to piously violate the most sacred duties of morality. when these superstitions have been desirous of restraining mortals whom they had previously hood-winked, whom they had rendered irrational, it gave them only ideal curbs, imaginary motives; it substituted unsubstantial causes, for those which were substantive; marvellous supernatural powers, for those which were natural, and well understood; it supplied actual realities, by ideal romances and visionary fables. by this inversion of principle, morality had no longer any fixed basis: nature, reason, virtue, demonstration, were laid prostrate before the most undefinable systems; were made to depend upon oracular promulgations, which never spake distinctly; indeed, they generally silenced reason, were often delivered by fanatics, which time proved to be impostors; by those who, always adopting the appellation of inspired beings, gave forth nothing but the wanderings of their own delirium, or else were desirous of profiting by the errors which they themselves instilled into mankind. thus these men became deeply interested in preaching abject submission, non-resistance, passive-obedience, factitious virtues, frivolous ceremonies; in short, an arbitrary morality, conformable to their own reigning passions; frequently prejudicial to the rest of the human race. it was thus, in making ethics flow from these various systems, they in point of fact submitted it to the dominant passions of men, who had a direct interest in moulding it to their own advantage. in being disposed to found it upon undemonstrated theories, they founded it upon nothing; in deriving it from imaginary sources, of which each individual forms to himself his own notion, generally adverse to that of his neighbour; in resting it upon obscure oracles, always delivered ambiguously, frequently interpreted by men in the height of delirium, sometimes by knaves, who had immediate interests to promote, they rendered it unsteady--devoid of fixed principle,--too frequently left it to the mercy of the most crafty of mankind. in proposing to man the changeable creeds of the theologians for a model, they weakened the moral system of human actions; frequently annihilated that which was furnished by nature; often substituted in its place nothing but the most perplexing incertitude; the most ruinous inconsistency. these systems, by the qualities which are ascribed, to them, become inexplicable enigmas, which each expounds as best suits himself; which each explains after his own peculiar mode of thinking; in which the theologian ever finds that which most harmonizes with his designs; which he can bend to his own sinister purposes; which he offers as irrefragible evidence of the rectitude of those actions, which at bottom have nothing but his own advantage in view. if they exhort the gentle, indulgent, equitable man, to be good, compassionate, benevolent; they equally excite the furious, who is destitute of these qualities, to be intolerant, inhuman, pitiless. the morality of these systems varies in each individual; differs in one country from another; in fact, those actions which some men look upon as sacred, which they have learned to consider meritorious, make others shudder with horror--fill them with the most painful recollections. some see the divinity filled with gentleness and mercy; others behold him as full of wrath and fury, whose anger is to be assuaged by the commission of the most shocking cruelties. the morality of nature is clear, it is evident even to those who outrage it. it is not thus with superstitious morality; this is as obscure as the systems which prescribe it; or rather as fluctuating as the passions, as changeable as the temperaments, of those who expound them; if it was left to the theologians, ethics ought to be considered as the science of all others the most problematical, the most unsteady, the most difficult to bring to a point; it would require the most profound, penetrating genius, the most active, vigorous mind, to discover the principles of those duties man owes to himself, that he ought to exercise towards others; this would render the sources of the moral system attainable by a very small number of individuals; would effectually lock them up in the cabinets of the metaphysicians; place them under the treacherous guardianship of priests: to derive it from those systems, which are in themselves undefinable, with the foundations of which no one is actually acquainted, which each contemplates after his own mode, modifies after his own peculiar ideas, is at once to submit it to the caprice of every individual; it is completely to acknowledge, we know not from whence it is derived, nor whence it has its principles. whatever may be the agent upon whom they make nature, or the beings she contains, to depend; with whatever power they way suppose him invested, it is very certain that man either does, or does not exist; but as soon as his existence is acknowledged, as soon as it is admitted to be what it actually is, when he shall be allowed to be a sensible being living in society, in love with his own felicity, they cannot without either annihilating him, or new modelling him, cause him to exist otherwise than he does. therefore, according to his actual essence, agreeable to his absolute qualities, conformable to those modifications which constitute him a being, of the human species, morality becomes necessary to him, and the desire of conserving himself will make him prefer virtue to vice, by the same necessity that he prefers pleasure to pain. if, following up the doctrine of the theologians, "that man hath occasion for supernatural grace to enable him to do good," it must be very injurious to sound principles of morality; because he will always wait for "the call from above," to exercise that virtue, which is indispensable to his welfare. tertullian, nevertheless says expressly, "wherefore will ye trouble yourselves, seeking after the law of god, whilst ye have that which is common to all the world, and which is written on the tablets of nature?" to say, that man cannot possess any moral sentiments without embracing the discordant systems offered to his acceptance, is, in point of fact, saying, that he cannot distinguish virtue from vice; it is to pretend that without these systems, man would not feel the necessity of eating to live, would not make the least distinction, would be absolutely without choice in his food: it is to pretend, that unless he is fully acquainted with the name, character, and qualities of the individual who prepares a mess for him, he is not competent to discriminate whether this mess be agreeable or disagreeable, good or bad. he who does not feel himself satisfied what opinions to adopt, upon the foundation and moral attributes of these systems, or who even formally denies them, cannot at least doubt his own existence-his own functions--his own qualities--his own mode of feeling--his own method of judging; neither can he doubt the existence of other organized beings similar to himself; in whom every thing discovers to him qualities analogous with his own; of whom he can, by certain actions, either gain the love or incur the hatred--secure the assistance or attract the ill-will--merit the esteem or elicit the contempt; this knowledge is sufficient to enable him to distinguish moral good and evil. in short, every man enjoying a well-ordered organization, possessing the faculty of making true experience, will only need to contemplate himself in order to discover what he owes to others: his own nature will enlighten him much more effectually upon his duties, than those systems in which he will consult either his own unruly passions, those of some enthusiast, or those of an impostor. he will allow, that to conserve himself, to secure his own permanent welfare, he is frequently obliged to resist the blind impulse of his own desires; that to conciliate the benevolence of others, he must act in a mode conformable to their advantage; in reasoning thus, he will find out what virtue actually is; if he puts his theory into practice, he will be virtuous; he will be rewarded for his conduct by the harmony of his own machine; by the legitimate esteem of himself, confirmed by the good opinion of others, whose kindness he will have secured: if he acts in a contrary mode, the trouble that will ensue, the disorder of his frame, will quickly warn him that nature, thwarted by his actions, disapproves his conduct, which is injurious to himself; to which he will be obliged to add the condemnation of others, who will hate him. if the wanderings of his mind prevent him from seeing the more immediate consequences of his irregularities, neither will he perceive the distant rewards, the remote punishments, which these systems hold forth; because they will never speak to him so distinctly as his conscience, which will either reward or punish him on the spot. theology has never yet known how to give a true definition of virtue: according to it, it is an effort of grace, that disposes man to do that which is agreeable to the divinity. but what is this grace? how doth it act upon man? how shall we know what is agreeable to a divinity who is incomprehensible to all men? every thing that has been advanced evidently proves, that superstitious morality is an infinite loser when compared with the morality of nature, with which, indeed, it is found in perpetual contradiction. nature invites man to love himself, to preserve his existence, to incessantly augment the sum of his happiness: superstition teaches him to be in love only with formidable doctrines, calculated to generate his dislike; to detest himself; to sacrifice to his idols his most pleasing sensations--the most legitimate pleasures of his heart. nature counsels man to consult reason, to adopt it for his guide; superstition pourtrays this reason as corrupted, as a treacherous director, that will infallibly lead him astray. nature warns him to enlighten his understanding, to search after truth, to inform himself of his duties; superstition enjoins him not to examine any thing, to remain in ignorance, to fear truth; it persuades him there are no relations so important to his interest, as those which subsist between himself and systems which he can never understand. nature tells the being who is in love with his welfare, to moderate his passions, to resist them when they are found destructive to himself, to counteract them by substantive motives collected from experience; superstition desires a sensible being to have no passions, to be an insensible mass, or else to combat his propensities by motives borrowed from the imagination, which are as variable as itself. nature exhorts man to be sociable, to love his fellow creatures, to be just, peaceable, indulgent, benevolent, to permit his associates to freely enjoy their opinions; superstition admonishes him to fly society, to detach himself from his fellow mortals, to hate them when their imagination does not procure them dreams conformable to his own; to break through the most sacred bonds, to maintain his own opinions, or to frustrate those of his neighbour; to torment, to persecute, to massacre, those who will not be mad after his own peculiar manner. nature exacts that man in society should cherish glory, labour to render himself estimable, endeavour to establish an imperishable name, to be active, courageous, industrious; superstition tells him to be abject, pusillanimous, to live in obscurity, to occupy himself with ceremonies; it says to him, be useless to thyself, and do nothing for others. nature proposes to the citizen, for his model, men endued with honest, noble, energetic souls, who have usefully served their fellow citizens; superstition recommends to his imitation mean, cringing sycophants; extols pious enthusiasts, frantic penitents, zealous fanatics, who for the most ridiculous opinions have disturbed the tranquility of empires. nature urges the husband to be tender, to attach himself to the company of his mate, to cherish her in his bosom; superstition makes a crime of his susceptibility, frequently obliges him to look upon the conjugal bonds as a state of pollution, as the offspring of imperfection. nature calls to the father to nurture his children, to cherish their affection, to make them useful members of society; superstition advises him to rear them in fear of its systems, to hoodwink them, to make them superstitious, which renders them incapable of actually serving society, but extremely well calculated to disturb its repose. nature cries out to children to honor their parents, to listen to their admonitions, to be the support of their old age; superstition says, prefer the oracles; in support of the systems of which you are an admitted member, trample father and mother under your feet. nature holds out to the philosopher that he should occupy himself with useful objects, consecrate his cares to his country, make advantageous discoveries, suitable to perfect the condition of mankind; superstition saith, occupy thyself with useless reveries; employ thy time in endless dispute; scatter about with a lavish hand the seeds of discord, calculated to induce the carnage of thy fellows; obstinately maintain opinions which thou thyself canst never understand. nature points out to the perverse man, that he should blush for his vices, that he should feel sorrow for his disgraceful propensities, that he should be ashamed of crime; it shews him, that his most secret irregularities will necessarily have an influence over his own felicity; superstition crieth to the most corrupt men, to the most flagitious mortals, "do not irritate the gods, whom thou knowest not; but if, peradventure, against their express command, thou dost deliver thyself up to crime, remember that their mercy is infinite, that their compassion endureth for ever, that therefore they may be easily appeased; thou hast nothing more to do than to go into their temples, prostrate thyself before their altars, humiliate thyself at the feet of their ministers; expiate thy transgressions by largesses, by sacrifices, by offerings, by ceremonies, and by prayer; these things done with a willing spirit, and a contrite heart, will pacify thine own conscience, and cleanse thee in the eyes of heaven." the rights of the citizen, or the man in society, are not less injured by superstition, which is always in contradiction with sound politics. nature says distinctly to man, "thou art free; no power on earth can justly deprive thee of thy rights, without thine own consent; and even then, thou canst not legitimately make thyself a slave to thy like." superstition tells him he is a slave, condemned to groan all his life under the iron rod of the representatives of its system. nature commands man to love the country which gave him birth, to serve it faithfully, to blend his interests with it, to unite against all those who shall attempt to injure it; superstition generally orders him to obey without murmur the tyrants who oppress it, to serve them against its best interests, to merit their favors by contributing to enslave their fellow citizens to their ungovernable caprices: notwithstanding these general orders, if the sovereign be not sufficiently devoted to the priest, superstition quickly changes its language, it then calls upon subjects to become rebels; it makes it a duty in them to resist their masters; it cries out to them, "it is better to obey the gods than men." nature acquaints princes that they are men: that it is not by their capricious whims that they can decide what is just; that it is not their wayward humours that can mark what is unjust; that the public will maketh the law. superstition often insinuates to them that they are gods, to whom nothing in this world ought to offer resistance; sometimes, indeed, it transforms them into tyrants, whom enraged heaven is desirous should be immolated to its wrath. superstition corrupts princes; these corrupt the law, which, like themselves, becomes unjust; from thence institutions are perverted; education only forms men who are worthless, blinded with prejudice, smitten with vain objects, enamoured of wealth, devoted to pleasures, which they must obtain by iniquitous means: thus nature, mistaken, is disdained; virtue is only a shadow quickly sacrificed to the slightest interest, while superstition, far from remedying these evils to which it has given birth, does nothing more than render them still more inveterate; or else engenders sterile regrets which it presently effaces: thus, by its operation, man is obliged to yield to the force of habit, to the general example, to the stream of those propensities, to those causes of confusion, which conspire to hurry all his species, who are not willing to renounce their own welfare, on to the commission of crime. here is the mode by which superstition, united with politics, exert their efforts to pervert, abuse, and poison the heart of man; the generality of human institutions appear to have only for their object to abase the human character, to render it more flagitiously wicked. do not then let us be at all astonished if morality is almost every where a barren speculation, from which every one is obliged to deviate in practice, if he will not risk the rendering himself unhappy. men can only have sound morals, when, renouncing his prejudices, he consults his nature; but the continued impulse which his soul is every moment receiving, on the part of more powerful motives, quickly compels him to forget those ethical rules which nature points out to him. he is continually floating between vice and virtue; we behold him unceasingly in contradiction with himself; if, sometimes, he justly appreciates the value of an honest, upright conduct, experience very soon shews him, that this cannot lead him to any thing, which he has been taught to desire, on the contrary, that it may be an invincible obstacle to the happiness which his heart never ceases for an instant to search after. in corrupt societies it is necessary to become corrupt, in order to become happy. citizens, led astray at the same time both by their spiritual and temporal guides, neither knew reason nor virtue. the slaves both of their superstitious systems, and of men like themselves, they had all the vices attached to slavery; kept in a perpetual state of infancy, they had neither knowledge nor principles; those who preached virtue to them, knew nothing of it themselves, and could not undeceive them with respect to those baubles in which they had learned to make their happiness consist. in vain they cried out to them to stifle those passions which every thing conspired to unloose: in vain they made the thunder of the gods roll to intimidate men whose tumultuous passions rendered them deaf. it was soon discovered that the gods of the heavens were much less feared than those of the earth; that the favour of the latter procured a much more substantive welfare than the promises of the former; that the riches of this world were more tangible than the treasures reserved for favorites in the next; that it was much more advantageous for men to conform themselves to the views of visible powers than to those of powers who were not within the compass of their visual faculties. thus society, corrupted by its priests, guided by their caprice, could only bring forth a corrupt offspring. it gave birth to avaricious, ambitious, jealous, dissolute citizens, who never saw any thing happy but crime; who beheld meanness rewarded; incapacity honoured; wealth adored; debauchery held in esteem; who almost every where found talents discouraged; virtue neglected; truth proscribed; elevation of soul crushed; justice trodden under foot; moderation languishing in misery; liberality of mind obligated to groan under the ponderous bulk of haughty injustice. in the midst of this disorder, in this confusion of ideas, the precepts of morality could only be vague declamations, incapable of convincing any one. what barrier could superstition, with its imaginary motives, oppose to the general corruption? when it spake reason, it could not be heard; its gods themselves were not sufficiently powerful to resist the torrent; its menaces failed of effect, on those hearts which every thing hurried along to crime; its distant promises could not counterbalance present advantages; its expiations, always ready to cleanse mortals from their sins, emboldened them to persevere in their criminal pursuits; its frivolous ceremonies calmed their consciences; its zeal, its disputes, its caprices, only multiplied the evils, with which society found itself afflicted; only gave them an inveteracy that rendered them more widely mischievous; in short, in the most vitiated nations there was a multitude of devotees, and but very few honest men. great and small listened to the doctrines of superstition, when they appeared favorable to their dominant passions; when they were desirous to counteract them, they listened no longer. whenever superstition was conformable to morality, it appeared incommodious, it was only followed when it either combatted ethics or destroyed them. the despot himself found it marvellous, when it assured him he was a god upon earth; that his subjects were born to adore him alone, to administer to his phantasms. he neglected it when it told him to be just; from thence he saw it was in contradiction with itself, that it was useless to preach equity to a deified mortal; besides, he was assured the gods would pardon every thing, as soon as he should consent to recur to his priests, always ready to reconcile them; the most wicked of their subjects reckoned in the same manner upon their divine assistance: thus superstition, far from restraining vice, assured its impunity; its menaces could not destroy the effects which its unworthy flattery had produced in princes; these same menaces could not annihilate the hope which its expiations had furnished to all. sovereigns, either inflated with pride, or always confident of washing out their crimes by timely sacrifices, no longer actually feared their gods; become gods themselves, they believed they were permitted any thing against poor pitiful mortals, whom they no longer considered under any other light than as playthings destined for their earthly amusement. if the nature of man was consulted in his politics which supernatural ideas have so woefully depraved, it would completely rectify those false notions that are entertained equally by sovereigns and by subjects; it would contribute more amply than all the superstitions existing, to render society happy, powerful, and flourishing under rational authority. nature would teach man, it is for the purpose of enjoying a greater portion of happiness, that mortals live together in society; that it is its own preservation, its own immediate felicity, that society should have for its determinate, unchangeable object: that without equity, a nation only resembles a congregation of enemies; that his most cruel foe, is the man who deceives him in order that he may enslave him; that the scourges most to be feared, are those priests who corrupt his chiefs, who, in the name of the gods assure them of impunity for their crimes: she would prove to him that association is a misfortune under unjust, negligent, destructive governments. this nature, interrogated by princes, would teach them they are men and not gods; that their power is only derived from the consent of other men; that they themselves are citizens, charged by other citizens, with the care of watching over the safety of the whole; that the law ought to be only the expression of the public will; that it is never permitted them to counteract nature, or to thwart the invariable end of society. this nature would make monarchs feel, that to be truly great, to be decidedly powerful, they ought to command elevated, virtuous souls; not minds degraded by despotism, vitiated by superstition. this nature would teach sovereigns, that in order to be cherished by their subjects, they ought to afford them succour; to cause them to enjoy those benefits which their wants render imperative, that they should at all times maintain them, inviolably, in the possession of their rights, of which they are the appointed defenders--of which they are the constituted guardians. this nature would prove to all those princes who should deign to consult her, that it is only by good actions, by kindness, they can either merit the love, or secure the attachment of the people; that oppression does nothing more than raise up enemies against them; that violence only makes their power unsteady; that force, however brutally used, cannot confer on them any legitimate right; that beings essentially in love with happiness, must sooner or later finish by revolting against an authority that establishes itself by injustice; that only makes itself felt by the outrage it commits: this is the manner in which nature, the sovereign of all beings, in whose system all are equal, would speak to one of these superb monarchs, whom flattery has deified:--"untoward, headstrong child! pigmy, so proud of commanding pigmies! have they then assured thee that thou art a god? have they flattered thee that thou art something supernatural? know there is nothing superior to myself. contemplate thine own insignificance, acknowledge thine impotence against the slightest of my blows. i can break thy sceptre; i can take away thine existence; i can level thy throne with the dust; i can scatter thy people; i can destroy even the earth which thou inhabitest; and yet thou hast the folly to believe thou art a god. be then, again, thyself; honestly avow that thou art a man, formed to submit to my laws equally with the meanest of thy subjects. learn then, and never let it escape thy memory, that thou art the man of thy people; the minister of thy nation; the interpreter of its laws; the executer of its will; the fellow-citizen of those whom thou hast the right of commanding, only because they consent to obey thee, in view of that well being which thou promisest to procure for them. reign, then, on these conditions; fulfil thy sacred engagements. be benevolent: above all, equitable. if thou art willing to have thy power assured to thee, never abuse it; let it be circumscribed by the immovable limits of eternal justice. be the father of thy people, and they will cherish thee as thy children. but, if unmindful of thy duties, thou neglectest them; if negligent of thine own interest, thou separatest them from those of thy great family, if thou refusest to thy subjects that happiness which thou owest them; if, heedless of thy own security, thou armest thyself against them; thou shall be like all tyrants, the slave to gloomy care, the bondman of alarm, the vassal of cruel suspicion: thou wilt become the victim to thine own folly. thy people, reduced to despair, shorn of their felicity, will no longer acknowledge thy divine rights. in vain, then, thou wouldst sue for aid to that superstition which hath deified thee; it can avail nothing with thy people, whom sharp misery had rendered deaf; heaven will abandon thee to the fury of those enemies to which thy frenzy shall have given birth. superstitious systems can effect nothing against my irrevocable decrees, which will that man shall ever irritate himself against the cause of his sorrows." in short, every thing would make known to rational princes, that they have no occasion for superstition to be faithfully obeyed on earth; that all the powers contained in these systems will not sustain them when they shall act the tyrant; that their true friends are those who undeceive the people in their delusions; that their real enemies are those who intoxicate them with flattery--who harden them in crime--who make the road to heaven too easy for them--who feed them with fanciful, chimerical doctrines, calculated to make them swerve from those cares, to divert them from those sentiments, which they justly owe to their nations. it is then, i repeat it, only by re-conducting man to nature, that we can procure him distinct notions, evident opinions, certain knowledge; it is only by shewing him his true relations with his fellows, that we can place him on the road to happiness. the human mind, blinded by theology, has scarcely advanced a single step. man's superstitious systems have rendered him sceptical on the most demonstrable truths. superstition, while it pervaded every thing, while it had an universal influence, served to corrupt the whole: philosophy, dragged in its train, although it swelled its triumphant procession, was no longer any thing but an imaginary science: it quitted the real world to plunge into the sinuosities of the ideal, inconceivable labyrinths of metaphysics; it neglected nature, who spontaneously opened her book to its examination, to occupy itself with systems filled with spirits, with invisible powers, which only served to render all questions more obscure; which, the more they were probed, the more inexplicable they became; which took delight in promulgating that which no one was competent to understand. in all difficulties it introduced the divinity; from thence things only became more and more perplexed, until nothing could be explained. theological notions appear only to have been invented to put man's reason to flight; to confound his judgment; to deceive his mind; to overturn his clearest ideas in every science. in the hands of the theologian, logic, or the art of reasoning, was nothing more than an unintelligible jargon, calculated to support sophism, to countenance falsehood, to attempt to prove the most palpable contradictions. morality, as we have seen, became wavering and uncertain, because it was founded on ideal systems, never in harmony with themselves, which, on the contrary, were continually contradicting their own most positive assertions. politics, as we have elsewhere said, were cruelly perverted by the fallacious ideas given to sovereigns of their actual rights. jurisprudence was determinately submitted to the caprices of superstition, which shackled labour, chained down human industry, controuled activity, and fettered the commerce of nations. every thing, in short, was sacrificed to the immediate interests of these theologians: in the place of every rational science, they taught nothing but an obscure, quarrelsome metaphysics, which but too often caused the blood of those unhappy people to flow copiously who were incapable of understanding its hallucinations. born an enemy to experience, theology, that supernatural science, was an invincible obstacle to the progress of the natural sciences, as it almost always threw itself in their way. it was not permitted to experimental philosophy, to natural history, to anatomy, to see any thing but through the jaundiced eye of superstition. the most evident facts were rejected with disdain, proscribed with horror, when ever they could not be made to quadrate with the idle hypotheses of superstition. virgil, the bishop of saltzburg, was condemned by the church, for having dared to maintain the existence of the antipodes; gallileo suffered the most cruel persecutions, for asserting that the sun did not make its revolution round the earth. descartes was obliged to die in a foreign land. priests, indeed, have a right to be the enemies to the sciences; the progress of reason must, sooner or later, annihilate superstitious ideas. nothing that is founded upon nature, that is bottomed upon truth, can ever be lost; while the systems of imaginations, the creeds of imposture, must be overturned. theology unceasingly opposed itself to the happiness of nations--to the progress of the human mind--to useful researches--to the freedom of thought; it kept man in ignorance; all his steps being guided by it, he was no more than a tissue of errors. indeed, is it resolving a question in natural philosophy, to say that an effect which excites our surprise, that an unusual phenomenon, that a volcano, a deluge, a hurricane, a comet, &c. are either signs of divine wrath, or works contrary to the laws of nature? in persuading nations, as it has done, that the calamities, whether physical or moral, which they experience, are the effects of the divine anger, or chastisements which his power inflicts on them, has it not, in fact, prevented them from seeking after remedies for these evils? would it not have been more useful to have studied the nature of things, to have sought in nature herself, or in human industry, for succours against those sorrows with which mortals are afflicted, than to attribute the evil which man experiences to an unknown power, against whose will it cannot be supposed there exists any relief? the study of nature, the search after truth, elevates the soul, expands the genius, is calculated to render man active, to make him courageous. theological notions appear to have been made to debase him, to contract his mind, to plunge him into despondence. in the place of attributing to the divine vengeance those wars, those famines, those sterilities, those contagions, that multitude of calamities, which desolate the earth; would it not have been more useful, more consistent with truth, to have shewn man that these evils were to be ascribed to his own folly, or rather to the unruly passions, to the want of energy, to the tyranny of some princes, who sacrifice nations to their frightful delirium? the irrational people, instead of amusing themselves with expiations for their pretended crimes, seeking to render themselves acceptable to imaginary powers; should they not rather have sought in a more healthy administration, the true means of avoiding those scourges, to which they were the victims? natural evils demand natural remedies: ought not experience then long since to have convinced mortals of the inefficacy of supernatural remedies, of expiatory sacrifices, of fastings, of processions, &c. which almost all the people of the earth have vainly opposed to the disasters which they experienced? let us then conclude, that theology with its notions, far from being useful to the human species, is the true source of all those sorrows which afflict the earth of all those errors by which man is blinded; of those prejudices which benumb mankind; of that ignorance which renders him credulous; of those vices which torment him; of those governments which oppress him. let us be fully persuaded that those theological, supernatural ideas, with which man is inspired from his infancy, are the actual causes of his habitual folly; are the springs of his superstitious quarrels; of his sacred dissensions; of his inhuman persecutions. let us, at length, acknowledge, that they are these fatal ideas which have obscured morality; corrupted polities; retarded the progress of the sciences; annihilated happiness; banished peace from the bosom of mankind, then let it be no longer dissimulated, that all those calamities, for which man turns his eyes towards heaven, bathed in tears, have their spring in the imaginary systems he has adopted: let him, therefore, cease to expect relief from them; let him seek in nature, let him search in his own energies, those resources, which superstition, deaf to his cries, will never procure for him. let him consult the legitimate desires of his heart, and he will find that which he oweth to himself, also that which he oweth to others; let him examine his own essence, let him dive into the aim of society, from thence he will no longer be a slave; let him consult experience, he will find truth, and he will discover, that _error can never possible render him happy._ chap. x. _man can form no conclusion from the ideas which are offered him of the divinity.--of their want of just inference.--of the inutility of his conduct._ it has been already stated, that ideas to be useful, must be founded upon truth; that experience must at all times demonstrate their justice: if, therefore, as we have proved, the erroneous ideas which man has in almost all ages formed to himself of the divinity, far from being of utility, are prejudicial to morality, to politics, to the happiness of society, to the welfare of the individuals who compose it, in short, to the progress of the human understanding; reason, and our interest, ought to make us feel the necessity of banishing from our mind these illusive, futile opinions, which can never do more than confound it--which can only disturb the tranquillity of our hearts. in vain should we flatter ourselves with arriving at the correction of theological notions; erroneous in their principles, they are not susceptible of reform. under whatever shape an error presents itself, as soon as man shall attach an undue importance to it, it will, sooner or later, finish by producing consequences dangerous in proportion to their extent. besides, the inutility of those researches, which in all ages have been made after the true nature of the divinity, the notions that have hitherto been entertained, have done little more than throw it into greater obscurity, even to those who have most profoundly meditated on the subject; then, ought not this very inutility to convince us that this subject is not within the reach of our capacity that this being will not be better known to us, or by our descendants, than it hath been to our ancestors, either the most savage or the most ignorant? the object, which of all others man has at all times reasoned upon the most, written upon the most, nevertheless remains the least known; far from progressing in his research, time, with the aid of theological ideas, has only rendered it more impossible to be conceived. if the divinity be such as dreaming theology depicts, he must himself be a divinity who is competent to form an idea of him. we know little of man, we hardly know ourselves, or our own faculties, yet we are disposed to reason upon a being inaccessible to our senses. let us, then, travel in peace over the line described for us by nature, without having a wish to diverge from it, to hunt after vague systems; let us occupy ourselves with our true happiness; let us profit of the benefits spread before us; let us labour to multiply them, by diminishing the number of our errors; let us quietly submit to those evils we cannot avoid, and not augment them by filling our mind with prejudices calculated to lead us astray. when we shall give it serious reflection, every thing will clearly prove that the pretended science of theology is, in truth, nothing but presumptuous ignorance, masked under pompous, unintelligible words. in short, let us terminate unfruitful researches; be content at least to acknowledge our invincible ignorance; it will clearly be more substantively advantageous, than an arrogant science, which has hitherto done little more than sow discord on the earth--affliction in the heart of man. in supposing a sovereign intelligence who governs the world; in supposing a divinity who exacts from his creatures that they should have a knowledge of him, that they should understand his attributes, his wisdom, his power; who is desirous they should render him homage; it must be allowed, that no man on earth in this respect completely fulfils the views of providence. indeed, nothing is more demonstrable than the impossibility in which the theologians find themselves, to form to their mind any idea whatever of the divinity. procopius, the first bishop of the goths, says in the most solemn manner: "i esteem it a very foolish temerity to be disposed to penetrate into the knowledge of the nature of god;" and further on he acknowledges, "that he has nothing more to say of him, except that he is perfectly good. he who knoweth more, whether he be ecclesiastic or layman, has only to tell it." the weakness, the obscurity of the proofs offered, of the systems attributed to him, the manifest contradictions into which they fall, the sophisms, the begging of the question, which are employed, evidently prove they are themselves in the greatest incertitude upon the nature of that being with whom it is their profession to occupy their thoughts: even the author of _a new view of society_ acknowledges, "that up to this moment it is, not possible yet to say which is right or which is wrong: that had any one of the various opposing systems which until this day have governed the world, and disunited man from man, been true, without any mixture of error; that system, very speedily after its public promulgation, would have pervaded society, and compelled all men to have acknowledged its truth." but granting that they have a knowledge of this being, that his essence, his attributes, his systems, were so fully demonstrated to them, as no longer to leave any doubt in their mind, do the rest of the human race enjoy the same advantages? are they, in fact, in a condition to be charged with this knowledge? ingenuously, how many persons are to be found in the world, who have the leisure, the capacity, the penetration, necessary to understand what is meant to be designated under the name of an immaterial being--of a pure spirit, who moveth matter without being himself matter; who is the motive of all the powers of nature, without being contained in nature--without being able to touch it? are there, in the most religious societies, many persons who are competent to follow their spiritual guides, in the subtle proofs which they adduce in evidence of their creeds, upon which they bottom their systems of theology? without question very few men are capable of profound, connected meditation; the exercise of intense thought is, for the greater number, a species of labour as painful as it is unusual. the people, obliged to toil hard, in order to obtain subsistence, are commonly incapable of reflection; nobles, men of the world, women, young people, occupied with their own immediate affairs, taken up with gratifying their passions, employed in procuring themselves pleasure, as rarely think deeply as the uninformed. there are not, perhaps, two men in an hundred thousand, who have seriously asked themselves the question, _what it is they understand by the word god?_ whilst it is extremely rare to find persons to whom the nature of god is a problem. nevertheless, as we have said, conviction supposes that evidence alone has banished doubt from the mind. where, then, are the web who are convinced of the rectitude of these systems? who are those in whom we shall find the complete certitude of these truths, so important to all? who are the persons, who have given themselves an accurate account of the ideas they have formed upon the divinity, upon his attributes, upon his essence? alas! throughout the whole world, are only to be seen some speculators, who, by dint of occupying themselves with the idea, have, with great fatuity, believed they have discovered something decisive in the confused, unconnected wanderings of their own imagination; they have, in consequence, endeavoured to form a whole, which, chimerical as it is, they have accustomed themselves to consider as actually existing: by force of musing upon it, they have sometimes persuaded themselves they, saw it distinctly; these have not unfrequently succeeded in making others believe, their reveries, although they may not have mused upon it quite so much as themselves. it is seldom more than hearsay, that the mass of the people adopt either the systems of their fathers, or of their priests: authority, confidence, submission, habit, take place of conviction--supersede proof; they prostrate themselves before idols, lend themselves to different creeds, because their ancestors have taught them to fall down, and worship; but never do they inquire wherefore they bend the knee: it is only because, in times far distant, their legislators, their guides, have imposed it upon them as a duty; these have said, "adore and believe those gods, whom ye cannot comprehend; yield yourselves in this instance to our profound wisdom; we know more than ye do respecting the divinity." but wherefore, it might be inquired, should i take this system upon your authority? it is, they will reply, because the gods will have it thus; because they will punish you, if you dare to resist. but are not these gods the thing in question? nevertheless, man has always been satisfied with this circle of errors; the idleness of his mind made him find it most easy to yield to the judgment of others. all superstitions are uniformly founded upon error, established by authority; equally forbid examination; are equally indisposed to permit that man should reason upon them; it is power that wills he should unconditionally accredit them: they are rested solely upon the influence of some few men, who pretend to a knowledge of things, which they admit are incomprehensible for all their species; who, at the same time, affirm they are sent as missionaries to announce them to the inhabitants of the earth: these inconceivable systems, formed in the brain of some enthusiastic persons, have most unquestionably occasion for men to expound them to their fellows. man is generally credulous as a child upon those objects which relate to superstition; he is told he must believe them; as he generally understands nothing of the matter, he imagines he runs no risk in joining sentiments with his priest, whom he supposes has been competent to discover what he himself is not able to comprehend. the most rational people argue thus: "what shall i do? what interest can so many persons have to deceive?" but, seriously, does this prove that they do not deceive? they may do it from two motives: either because they are themselves deceived, or because they have a great interest in deceiving. by the confession of the theologians themselves, man is, for the greater part, without _religion_: he has only _superstition_. superstition, according to them, "is a worship of the divinity, either badly understood or irrational," or else, "worship rendered to a false divinity." but where are the people or the clergy who will allow, either that their divinity is false, or their worship irrational? how shall it be decided who is right, or who is wrong? it is evident that in this affair great numbers must be wrong. indeed, buddaeus, in his _treatise on atheism_, tells us, "in order that a religion may be true, not only the object of the worship must be true, but we must also have a just idea of it. he, then, who adoreth god without knowing him, adoreth him in a perverse and corrupt manner, and is generally guilty of superstition." this granted, would it not be fair to demand of the theologians, if they themselves can boast of having a _just idea_ or real knowledge of the divinity? admit for a moment they have, would it not then be evident, that it is for the priest, for the inspired, for the metaphysician, that this idea, which is said to be so necessary for the whole human race, is exclusively reserved? if we examine, however, we shall not find any harmony among the theological notions of these various inspired men, or of that hierarchy which is scattered over the earth: even those who make a profession of the same system, are not in unison upon the leading points. are they ever contented with the proofs offered by their colleagues? do they unanimously subscribe to each other's ideas? are they agreed upon the conduct to be adopted; upon the manner of explaining their texts; upon the interpretation of the various oracles? does there exist one country upon the whole earth, where the science of theology is actually perfectioned?--where the ideas of the divinity are rendered so clear, as not to admit of cavil? has this science obtained any of that steadiness, any of that consistency, any of that uniformity, which is found attached to other branches of human knowledge; even to the most futile arts, or to those trades which are most despised? has the multitude of subtle distinctions, with which theology in some countries is filled throughout; have the words spirit, immateriality, incorporeity, predestination, grace, with other ingenious inventions, imagined by sublime thinkers, who during so many ages have succeeded each other, actually had any other effect than to perplex things; to render the whole obscure; decidedly unintelligible? alas! do, they not offer practical demonstration, that the science held forth as the most necessary to man, has not, hitherto, been able to acquire the least degree of stability; has remained in the most determined state of indecision; has entirely failed in obtaining solidity? for thousands of years the most idle dreamers have been relieving each other, meditating on systems, diving into concealed ways, inventing hypothesis suitable to develope this important enigma. their slender success has not at all discouraged theological vanity; the priests have always spoken of it as of a thing with which they were most intimately acquainted; they have disputed with all the pertinancy of demonstrated argument; they have destroyed each other with the most savage barbarity; yet, notwithstanding, to this moment, this sublime science remains entirely unauthenticated; almost unexamined. indeed, if things were coolly contemplated, it would be obvious that these theories are not formed for the generality of mankind, who for the most part are utterly incompetent to comprehend the aerial subtilities upon which they rest. who is the man, that understandeth any thing of the fundamental principles of these systems? whose capacity embraces spirituality, immateriality, incorporeity, or the mysteries of which he is every day informed? are there many persons who can boast of perfectly understanding the state of the question, in those theological disputations, which have frequently had the potency to disturb the repose of mankind? nevertheless, even women believe themselves obliged to take part in the quarrels excited by these idle speculators, who are of less actual utility, to society, than the meanest artizan. man would, perhaps, have been too happy, if confining himself to those visible objects which interest him, he had employed half that energy which he has wasted in researches after incomprehensible systems, upon perfectioning the real sciences; in giving consistency to his laws; in establishing his morals upon solid foundations; in spreading a wholesome education among his fellows. he would, unquestionably, have been much wiser, more fortunate, if he had agreed to let his idle, unemployed guides quarrel among themselves unheeded; if he had permitted them to fathom those depths calculated to astound the mind, to amaze the intellect, without intermeddling with their irrational disputes. but it is the essence of ignorance, to attach great importance to every thing which it doth not understand. human vanity makes the mind bear up against difficulties. the more an object eludes our inquiry, the more efforts we make to compass it; because from thence our pride is spurred on, our curiosity is set afloat, our passions are irritated, and it assumes the character of being highly interesting to us. on the other hand, the more continued, the more laborious our researches have been, the more importance we attach to either our real or our pretended discoveries; the more we are desirous not to have wasted our time; besides, we are always ready warmly to defend the soundness of our own judgment. do not let us then be surprised at the interest that ignorant persons have at all times taken in the discoveries of their priests; nor at the obstinate pertinacity which they have ever manifested in their disputes. indeed, in combating for his own peculiar system, each only fought for the interests of his own vanity, which of all human passions is the most quickly alarmed, the most calculated to lead man on to the commission of great follies. theology is truly the vessel of the danaides. by dint of contradictory qualities, by means of bold assertions, it has so shackled its own systems as to render it impossible they should act. indeed, when even we should suppose the existence of these theological systems, the reality of codes so discordant with each other and with themselves, we can conclude nothing from them to authorize the conduct, or sanction the mode of worship which they prescribe. if their gods are infinitely good, wherefore should we dread them? if they are infinitely wise, what reason have we to disturb ourselves with our condition? if they are omniscient, wherefore inform them of our wants, why fatigue them with our requests? if they are omnipresent, of what use can it be to erect temples to them? if they are lords of all, why make sacrifices to them; why bring them offerings of what already belongs to them? if they are just, upon what foundation believe that they will punish those creatures whom they have filled with imbecility? if their grace works every thing in man, what reason can there be why he should be rewarded? if they are omnipotent, how can they be offended; how can we resist them? if they are rational, how can the enrage themselves against blind mortals, to whom they have left the liberty of acting irrationally? if they are immutable, by what right shall we pretend to make them change their decrees? if they are inconceivable, wherefore should we occupy ourselves with them? if the knowledge of these systems be the most necessary thing, wherefore are they not more evident, more consistent, more manifest? this granted, he who can undeceive himself on the afflicting notions of these theories, hath this advantage over the credulous, trembling, superstitious mortal--that he establishes in his heart a momentary tranquility, which, at least, rendereth him happy in this life. if the study of nature hath banished from his mind, those chimeras with which the superstitions man is infested, he, at least, enjoys a security of which this sees himself deprived. in consulting this nature, his fears are dissipated, his opinions, whether true or false, acquire a steadiness of character; a calm succeeds the storm, which panic terror, the result of wavering notions, excite in the hearts of all men who occupy themselves with these systems. if the human soul, cheered by philosophy, had the boldness to consider things coolly; it would no longer behold the universe submitted to implacable systems, under which man is continually trembling. if he was rational, he would perceive that in committing evil he did not disturb nature; that he either injureth himself alone, or injures other beings capable of feeling the effects of his conduct, from thence he would know the line of his duties; he would prefer virtue to vice, for his own permanent repose: he would, for his own satisfaction, for his own felicity in this world, find himself deeply interested in the practice of moral goodness; in rendering virtue habitual; in making it dear to the feeling of his heart: his own immediate welfare would be concerned in avoiding vice, in detesting crime, during the short season of his abode among intelligent, sensible beings, from whom he expects his happiness. by attaching himself to these rules, he would live contented with his own conduct; he would be cherished by those who are capable of feeling the influence of his actions; he would expect without inquietude the term when his existence should have a period; he would have no reason to dread the existence which _might_ follow the one he at present enjoys: he would not fear to be deceived in his reasonings. guided by demonstration, led gently along by honesty, he would perceive, that he could have nothing to dread from a beneficent divinity, who would not punish him for those involuntary errors which depend upon the organization, which without his own consent he has received. such a man so conducting himself, would have nothing to apprehend, whether at the moment of his death, he falls asleep for ever; or whether that sleep is only a prelude to another existence, in which he shall find himself in the presence of his god. addressing himself to the divinity, he might with confidence say, "o god! father, who hath rendered thyself invisible to thy child! inconceivable, hidden author of all, whom i could not discover! pardon me, if my limited understanding hath not been able to know thee, in a nature, where every thing hath appeared to me to be necessary! excuse me, if my sensible heart hath not discerned thine august traits among those numerous systems which superstitious mortals tremblingly adore: if, in that assemblage of irreconcileable qualities, with which the imagination hath clothed thee, i could only see a phantom. how could my coarse eyes perceive thee in nature, in which all my senses have never been able to bring me acquainted but with material beings, with, perishable forms? could i, by the aid of these senses, discover thy spiritual essence, of which no one could furnish me any idea? could my feeble brain, obliged to form its judgments after its own capacity, discern thy plans, measure thy wisdom, conceive thine intelligence, whilst the universe presented to my view a continued mixture of order and confusion--of good and evil--of formation and destruction? have i been able to render homage to the justice of thy priests, whilst i so frequently beheld crime triumphant, virtue in tears? could i possibly acknowledge the voice of a being filled with wisdom, in those ambiguous, puerile, contradictory oracles, published in thy name in the different countries of the earth i have quitted? if i have not known thy peculiar existence, it is because i have not known either what thou couldst be, where thou couldst be placed, or the qualities which could be assigned thee. my ignorance is excusable, because it was invincible: my mind could not bend itself under the authority of men, who acknowledged they were as little enlightened upon thine essence as myself; who were for ever disputing among themselves; who were in harmony only in imperiously crying out to me, to sacrifice to them that reason which thou hadst given to me; but, oh god! if thou cherishest thy creatures, i also, like thee, have cherished them; i have endeavoured to render them happy, in the sphere in which i have lived. if thou art the author of reason, i have always listened to it--have ever endeavoured to follow it; if virtue pleaseth thee, my heart hath always honoured it; i have never willingly outraged it: when my powers have permitted me, i have myself practised it; i was an affectionate husband, a tender father, a sincere friend, a faithful subject, a zealous citizen; i have held out consolation to the afflicted; and if the foibles of my nature have been either injurious to myself or incommodious to others, i have not at least made the unfortunate groan under the weight of my injustice. i have not devoured the substance of the poor--i have not seen without pity the widow's tears; i have not heard without commiseration the cries of the orphan. if thou didst render man sociable, if thou was disposed that society should subsist, if thou wast desirous the community might be happy, i have been the enemy to all who oppressed him, the decided foe to all those who deceived him, in order that they might advantage themselves of his misfortunes. "if i have not thought properly of thee, it is because my understanding could not conceive thee; if i have spoken ill of thy systems, it is because my heart, partaking too much of human nature, revolted against the odious portrait under which they depicted thee. my wanderings have been the effect of the temperament which thou hast given me; of the circumstances in which, without my consent, thou hast placed me; of those ideas, which in despite of me, have entered into my mind. as thou art good, as thou art just, (as we are assured thou art) thou wilt not punish me for the wanderings of mine imagination; for faults caused by my passions, which are the necessary consequence of the organization which i have received from thee. thus i cannot doubt thy justice, i cannot dread the condition which thou preparest for me. thy goodness cannot have permitted that i should incur punishment for inevitable errors. thou wouldst rather prevent my being born, than have called me into the rank of intelligent beings, there to enjoy the fatal liberty of rendering myself eternally unhappy." it is thus that a disciple of nature, who, transported all at once into the regions of space, should find himself in the presence of his god, would be able to speak, although he should not have been in a condition to lend himself to all the abstract systems of theology which appear to have been invented for no other purpose than to overturn in his mind all natural ideas. this illusory science seems bent an forming its systems in a manner the most contradictory to human reason; notwithstanding we are obliged to judge in this world according to its dictates; if, however, in the succeeding world, there is nothing conformable to this, what can be of more inutility, than to think of it or reason upon it? besides, wherefore should we leave it to the judgment of men, who are, themselves, only enabled to act after our manner? without a very marked derangement of our organs, our sentiments hardly ever vary upon those objects which either our senses experience, or which reason has clearly demonstrated, in whatever circumstances we are found, we have no doubt either upon the whiteness of snow, the light of day, or the utility of virtue. it is not so with those objects which depend solely upon our imagination--which are not proved to us by the constant evidence of our senses; we judge of them variously, according to the dispositions in which we find ourselves. these dispositions fluctuate by reason of the involuntary impulse which our organs every instant receive, on the part of an infinity of causes, either exterior to ourselves, or else contained within our own frame. these organs are, without our knowledge, perpetually modified, either relaxed or braced by the density, more or less, of the atmosphere; by heat and by cold; by dryness and by humidity; by health and by sickness; by the heat of the blood; by the abundance of bile; by the state of the nervous system, &c. these various causes have necessarily an influence upon the momentary ideas, upon the instantaneous thoughts, upon the fleeting opinions of man, he is, consequently, obliged to see under a great variety of hues, those objects which his imagination presents to him; without it all times having the capacity to correct them by experience: to compare them by memory. this, without doubt, is the reason why man is continually obliged to view his gods, to contemplate his superstitious systems, under such a diversity of aspects, in different periods of his existence. in the moment, when his fibres find themselves disposed to he tremulous, he will be cowardly, pusillanimous; he will think of these systems only with fear and trembling. in the moment, when these same fibres shall have more tension, he will possess more firmness, he will then view these systems with greater coolness. the theologian will call his pusillanimity, "inward feeling;" "warning from heaven;" "secret inspiration;" but he who knoweth man, will say that this is nothing more than a mechanical motion, produced by a physical or natural cause. indeed, it is by a pure physical mechanism, that we can explain all the revolutions that take place in the system, frequently from one minute to another; all the fluctuations in the opinions of mankind; all the variations of his judgment: in consequence of which we sometimes see him reasoning justly, sometimes in the most irrational manner. this is the mode by which, without recurring to grace, to inspirations, to visions, to supernatural notions, we can render ourselves an account of that uncertain, that wavering state into which we sometimes behold persons fall, when there is a question respecting their superstition, who are otherwise extremely enlightened. frequently, in despite of all reasoning, momentary dispositions re-conduct them to the prejudices of their infancy, upon which on other occasions they appear to be entirely undeceived. these changes are very apparent, especially under infirmities, in sickness, or at approach of death. the barometer of the understanding is then frequently obliged to fall. those chimeras which he despised, or which in a state of health, he set down at their true value, are then realized. he trembles, because his machine is enfeebled; he is irrational because his brain is incapable of fulfilling its functions with exactitude. it is evident these are the actual causes of those changes which the priests well know how to make use of against what they call incredulity; from which they draw proofs of the reality of their sublimated opinions. those conversions, or those alterations, which take place, in the ideas of man, have always their origin in some derangement of his machine; brought on either by chagrin or by some other natural or known cause. submitted to the continual influence of physical causes, our systems invariably follow the variations of the body; we reason well when the body is healthy--when it is soundly constituted; we reason badly when the corporeal faculties are deranged; from thence our ideas become disconnected, we are no longer equal to the task of associating them with precision; we are incapable of finding principles, or to draw from them just inferences; the brain, in fact, is shaken; we no longer contemplate any thing under its actual point of view. it is a man of this kind, who does not see things in frosty weather, under the same traits as when the season is cloudy, or when it is rainy; he does not view them in the same manner in sorrow as in gaiety; when in company as when alone. good sense suggests to us, that it is when the body is sound, when the mind is undisturbed by any mist, that we can reason with accuracy; this state can furnish us with a general standard, calculated to regulate our judgment; even to rectify our ideas, when unexpected causes shall make them waver. if the opinions even of the same individual, are fluctuating, subject to vaccillate, how many changes must they experience in the various beings who compose the human race? if there do not, perhaps, exist two persons who see a physical object under the same exact form or colour, what much greater variety must they not have in their mode of contemplating those things which have existence only in their imagination? what an infinity of combinations, what a multitude of ideas, must not minds essentially different, form to themselves when they endeavour to compose an ideal being, which each moment of their existence must present to them under a different aspect? it would, then, be a most irrational enterprise, to attempt to prescribe to man what he ought to think of superstition, which is entirely under the cognizance of his imagination; for the admeasurement of which, as we have very frequently repeated, mortals will never have any common standard. to oppugn the superstitious opinions of man, is to commence hostilities with his imagination--to attack his fancy--to be at war with his organization--to enter the lists with his habits, which are of themselves sufficient to identify with his existence, the most absurd, the most unfounded ideas. the more imagination man has, the greater enthusiast he will be in matters of superstition; reason will have the less ability to undeceive him in his chimeras. in proportion as his fancy is powerful, these chimeras themselves will become food necessary to its ardency. in fine, to battle with the superstitious notions of man, is to combat the passions he usually indulges for the marvellous; it is to assail him on that side where he is least vulnerable; to force him in that position where he unites all his strength--where he keeps the most vigilant guard. in despite of reason, those persons who have a lively imagination, are perpetually re-conducted to those chimeras which habit renders dear to them, even when they are found troublesome; although they should prove fatal. thus a tender soul hath occasion for a god that loveth him; the happy enthusiast needeth a god who rewardeth him; the unfortunate visionary wants a god who taketh part in his sorrows; the melancholy devotee requireth a god who chastiseth him, who maintaineth him in that trouble which has become necessary to his diseased organization; the frantic penitent exacteth a god, who imposes upon him an obligation to be inhuman towards himself; whilst the furious fanatic would believe himself unhappy, if he was deprived of a god who commanded him to make others experience the effect of his inflamed humours, of his unruly passions. he is, without question, a less dangerous enthusiast who feeds himself with agreeable illusions, than he whose soul is tormented with odious spectres. if a placid, tender soul, does not commit ravages in society, a mind agitated by incommodious passions, cannot fall to become, sooner or later, troublesome to his fellow creatures. the god of a socrates, or a fenelon, may be suitable to souls as gentle as theirs; but he cannot be that of a whole nation, in which it is extremely rare men of their temper are found: if honest men only view their gods as fitted with benefits; vicious, restless, inflexible individuals, will give them their own peculiar character, from thence will authorize themselves to indulge, a free course to their passions. each will view his deities with eyes only open to his own reigning prejudice; the number of those who will paint them as afflicting will always be greater, much more to be feared, than those who shall delineate them under seducing colors: for one mortal that those ideas will render happy, there will be thousands who will be made miserable; they will, sooner or later, become an inexhaustible source of contention; a never failing spring of extravagant folly; they will disturb the mind of the ignorant, over whom impostors will always gain ascendancy--over whom fanatics will ever have an influence: they will frighten the cowardly, terrify the pussillanimous, whose imbecility will incline them to perfidy, whose weakness will render them cruel; they will cause the most upright to tremble, who, even while practising virtue, will fear incurring the divine displeasure; but they will not arrest the progress of the wicked, who will easily cast them aside, that they may the more commodiously deliver themselves up to crime; or who will even take advantage of these principles, to justify their transgression. in short, in the hands of tyrants, these systems will only serve to crush the liberty of the people; will be the pretext for violating, with impunity, all equitable rights. in the hands of priests they will become talismans, suitable to intoxicate the mind; calculated to hoodwink the people; competent to subjugate equally the sovereign as the subject; in the hands of the multitude, they will be a two-edged sword, with which they will inflict, at the same moment, the most dreadful wounds on themselves--the most serious injuries on their associates. on the other hand, these theological systems, as we have seen, being only an heap of contradictions, which represent the divinity under the most incompatible characters, seem to doubt his wisdom, when they invite mortals to address their prayers to him, for the gratification of their desires; to pray to him to grant that which he has not thought it proper to accord to them. is it not, in other words, to accuse him with neglecting his creatures? is it not to ask him to alter the eternal decrees of his justice; to change the invariable laws which he hath himself determined? is it not to say to him, "o, my god! i acknowledge thy wisdom, thine omniscience, thine infinite goodness; nevertheless, thou forgettest thy servant; thou losest sight of thy creature; thou art ignorant, or thou feignest ignorance, of that which he wanteth: dost thou not see that i suffer from the marvellous arrangement, which thy wise laws have made in the universe? nature, against thy commands, actually renders my existence painful: change then, i beseech thee, the essence which thy will has given to all beings. grant that the elements, at this moment, lose in my favor their distinguishing properties; so order it, that heavy bodies shall not fall, that fire shall not burn, that the brittle frame which i have received at thine hands, shall not suffer those shocks which it every instant experiences. rectify, i pray thee, for my happiness, the plan which thine infinite prudence hath marked out from all eternity." such is very nearly the euchology which man adopts; such are the discordant, absurd requests which he continually puts up to the divinity, whose wisdom he extols; whose intelligence he holds forth to admiration; whose providence he eulogizes; whose equity he applauds; whilst he is hardly ever contented with the effects of the divine perfections. man is not more consequent in those thanksgivings which he believes himself obliged to offer to the throne of grace. is it not just, he exclaims, to thank the divinity for his kindness? would it not be the height of ingratitude to refuse our homage to the author of our existence; to withhold our acknowledgements from the giver of every thing that contributes to render it agreeable? but does he not frequently offer up his thanksgivings for actions that overwhelm his neighbour with misery? does not the husbandman on the hill, return thanks for the rain that irrigates his lands parched with drought, whilst the cultivator of the valley is imploring a cessation of those showers which deluge his fields--that render useless the labour of his hands? thus each becomes thankful for that which his own limited views points out to him as his immediate interest, regardless of the general effect produced by those circumstances on the welfare of his fellows. each believes that it is either a peculiar dispensation of providence in his own favor, or a signal of the heavenly wrath directed against himself; whilst the slightest reflection would clearly evince it to be nothing more than the inevitable order of things, which take place without the least regard to his individual comforts. from this it will be obvious, that these systems do not teach their votaries, practically, to love their neighbour as themselves. but in matters of superstition, mortals never reason; they only follow the impulse of their fears; the direction of their imagination; the force of their temperament; the bent of their own peculiar passions; or those of the guides, who have acquired the right of controling their understanding. fear has generally created these systems; terror unceasingly accompanies them; it is impossible to reason while we tremble. we do not, however, flatter ourselves that reason will be capable, all at once, to deliver the human race from those errors with which so many causes united have contributed to poison him. the vainest of all projects would be the expectation of curing, in an instant, those epidemical follies, those hereditary fallacies, rooted during so many ages; continually fed by ignorance; corroborated by custom; borne along by the passions made inveterate by interest; grounded upon the fears, established upon the ever regenerating calamities of nations. the ancient disasters of the earth gave birth to the first systems of theology, new revolutions would equally produce others; even if the old ones should chance to be forgotton. ignorant, miserable, trembling beings, will always either form to themselves systems, or else adopt those which imposture shall announce--which fanaticism shall be disposed to give them. it would therefore be useless to propose more than to hold out reason to those who are competent to understand it; to present truth to those who can sustain its lustre; who can with serenity contemplate its refulgent beauty; to undeceive those who shall not be inclined to oppose obstacles to demonstration; to enlighten those who shall not desire pertinaciously to persist in error. let us, then, infuse courage into those who want power to break with their illusions; let us cheer up the honest man, who is much more alarmed by his fears than the wicked, who, in despite of his opinions, always follows the rule of his passions: let us console the unfortunate, who groans under a load of prejudices which he has not examined: let us dissipate the incertitude of those whose doubts render them unhappy; who ingenuously seek after truth, but who find in philosophy itself only wavering opinions little calculated to determine their fluctuating minds. let us banish from the man of genius those chimerical speculations which cause him to waste his time; let us wrest his gloomy superstition from the intimidated mortal, who, duped by his vain fears, becomes useless to society; let us remove from the atrabilarious being those systems that afflict him, that exasperate his mind, that do nothing more than kindle his anger against his incredulous neighbour; let us tear from the fanatic those terrible ideas which arm him with poniards against the happiness of his fellows; let us pluck from tyrants, let us snatch from impostors, those opinions which enable them to terrify, to enslave, and to despoil the human species. in removing from honest men their formidable notions let us not encourage those of the wicked, who are the enemies of society; let us deprive the latter of those illegitimate sources, upon which they reckon to expiate their transgressions; let us substitute actual, present terrors, to those which are distant and uncertain to those which do not arrest the most licentious excesses; let us make the profligate blush at beholding themselves what they really are; let the ministers of superstition tremble at finding their conspiracies discovered; let them dread the arrival of the day, when mortals, cured of those errors with which they have abused them, will no longer be enslaved by their artifice. if we cannot induce nations to lay aside their inveterate prejudices, let us, at least, endeavour to prevent them from relapsing into those excesses, to the commission of which superstition has so frequently hurried them; let mankind form to himself chimeras, if he cannot do without them; let him think as he may feel inclined, provided his reveries do not make him forget that he is a man; that he does not cease to remember that a sociable being is not formed to resemble the most ferocious animals. let us try to balance the fictitious interests of superstition, by the more immediate advantages of the earth. let sovereigns, as well as their subjects, at length acknowledge that the benefits resulting from truth, the happiness arising from justice, the tranquillity springing out of wholesome laws, the blessings to be derived from a rational education, the superiority to be obtained from a physical, peaceable morality, are much more substantive than those they vainly expect from their respective superstitious systems, let them feel, that advantages so tangible, benefits so precious, ought not to be sacrificed to uncertain hopes, so frequently contradicted by experience. in order to convince themselves of these truths, let every rational man consider the numberless crimes which superstition has caused upon our globe; let them study the frightful history of theology: let them read over the biography of its more odious ministers, who have too often fanned the spirit of discord--kindled the flame of fury--stirred up the raging fire of madness: let the prince and the people, at least, sometimes learn to resist the demoniacal passions of these interpreters of unintelligible systems, which they acknowledge they do not themselves at all understand, especially when they shall invoke them to be inhuman; when they shall preach up intolerance; when they invite them to barbarity; above all, when they shall command them, in the name of their gods, to stifle the cries of nature; to put down the voice of equity; to be deaf to the remonstrances of reason; to be blind to the interest of society. feeble mortals! led astray by error, how long will ye permit your imagination, so active, so prompt to seize on the marvellous, to continue to seek out of the universe pretexts to render you baneful to yourselves, injurious to the beings with whom ye live in society? wherefore do ye not follow in peace, the simple, easy route marked out for ye by nature? to what purpose do ye scatter thorns on the road of life? what avails it, that ye multiply those sorrows to which your destiny exposes ye? what advantages can ye derive from systems with which the united efforts of the whole human species have not been competent to bring ye acquainted? be content, then, to remain ignorant of that, which the human mind is not formed to comprehend; which human intellect is not adequate to embrace: occupy yourselves with truth; learn the invaluable art of living happy; perfection your morals; give rationality to your governments; simplify your laws, and rest them on the pillars of justice; watch over education, and see that it is of an invigorating quality; give attention to agriculture, and encourage beneficial improvements; foster those sciences which are actually useful, and place their professors in the most honorable stations; labor with ardour, and munificently reward those whose assiduity promotes the general welfare; oblige nature by your industry to open her immense stores, to become propitious to your exertions; do these things, and the gods will oppose nothing to your felicity. leave to idle thinkers, to soporific dreamers, to waking visionaries, to useless enthusiasts, the unproductive task, the unfruitful occupation, of fathoming depths, from which ye ought sedulously to divert your attention; enjoy with moderation, the benefits attached to your present existence; augment their number when reason sanctions the multiplication; but never attempt to spring yourselves forward, beyond the sphere destined for your action. if you must have chimeras, permit your fellow creatures to have theirs also; but never cut the throats of your brethren, when, they cannot rave in your own manner. if ye will have unintelligible systems, if ye cannot be contented without marvellous doctrines, if the infirmities of your nature require an invisible crutch, adopt such as may best suit with your humour; select those which you may think most calculated to support your tottering frame; if ye can, let your own imagination give birth to them; but do not insist on your neighbours making the same choice with yourself: do not suffer these imaginary theories to infuriate your mind: let them not so far intoxicate your understandings, as to make ye mistake the duties ye owe to the real beings with whom ye are associated. always remember, that amongst these duties, the foremost, the most consequential, the most immediate in its bearing upon the felicity of the human race, stands, _a reasonable indulgence for the foibles of others_. chap. xi. _defence of the sentiments contained in this work.--of impiety.--do there exist atheists?_ what has been said in the course of this work, ought sufficiently to undeceive those who are capable of reasoning on the prejudices to which they attached so much importance. but the most evident truths frequently crouch under fear; are kept at bay by habit; prove abortive against the force of enthusiasm. nothing is more difficult to remove from its resting place than error, especially when long prescription has given it full possession of the human mind. it is almost unassailable when supported by general consent; when it is propagated by education; when it has acquired inveteracy by custom: it commonly resists every effort to disturb it, when it is either fortified by example, maintained by authority, nourished by the hopes, or cherished by the fears of a people, who have learned to look upon these delusions as the most potent remedies for their sorrows. such are the united forces which sustain the empire of unintelligible systems over the inhabitants of this world; they appear to give stability to their throne; to render their power immoveable; to make their reign as lasting as the human race. we need not, then, be surprised at seeing the multitude cherish their own blindness; encourage their superstitious notions; exhibit the most sensitive fear of truth. every where we behold mortals obstinately attached to phantoms from which they expect their happiness; notwithstanding these fallacies are evidently the source of all their sorrows. deeply smitten with the marvellous, disdaining the simple, despising that which is easy of comprehension, but little instructed in the ways of nature, accustomed to neglect the use of their reason, the uninformed, from age to age, prostrate themselves before those invisible powers which they have been taught to adore. to these they address their most fervent prayers; implore them in their misfortunes, offer them the fruits of their labour; they are unceasingly occupied either with thanking their vain idols for benefits they have not received at their bands, or else in requesting from them favors which they can never obtain. neither experience nor reflection can undeceive them; they do not perceive these idols, the work of their own hands, have always been deaf to their intreaties; they ascribe it to their own conduct; believe them to be violently irritated: they tremble, groan out the most dismal lamentations; sigh bitterly in their temples; strew their altars with presents; load their priests with their largesses; it never strikes their attention that these beings, whom they imagine so powerful, are themselves submitted to nature; are never propitious to their wishes, but when nature herself is favourable. it is thus that nations are the accomplices of those who deceive them; are themselves as much opposed to truth as those who lead them astray. in matters of superstition, there are very few persons who do not partake, more or less, of the opinions of the illiterate. every man who throws aside the received ideas, is generally considered a madman; is looked upon as a presumptuous being, who insolently believes himself much wiser than his associates. at the magical sound of superstition, a sudden panic, a tremulous terror takes possession of the human species: whenever it is attacked, society is alarmed; each individual imagines he already sees the celestial monarch lift his avenging arm against the country in which rebellious nature has produced a monster with sufficient temerity to brave these sacred opinions. even the most moderate persons tax with folly, brand with sedition, whoever dares combat with these imaginary systems, the rights of which good sense has never yet examined. in consequence, the man who undertakes to tear the bandeau of prejudice, appears an irrational being--a dangerous citizen; his sentence is pronounced with a voice almost unanimous; the public indignation, roused by fanaticism, stirred up by imposture, renders it impossible for him to be heard in his defence; every one believes himself culpable, if he does not exhibit his fury against him; if he does not display his zeal in hunting him down; it is by such means man seeks to gain the favor of the angry gods, whose wrath is supposed to be provoked. thus the individual who consults his reason, the disciple of nature, is looked upon as a public pest; the enemy to superstition is regarded as the enemy to the human race; he who would establish a lasting peace amongst men, is treated as the disturber of society; the man who would be disposed to cheer affrighted mortals by breaking those idols, before whom prejudice has obliged them to tremble, is unanimously proscribed as an atheist. at the bare name of atheist the superstitious man quakes; the deist himself is alarmed; the priest enters the judgement chair with fury glaring in his eyes; tyranny prepares his funeral pile, the vulgar applaud the punishments which irrational, partial laws, decree against the true friend of the human species. such are the sentiments which every man must expect to excite, who shall dare to present his fellow creatures with that truth which all appear to be in search of, but which all either fear to find, or else mistake what we are disposed to shew it to them. but what is this man, who is so foully calumniated as an atheist? he is one who destroyeth chimeras prejudicial to the human race; who endeavours to re-conduct wandering mortals back to nature; who is desirous to place them upon the road of experience; who is anxious that they should actively employ their reason. he is a thinker, who, having meditated upon matter, its energies, its properties, its modes of acting, hath no occasion to invent ideal powers, to recur to imaginary systems, in order to explain the phenomena of the universe--to develope the operations of nature; who needs not creatures of the imagination, which far from making him better understand nature, do no more than render it wholly inexplicable, an unintelligible mass, useless to the happiness of mankind. thus, the only men who can have pure, simple, actual ideas of nature, are considered either as absurd or knavish speculators. those who form to themselves distinct, intelligible notions of the powers of the universe, are accused of denying the existence of this power: those who found every thing that is operated in this world, upon determinate, immutable laws, are accused with attributing every thing to chance; are taxed with blindness, branded with delirium, by those very enthusiasts themselves, whose imagination, always wandering in a vacuum, regularly attribute the effects of nature to fictitious causes, which have no existence but in their own heated brain; to fanciful beings of their own creation; to chimerical powers, which they obstinately persist in preferring to actual, demonstrable causes. no man in his proper senses can deny the energy of nature, or the existence of a power by virtue of which matter acts; by which it puts itself in motion; but no man can, without renouncing his reason, attribute this power to an immaterial substance; to a power placed out of nature; distinguished from matter; having nothing in common with it. is it not saying, this power does not exist, to pretend that it resides in an unknown being, formed by an heap of unintelligible qualities, of incompatible attributes, from whence necessarily results a whole, impossible to have existence? indestructible elements, the atoms of epicurus, of which it is said the motion, the collision, the combination, have produced all beings, are, unquestionably, much more tangible than the numerous theological systems, broached in various parts of the earth. thus, to speak precisely, they are the partizans of imaginary theories, the advocates of contradictory beings, the defenders of creeds, impossible to be conceived, the contrivers of substances which the human mind cannot embrace on any side, who are either absurd or knavish; those enthusiasts, who offer us nothing but vague names, of which every thing is denied, of which nothing is affirmed, are the real _atheists_; those, i say, who make such beings the authors of motion, the preservers of the universe, are either blind or irrational. are not those dreamers, who are incapable of attaching any one positive idea to the causes of which they unceasingly speak, true deniers? are not those visionaries, who make a pure nothing the source of all beings, men really groping in the dark? is it not the height of folly to personify abstractions, to organize negative ideas, and then to prostrate ourselves before the figments of our own brain? nevertheless, they are men of this temper who regulate the opinions of the world; who hold up to public scorn, those who are consistent to principle; who expose to the most infuriate vengeance, those who are more rational than themselves. if you will but accredit those profound dreamers, there is nothing short of madness, nothing on this side the most complete derangement of intellect, that can reject a totally incomprehensible motive-power in nature. is it, then, delirium to prefer the known to the unknown? is it a crime to consult experience, to call in the evidence of our senses, in the examination of that which we are informed is the most important to be understood? is it a horrid outrage to address ourselves to reason; to prefer its oracles to the sublime decisions of some sophists, who themselves acknowledge they do not comprehend any thing of the systems they announce? nevertheless, according to these men, there is no crime more worthy of punishment--there is no enterprize more dangerous to morals--no treason more substantive against society, than to despoil these immaterial substances, which they know nothing about, of those inconceivable qualities which these learned doctors ascribe to them--of that equipage with which a fanatical imagination has furnished them--of those miraculous properties with which ignorance, fear, and imposture have emulated each other in surrounding them: there is nothing more impious than to call forth man's reason upon superstitious creeds; nothing more heretical than to cheer up mortals against systems, of which the idea alone is the source of all their sorrows; there is nothing more pious, nothing more orthodox, than to exterminate those audacious beings who have had sufficient temerity to attempt to break an invisible charm that keeps the human species benumbed in error: if we are to put faith in the asseverations of the hierarchy, to be disposed to break man's chains is to rend asunder his most sacred bonds. in consequence of these clamours, perpetually renovated by the disciples of imposture, kept constantly afloat by the theologians, reiterated by ignorance, those nations, which reason, in all ages, has sought to undeceive, have never dared to hearken to its benevolent lessons: they have stood aghast at the very name of physical truth. the friends of mankind were never listened to, because they were the enemies to his superstition--the examiners of the doctrines of his priest. thus the people continued to tremble; very few philosophers had the courage to cheer them; scarcely any one dared brave public opinion; completely inoculated by superstition, they dreaded the power of imposture, the menaces of tyranny, which always sought to uphold themselves by delusion. the yell of triumphant ignorance, the rant of haughty fanaticism, at all time stifled the feeble voice of the disciple of nature; his lessons were quickly forgotten; he was obliged to keep silence; when he even dared to speak, it was frequently only in an enigmatical language, perfectly unintelligible to the great mass of mankind. how should the uninformed, who with difficulty compass the most evident truths, those that are the most distinctly announced, be able to comprehend the mysteries of nature, presented under half words, couched under intricate emblems. in contemplating the outrageous language which is excited among theologians, by the opinions of those whom they choose to call atheists; in looking at the punishments which at their instigation were frequently decreed against them, should we not be authorized to conclude, that these doctors either are not so certain as they say they are, of the infallibility of their respective systems; or else that they do not consider the opinions of their adversaries so absurd as they pretend? it is always either distrust, weakness, or fear, frequently the whole united, that render men cruel; they have no anger against those whom they despise; they do not look upon folly as a punishable crime. we should be content with laughing at an irrational mortal, who should deny the existence of the sun; we should not think of punishing him, unless we had, ourselves, taken leave of our senses. theological fury never proves more than the imbecility of its cause. lucian describes jupiter, who disputing with menippus, is disposed to strike him to the earth with his thunder; upon which the philosopher says to him, "ah! thou vexest thyself, thou usest thy thunder! then thou art in the wrong." the inhumanity of these men-monsters, whose profession it was to announce chimerical systems to nations, incontestibly proves, that they alone have an interest in the invisible powers they describe; of which they successfully avail themselves to terrify, mortals: they are these tyrants of the mind, however, who, but little consequent to their own principles, undo with one hand that which they rear up with the other: they are these profound logicians who, after having formed a deity filled with goodness, wisdom and equity, traduce, disgrace, and completely annihilate him, by saving he is cruel, capricious, unjust, and despotic: this granted, these men are truly impious; decidedly heretical. he who knoweth not this system, cannot do it any injury, consequently cannot be called impious. "to be impious," says epicurus, "is not to take away from the illiterate the gods which they have; it is to attribute to these gods the opinions of the vulgar." to be impious is to insult systems which we believe; it is knowingly to outrage them. to be impious, is to admit a benevolent, just god, at the same time we preach up persecution and carnage. to be impious, is to deceive men in the name of a deity, whom we make use of as a pretext for our own unworthy passions. to be impious, is to speak falsely on the part of a god, whom we suppose to be the enemy of falsehood. in fine, to be impious, is to make use of the name of the divinity in order to disturb society--to enslave it to tyrants--to persuade man that the cause of imposture is the cause of god; it is to impute to god those crimes which would annihilate his divine perfections. to be impious, and irrational, at the same time, is to make, by the aggregation of discrepant qualities, a mere chimera of the god we adore. on the other hand, to be pious, is to serve our country with fidelity; it is to be useful to our fellow creatures; to labour to the welfare of society. every one can put in his claim to this piety, according to his faculties; he who meditates can render himself useful, when he has the courage to announce truth--to attack error--to battle those prejudices which everywhere oppose themselves to the happiness of mankind; it is to be truly useful, it is even a duty, to wrest from the hands of mortals those homicidal weapons which wretched fanatics so profusely distribute among them; it is highly praiseworthy to deprive imposture of its influence; it is loving our neighbour as ourself to despoil tyranny of its fatal empire over opinion, which at all times it so successfully employs to elevate knaves at the expence of public happiness; to erect its power upon the ruins of liberty; to establish unruly passions upon the wreck of public security. to be truly pious, is religiously to observe the wholesome laws of nature; to follow up faithfully those duties which she prescribes to us; in short, to be pious is to be humane, equitable, benevolent: it is to respect the rights of mankind. to be pious and rational at the same time, is to reject those reveries which would be competent to make us mistake the sober counsels of reason. thus, whatever fanaticism, whatever imposture may say, he who denieth the solidity of systems which have no other foundation than an alarmed imagination; he who rejecteth creeds continually in contradiction with themselves; he who banisheth from his heart, doctrines perpetually wrestling with nature, always in hostility with reason, ever at war with the happiness of man; he, i repeat, who undeceiveth himself on such dangerous chimeras, when his conduct shall not deviate from those invariable rules which sound morality dictates, which nature approves, which reason prescribes, may be fairly reputed pious, honest, and virtuous. because a man refuseth to admit contradictory systems, as well as the obscure oracles, which are issued in the name of the gods, does it then follow, that such a man refuses to acknowledge the evident, the demonstrable laws of nature, upon which he depends, of which he in obliged to fulfil the necessary duties, under pain of being punished in this world; whatever he may be in the in the next? it is true, that if virtue could by any chance consist in an ignominious renunciation of reason, in a destructive fanaticism, in useless customs, the atheist, as he is called, could not pass for a virtuous being: but if virtue actually consists in doing to society all the good of which we are capable, this miscalled atheist may fairly lay claim to its practice: his courageous, tender soul, will not be found guilty, for hurling his legitimate indignation against prejudices, fatal to the happiness of the human species. let us listen, however, to the imputations which the theologians lay upon those men they falsely denominate atheists; let us coolly, without any peevish humour, examine the calumnies which they vomit forth against them: it appears to them that atheism, (as they call differing in opinion from themselves,) is the highest degree of delirium that can assail the human mind; the greatest stretch of perversity that can infect the human heart; interested in blackening their adversaries, they make incredulity the undeniable offspring of folly; the absolute effect of crime. "we do not," say they to us, "see those men fall into the horrors of atheism, who have reason to hope the future state will be for them a state of happiness." in short, according to these metaphysical doctors, it is the interest of their passions which makes them seek to doubt systems, at whose tribunals they are accountable for the abuses of this life; it is the fear of punishment which is alone known to atheists; they are unceasingly repeating the words of a hebrew prophet, who pretends that nothing but folly makes men deny these systems; perhaps, however, if he had suppressed his negation, he would have more closely aproximated the truth. doctor bentley, in his _folly of atheism_, has let loose the whole billingsgate of theological spleen, which he has scattered about with all the venom of the most filthy reptiles: if he and other expounders are to be believed, "nothing is blacker than the heart of an atheist; nothing is more false than his mind. atheism," according to them, "can only be the offspring of a tortured conscience, that seeks to disengage itself from the cause of its trouble. we have a right", says derham, "to look upon an atheist as a monster among rational beings; as one of those extraordinary productions which we hardly ever meet with in the whole human species; and who, opposing himself to all other men, revolts not only against reason and human nature, but against the divinity himself." we shall simply reply to all these calumnies by saying, it is for the reader to judge if the system which these men call atheism, be as absurd as these profound speculators (who are perpetually in dispute on the uninformed, ill organized, contradictory, whimsical productions of their own brain) would have it believed to be! it is true, perhaps, that the system of naturalism hitherto has not been developed in all its extent: unprejudiced persons however, will, at least, be enabled to know whether the author has reasoned well or ill; whether or not he has attempted to disguise the most important difficulties; distinctly to see if he has been disingenuous; they will be competent to observe if, like unto the enemies of human reason, he has recourse to subterfuges, to sophisms, to subtle discriminations, which ought always to make it suspected of those who use them, either that they do not understand or else that they fear the truth. it belongs then to candour, it is the province of disinterestedness, it is the duty of reason to judge, if the natural principles which have been here ushered to the world be destitute of foundation; it is to these upright jurisconsults that a disciple of nature submits his opinions: he has a right to except against the judgment of enthusiasm; he has the prescription to enter his caveat against the decision of presumptuous ignorance; above all, he is entitled to challenge the verdict of interested knavery. those persons who are accustomed to think, will, at least find reasons to doubt many of those marvellous notions, which appear as incontestable truths only to those, who have never assayed them by the standard of good sense. we agree with derham, that atheists are rare; but then we also say, that superstition has so disfigured nature, so entangled her rights--enthusiasm has so dazzled the human mind-terror has so disturbed the heart of man--imposture has so bewildered his imagination--tyranny has so enslaved his thoughts: in fine, error, ignorance, and delirium have so perplexed and confused the clearest ideas, that nothing is more uncommon than to find men who have sufficient courage to undeceive themselves on notions which every thing conspires to identify with their very existence. indeed, many theologians in despite of those bitter invectives with which they attempt to overwhelm the men they choose to call atheists, appear frequently to have doubted whether any ever existed in the world. tertullian, who, according to modern systems, would be ranked as an atheist, because he admitted a corporeal god, says, "christianity has dissipated the ignorance in which the pagans were immersed respecting the divine essence, and there is not an artizan among the christians who does not see god, and who does not know him." this uncertainty of the theologic professors was, unquestionably, founded upon those absurd ideas, which they ascribe to their adversaries, whom they have unceasingly accused with attributing every thing to chance--to blind causes--to dead, inert matter, incapable of self-action. we have, i think, sufficiently justified the partizans of nature against these ridiculous accusations; we have throughout the whole proved, and we repeat it, that chance is a word devoid of sense, which as well as all other unintelligible words, announces nothing but ignorance of actual causes. we have demonstrated that matter is not dead; that nature, essentially active and self-existent, has sufficient energy to produce all the beings which she contains--all the phenomena we behold. we have, throughout, made it evident that this cause is much more tangible, more easy of comprehension, than the inconceivable theory to which theology assigns these stupendous effects. we have represented, that the incomprehensibility of natural effects was not a sufficient reason for assigning to them a system still more incomprehensible than any of those of which, at least, we have a slight knowledge. in fine, if the incomprehensibility of a system does not authorize the denial of its existence, it is at least certain that the incompatibility of the attributes with which it is clothed, authorizes the assertion, that those which unite them cannot be any thing more than chimeras, of which the existence is impossible. this granted, we shall be competent to fix the sense that ought to be attached to the name of atheist; which, notwithstanding, the theologians lavish on all those who deviate in any thing from their opinions. if, by atheist, be designated a man who denieth the existence of a power inherent in matter, without which we cannot conceive nature, and if it be to this power that the name of god is given, then there do not exist any atheists, and the word under which they are denominated would only announce fools. but if by atheists be understood men without enthusiasm; who are guided by experience; who follow the evidence of their senses; who see nothing in nature but what they actually find to have existence, or that which they are capacitated to know; who neither do, nor can perceive any thing but matter essentially active, moveable, diversely combined, in the full enjoyment of various properties, capable of producing all the beings who display themselves to our visual faculties, if by atheists be understood natural philosophers, who are convinced that without recurring to chimerical causes, they can explain every thing, simply by the laws of motion; by the relation subsisting between beings; by their affinities; by their analogies; by their aptitude to attraction; by their repulsive powers; by their proportions; by their combinations; by their decomposition: if by atheists be meant these persons who do not understand what _pneumatology_ is, who do not perceive the necessity of spiritualizing, or of rendering incomprehensible, those corporeal, sensible, natural causes, which they see act uniformly; who do not find it requisite to separate the motive-power from the universe; who do not see, that to ascribe this power to an immaterial substance, to that whose essence is from thenceforth totally inconceivable, is a means of becoming more familiar with it: if by atheists are to be pourtrayed those men who ingenuously admit that their mind can neither receive nor reconcile the union of the negative attributes and the theological abstractions, with the human and moral qualities which are given to the divinity; or those men who pretend that from such an incompatible alliance, there could only result an imaginary being; seeing that a pure spirit is destitute of the organs necessary to exercise the qualities, to give play to the faculties of human nature: if by atheists are described those men who reject systems, whose odious and discrepant qualities are solely calculated to disturb the human species--to plunge it into very prejudicial follies: if, i repeat it, thinkers of this description are those who are called atheists, it is not possible to doubt their existence; and their number would be considerable, if the light of sound natural philosophy was more generally diffused; if the torch of reason burnt more distinctly; or if it was not obscured by the theological bushel: from thence, however, they would be considered neither as irrational; nor as furious beings, but as men devoid of prejudice, of whose opinions, or if they prefer it, whose ignorance, would be much more useful to the human race, than those ideal sciences, those vain hypotheses, which for so many ages have been the actual causes of all man's tribulation. doctor cudworth, in his _intellectual system_, reckons four species of atheists among the ancients. first.--the disciples of anaximander, called _hylopathians_, who attributed every thing to matter destitute of feeling. his doctrine was, that men were born of earth united with water, and vivified by the beams of the sun; his crime seems to have been, that he made the first geographical maps and sun-dials; declared the earth moveable and of a cylindrical form. secondly.--the _atomists_, or the disciples of democritus, who attribute every thing, to the concurrence of atoms. his crime was, having first taught that the milky way was occasioned by the confused light from a multitude of stars. thirdly.--the _stoics_, or the disciples of zeno, who admitted a blind nature acting after certain laws. his crime appears to be, that he practised virtue with unwearied perseverance, and taught that this quality alone would render mankind happy. fourthly.--the _hylozoists_, or the disciples of strato, who attributed life to matter. his crime consisted in being one of the most acute natural philosophers of his day, enjoying high favour with ptolemy philadelphus, an intelligent prince, whose preceptor be was. if, however, by atheists, are meant those men, who are obliged to avow, that they have not one idea of the system they adore, or which they announce to others; who cannot give any satisfactory account, either of the nature or of the essence of their immaterial substances; who can never agree amongst themselves on the proofs which they adduce in support of their system; on the qualities or on the modes of action of their incorporeities, which by dint of negations they render a mere nothing; who either prostrate themselves, or cause others to bow down, before the absurd fictions of their own delirium: if, i say, by atheists, be denominated men of this stamp, we shall be under the necessity of allowing, that the world is filled with them: we shall even be obliged to place in this number some of the most active theologians, who are unceasingly reasoning upon that which they do not understand; who are eternally disputing upon points which they cannot demonstrate; who by their contradictions very efficaciously undermine their own systems; who annihilate all their own assertions of perfection, by the numberless imperfections with which they clothe them; who rebel against their gods by the atrocious character under which they depict them. in short, we shall be able to consider as true atheists, those credulous, weak persons, who upon hearsay and from tradition, bend the knee before idols, of whom they have no other ideas, than those which are furnished them by their spiritual guides, who themselves acknowledge that they comprehend nothing about the matter. what has been said amply proves that the theologians themselves have not always known the sense they could affix to the word atheist; they have vaguely attacked, in an indistinct manner, calumniated with it, those persons whose sentiments and principles were opposed to their own. indeed, we find that these sublime professors, always infatuated with their own particular opinions, have frequently been extremely lavish in their accusations of atheism, against all those whom they felt a desire to injure; whose characters it was their pleasure to paint in unfavourable colours; whose doctrines they wished to blacken; whose systems they sought to render odious: they were certain of alarming the illiterate, of rousing the antipathies of the silly, by a loose imputation, or by a word, to which ignorance attaches the idea of horror, merely because it is unacquainted with its true sense. in consequence of this policy, it has been no uncommon spectacle to see the partizans of the same sect, the adorers of the same gods, reciprocally treat each other as atheists, in the fervour of their theological quarrels; to be an atheist, in this sense, is not to have, in every point, exactly the same opinions as those with whom we dispute, either on superstitious or religious subjects. in all times the uninformed have considered those as atheists, who did not think upon the divinity precisely in the same manner as the guides whom they were accustomed to follow. socrates, the adorer of a unique god, was no more than an atheist in the eyes of the athenian people. still more, as we have already observed, those persons have frequently been accused of atheism, who have taken the greatest pains to establish the existence of the gods, but who have not produced satisfactory proofs: when their enemies wished to take advantage of them, it was easy to make them pass for atheists, who had wickedly betrayed their cause, by defending it too feebly. the theologians have frequently been very highly incensed against those who believed they had discovered the most forcible proof of the existence of their gods, because they were obliged to discover that their adversaries could make very contrary inductions from their propositions; they did not perceive that it was next to impossible not to lay themselves open to attack, in establishing principles visibly founded upon that which each man sees variously. thus paschal says, "i have examined if this god, of whom all the world speaks, might not have left some marks of himself. i look every where, and every where i see nothing but obscurity. nature offers one nothing, that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude. if i saw nothing in nature which indicated a divinity, i should determine with myself, to believe nothing about it. if every where i saw the sign of a creator, i should repose myself in peace, in the belief of one. but seeing too much to deny, and too little to assure me of his existence, i am in a situation that i lament, and in which i have an hundred times wished, that if a god doth sustain nature, he would give unequivocal marks of it, and that if the signs which he hath given be deceitful, that he would suppress them entirely; that he said all or nothing, to the end that i might see which side i ought to follow." in a word, those who have most vigorously taken up the cause of the theological systems, have been taxed with atheism and irreligion; the most zealous partizans have been looked upon as deserters, have been contemplated as traitors; the most orthodox theologians have not been able to guarantee themselves from this reproach; they have mutually bespatered each other; prodigally lavished, with malignant reciprocity, the most abusive terms: nearly all have, without doubt, merited these invectives, if in the term atheist be included those men who have not any idea of their various systems, that does not destroy itself, whenever they are willing to submit it to the touchstone of reason. from whence we may conclude, without subjecting ourselves to the reproach of being hasty, that error will not stand the test of investigation; that it will not pass the ordeal of comparison; that it is in its hues a perfect chamelion; that consequently it can never do more than lead to the most absurd deductions: that the most ingenious systems, when they have their foundations in hallucination, crumble like dust under the rude band of the assayer; that the most sublimated doctrines, when they lack the substantive quality of rectitude, evaporate under the scrutiny of the sturdy examiner, who tries them in the crucible; that it is not by levelling abusive language against those who investigate sophisticated theories, they will either be purged of their absurdities, acquire solidity, or find an establishment to give them perpetuity; that moral obliquities, can never be made rectilinear by the mere application of unintelligible terms, or by the inconsiderate jumble of discrepant properties, however gaudy the assemblage: in short, that the only criterion of truth is, _that it is ever consistent with itself_. chap. xii. _is what is termed atheism compatible with morality?_ after having proved the existence of those whom the superstitious bigot, the heated theologian, the inconsequent theist, calls _atheists_, let us return to the calumnies which are so profusely showered upon them by the deicolists. according to abady, in his _treatise on the truth of the christian religion_, "an atheist cannot be virtuous: to him virtue is only a chimera; probity no more than a vain scruple; honesty nothing but foolishness;--he knoweth no other law than his interest: where this sentiment prevails, conscience is only a prejudice; the law of nature only an illusion; right no more than an error; benevolence hath no longer any foundation; the bonds of society are loosened; the ties of fidelity are removed; friend is ready to betray friend; the citizen to deliver up his country; the son to assassinate his father, in order to enjoy his inheritance, whenever they shall find occasion, and that authority or silence shall shield them from the arm of the secular power, which alone is to be feared. the most inviolable rights, and most sacred laws, must no longer be considered, except as dreams and visions." such, perhaps, would be the conduct, not of a feeling, thinking, reflecting being, susceptible of reason; but of a ferocious brute, of an irrational wretch, who should not have any idea of the natural relations which subsist between beings, reciprocally necessary to each other's happiness. can it actually be supposed, that a man capable of experience, furnished with the faintest glimmerings of sound sense, would lend himself to the conduct which is here ascribed to the atheist; that is to say, to a man who is conversant with the evidence of facts; who ardently seeks after truth; who is sufficiently susceptible of reflection, to undeceive himself by reasoning upon those prejudices which every one strives to shew him as important; which all voices endeavour to announce to him as sacred? can it, i repeat, be supposed, that any enlightened, any polished society, contains a citizen so completely blind, not to acknowledge his most natural duties; so very absurd, not to admit his dearest interests; so completely besotted not to perceive the danger he incurs in incessantly disturbing his fellow creatures; or in following no other rule, than his momentary appetites? is not every human being who reasons in the least possible manner, obliged to feel that society is advantageous to him; that he hath need of assistance; that the esteem of his fellows is necessary to his own individual happiness; provoked, that he has every thing to fear from the wrath of his associates; that the laws menace whoever shall dare to infringe them? every man who has received a virtuous education, who has in his infancy experienced the tender cares of a parent; who has in consequence tasted the sweets of friendship; who has received kindness; who knows the worth of benevolence; who sets a just value upon equity; who feels the pleasure which the affection of our fellow creatures procures for us; who endures the inconveniences which result from their aversion who smarts under the sting which is inflicted by their scorn, is obliged to tremble at losing, by his measures, such manifest advantages--at incurring such, imminent danger. will not the hatred of others, the fear of punishment, his own contempt of himself, disturb his repose every time that, turning, inwardly upon his own conduct, he shall contemplate it under the same perspective as does his neighbour? is there then no remorse but for those who believe in incomprehensible systems? is the idea that we are tinder the eye of beings of whom we have but vague notions, more forcible than the thought that we are viewed by our fellow men; than the fear of being detected by ourselves; than the dread of exposure; than the cruel necessity of becoming despicable in our own eyes; than the wretched alternative, to be constrained to blush guiltily, when we reflect on our wild career, and the sentiments which it must infallibly inspire? this granted, we shall reply deliberately to this abady, that an atheist is a man who understands nature, who studies her laws; who knows his own nature; who feels what it imposes upon him. an atheist hath experience; this experience proves to him every moment that vice can injure him; that his most concealed faults, his most secret dispositions, may be detected--may display his character in open day; this experience proves to him that society is useful to his happiness; that his interest authoritatively demands he should attach himself to the country that protects him, which enables him to enjoy in security the benefits of nature; every thing shews him that in order to be happy he must make himself beloved; that his parent is for him the most certain of friends; that ingratitude would remove him from his benefactor; that justice is necessary to the maintenance of every association; that no man, whatever way he his power, can be content with himself, when he knows he is an object of public hatred. he who has maturely reflected upon himself, upon his own nature, upon that of his associates, upon his own wants, upon the means of procuring them, cannot prevent himself from becoming acquainted with his duties--from discovering the obligations he owes to himself, as well as those which he owes to others; from thence he has morality, he has actual motives to confirm himself to its dictates; he is obliged to feel, that these duties are imperious: if his reason be not disturbed by blind passions, if his mind be not contaminated by vicious habits, he will find that virtue is the surest road to felicity. the atheists, as they are styled, or the fatalists, build their system upon necessity: thus, their moral speculations, founded upon the nature of things, are at least much more permanent, much more invariable, than those which only rest upon systems that alter their aspect according to the various dispositions of their adherents--in conformity with the wayward passions of those who contemplate, them. the essence of things, and the immutable laws of nature, are not subject to fluctuate; it is imperative with the atheist, as he is facetiously called by the theologian, to call whatever injures himself either vice or folly; to designate that which injures others, crime; to describe all that is advantageous to society, every thing which contributes to its permanent happiness, virtue. it will be obvious, then, that the principles of the miscalled atheist are much less liable to be shaken, than those of the enthusiast, who shall have studied a baby from his earliest infancy; who should have devoted not only his days, but his nights, to gleaning the scanty portion of actual information that he scatters through his volumes; they will have a much more substantive foundation than those of the theologian, who shall construct his morality upon the harlequin scenery of systems that so frequently change, even in his own distempered brain. if the atheist, as they please to call those who differ in opinion with themselves, objects to the correctness, of--their systems, he cannot deny his own existence, nor that of beings similar to himself, by whom he is surrounded; he cannot doubt the reciprocity of the relations that subsist between them; he cannot question the duties which spring out of these relations; pyrrhonism, then, cannot enter his mind upon the actual principles of morality; which is nothing more than the science of the relations of beings living together in society. if, however, satisfied with a barren, speculative knowledge of his duties, the atheist of the theologian should not apply them in his conduct--if, hurried along by the current of his ungovernable passions--if, borne forward by criminal habits--if, abandoned to shameful vices-if, possessing a vicious temperament, which he has not been sedulous to correct--if, lending himself to the stream of outrageous desires, he appears to forget his moral obligations, it by no means follows, either that he hath no principles, or that his principles are false: it can only be concluded from such conduct, that in the intoxication of his passions, in the delirium of his habits, in the confusion of his reason, he does not give activity to doctrines grounded upon truth; that he forgets to give currency to ascertained principles; that he may follow those propensities which lead him astray. in this, indeed, he will have dreadfully descended to the miserable level of the theologian, but he will nevertheless find him the partner of his folly--the partaker of his insanity--the companion of his crime. nothing is, perhaps, more common among men, than a very marked discrepancy between the mind and the heart; that is to say, between the temperament, the passions, the habits the caprices, the imagination, and the judgment, assisted by reflection. nothing is, in fact, more rare, than to find these harmoniously running upon all fours with each other; it is, however, only when they do, that we see speculation influence practice. the most certain virtues are those which are founded upon the temperament of man. indeed, do we not every day behold mortals in contradiction with themselves? does not their more sober judgment unceasingly condemn the extravagancies to which their undisciplined passions deliver them up? in short, doth not every thing prove to us hourly, that men, with the very best theory, have sometimes the very worst practice; that others with the most vicious theory, frequently adopt the most amiable line of conduct? in the blindest systems, in the most atrocious superstitions, in those which are most contrary to reason, we meet with virtuous men, the mildness of whose character, the sensibility of whose hearts, the excellence of whose temperament, re conducts them to humanity, makes them fall back upon the laws of nature, in despite of their furious theories. among the adorers of the most cruel, vindictive, jealous gods, are found peaceable, souls, who are enemies to persecution; who set their faces against violence; who are decidedly opposed to cruelty: among the disciples of a god filled with mercy, abounding in clemency, are seen barbarous monsters; inhuman cannibals: nevertheless, both the one and the other acknowledge, that their gods ought to serve them for a model. wherefore, then, do they not in all things conform themselves? it is because the most wicked systems cannot always corrupt a virtuous soul; that those which are most bland, most gentle in their precepts, cannot always restrain hearts driven along by the impetuosity of vice. the organization will, perhaps, be always more potential than either superstition or religion. present objects, momentary interests, rooted habits, public opinion, have much more efficacy than unintelligible theories, than imaginary systems, which themselves depend upon the organic structure of the human frame. the point in question then is, to examine if the principles of the atheist, as he is erroneously called, be true, and not whether his conduct be commendable? an atheist, having an excellent theory, founded upon nature, grafted upon experience, constructed upon reason, who delivers himself up to excesses, dangerous to himself, injurious to society, is, without doubt, an inconsistent man. but he is not more to be feared than a superstitious bigot; than a zealous enthusiast; or than even a religious man who, believing in a good, confiding in an equitable, relying on a perfect god, does not scruple to commit the most frightful devastations in his name. an atheistical tyrant would assuredly not be more to be dreaded than a fanatical despot. an incredulous philosopher, however, is not so mischievous a being as an enthusiastic priest, who either fans the flame of discord among his fellow subjects, or rises in rebellion against his legitimate monarch. would, then, an atheist clothed with power, be equally dangerous as a persecuting priest-ridden king; as a savage inquisitor; as a whimsical devotee; or, as a morose bigot? these are assuredly more numerous in the world than atheists, as they are ludicrously termed, whose opinions, or whose vices are far from being in a condition to have an influence upon society; which is ever too much hoodwinked by the priest, too much blinded by prejudice, too much the slave of superstition, to be disposed to give them a patient hearing. an intemperate, voluptuous atheist, is not more dangerous to society than a superstitions bigot, who knows how to connect licentiousness, punic faith, ingratitude, libertinism, corruption of morals, with his theological notions. can it, however, be ingeniously imagined, that a man, because he is falsely termed an atheist, or because he does not subscribe to the vengeance of the most contradictory systems, will therefore be a profligate debaucheé, malicious, and persecuting; that he will corrupt the wife of his friend; will turn his own wife adrift; will consume both his time and his money in the most frivolous gratifications; will be the slave to the most childish amusements; the companion of the most dissolute men; that he will discard all his old friends; that he will select his bosom confidents from the brazen betrayers of their native land--from among the hoary despoilers of connubial happiness--from out of the ranks of veteran gamblers; that he will either break into his neighbour's dwelling, or cut his throat; in short, that he will lend himself to all those excesses, the most injurious to society, the most prejudicial to himself, the most deserving public castigation? the blemishes of an atheist, then, as the theologian styles him, have not any thing more extraordinary in them than those of the superstitious man; they possess nothing with which his doctrine can be fairly reproached. a tyrant, who should be incredulous, would not be a more incommodious scourge to his subjects, than a theological autocrat, who should wield his sceptre to the misery of his people. would the nation of the latter feel more happy, from the mere circumstance that the tyger who governed it believed in the most abstract systems, heaped the most sumptuous presents on the priests, and humiliated himself at their shrine? at least it must be acknowledged, according to the shewing of the theologian himself, that under the dominion of the atheist, a nation would not have to apprehend superstitious vexations; to dread persecutions for opinion; to fear proscriptions for ill-digested systems; neither would it witness those strange outrages that have sometimes been committed for the interests of heaven, even under the mildest monarchs. if it was the victim to the turbulent passions of an unbelieving prince, the sacrifice to the folly of a sovereign who should be an infidel, it would not, at least, suffer from his blind infatuation, for theological systems which he does not understand; nor from his fanatical zeal, which of all the passions that infest monarchs, is ever the most destructive, always the most dangerous. an atheistical tyrant, who should persecute for opinions, would be a man not consistent with his own principles; he could not exist; he would not, indeed, according to the theologian, be an atheist at most, he would only furnish one more example, that mortals much more frequently follow the blind impulse of their passions, the more immediate stimulus of their interest, the irresistible torrent of their temperament, than their speculations, however grave, however wise. it is, at least, evident, that an atheist has one pretext less than a credulous prince, for exercising his natural wickedness. indeed, if men condescended to examine things coolly, they would find that on this earth the name of god is but too frequently made use of as a motive to indulge the worst of human passions. ambition, imposture, and tyranny, have often formed a league to avail themselves of its influence, to the end that they might blind the people, and bend them beneath a galling yoke: the monarch sometimes employs it to give a divine lustre to his person--the sanction of heaven to his rights--the confidence of its votaries to his most unjust, most extravagant whims. the priest frequently uses it to give currency to his pretensions, to the end that he may with impunity gratify his avarice, minister to his pride, secure his independence. the vindictive, enraged, superstitious being, introduces the cause of his gods, that he may give free scope to his fury, which he qualifies with zeal. in short, superstition becomes dangerous, because it justifies those passions, lends legitimacy to those crimes, holds forth as commendable those excesses, of which it does not fail to gather the fruit: according to its ministers, every thing is permitted to revenge the most high: thus the name of the divinity is made use of to authorize the most baneful actions, to palliate the most injurious transgressions. the atheist, as he is called, when he commits crimes, cannot, at least, pretend that it is his gods who command them, or who clothe them with the mantle of their approval, this is the excuse the superstitious being offers for his perversity; the tyrant for his persecutions; the priest for his cruelty, and for his sedition; the fanatic for the ebullition of his boiling passions; the penitent for his inutility. "they are not," says bayle, "the general opinions of the mind, but the passions, which determine us to act." atheism, as it is called, is a system which will not make a good man wicked but it may, perhaps, make a wicked man good. "those," says the same author, "who embraced the sect of epicurus, did not become debaucheés because they had adopted the doctrine of epicurus; they only lent themselves to the system, then badly understood, because they were debaucheés." in the same manner, a perverse man may embrace atheism, because he will flatter himself, that this system will give full scope to his passions: he will nevertheless be deceived. atheism, as it is called, if well understood, is founded upon nature and upon reason, which never can, like superstition, either justify or expiate the crimes of the profligate. from the diffusion of doctrines which make morality depend upon unintelligible, incomprehensible systems, that are proposed to man for a model, there has unquestionably resulted very great inconvenience. corrupt souls, in discovering, how much each of these suppositions are erroneous or doubtful, give loose to the rein of their vices, and conclude there are not more substantive motives for acting well; they imagine that virtue, like these fragile systems, is merely chimerical; that there is not any cogent solid reason for practising it in this world. nevertheless, it must be evident, that it is not as the disciples of any particular tenet, that we are bound to fulfil the duties of morality; it is as men, living together in society, as sensible beings seeking to secure to ourselves a happy existence, that we should feel the moral obligation. whether these systems maintain their ground, or whether the do not, our duties will remain the same; our nature, if consulted, will incontestibly prove, that _vice is a decided evil, that virtue is an actual, a substantial good_. if, then, there be found atheists who have denied the distinction of good and evil, or who have dared to strike at the foundations of morality; we ought to conclude, that upon this point they have reasoned badly; that they have neither been acquainted with the nature of man, nor known the true source of his duties; that they have falsely imagined that ethics, as well as theology, was only an ideal science; that the fleeting systems once destroyed, there no longer remained any bonds to connect mortals. nevertheless, the slightest reflection would have incontestibly proved, that morality is founded upon immutable relations subsisting between sensible, intelligent, sociable beings; that without virtue, no society can maintain itself; that without putting the curb on his desires, no mortal can conserve himself: man is constrained from his nature to love virtue, to dread crime, by the same necessity that obliges him to seek happiness, and fly from sorrow: thus nature compels him to place a distinction between those objects which please, and those objects which injure him. ask a man, who is sufficiently irrational to deny the difference between virtue and vice, if it would be indifferent to him to be beaten, robbed, calumniated, treated with ingratitude, dishonoured by his wife, insulted by his children, betrayed by his friend? his answer will prove to you, that whatever he may say, he discriminates the actions of mankind; that the distinction between good and evil, does not depend either upon the conventions of men, or upon the ideas which they may have of particular systems; upon the punishments or upon the recompenses which attend mortals in a future existence. on the contrary, an atheist, as he is denominated, who should reason with justness, would feel himself more interested than another in practising those virtues to which he finds his happiness attached in this world. if his views do not extend themselves beyond the limits of his present existence, he must, at least, desire to see his days roll on in happiness and in peace. every man, who during the calm of his passions, falls back upon himself, will feel that his interest invites him to his own preservation; that his felicity rigorously demands he should take the necessary means to enjoy life peaceably that it becomes an imperative duty to himself to keep his actual abode free from alarm; his mind untainted by remorse. man oweth something to man, not merely because he would offend any particular system, if he was to injure his fellow creature; but because in doing him an injury he would offend a man; would violate the laws of equity; in the maintenance of which every human being finds himself interested. we every day see persons who are possessed of great talents, who have very extensive knowledge, who enjoy very keen penetration, join to these advantages a very corrupt heart; who lend, themselves to the most hideous vices: their opinions may be true in some respects, false in a great many others; their principles may be just, but their inductions are frequently defective; very often precipitate. a man may embrace sufficient knowledge to detect some of his errors, yet command too little energy to divest himself of his vicious propensities. man is a being whose character depends upon his organization, modified by habit--upon his temperament, regulated by education--upon his propensities, marshalled by example--upon his; passions, guided by his government; in short, he is only what transitory or permanent circumstances make him: his superstitious ideas are obliged to yield to this temperament; his imaginary systems feel a necessity to accommodate themselves to his propensities; his theories give way to his interests. if the system which constitutes man an atheist in the eyes of this theologic friend, does not remove him from the vices with which he was anteriorly tainted, neither does it tincture him with any new ones; whereas, superstition furnishes its disciples with a thousand pretexts for committing evil without repugnance; induces them even to applaud themselves for the commission of crime. atheism, at least, leaves men such as they are; it will neither increase a man's intemperance, nor add to his debaucheries, it will not render him more cruel than his temperament before invited him to be: whereas superstition either lacks the rein to the most terrible passions, gives loose to the most abominable suggestions, or else procures easy expiations for the most dishonourable vices. "atheism," says chancellor bacon, "leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and every thing that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these things, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: this is the reason why atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear-sighted, as seeing nothing beyond the bounds of this life." the same author adds, "that the times in which men have turned towards atheism, have been the most tranquil; whereas superstition has always inflamed their minds, and carried them on to the greatest disorders; because it infatuates the people with novelties, which wrest from and carry with them all the authority of government." men, habituated to meditate, accustomed to make study a pleasure, are not commonly dangerous citizens: whatever may be their speculations, they never produce sudden revolutions upon the earth. the winds of the people, at all times susceptible to be inflamed by the marvellous, their dormant passions liable to be aroused by enthusiasm, obstinately resist the light of simple truths; never heat themselves for systems that demand a long train of reflection--that require the depth of the most acute reasoning. the system of atheism, as the priests choose to denominate it, can only be the result of long meditation; the fruit of connected study; the produce of an imagination cooled by experience: it is the child of reason. the peaceable epicurus never disturbed greece; his philosophy was publicly taught in athens during many centuries; he was in incredible favour with his countrymen, who caused statues to be erected to him; he had a prodigious number of friends, and his school subsisted for a very long period. cicero, although a decided enemy to the epicureans, gives a brilliant testimony to the probity both of epicurus and his disciples, who were remarkable for the inviolable friendship they bore each other. in the time of marcus aurelius, there was at athens a public professor of the philosophy of epicurus, paid by that emperor, who was himself a stoic. hobbes did not cause blood to flow in england, although in his time, religious fanaticism made a king perish on the scaffold. the poem of lucretius caused no civil wars in rome; the writings of spinosa did not excite the same troubles in holland as the disputes of gomar and d'arminius. in short, we can defy the enemies to human reason to cite a single example, which proves in a decisive manner that opinions purely philosophical, or directly contrary to superstition, have ever excited disturbances in the state. tumults have generally arisen from theological notions, because both princes and people have always foolishly believed they ought to take a part in them. there is nothing so dangerous as that empty philosophy, which the theologians have combined with their systems. it is to philosophy, corrupted by priests, that it peculiarly belongs to blow up the embers of discord; to invite the people to rebellion; to drench the earth with human blood. there is, perhaps, no theological question, which has not been the source of immense mischief to man; whilst all the writings of those denominated atheists, whether ancient or modern, have never caused any evil but to their authors; whom dominant imposture has frequently immolated at his deceptive shrine. the principles of atheism are not formed for the mass of the people, who are commonly under the tutelage of their priests; they are not calculated for those frivolous capacities, not suited to those dissipated minds, who fill society with their vices, who hourly afford evidence of their own inutility; they will not gratify the ambitious; neither are they adapted to intriguers, nor fitted for those restless beings who find their immediate interest in disturbing the harmony of the social compact: much less are they made for a great number of persons, who, enlightened in other respects, have not sufficient courage to divorce themselves from the received prejudices. so many causes unite themselves to confirm man in those errors which he draws in with his mother's milk, that every step that removes him from these endeared fallacies, costs him uncommon pain. those persons who are most enlightened, frequently cling on some side to the general prepossession. by giving up these revered ideas, we feel ourselves, as it were, isolated in society: whenever we stand alone in our opinions, we no longer seem to speak the language of our associates; we are apt to fancy ourselves placed on a barren, desert island, in sight of a populous, fruitful country, which we can never reach: it therefore requires great courage to adopt a mode of thinking that has but few approvers. in those countries where human knowledge has made some progress; where, besides, a certain freedom of thinking is enjoyed, may easily be found a great number of deicolists, theists, or incredulous beings, who, contented with having trampled under foot the grosser prejudices of the illiterate, have not dared to go back to the source--to cite the more subtle systems before the tribunal of reason. if these thinkers did not stop on the road, reflection would quickly prove to them that those systems which they have not the fortitude to examine, are equally injurious to sound ratiocination, fully as revolting to good sense, quite as repugnant to the evidence of experience, as any of those doctrines, mysteries, fables, or superstitious customs, of which they have already acknowledged the futility; they would feel, as we have already proved, that all these things are nothing more than the necessary consequences of those primitive errors which man has indulged for so many ages in succession; that in admitting these errors, they no longer have any rational cause to reject the deductions which the imagination has drawn from them. a little attention would distinctly shew them, that it is precisely these errors that are the true cause of all the evils of society; that those endless disputes, those sanguinary quarrels, to which superstition and the spirit of party every instant give birth, are the inevitable effects of the importance they attach to errors which possess all the means of distraction, that scarcely ever fail to put the mind of man into a state of combustion. in short, nothing is more easy than to convince ourselves that imaginary systems, not reducible to comprehension, which are always painted under terrific aspects, must act upon the imagination in a very lively manner, must sooner or later produce disputes--engender enthusiasm--give birth to fanaticism--end in delirium. many persons acknowledge, that the extravagances to which superstition lends activity, are real evils; many complain of the abuse of superstition, but there are very few who feel that this abuse, together with the evils, are the necessary consequences of the fundamental principles of all superstition; which are founded upon the most grievous notions, which rest themselves on the most tormenting opinions. we daily see persons undeceived upon superstitious ideas, who nevertheless pretend that this superstition "is salutary for the people;" that without its supernatural magic, they could not be kept within due bounds; in other words, could not be made the voluntary slaves of the priest. but, to reason thus, is it not to say, poison is beneficial to mankind, that therefore it is proper to poison them, to prevent them from making an improper use of their power? is it not in fact to pretend it is advantageous to render them absurd; that it is a profitable course to make them extravagant; wholesome to give them an irrational bias; that they have need of hobgoblins to blind them; require the most incomprehensible systems to make them giddy; that it is imperative to submit them either to impostors or to fanatics, who will avail themselves of their follies to disturb the repose of the world? again, is it an ascertained fact, does experience warrant the conclusion, that superstition has a useful influence over the morals of the people? it appears much more evident, is much better borne out by observation, falls more in with the evidence of the senses, that it enslaves them without rendering them better; that it constitutes an herd of ignorant beings, whom panic terrors keep under the yoke of their task-masters; whom their useless fears render the wretched instruments of towering ambition--of rapacious tyrants; of the subtle craft of designing priests: that it forms stupid slaves, who are acquainted with no other virtue, save a blind submission to the most futile customs, to which they attach a much more substantive value than to the actual virtues springing out of the duties of morality; or issuing from the social compact which has never been made known to them. if by any chance, superstition does restrain some few individuals, it has no effect on the greater number, who suffer themselves to be hurried along by the epidemical vices with which they are infected: they are placed by it upon the stream of corruption, and the tide either sweeps them away, or else, swelling the waters, breaks through its feeble mounds, and involves the whole in one undistinguished mass of ruin. it is in those countries where superstition has the greatest power, that will always be found the least morality. virtue is incompatible with ignorance; it cannot coalesce with superstition; it cannot exist with slavery: slaves can only be kept in subordination by the fear of punishment; ignorant children are for a moment intimidated by imaginary terrors. but freemen, the children of truth, have no fears but of themselves; are neither to be lulled into submission by visionary duties, nor coerced by fanciful systems; they yield ready obedience to the evident demonstrations of virtue; are the faithful, the invulnerable supporters of solid systems; cling with ardour to the dictates of reason; form impenetrable ramparts round their legitimate sovereigns; and fix their thrones on an immoveable basis, unknown to the theologian; that cannot be touched with unhallowed hands; whose duration will be commensurate with the existence of time itself. to form freemen, however, to have virtuous citizens, it is necessary to enlighten them; it is incumbent to exhibit truth to them; it is imperative to reason with them; it is indispensable to make them feel their interests; it is paramount to learn them to respect themselves; they must be instructed to fear shame; they must be excited to have a just idea of honour; they must be made familiar with the value of virtue, they must be shewn substantive motives for following its lessons. how can these happy effects ever be expected from the polluted fountains of superstition, whose waters do nothing more than degrade mankind? or how are they to be obtained from the ponderous, bulky yoke of tyranny, which proposes nothing more to itself, than to vanquish them by dividing them; to keep them in the most abject condition by means of lascivious vices, and the most detestable crimes? the false idea, which so many persons have of the utility of superstition, which they, at least, judge to be calculated to restrain the licentiousness of the illiterate, arise from the fatal prejudice that it is a useful error; that truth may be dangerous. this principle has complete efficacy to eternize the sorrows of the earth: whoever shall have the requisite courage to examine these things, will without hesitation acknowledge, that all the miseries of the human race are to be ascribed to his errors; that of these, superstitious error must he the most prejudicial, from the importance which is usually attached to it; from the haughtiness with which it inspires sovereigns; from the worthless condition which it prescribes to subjects; from the phrenzy which it excites among the vulgar. we shall, therefore, be obliged to conclude, that the superstitious errors of man, rendered sacred by time, are exactly those which for the permanent interest of mankind, for the well-being of society, for the security of the monarch himself, demand the most complete destruction; that it is principally to their annihilation, the efforts of a sound philosophy ought to be directed. it is not to be feared, that this attempt will produce either disorders or revolutions: the more freedom shall accompany the voice of truth, the more convincing it will appear; although the more simple it shall be, the less it will influence men, who are only smitten with the marvellous; even those individuals who most sedulously seek after truth, who pursue it with the greatest ardour, have frequently an irresistible inclination, that urges them on, and incessantly disposes them to reconcile error with its antipode. that great master of the art of thinking, who holds forth to his disciples such able advice, says, with abundant reason, "that there is nothing but a good and solid philosophy, which can, like another hercules, exterminate those monsters called popular errors: it is that alone which can give freedom to the human mind." here is, unquestionably, the true reason why atheism, as it is called, of which hitherto the principles have not been sufficiently developed, appears to alarm even those persons who are the most destitute of prejudice. they find the interval too great between vulgar superstition and an absolute renunciation of it; they imagine they take a wise medium in compounding with error; they therefore reject the consequences, while they admit the principle; they preserve the shadow and throw away the substance, without foreseeing that, sooner or later, it must, by its obstetric art, usher into the world, one after another, the same follies which now fill the heads of bewildered human beings, lost in the labyrinths of incomprehensible systems. the major part of the incredulous, the greater number of reformers, do no more than prune a cankered tree, to whose root they dare not apply the axe; they do not perceive that this tree will in the end produce the same fruit. theology, or superstition, will always be an heap of combustible matter: brooded in the imagination of mankind, it will always finish by causing the most terrible explosions. as long as the sacerdotal order shall have the privilege of infecting youth--of habituating their minds to tremble before unmeaning words--of alarming nations with the most terrific systems, so long will fanaticism be master of the human mind; imposture will, at its pleasure, cast the apple of discord among the members of the state. the most simple error, perpetually fed, unceasingly modified, continually exaggerated by the imagination of man, will by degrees assume a collossal figure, sufficiently powerful to upset every institution; amply competent to the overthrow of empires. theism is a system at which the human mind cannot make a long sojourn; founded upon error, it will, sooner or later, degenerate into the most absurd, the most dangerous superstition. many incredulous beings, many theists, are to be met with in those countries where freedom of opinion reigns; that is to say, where the civil power has known how to balance superstition. but, above all, atheists as they are termed, will be found in those nations where, superstition, backed by the sovereign authority, most enforces the ponderosity of its yoke; most impresses the volume of its severity; imprudently abuses its unlimited power. indeed, when in these kind of countries, science, talents, the seeds of reflection, are not entirely stifled, the greater part of the men who think, revolt at the crying abuses of superstition; are ashamed of its multifarious follies; are shocked at the corruption of its professors; scandalized at the tyranny of its priests: are struck with horror at those massive chains which it imposes on the credulous. believing with great reason, that they can never remove themselves too far from its savage principles, the system that serves for the basis of such a creed, becomes as odious as the superstition itself; they feel that terrific systems can only be detailed by cruel ministers; these become detestable objects to every enlightened, to every honest mind, in which either the love of equity, or the sacred fire of freedom resides; to every one who is the advocate of humanity--the indignant spurner of tyranny. oppression gives a spring to the soul; it obliges man to examine closely into the cause of his sorrows; misfortune is a powerful incentive, that turns the mind to the side of truth. how formidable a foe must not outraged reason be to falsehood? it at least throws it into confusion, when it tears away its mask; when it follows it into its last entrenchment; when it proves, beyond contradiction, that _nothing is so dastardly as delusion detected, or tyrannic power held at bay._ chap. xiii. _of the motives which lead to what is falsely called atheism.--can this system be dangerous?--can it be embraced by the illiterate?_ the reflections, as well as the facts which have preceded, will furnish a reply to those who inquire what interest man has in not admitting unintelligible systems? the tyrannies, the persecutions, the numberless outrages committed under these systems; the stupidity, the slavery, into which their ministers almost every where plunge the people; the sanguinary disputes to which they give birth; the multitude of unhappy beings with which their fatal notions fill the world; are surely abundantly sufficient to create the most powerful, the most interesting motives, to determine all sensible men, who possess the faculty of thought, to examine into the authenticity of doctrines, which cause so many serious evils to the inhabitants of the earth. a theist, very estimable for his talents, asks, "if there can be any other cause than an evil disposition, which can make men atheists?" i reply to him, yes, there are other causes. there is the desire, a very laudable one, of having a knowledge of interesting truths; there is the powerful interest of knowing what opinions we ought to hold upon the object which is announced to us as the most important; there is the fear of deceiving ourselves upon systems which are occupied with the opinions of mankind, which do not permit he should deceive himself respecting them with impunity. but when these motives, these causes, should not subsist, is not indignation, or if they will, an evil disposition, a legitimate cause, a good and powerful motive, for closely examining the pretensions, for searching into the rights of systems, in whose name so many crimes are perpetrated? can any man who feels, who thinks, who has any elasticity in his soul, avoid being incensed against austere theories, which are visibly the pretext, undeniably the source, of all those evils, which on every side assail the human race? are they not these fatal systems which are at once the cause and the ostensible reason of that iron yoke that oppresses mankind; of that wretched slavery in which he lives; of that blindness which hides from him his happiness; of that superstition, which disgraces him; of those irrational customs which torment him; of those sanguinary quarrels which divide him; of all the outrages which he experiences? must not every breast in which humanity is not extinguished, irritate itself against that theoretical speculation, which in almost every country is made to speak the language of capricious, inhuman, irrational tyrants? to motives so natural, so substantive, we shall join those which are still more urgent, more personal to every reflecting man: namely, that benumbing terror, that incommodious fear, which must be unceasingly nourished by the idea of capricious theories, which lay man open to the most severe penalties, even for secret thoughts, over which he himself has not any controul; that dreadful anxiety arising out of inexorable systems, against which he may sin without even his own knowledge; of morose doctrines, the measure of which he can never be certain of having fulfilled; which so far from being equitable, make all the obligations lay on one side; which with the most ample means of enforcing restraint, freely permit evil, although they hold out the most excruciating punishments for the delinquents? does it not then, embrace the best interests of humanity, become of the highest importance to the welfare of mankind, of the greatest consequence to the quiet of his existence, to verify the correctness of these systems? can any thing be more rational than to probe to the core these astounding theories? is it possible that any thing can be more just, than to inquire rigorously into the rights, sedulously to examine the foundations, to try by every known test, the stability of doctrines, that involve in their operations, consequences of such colossal magnitude; that embrace, in their dictatory mandates, matters of such high behest; that implicate the eternal felicity of such countless millions in the vortex of their action? would it not be the height of folly to wear such a tremendous yoke without inquiry; to let such overwhelming notions pass current unauthenticated; to permit the soi-disant ministers of these terrific systems to establish their power, without the most ample verification of their patents of mission? would it, i repeat, be at all wonderful, if the frightful qualities of some of these systems, as exhibited by their official expounders, whom the accredited functionaries of similar systems, do not scruple, in the face of day, to brand as impostors, should induce rational beings to drive them entirely from their hearts; to shake off such an intolerable burden of misery; to even deny the existence of such appalling doctrines, of such petrifying systems, which the superstitious themselves, whilst paying them their homage, frequently curse from the very bottom of their hearts? the theist, however, will not fail to tell the atheist, as he calls him, that these systems are not such as superstition paints them; that the colours are coarse, too glaring, ill assorted, the perspective out of all keeping; he will then exhibit his own picture, in which the tints are certainly blended with more mellowness, the colouring of a more pleasing hue, the whole more harmonious, but the distances equally indistinct: the atheist, in reply, will say, that superstition itself, with all the absurd prejudices, all the mischievous notions to which it gives birth, are only corollaries drawn from the fallacious ideas, from those obscure principles, which the deicolist himself indulges. that his own incomprehensible system authorizes the incomprehensible absurdities, the inconceivable mysteries, with which superstition abounds; that they flow consecutively from his own premises; that when once the mind of mortals is bewildered in the dark, inextricable mazes of an ill-directed imagination, it will incessantly multiply its chimeras. to assure the repose of mankind, fundamental errors must be annihilated; that he may understand his true relations, be acquainted with his imperative duties, primary delusions must be rectified; to procure him that serenity of soul, without which there can be no substantive happiness, original fallacies must be undermined. if the systems of the superstitious be revolting, if their theories be gloomy, if their dogmas are unintelligible, those of the theist will always be contradictory; will prove fatal, when he shall be disposed to meditate upon them; will become the source of illusions, with which, sooner or later, imposture will not omit to abuse his credulity. nature alone, with the truths she discovers, is capable of lending to the human mind that firmness which falsehood will never be able to shake; to the human heart that self-possession, against which imposture will in vain direct its attacks. let us again reply to those who unceasingly repeat that the interest of the passions alone conduct man to what is termed atheism: that it is the dread of future punishment that determines corrupt individuals to make the most strenuous efforts to break up a system they have reason to dread. we shall, without hesitation, agree that it is the interest of man's passions which excites him to make inquiries; without interest, no man is tempted to seek; without passion, no man will seek vigorously. the question, then, to be examined, is, if the passions and interests, which determine some thinkers to dive into the stability or the systems held forth to their adoption, are or are not legitimate? these interests have, already been exposed, from which it has been proved, that every rational man finds in his inquietudes, in his fears, reasonable motives to ascertain, whether or not it be necessary to pass his life in perpetual dread; in never ceasing agonies? will it be said, that an unhappy being, unjustly condemned to groan in chains, has not the right of being willing to render them asunder; to take some means to liberate himself from his prison; to adopt some plan to escape from those punishments, which every instant threaten him? will it be pretended that his passion for liberty has no legitimate foundation, that he does an injury to the companions of his misery, in withdrawing himself from the shafts of tyrannical infliction; or in furnishing, them also with means to escape from its cruel strokes? is, then, an incredulous man, any thing more than one who has taken flight from the general prison, in which despotic superstition detains nearly all mankind? is not an atheist, as he is called, who writes, one who has broken his fetters, who supplies to those of his associates who have sufficient courage to follow him, the means of setting themselves free from the terrors that menace them? the priests unceasingly repeat that it is pride, vanity, the desire of distinguishing himself from the generality of mankind, that determines man to incredulity. in this they are like some of those wealthy mortals, who treat all those as insolent who refuse to cringe before them. would not every rational man have a right to ask the priest, where is thy superiority in matters of reasoning? what motives can i have to submit my reason to thy delirium? on the other hand, way it not be said to the hierarchy, that it is interest which makes them priests; that it is interest which renders them theologians; that it is for the interest of their passions, to inflate their pride, to gratify their avarice, to minister to their ambition, &c. that they attach themselves to systems, of which they alone reap the benefits? whatever it may be, the priesthood, contented with exercising their power over the illiterate, ought to permit those men who do think, to be excused from bending the knee before their vain, illusive idols. we also agree, that frequently the corruption of morals, a life of debauchery, a licentiousness of conduct, even levity of mind, may conduct man to incredulity; but is it not possible to be a libertine, to be irreligious, to make a parade of incredulity, without being on that account an atheist? there is unquestionably a difference between those who are led to renounce belief in unintelligible systems by dint of reasoning, and those who reject or despise superstition, only because they look upon it as a melancholy object, or an incommodious restraint. many persons, no doubt, renounce received prejudices, through vanity or upon hearsay; these pretended strong minds have not examined any thing for themselves; they act upon the authority of others, whom they suppose to have weighed things more maturely. this kind of incredulous beings, have not, then, any distinct ideas, any substantive opinions, and are but little capacitated to reason for themselves; they are indeed hardly in a state to follow the reasoning of others. they are irreligious in the same manner as the majority of mankind are superstitious, that is to say, by credulity like the people; or through interest like the priest. a voluptuary devoted to his appetites; a debaucheé drowned in drunkenness; an ambitious mortal given up to his own schemes of aggrandizement; an intriguer surrounded by his plots; a frivolous, dissipated mortal, absorbed by his gewgaws, addicted to his puerile pursuits, buried in his filthy enjoyments; a loose woman abandoned to her irregular desires; a choice spirit of the day: are these i say, personages, actually competent to form a sound judgment of superstition, which they have never examined? are they in a condition to maturely weigh theories that require the utmost depth of thought? have they the capabilities to feel the force of a subtle argument; to compass the whole of a system: to embrace the various ramifications of an extended doctrine? if some feeble scintillations occasionally break in upon the cimmerian darkness of their minds; if by any accident they discover some faint glimmerings of truth amidst the tumult of their passions; if occasionally a sudden calm, suspending, for a short season, the tempest of their contending vices, permits the bandeau of their unruly desires by which they are blinded, to drop for an instant from their hoodwinked eyes, these leave on them only evanescent traces; scarcely sooner received than obliterated. corrupt men only attack the gods when they conceive them to be the enemies to their vile passions. arrian says, "that when men imagine the gods are in opposition to their passions, they abuse them, and overturn their altars." the chinese, i believe, do the same. the honest man makes war against systems which he finds are inimical to virtue--injurious to his own happiness--baneful to that of his fellow mortals--contradictory to the repose, fatal to the interests of the human species. the bolder, therefore, the sentiments of the honest atheist, the more strange his ideas, the more suspicious they appear to other men, the more strictly he ought to observe his own obligations; the more scrupulously he should perform his duties; especially if he be not desirous that his morals shall calumniate his system; which duly weighed, will make the necessity of sound ethics, the certitude of morality, felt in all its force; but which every species of superstition tends to render problematical, or to corrupt. whenever our will is moved by concealed and complicated motives, it is extremely difficult to decide what determines it; a wicked man may be conducted to incredulity or to scepticism by those motives which he dare not avow, even to himself; in believing he seeks after truth, he may form an illusion to his mind, only to follow the interest of his passions; the fear of an avenging system will perhaps determine him to deny their existence without examination; uniformly because he feels them incommodious. nevertheless, the passions sometimes happen to be just; a great interest carries us on to examine things more minutely; it may frequently make a discovery of the truth, even to him who seeks after it the least, or who is only desirous to be lulled to sleep, who is only solicitous to deceive himself. it is the same with a perverse man who stumbles upon truth, as it is with him, who flying from an imaginary danger, should encounter in his road a dangerous serpent, which in his haste he should destroy; he does that by accident, without design, which a man, less disturbed in his mind, would have done with premeditated deliberation. to judge properly of things, it is necessary to be disinterested; it is requisite to have an enlightened mind, to have connected ideas to compass a great system. it belongs, in fact, only to the honest man to examine the proofs of systems--to scrutinize the principles of superstition; it belongs only to the man acquainted with nature, conversant with her ways, to embrace with intelligence the cause of the system of nature. the wicked are incapable of judging with temper; the ignorant are inadequate to reason with accuracy; the honest, the virtuous, are alone competent judges in so weighty an affair. what do i say? is not the virtuous man, from thence in a condition to ardently desire the existence of a system that remunerates the goodness of men? if he renounces those advantages, which his virtue confers upon him the right to hope, it is, undoubtedly, because he finds them imaginary. indeed, every man who reflects will quickly perceive, that for one timid mortal, of whom these systems restrain the feeble passions, there are millions whose voice they cannot curb, of whom, on the contrary, they excite the fury; for one that they console, there are millions whom they affright, whom they afflict; whom they make unhappy: in short, he finds, that against one inconsistent enthusiast, which these systems, which are thought so excellent, render happy, they carry discord, carnage, wretchedness into vast countries; plunge whole nations into misery; deluge them with tears. however this may be, do not let us inquire into motives which may determine a man to embrace a system; let us rather examine the system itself; let us convince ourselves of its rectitude; if we shall find that it is founded upon truth, we shall never, be able to esteem it dangerous. it is always falsehood that is injurious to man; if error be visibly the source of his sorrows, reason is the true remedy for them; this is the panacea that can alone carry consolation to his afflictions. do not let us farther examine the conduct of a man who presents us with a system; his ideas, as we have already said, may be extremely sound, when even his actions are highly deserving of censure. if the system of atheism cannot make him perverse, who is not so by his temperament, it cannot render him good, who does not otherwise know the motives that should conduct him to virtue. at least we have proved, that the superstitious man, when he has strong passions, when he possesses a depraved heart, finds even in his creed a thousand pretexts more than the atheist, for injuring the human species. the atheist has not, at least, the mantle of zeal to cover his vengeance; he has not the command of his priest to palliate his transports; he has not the glory of his gods to countenance his fury; the atheist does not enjoy the faculty of expiating, at the expence of a sum of money, the transgressions of his life; of availing himself of certain ceremonies, by the aid of which he may atone for the outrages he may have committed against society; he has not the advantage of being able to reconcile himself with heaven, by some easy custom; to quiet the remorse of his disturbed conscience, by an attention to outward forms: if crime has not deadened every feeling of his heart, he is obliged continually to carry within himself an inexorable judge, who unceasingly reproaches him for his odious conduct; who forces him to blush for his own folly; who compels him to hate himself; who imperiously obliges him to fear examination, to dread the resentment of others. the superstitious man, if he be wicked, gives himself up to crime, which is followed by remorse; but his superstition quickly furnishes him with the means a getting rid of it; his life is generally no more than a long series of error and grief, of sin and expiation, following each other in alternate succession; still more, he frequently, as we have seen, perpetrates crimes of greater magnitude, in order to wash away the first. destitute of any permanent ideas on morality, he accustoms himself to look upon nothing as criminal, but that which the ministers, the official expounders of his system, forbid him to commit: he considers actions of the blackest dye as virtues, or as the means of effacing those transgressions, which are frequently held out to him as faithfully executing the duties of his creed. it is thus we have seen fanatics expiate their adulteries by the most atrocious persecutions; cleanse their souls from infamy by the most unrelenting cruelty; make atonement for unjust wars by the foulest means; qualify their usurpations by outraging every principle of virtue; in order to wash away their iniquities, bathe themselves in the blood of those superstitious victims, whose infatuation made them martyrs. an atheist, as he is falsely called, if he has reasoned justly, if he has consulted nature, hath principles more determinate, more humane, than the superstitious; his system, whether gloomy or enthusiastic, always conducts the latter either to folly or cruelty; the imagination of the former will never be intoxicated to that degree, to make him believe that violence, injustice, persecution, or assassination are either virtuous or legitimate actions. we every day see that superstition, or the cause of heaven, as it is called, hoodwinks even those persons who on every other occasion are humane, equitable, and rational; so much so, that they make it a paramount duty to treat with determined barbarity, those men who happen to step aside from their mode of thinking. an heretic, an incredulous being, ceases to be a man, in the eyes of the superstitious. every society, infected with the venom of bigotry, offers innumerable examples of juridical assassination, which the tribunals commit without scruple, even without remorse. judges who are equitable on every other occasion, are no longer so when there is a question of theological opinions; in steeping their hands in the blood of their victims, they believe, on the authority of the priests, they conform themselves to the views of the divinity. almost every where the laws are subordinate to superstition; make themselves accomplices in its fanatical fury; they legitimate those actions most opposed to the gentle voice of humanity; they even transform into imperative duties, the most barbarous cruelties. the president grammont relates, with a satisfaction truly worthy of a cannibal, the particulars of the punishment of vanini, who was burned at thoulouse, although he had disavowed the opinions with which he was accused; this president carries his demoniac prejudices so far, as to find wickedness in the piercing cries, in the dreadful howlings, which torment wrested from this unhappy victim to superstitious vengeance. are not all these avengers of the gods miserable men, blinded by their piety, who, under the impression of duty, wantonly immolate at the shrine of superstition, those wretched victims whom the priests deliver over to them? are they not savage tyrants, who have the rank injustice to violate thought; who have the folly to believe they can enslave it? are they not delirious fanatics, on whom the law, dictated by the most inhuman prejudices, imposes the necessity of acting like ferocious brutes? are not all those sovereigns, who to gratify the vanity of the priesthood, torment and persecute their subjects, who sacrifice to their anthropophagite gods human victims, men whom superstitious zeal has converted into tygers? are not those priests, so careful of the soul's health, who insolently break into the sacred sanctuary of man's mind, to the end that they may find in his opinions motives for doing him an injury, abominable knaves, disturbers of the public repose, whom superstition honours, but whom virtue detests? what villains are more odious in the eyes of humanity, what depredators more hateful to the eye of reason, than those infamous inquisitors, who by the blindness of princes, by the delirium of monarchs, enjoy the advantage of passing judgment on their own enemies; who ruthlessly commit them to the charity of the flames? nevertheless, the fatuity of the people makes even these monsters respected; the favour of kings covers them with kindness; the mantle of superstitious opinion shields them from the effect of the just execration of every honest man. do not a thousand examples prove, that superstition has every where produced the most frightful ravages: that it has continually justified the most unaccountable horrors? has it not a thousand times armed its votaries with the dagger of the homicide; let loose passions much wore terrible than those which it pretended to restrain; broken up the most sacred bonds by which mortals are connected with each other? has it not, under the pretext of duty, under the colour of faith, under the semblance of zeal, under the sacred name of piety, favoured cupidity, lent wings to ambition, countenanced cruelty, given a spring to tyranny? has it not legitimatized murder; given a system to perfidy; organized rebellion; made a virtue of regicide? have not those princes who have been foremost as the avengers of heaven, who have been the lictors of superstition, frequently themselves become its victims? in short, has it not been the signal for the most dismal follies, the most wicked outrages, the most horrible massacres? has not its altars been drenched with human gore? under whatever form it has been exhibited, has it not always been the ostensible cause of the most bare-faced violation--of the sacred rights of humanity? never will an atheist, as he is called, as called, as he enjoys his proper senses, persuade himself that similar actions can be justifiable; never will he believe that he who commits them can be an estimable man; there is no one but the superstitious, whose blindness makes him forget the most evident principles of morality, whose callous soul renders him deaf to the voice of nature, whose zeal causes him to overlook the dictates of reason, who can by any possibility imagine the most destructive crimes are the most prominent features of virtue. if the atheist be perverse, he, at least, knows that he acts wrong; neither these systems, nor their priests, will be able to persuade him that he does right: one thing, however, is certain, whatever crimes he may allow himself to commit, he will never be capable of exceeding those which superstition perpetrates without scruple; that it encourages in those whom it intoxicates with its fury; to whom it frequently holds forth wickedness itself, either as expiations for offences, or else as orthodox, meritorious actions. thus the atheist, however wicked he may be supposed, will at most be upon a level with the devotee, whose superstition encourages him to commit crimes, which it transforms into virtue. as to conduct, if he be debauched, voluptuous, intemperate, adulterous, the atheist in this differs in nothing from the most credulously superstitious, who frequently knows how to connect these vices with his credulity, to blend with his superstition certain atrocities, for which his priests, provided he renders due homage to their power, especially if he augments their exchequer, will always find means to pardon him. if he be in hindoostan, his brahmins will wash him in the sacred waters of the ganges, while reciting a prayer. if he be a jew, upon making an offering, his sins will be effaced. if he be in japan, he will be cleansed by performing a pilgrimage. if he be a mahometan, he will be reputed a saint, for having visited the tomb of his prophet; the roman pontiff himself will sell him indulgences; but none of them will ever censure him for those crimes he may have committed in the support of their several faiths. we are constantly told, that the indecent behaviour of the official expounders of superstition, the criminal conduct of the priests, or of their sectaries, proves nothing against the goodness of their systems. admitted: but wherefore do they not say the same thing of the conduct of those whom they call atheists, who, as we have already proved, way have a very substantive, a very correct system of morality, even while leading a very dissolute life? if it be necessary to judge the opinions of mankind according to their conduct, which is the theory that would bear the scrutiny? let us, then, examine the opinion of the atheist, without approving his conduct; let us adopt his mode of thinking, if we find it marked by the truth; if it shall appear useful; if it shall be proved rational; but let us reject his mode of action, if that should be found blameable. at the sight of a work performed with truth, we do not embarrass ourselves with the morals of the workman: of what importance is it to the universe, whether the illustrious newton was a sober, discreet citizen, or a debauched intemperate man? it only remains for us to examine his theory; we want nothing more than to know whether he has reasoned acutely; if his principles be steady; if the parts of his system are connected; if his work contains more demonstrable truths, than bold ideas? let us judge in the same manner of the principles of the atheist; if they appear strange, if they are unusual, that is a solid reason for probing them more strictly; if he has spoken truth, if he has demonstrated his positions, let us yield to the weight of evidence; if he be deceived in some parts, let us distinguish the true from the false; but do not let us fall into the hacknied prejudice, which on account of one error in the detail, rejects a multitude of incontestible truisms. doctor johnson, i think, says in his preface to his dictionary, "when a man shall have executed his task with all the accuracy possible, he will only be allowed to have done his duty; but if he commits the slightest error, a thousand snarlers are ready to point it out." the atheist, when he is deceived, has unquestionably as much right to throw his faults on the fragility of his nature, as the superstitious man. an atheist may have vices, may be defective, he may reason badly; but his errors will never have the consequences of superstitious novelties; they will not, like these, kindle up the fire of discord in the bosom of nations; the atheist will not justify his vices, defend his wanderings by superstition; he will not pretend to infallibility, like those self-conceited theologians who attach the divine sanction to their follies; who initiate that heaven authorizes those sophisms, gives currency to those falsehoods, approves those errors, which they believe themselves warranted to distribute over the face of the earth. it will perhaps be said, that the refusal to believe in these systems, will rend asunder one of the most powerful bonds of society, by making the sacredness of an oath vanish. i reply, that perjury is by no means rare, even in the most superstitious nations, nor even among the most religious, or among those who boast of being the most thoroughly convinced of the rectitude of their theories. diagoras, superstitious as he was, and it was not well possible to be more so, it is said became an atheist, on seeing that the gods did not thunder their vengeance on a man who had taken them as evidence to a falsity. upon this principle, how many atheists ought there to be? from the systems that have made invisible unknown beings the depositaries of man's engagements, we do not always see it result that they are better observed; or that the most solemn contracts have acquired a greater solidity. if history was consulted, it would now and then be in evidence, that even the conductors of nations, those who have said they were the images of the divinity, who have declared that they held their right of governing immediately from his hands, have sometimes taken the deity as the witness to their oaths, have made him the guarantee of their treaties, without its having had all the effect that might have been expected, when very trifling interests have intervened; it would appear, unless historians are incorrect, that they did not always religiously observe those sacred engagements they made with their allies, much less with their subjects. to form a judgment from these historic documents, we should be inclined to say, there have been those who had much superstition, joined with very little probity; who made a mockery both of gods and men; who perhaps blushed when they reviewed their own conduct: nor can this be at all surprising, when it not unfrequently happened that superstition itself absolved them from their oaths. in fact, does not superstition sometimes inculcate perfidy; prescribe violation of plighted faith? above all, when there is a question of its own interests, does it not dispense with engagements, however solemn, made with those whom it condemns? it is, i believe, a maxim in the romish church, that _"no faith is to be held with heretics."_ the general council of constance decided thus, when, notwithstanding the emperor's passport, it decreed john hus and jerome of prague to be burnt. the roman pontiff has, it is well known, the right of relieving his sectaries from their oaths; of annulling their vows: this same pontiff has frequently arrogated to himself the right of deposing kings; of absolving their subjects from their oaths of fidelity. indeed, it is rather extraordinary that oaths should be prescribed, by the laws of those nations which profess christianity, seeing that christ has expressly forbidden the use of them. if things were considered attentively, it would be obvious that under such management, superstition and politics are schools of perjury. they render it common: thus knaves of every description never recoil, when it is necessary to attest the name of the divinity to the most manifest frauds, for the vilest interests. what end, then, do oaths answer? they are snares, in which simplicity alone can suffer itself to be caught: oaths, almost every where, are vain formalities, that impose nothing upon villains; nor do they add any thing to the sacredness of the engagements of honest men; who would neither have the temerity nor the wish to violate them; who would not think themselves less bound without an oath. a perfidious, perjured, superstitious being, has not any advantage over an atheist, who should fail in his promises: neither the one nor the other any longer deserves the confidence of their fellow citizens nor the esteem of good men; if one does not respect his gods, in whom he believes, the other neither respects his reason, his reputation, nor public opinion, in which all rational men cannot refuse to believe. hobbes says, "an oath adds nothing to the obligation. for a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of god, without the oath, as much as with it: if unlawful, bindeth not at all: though it be confirmed with an oath." the heathen form was, "let jupiter kill me else, as i kill this beast." adjuration only augments, in the imagination of him who swears, the fear of violating an engagement, which he would have been obliged to keep, even without the ceremony of an oath. it has frequently been asked, if there ever was a nation that had no idea of the divinity: and if a people, uniformly composed of atheists, would be able to subsist? whatever some speculators may say, it does not appear likely that there ever has been upon our globe, a numerous people who have not had an idea of some invisible power, to whom they have shewn marks of respect and submission: it has been sometimes believed that the chinese were atheists: but this is an error, due to the christian missionaries, who are accustomed to treat all those as atheists, who do not hold opinions similar with their own upon divinity. it always appears that the chinese are a people extremely addicted to superstition, but that they are governed by chiefs who are not so, without however their being atheists for that reason. if the empire of china be as flourishing as it is said to be, it at least furnishes a very forcible proof that those who govern have no occasion to be themselves superstitious, in order to govern with propriety a people who are so. it is pretended that the greenlanders have no idea of the divinity. nevertheless, it is difficult to believe it of a nation so savage. man, inasmuch as he is a fearful, ignorant animal, necessarily becomes superstitious in his misfortunes: either he forms gods for himself, or he admits the gods which others are disposed to give him; it does not then appear, that we can rationally suppose there may have been, or that there actually is, a people on the earth a total stranger to some divinity. one will shew us the sun, the moon, or the stars; the other will shew us the sea, the lakes, the rivers, which furnish him his subsistence, the trees which afford him an asylum against the inclemency of the weather; another will shew us a rock of an odd form; a lofty mountain; or a volcano that frequently astonishes him by its emission of lava; another will present you with his crocodile, whose malignity he fears; his dangerous serpent, the reptile to which he attributes his good or bad fortune. in short, each individual will make you behold his phantasm or his tutelary or domestic gods with respect. but from the existence of his gods, the savage does not draw the same inductions as the civilized, polished man: the savage does not believe it a duty to reason continually upon their qualities; he does not imagine that they ought to influence his morals, nor entirely occupy his thoughts: content with a gross, simple, exterior worship, he does not believe that these invisible powers trouble themselves with his conduct towards his fellow creatures; in short, he does not connect his morality with his superstition. this morality is coarse, as must be that of all ignorant people; it is proportioned to his wants, which are few; it is frequently irrational, because it is the fruit of ignorance; of inexperience; of the passions of men but slightly restrained, or to say thus, in their infancy. it is only numerous, stationary, civilized societies, where man's wants are multiplied, where his interests clash, that he is obliged to have recourse to government, to laws, to public worship, in order to maintain concord. it is then, that men approximating, reason together, combine their ideas, refine their notions, subtilize their theories; it is then also, that those who govern them avail themselves of invisible powers, to keep them within bounds, to render them docile, to enforce their obedience, to oblige them to live peaceably. it was thus, that by degrees, morals and politics found themselves associated with superstitious systems. the chiefs of nations, frequently, themselves, the children of superstition, but little enlightened upon their actual interests; slenderly versed in sound morality; with an extreme exilty of knowledge on the actuating motives of the human heart; believed they had effected every thing requisite for the stability of their own authority; as well as achieved all that could guarantee the repose of society, that could consolidate the happiness of the people, in rendering their subjects superstitious like themselves; by menacing them with the wrath of invisible powers; in treating them like infants who are appeased with fables, like children who are terrified by shadows. by the assistance of these marvellous inventions, to which even the chiefs, the conductors of nations, are themselves frequently the dupes; which are transmitted as heirlooms from race to race; sovereigns were dispensed from the trouble of instructing themselves in their duties; they in consequence neglected the laws, enervated themselves in luxurious ease, rusted in sloth; followed nothing but their caprice: the care of restraining their subjects was reposed in their deities; the instruction of the people was confided to their priests, who were commissioned to train them to obedience, to make them submissive, to render them devout, to teach them at an early age to tremble under the yoke of both the visible and invisible gods. it was thus that nations, kept by their tutors in a perpetual state of infancy, were only restrained by vain, chimerical theories. it was thus that politics, jurisprudence, education, morality, were almost every where infected with superstition; that man no longer knew any duties, save those which grew out of its precepts: the ideas of virtue were thus falsely associated with those of imaginary systems, to which imposture generally gave that language which was most conducive to its own immediate interests: mankind thus fully persuaded, that without these marvellous systems, there could not exist any sound morality, princes, as well as subjects, equally blind to their actual interests, to the duties of nature, to their reciprocal rights, habituated themselves to consider superstition as necessary to mortals--as indispensibly requisite to govern men--as the most effectual method of preserving power--as the most certain means of attaining happiness. it is from these dispositions, of which we have so frequently demonstrated the fallacy, that so many persons, otherwise extremely enlightened, look upon it as an impossibility that a society formed of atheists, as they are termed, could subsist for any length of time. it does not admit a question, that a numerous society, who should neither have religion, morality, government, laws, education, nor principles, could not maintain itself; that it would simply congregate beings disposed to injure each other, or children who would follow nothing but the blindest impulse; but then is it not a lamentable fact, that with all the superstition that floats in the world, the greater number of human societies are nearly in this state? are not the sovereigns of almost every country in a continual state of warfare with their subjects? are not the people, in despite of their superstition, not withstanding the terrific notions which it holds forth, unceasingly occupied with reciprocally injuring each other; with rendering themselves mutually unhappy? does not superstition itself, with its supernatural notions, unremittingly flatter the vanity of monarchs, unbridle the passions of princes, throw oil into the fire of discord, which it kindles between those citizens who are divided in their opinion? could those infernal powers, who are supposed to be ever on the alert to mischief mankind, be capable of inflicting greater evils upon the human race than spring from fanaticism, than arise out of the fury to which theology gives birth? could atheists, however irrational they may be supposed, if assembled together in society, conduct themselves in a more criminal manner? in short, is it possible they could act worse than the superstitious, who, saturated with the most pernicious vices, guided by the most extravagant systems, during so many successive ages, have done nothing more than torment themselves with the most cruel inflictions; savagely cut each other's throats, without a shadow of reason; make a merit of mutual extermination? it cannot be pretended they would. on the contrary, we boldly assert, that a community of atheists, as the theologian calls them, because they cannot fall in with his mysteries, destitute of all superstition, governed by wholesome laws, formed by a salutary education, invited to the practice of virtue by instantaneous recompences, deterred from crime by immediate punishments, disentangled from illusive theories, unsophisticated by falsehood, would be decidedly more honest, incalculably more virtuous, than those superstitious societies, in which every thing contributes to intoxicate the mind; where every thing conspires to corrupt the heart. when we shall be disposed usefully to occupy ourselves with the happiness of mankind, it is with superstition that the reform must commence; it is by abstracting these imaginary theories, destined to affright the ignorant, who are completely in a state of infancy, that we shall be able to promise ourselves the desirable harvest of conducting man to a state of maturity. it cannot be too often repeated, there can be no morality without consulting the nature of man, without studying his actual relations with the beings of his own species; there can be no fixed principle for man's conduct, while it is regulated upon unjust theories; upon capricious doctrines; upon corrupt systems; there can be no sound politics without attending to human temperament, without contemplating him as a being associated for the purpose of satisfying his wants, consolidating his happiness, and assuring its enjoyment. no wise government can found itself upon despotic systems; they will always make tyrants of their representatives. no laws can be wholesome, that do not bottom themselves upon the strictest equity; which have not for their object the great end of human society. no jurisprudence can be advantageous for nations, if its administration be regulated by capricious systems, or by human passions deified. no education can be salutary, unless it be founded upon reason; to be efficacious to its proposed end, it must neither be construed upon chimerical theories, nor upon received prejudices. in short, there can be no probity, no talents, no virtue, either under corrupt masters, or under the conduct of those priests who render man the enemy to himself--the determined foe to others; who seek to stifle in his bosom the germ of reason; who endeavour to smother science, or who try to damp his courage. it will, perhaps, be asked, if we can reasonably flatter ourselves with ever reaching the point to make a whole people entirely forget their superstitious opinions; or abandon the ideas which they have of their gods? i reply, that the thing appears utterly impossible; that this is not the end we can propose to ourselves. these ideas, inculcated from the earliest ages, do not appear of a nature to admit eradication from the mind of the majority of mankind: it would, perhaps be equally arduous to give them to those persons, who, arrived at a certain time of life, should never have heard them spoken of, as to banish them from the minds of those, who have been imbued with them from their tenderest infancy. thus, it cannot be reckoned possible to make a whole nation pass from the abyss of superstition, that is to say, from the bosom of ignorance, from the ravings of delirium, into absolute naturalism, or as the priests of superstition would denominate it, into atheism; which supposes reflection--requires intense study--demands extensive knowledge--exacts a long series of experience--includes the habit of contemplating nature--the faculty of observing her laws; which, in short, embraces the expansive science of the causes producing her various phenomena; her multiplied combinations, together with the diversified actions of the beings she contains, as well as their numerous properties. in order to be an atheist, or to be assured of the capabilities of nature, it is imperative to have meditated her profoundly: a superficial glance of the eye will not bring man acquainted with her resources; optics but little practised on her powers, will unceasingly be deceived; the ignorance of actual causes will always induce the supposition of those which are imaginary; credulity will, thus re-conduct the natural philosopher himself to the feet of superstitious phantoms, in which either his limited vision, or his habitual sloth, will make him believe he shall find the solution to every difficulty. atheism, then, as well as philosophy, like all profound abstruse sciences, is not calculated for the vulgar; neither is it suitable to the great mass of mankind. there are, in all populous, civilized nations, persons whose circumstances enable them to devote their time to meditation, whose easy finances afford them leisure to make deep researches into the nature of things, who frequently make useful discoveries, which, sooner or later, after they have been submitted to the infallible test of experience, when they have passed the fiery ordeal of truth, extend widely their salutary effects, become extremely beneficial to society, highly advantageous to individuals. the geometrician, the chemist, the mechanic, the natural philosopher, the civilian, the artizan himself, are industriously employed, either in their closets, or in their workshops, seeking the means to serve society, each in his sphere: nevertheless, not one of their sciences or professions are familiar to the illiterate; not one of the arts with which they are respectively occupied, are known to the uninitiated: these, however, do not fail, in the long run, to profit by them, to reap substantive advantages from those labours, of which they themselves have no idea. it is for the mariner, that the astronomer explores his arduous science; it is for him the geometrician calculates; for his use the mechanic plies his craft: it is for the mason, for the carpenter, for the labourer, that the skilful architect studies his orders, lays down well-proportioned elaborate plans. whatever may be the pretended utility of pneumatology, whatever may be the vaunted advantages of superstitious opinions, the wrangling polemic, the subtle theologian, cannot boast either of toiling, of writing, or of disputing for the advantage of the people, whom, notwithstanding, he contrives to tax, very exorbitantly, for those systems they can never understand; from whom he levies the most oppressive contributions, as a remuneration for the detail of those mysteries, which under any possible circumstances, cannot, at any time whatever, be of the slightest benefit to them. it is not, then, for the multitude that a philosopher should propose to himself, either to write or to meditate: the code of nature, or the principles of atheism, as the priest calls it, are not, as we have shewn, even calculated for the meridian of a great number of persons, who are frequently too much prepossessed in favour of the received prejudices, although extremely enlightened on other points. it is extremely rare to find men, who, to an enlarged mind, extensive knowledge, great talents, join either a well regulated imagination, or the courage necessary to successfully oppugn habitual errors; triumphantly to attack those chimerical systems, with which the brain has been inoculated from the first hour of its birth. a secret bias, an invincible inclination, frequently, in despite of all reasoning, re-conducts the most comprehensive, the best fortified, the most liberal minds, to those prejudices which have a wide-spreading establishment; of which they have themselves taken copious draughts during the early stages of life. nevertheless, those principles, which at first appear strange, which by their boldness seem revolting, from which timidity flies with trepidation, when they have the sanction of truth, gradually insinuate themselves into the human mind, become familiar to its exercise, extend their happy influence on every side, and finally produce the most substantive advantages to society. in time, men habituate themselves to ideas which originally they looked upon as absurd; which on a superficial glance they contemplated as either noxious or irrational: at least, they cease to consider those as odious, who profess opinions upon subjects on which experience makes it evident they may be permitted to have doubts, without imminent danger to public tranquillity. then the diffusion of ideas among mankind is not an event to be dreaded: if they are truths, they will of necessity be useful: by degrees they will fructify. the man who writes, must neither fix his eyes upon the time in which he lives, upon his actual fellow citizens, nor upon the country he inhabits. he must speak to the human race; he must instruct future generations; he must extend his views into the bosom of futurity; in vain he will expect the eulogies of his contemporaries; in vain will he flatter himself with seeing his reasoning adopted; in vain he will soothe himself with the pleasing reflection, that his precocious principles will be received with kindness; if he has exhibited truisms, the ages that shall follow will do justice to his efforts; unborn nations shall applaud his exertions; his future countrymen shall crown his sturdy attempts with those laurels, which interested prejudice withholds from him in his own days; it must therefore be from posterity, he is to expect the need of applause due to his services; the present race is hermetically sealed against him: meantime let him content himself with having done well; with the secret suffrages of those few friends to veracity who are so thinly spread over the surface of the earth. it is after his death, that the trusty reasoner, the faithful writer, the promulgator of sterling principles, the child of simplicity, triumphs; it is then that the stings of hatred, the shafts of envy, the arrows of malice, either exhausted or blunted, enable mankind to judge with impartiality; to yield to conviction; to establish eternal truth upon its own imperishable altars, which from its essence must survive all the error of the earth. it is then that calumny, crushed like the devouring snail by the careful gardener, ceases to besmear the character of an honest man, while its venomous slime, glazed by the sun, enables the observant spectator to trace the filthy progress it had made. it is a problem with many people, _if truth may not be injurious?_ the best intentioned persons are frequently in great doubt upon this important point. the fact is, _it never injures any but those who deceive mankind_: this has, however, the greatest interest in being undeceived. truth may be injurious to the individual who announces it, but it can never by any possibility harm the human species; never can it be too distinctly presented to beings, always either little disposed to listen to its dictates, or too slothful to comprehend its efficacy. if all those who write to publish important truths, which, of all others, are ever considered the most dangerous, were sufficiently ardent for the public welfare to speak freely, even at the risk of displeasing their readers, the human race would be much more enlightened, much happier than it now is. to write in ambiguous terms, is very frequently to write to nobody. the human mind is idle; we must spare it, as much as possible, the trouble of reflection; we must relieve it from the embarrassment of intense thinking. what time does it not consume, what study does it not require, at the present day, to unravel the amphibological oracles of the ancient philosophers, whose actual sentiments are almost entirely lost to the present race of men? if truth be useful to human beings, it is an injustice to deprive them of its advantages; if truth ought to be admitted, we must admit its consequences, which are also truths. man, taken generally, is fond of truth, but its consequences often inspire him with so much dread, so alarm his imbecility, that, frequently, he prefers remaining in error, of which a confirmed habit prevents him from feeling the deplorable effects. besides, we shall say with hobbes, "that we cannot do men any harm by proposing truth to them; the worst mode is to leave them in doubt, to let them remain in dispute." if an author who writes be deceived, it is because he may have reasoned badly. has he laid down false principles? it remains to examine them. is his system fallacious? is it ridiculous? it will serve to make truth appear with the greatest splendor: his work will fall into contempt; the writer, if he be witness to its fall, will be sufficiently punished for his temerity; if he be defunct, the living cannot disturb his ashes. no man writes with a design to injure his fellow creatures; he always proposes to himself to merit their suffrages, either by amusing them, by exciting their curiosity, or by communicating to them discoveries, which he believes useful. above all, no work can be really dangerous, if it contains truth. it would not be so, even if it contained principles evidently contrary to experience--opposed to good sense. indeed, what would result from a work that should now tell us the sun is not luminous; that parricide is legitimate; that robbery is allowable; that adultery is not a crime? the smallest reflection would make us feet the falsity of these principles; the whole human race would protest against them. men would laugh at the folly of the author; presently his book, together with his name, would be known only by its ridiculous extravagancies. there is nothing but superstitious follies that are pernicious to mortals; and wherefore? it is because authority always pretends to establish them by violence; to make them pass for substantive virtues; rigorously punishes those who shall be disposed to smile at their inconsistency, or examine into their pretensions. if man was more rational, he would examine superstitious opinions as he examines every thing else; he would look upon theological theories with the same eyes that he contemplates systems of natural philosophy, or problems in geometry: the latter never disturbs the repose of society, although they sometimes excite very warm disputes in the learned world. theological quarrels would never be attended with any evil consequences, if man could gain the desirable point of making those who exercise power, feel that the disputes of persons, who do not themselves understand the marvellous questions upon which they never cease wrangling, ought not to give birth to any other sensations than those of indifference; to rouse no other passion than that of contempt. it is, at least, this indifference not speculative theories, so just, so rational, so advantageous for states, that sound philosophy may propose to introduce, gradually, upon the earth. would not the human race be much happier--if the sovereigns of the world, occupied with the welfare of their subjects, leaving to superstitious theologians their futile contests, making their various systems yield to healthy politics; obliged these haughty ministers to become citizens; carefully prevented their disputes from interrupting the public tranquillity? what advantage might there not result to science; what a start would be given to the progress of the human mind, to the cause of sound morality, to the advancement of equitable jurisprudence, to the improvement of legislation, to the diffusion of education, from an unlimited freedom of thought? at present, genius every where finds trammels; superstition invariably opposes itself to its course; man, straitened with bandages, scarcely enjoys the free use of any one of his faculties; his mind itself is cramped; it appears continually wrapped up in the swaddling clothes of infancy. the civil power, leagued with spiritual domination, appears only disposed to rule over brutalized slaves, shut up in a dark prison, where they reciprocally goad each other with the efferverscence of their mutual ill humour. sovereigns, in general, detest liberty of thought, because they fear truth; this appears formidable to them, because it would condemn their excesses; these irregularities are dear to them, because they do not, better than their subjects, understand their true interests; properly considered, these ought to blend themselves into one uniform mass. let not the courage of the philosopher, however, be abated by so many united obstacles, which would appear for ever to exclude truth from its proper dominion; to banish reason from the mind of man; to spoil nature of her imprescriptible rights. the thousandth part of those cares which are bestowed to infect the human mind, would be amply sufficient to make it whole. let us not, then, despair of the case: do not let us do man the injury to believe that truth is not made for him; his mind seeks after it incessantly; his heart desires it faithfully; his happiness demands it with an imperious voice; he only either fears it, or mistakes it, because superstition, which has thrown all his ideas into confusion, perpetually keeps the bandeau of delusion fast bound over his eyes; strives, with an almost irresistible force, to render him an entire stranger to virtue. maugre the prodigious exertions that are made to drive truth from the earth; in spite of the extraordinary pains used to exile reason--of the uninterrupted efforts to expel true science from the residence of mortals; time, assisted by the progressive knowledge of ages, may one day be able to enlighten even those princes who are the most outrageous in their opposition to the illumination of the human mind; who appear such decided enemies to justice, so very determined against the liberties of mankind. destiny will, perhaps, when least expected, conduct these wandering outcasts to the throne of some enlightened, equitable, courageous, generous, benevolent sovereign, who, smitten with the charms of virtue, shall throw aside duplicity, frankly acknowledge the true source of human misery, and apply to it those remedies with which wisdom has furnished him: perhaps he may feel, that those systems, from whence it is pretended he derives his power, are the true scourges of his people; the actual cause of his own weakness: that the official expounders of these systems are his most substantial enemies--his most formidable rivals; he may find that superstition, which he has been taught to look upon as the main support to his authority, in point of fact only enfeebles it--renders it tottering: that superstitious morality, false in its principles, is only calculated to pervert his subjects; to break down their intrepidity; to render them perfidious; in short, to give them the vices of slaves, in lieu of the virtues of citizens. a prince thus disentangled from prejudice, will perhaps behold, in superstitious errors, the fruitful source of human sorrows, and commiserations, the condition of his race, it may be, will generously declare, that they are incompatible with every equitable administration. until this epoch, so desirable for humanity, shall arrive, the principles of naturalism will be adopted only by a small number of liberal-minded men, who shall dive below the surface; these cannot flatter themselves either with making proselytes, or having a great number of approvers: on the contrary, they will meet with zealous adversaries, with ardent contemners, even in those persons who upon every other subject discover the most acute minds; display the most consummate knowledge. those men who possess the greatest share of ability, as we have already observed, cannot always resolve to divorce themselves completely from their superstitious ideas; imagination, so necessary to splendid talents, frequently forms in them an insurmountable obstacle to the total extinction of prejudice; this depends much more upon the judgment than upon the mind. to this disposition, already so prompt to form illusions to them, is also to be joined the force of habit; to a great number of men, it would he wresting from them a portion of themselves to take away their superstitious notions; it would be depriving them of an accustomed aliment; plunging them into a dreadful vacuum: obliging their distempered minds to perish for want of exercise. menage remarks, "that history speaks of very few incredulous women, or female atheists:" this is not surprising; their organization renders them fearful; their nervous system undergoes periodical variations; the education they receive disposes them to credulity. those among them who have a sound constitution, who have a well ordered imagination, have occasion for chimeras suitable to occupy their leisure; above all, when the world abandons them, then superstitious devotion, with its attractive ceremonies, becomes either a business or an amusement. let us not be surprised, if very intelligent, extremely learned men, either obstinately shut their eyes, or run counter to their ordinary sagacity, every time there is a question respecting an object which they have not the courage to examine with that attention they lend to many others. lord chancellor bacon pretends, "that a little philosophy disposes men to atheism, but that great depth re-conducts them to religion." if we analyze this proposition, we shall find it signifies, that even moderate, indifferent thinkers, are quickly enabled to perceive the gross absurdities of superstition; but that very little accustomed to meditate, or else destitute of those fixed principles which could serve them for a guide, their imagination presently replaces them in the theological labyrinth, from whence reason, too weak for the purpose, appeared disposed to withdraw them: these timid souls, who fear to take courage, with minds disciplined to be satisfied with theological solutions, no longer see in nature any thing but an inexplicable enigma; an abyss which it is impossible for them to fathom: these, habituated to fix their eyes upon an ideal, mathematical point, which they have made the centre of every thing, whenever they lose sight of it, find the universe becomes an unintelligible jumble to them; then the confusion in which they feel themselves involved, makes them rather prefer returning to the prejudices of their infancy, which appear to explain every thing, than to float in the vacuum, or quit a foundation which they judge to be immoveable. thus the proposition of bacon should seem, to indicate nothing, except it be that the most experienced persons cannot at all times defend themselves against the illusions of their imagination; the impetuosity of which resists the strongest reasoning. nevertheless, a deliberate study of nature is sufficient to undeceive every man who will calmly consider things: he will discover that the phenomena of the world is connected by links, invisible to superficial notice, equally concealed from the too impetuous observer, but extremely intelligible to him who views her with serenity. he will find that the most unusual, the most marvellous, as well as the most trifling, or ordinary effects, are equally inexplicable, but that they all equally flow from natural causes; that supernatural causes, under whatever name they way be designated, with whatever qualities they may be decorated, will never do more than increase difficulties; will only make chimeras multiply. the simplest observation will incontestibly prove to him that every thing is necessary; that all the effects he perceives are material; that they can only originate in causes of the same nature, when he even shall not be able to recur to them by the assistance of his senses. thus his mind, properly directed, every where show him nothing but matter, sometimes acting in a manner which his organs permit him to follow, at others in a mode imperceptible by the faculties he possesses: he will see that all beings follow constant invariable laws, by which all combinations are united and destroyed; he will find that all forms change, but that, nevertheless, the great whole ever remains the same. thus, cured of the idle notions with which he was imbued, undeceived in those erroneous ideas, which from habit be attached to imaginary systems, he will cheerfully consent to be ignorant of whatever his organs do not enable him to compass; he will know that obscure terms, devoid of sense, are not calculated to explain difficulties; guided by reason, he will throw aside all hypothesis of the imagination; the champion of rectitude, he will attach himself to realities, which are confirmed by experience, which are evidenced by truth. the greater number of those who study nature, frequently do not consider, that prejudiced eyes will never discover more than that which they have previously determined to find: as soon as they perceive facts contrary to their own ideas, they quickly turn aside, and believe their visual organs have deceived them; if they return to the task, it is in hopes to find means by which they may reconcile the facts to the notions with which their own mind is previously tinctured. thus we find enthusiastic philosophers, whose determined prepossession shews them what they denominate incontestible evidences of the systems with which they are pre-occupied, even in those things, that most openly contradict their hypothesis: hence those pretended demonstrations of the existence of theories, which are drawn from final causes--from the order of nature--from the kindness evinced to man, &c. do these same enthusiasts perceive disorder, witness calamities? they induct new proofs of the wisdom, fresh evidence of the intelligence, additional testimony to the bounty of their system, whilst all these occurrences as visibly contradict these qualities, as the first seem to confirm or to establish them. these prejudiced observers are in an ecstacy at the sight of the periodical motions of the planets; at the order of the stars; at the various productions of the earth; at the astonishing harmony in the component parts of animals: in that moment, however, they forget the laws of motion; the powers of gravitation; the force of attraction and repulsion; they assign all these striking phenomena to unknown causes, of which they have no one substantive idea. in short, in the fervor of their imagination they place man in the centre of nature; they believe him to be the object, the end, of all that exists; that it is for his convenience every thing is made; that it is to rejoice his mind, to pleasure his senses, that the whole was created; whilst they do not perceive, that very frequently the entire of nature appears to be loosed against his weakness; that the elements themselves overwhelm him with calamity; that destiny obstinately persists in rendering him the most miserable of beings. the progress of sound philosophy will always be fatal to superstition, whose notions will be continually contradicted by nature. astronomy has caused judiciary astrology to vanish; experimental philosophy, the study of natural history and chemistry, have rendered it impossible for jugglers, priests or sorcerers, any longer to perform miracles. nature, profoundly studied, must necessarily cause the overthrow of those chimerical theories, which ignorance has substituted to her powers. atheism, as it is termed, is only so rare, because every thing conspires to intoxicate man with a dazzling enthusiasm, from his most tender age; to inflate him from his earliest infancy, with systematic error, with organized ignorance, which of all others is the most difficult to vanquish, the most arduous to root out. theology is nothing more than a science of words, which by dint of repetition we accustom ourselves to substitute for things: as soon as we feel disposed to analyze them, we are astonished to find they do not present us with any actual sense. there are, in the whole world, very few men who think deeply: who render to themselves a faithful account of their own ideas; who have keen penetrating minds. justness of intellect is one of the rarest gifts which nature bestows on the human species. it is not, however, to be understood by this, that nature has any choice in the formation of her beings; it is merely to be considered, that the circumstances very rarely occur which enable the junction of a certain quantity of those atoms or parts, necessary to form the human machine in such due proportions, that one disposition shall not overbalance the others; and thus render the judgment erroneous, by giving it a particular bias. we know the general process of making gunpowder; nevertheless, it will sometimes happen that the ingredients have been so happily blended, that this destructive article is of a superior quality to the general produce of the manufactory, without, however, the chemist being on that account entitled to any particular commendation; circumstances have been decidedly favorable, and these seldom occur. too lively an imagination, an over eager curiosity, are as powerful obstacles to the discovery of truth, as too much phlegm, a slow conception, indolence of mind, or the want of a thinking habit: all men have more or less imagination, curiosity, phlegm, bile, indolence, activity: it is from the happy equilibrium which nature has observed in their organization, that depends that invaluable blessing, correctness of mind. nevertheless, as we have heretofore said, the organic structure of man is subject to change; the accuracy of his mind varies with the mutations of his machine: from hence may be traced those almost perpetual revolutions that take place in the ideas of mortals; above all when there is a question concerning those objects, upon which experience does not furnish any fixed basis whereon to rest their merits. to search after right, to discover truth, requires a keen, penetrating, just, active mind; because every thing strives to conceal from us its beauties: it needs an upright heart, one in good faith with itself, joined to an imagination tempered with reason, because our habitual fears make us frequently dread its radiance, sometimes bursting like a meteor on our darkened faculties; besides, it not unfrequently happens, that we are actually the accomplices of those who lead us astray, by an inclination we too often manifest to dissimilate with ourselves on this important measure. truth never reveals itself either to the enthusiast smitten with his own reveries; to the fellifluous fanatic enslaved by his prejudices; to the vain glorious mortal puffed up with his own presumptuous ignorance; to the voluptuary devoted to his pleasures; or to the wily reasoner, who, disingenuous with himself, has a peculiar spontaneity to form illusions to his mind. blessed, however, with a heart, gifted with a mind such as described, man will surely discover this _rara avis:_ thus constituted, the attentive philosopher, the geometrician, the moralist, the politician, the theologian himself, when he shall sincerely seek truth, will find that the corner-stone which serves for the foundation of all superstitious systems, is evidently rested upon fiction. the philosopher will discover in matter a sufficient cause for its existence; he will perceive that its motion, its combination, its modes of acting, are always regulated by general laws, incapable of variation. the geometrician, without quiting nature, will calculate the active force of matter; it will then become obvious to him, that to explain its phenomena, it is by no means necessary to have recourse to that which is incommensurable with all known powers. the politician, instructed in the true spring which can act upon the mind of nations, will feel distinctly, that it is not imperative to recur to imaginary theories, whilst there are actual motives to give play to the volition of the citizens; to induce them to labour efficaciously to the maintenance of their association; he will readily acknowledge that fictitious systems are calculated either to slaken the exertions, or to disturb the motion of so complicated a machine an human society. he who shall more honor truth than the vain subtilities of theology, will quickly perceive that this pompous science is nothing more than an unintelligible jumble of false hypothesis; that it continually begs its principles; is full of sophisms; contains only vitiated circles; embraces the most subdolous distinctions; is ushered to mankind by the most disingenuous arguments, from which it is not possible, under any given circumstances, there should result any thing but puerilities--the most endless disputes. in short, all men who have sound ideas of morality, whose notions of virtue are correct, who understand what is useful to the human being in society, whether it be to conserve himself individually, or the body of which he is a member, will acknowledge, that in order to discover his relations, to ascertain his duties, he has only to consult his own nature; that he ought to be particularly careful neither to found them upon discrepant systems, nor to borrow them from models that never can do more than disturb his mind; that will only render his conduct fluctuating; that will leave him for ever uncertain of its proper character. thus, every rational thinker, who renounces his prejudices, will be enabled to feel the inutility, to comprehend the fallacy of so many abstract systems; he will perceive that they have hitherto answered no other purpose than to confound the notions of mankind; to render doubtful the clearest truths. in quitting the regions of the empyreum, where his mind can only bewilder itself, in re-entering his proper sphere, in consulting reason, man will discover that of which he needs the knowledge; he will be able to undeceive himself upon those chimerical theories, which enthusiasm has substituted for actual natural causes; to detect those figments, by which imposture has almost every where superseded the real motives that can give activity in nature; out of which the human mind never rambles, without going woefully astray; without laying the foundation of future misery. the deicolists, as well as the theologians, continually reproach their adversaries with their taste for paradoxes--with their attachment to systems; whilst they themselves found all their reasoning upon imaginary hypothesis--upon visionary theories; make a principle of submitting their understanding to the yoke of authority; of renouncing experience; of setting down as nothing the evidence of their senses. would it not be justifiable in the disciples of nature, to say to these men, who thus despise her, "we only assure ourselves of that which we see; we yield to nothing but evidence; if we have a system, it is one founded upon facts; we perceive in ourselves, we behold every where else, nothing but matter; we therefore conclude from it that matter can both feel and think: we see that the motion of the universe is operated after mechanical laws; that the whole results from the properties, is the effect of the combination, the immediate consequence of the modification of matter; thus, we are content, we seek no other explication of the phenomena which nature presents. we conceive only an unique world, in which every thing is connected; where each effect is linked to a natural cause, either known or unknown, which it produces according to necessary laws; we affirm nothing that is not demonstrable; nothing that you are not obliged to admit as well as ourselves: the principles we lay down are distinct: they are self-evident: they are facts. if we find some things unintelligible, if causes frequently become arduous, we ingenuously agree to their obscurity; that is to say, to the limits of our own knowledge. but in order to explain these effects, we do not imagine an hypothesis; we either consent to be for ever ignorant of them, or else we wait patiently until time, experience, with the progress of the human mind, shall throw them into light: is not, then, our manner of philosophizing consistent with truth? indeed, in whatever we advance upon the subject of nature, we proceed precisely in the same manner as our opponents themselves pursue in all the other sciences, such as natural history, experimental philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, &c. we scrupulously confine ourselves to what comes to our knowledge through the medium of our senses; the only instruments with which nature has furnished us to discover truth. what is the conduct of our adversaries? in order to expound things of which they are ignorant, they imagine theories still more incomprehensible than what they are desirous to explain; theories of which they themselves are obliged to acknowledge they have not the most slender notion. thus they invert the true principles of logic, which require we should proceed gradually from that which is most known, to that with which we are least acquainted. again, upon what do they found the existence of these theories, by whose aid they pretend to solve all difficulties? it is upon the universal ignorance of mankind; upon the inexperience of man; upon his fears; upon his disordered imagination; upon a pretended _intimate sense_, which in reality is nothing more than the effect of vulgar prejudice; the result of dread; the consequence of the want of a reflecting habit, which induces them to crouch to the opinions of others; to be guided by the mandates of authority, rather than take the trouble to examine for their own information. such, o theologians! are the ruinous foundations upon which you erect the superstructure of your doctrine. accordingly, you find it impossible to form to yourselves any distinct idea of those theories which serve for the basis of your systems; you are unable to comprehend either their attributes, their existence, the nature of their localities, or their mode of action. thus, even by your own confession, ye are in a state of profound ignorance, on the primary elements of that which ye constitute the cause of all that exists: of which, according to your own account, it is imperative to have a correct knowledge. under whatever point of view, therefore, ye are contemplated, it must be admitted ye are the founders of aerial systems; of fanciful theories: of all systematizers, ye are consequently the most absurd; because in challenging your imagination to create a cause, this cause, at least, ought to diffuse light over the whole; it would be upon this condition alone that its incomprehensibility could be pardonable; but to speak ingenuously, does this cause serve to explain any thing? does it make us conceive more clearly the origin of the world; bring us more distinctly acquainted with the actual nature of man; does it more intelligibly elucidate the faculties of the soul; or point out with more perspicuity the source of good and evil? no! unquestionably: these subtle theories explain nothing, although they multiply to infinity their own difficulties; they, in fact, embarrass elucidation, by plunging into greater obscurity those matters in which they are interposed. whatever may be the question agitated, it becomes complicated: as soon as these theories are introduced, they envelope the most demonstrable sciences with a thick, impenetrable mist; render the most simple notions complex; give opacity to the most diaphanous ideas; turn the most evident opinions into insolvable enigmas. what exposition of morality does the theories, upon which ye found all the virtue, present to man? do not all your oracles breathe inconsistency? does not your doctrines embrace every gradation of character, however discrepant: every known property, however opposed. all your ingenious systems, all your mysteries, all the subtilties which ye have invented, are they capable of reconciling that discordant assemblage of amiable and unamiable qualities, with which ye have dressed up your figments? in short, is it not by these theories that ye disturb the harmony of the universe; is it not in their name ye follow up your barbarous proscriptions; in their support, that ye so inhumanly exterminate all who refuse to subscribe to your organized reveries; who withhold assent to those efforts of the imagination which ye have collectively decorated with the pompous name of religion; but which, individually, ye brand as superstition, always excepting that to which ye lend yourselves. agree, then, o theologians! acknowledge, then, ye subtle metaphysicians! consent, then, ye organizers of fanciful theories! that not only are ye systematically absurd, but also that ye finish by being atrocious; because whenever ye obtain the ascendancy one over the other, your unfortunate pre-eminence is distinguished by the most malevolent persecution; your domination is ushered in with cruelty; your career is described with blood: from the importance which your own interest attaches to your ruinous dogmas; from the pride with which ye tumble down the less fortunate systems of those who started with you for the prize of plunder; _from that savage ferocity, under which ye equally overwhelm human reason, the happiness of the individual, and the felicity of nations._" chap. xiv. _a summary of the code of nature_. truth is the only object worthy the research of every wise man; since that which is false cannot be useful to him: whatever constantly injures him cannot be founded upon truth; consequently, ought to be for ever proscribed. it is, then, to assist the human mind, truly to labour for his happiness, to point out to him the clew by which he may extricate himself from those frightful labyrinths in which his imagination wanders; from those sinuosities whose devious course makes him err, without ever finding a termination to his incertitude. nature alone, known through experience, can furnish him with this desirable thread; her eternal energies can alone supply the means of attacking the minotaur; of exterminating the figments of hypocrisy; of destroying those monsters, who during so many ages, have devoured the unhappy victims, which the tyranny of the ministers of moloch have exacted as a cruel tribute from affrighted mortals. by steadily grasping this inestimable clew, rendered still more precious by the beauty of the donor, man can never be led astray--will never ramble out of his course; but if, careless of its invaluable properties, for a single instant he suffers it to drop from his hand; if, like another theseus, ungrateful for the favour, he abandons the fair bestower, he will infallibly fall again into his ancient wanderings; most assuredly become the prey to the cannibal offspring of the white bull. in vain shall he carry his views above his head, to find resources which are at his feet; so long as man, infatuated with his superstitious notions, shall seek in an imaginary world the rule of his earthly conduct, he will be without principles; while he shall pertinaciously contemplate the regions of a distempered fancy, so long he will grope in those where he actually finds himself; his uncertain steps will never encounter the welfare he desires; never lead him to that repose after which he so ardently sighs, nor conduct him to that surety which is so decidedly requisite to consolidate his happiness. but man, blinded by his prejudices; rendered obstinate in injuring his fellow, by his enthusiasm; ranges himself in hostility even against those who are sincerely desirous of procuring for him the most substantive benefits. accustomed to be deceived, he is in a state of continual suspicion; habituated to mistrust himself, to view his reason with diffidence, to look upon truth as dangerous, he treats as enemies even those who most eagerly strive to encourage him; forewarned in early life against delusion, by the subtilty of imposture, he believes himself imperatively called upon to guard with the most sedulous activity the bandeau with which they have hoodwinked him; he thinks his eternal welfare involved in keeping it for ever over his eyes; he therefore wrestles with all those who attempt to tear it from his obscured optics. if his visual organs, accustomed to darkness, are for a moment opened, the light offends them; he is distressed by its effulgence; he thinks it criminal to be enlightened; he darts with fury upon those who hold the flambeau by which he is dazzled. in consequence, the atheist, as the arch rogue from whom he differs ludicrously calls him, is looked upon as a malignant pest, as a public poison, which like another upas, destroys every thing within the vortex of its influence; he who dares to arouse mortals from the lethargic habit which the narcotic doses administered by the theologians have induced passes for a perturbator; he who attempts to calm their frantic transports, to moderate the fury of their maniacal paroxysms, is himself viewed as a madman, who ought to be closely chained down in the dungeons appropriated to lunatics; he who invites his associates to rend their chains asunder, to break their galling fetters, appears only like an irrational, inconsiderate being, even to the wretched captives themselves: who have been taught to believe that nature formed them for no other purpose than to tremble: only called them into existence that they might be loaded with shackles. in consequence of these fatal prepossessions, the _disciple of nature_ is generally treated as an assassin; is commonly received by his fellow citizens in the same manner as the feathered race receive the doleful bird of night, which as soon as it quits its retreat, all the other birds follow with a common hatred, uttering a variety of doleful cries. no, mortals blended by terror! the friend of nature is not your enemy; its interpreter is not the minister of falsehood; the destroyer of your vain phantoms is not the devastator of those truths necessary to your happiness; the disciple of reason is not an irrational being, who either seeks to poison you, or to infect you with a dangerous delirium. if he is desirous to wrest the thunder from those terrible theories that affright ye, it is that ye way discontinue your march, in the midst of storms, over roads that ye can only distinguish by the sudden, but evanescent glimmerings of the electric fluid. if he breaks those idols, which fear has served with myrrh and frankencense--which superstition has surrounded by gloomy despondency--which fanaticism has imbrued with blood; it is to substitute in their place those consoling truths that are calculated to heal the desperate wounds ye have received; that are suitable to inspire you with courage, sturdily to oppose yourselves to such dangerous errors; that have power to enable you to resist such formidable enemies. if he throws down the temples, overturns the altars, so frequently bathed with the bitter tears of the unfortunate, blackened by the most cruel sacrifices, smoked with servile incense, it is that he may erect a fane sacred to peace; a hall dedicated to reason; a durable monument to virtue, in which ye may at all times find an asylum against your own phrenzy; a refuge from your own ungovernable passions; a sanctuary against those powerful dogmatists, by whom ye are oppressed. if he attacks the haughty pretensions of deified tyrants, who crush ye with an iron sceptre, it is that ye may enjoy the rights of your nature; it is to the end that ye may be substantively freemen, in mind as well as in body; that ye may not be slaves, eternally chained to the oar of misery; it is that ye may at length be governed by men who are citizens, who may cherish their own semblances, who way protect mortals like themselves, who may actually consult the interests of those from whom they hold their power. if he battles with imposture, it is to re-establish truth in those rights which have been so long usurped by fiction. if he undermines the base of that unsteady, fanatical morality, which has hitherto done nothing more than perplex your minds, without correcting your hearts; it is to give to ethics an immovable basis, a solid foundation, secured upon your own nature; upon the reciprocity of those wants which are continually regenerating in sensible beings: dare, then, to listen to his voice; you will find it much more intelligible than those ambiguous oracles, which are announced to you as the offspring of capricious theories; as imperious decrees that are unceasingly at variance with themselves. listen then to nature, she never contradicts her own eternal laws. "o thou!" cries this nature to man, "who, following the impulse i have given you, during your whole existence, incessantly tend towards happiness, do not strive to resist my sovereign law. labour to your own felicity; partake without fear of the banquet which is spread before you, with the most hearty welcome; you will find the means legibly written on your own heart. vainly dost thou, o superstitious being! seek after thine happiness beyond the limits of the universe, in which my hand hath placed thee: vainly shalt thou search it in those inexorable theories, which thine imagination, ever prone to wander, would establish upon my eternal throne: vainly dost thou expect it in those fanciful regions, to which thine own delirium hath given a locality and a shame: vainly dost thou reckon upon capricious systems, with whose advantages thou art in such ecstasies; whilst they only fill thine abode with calamity--thine heart with dread--thy mind with illusions--thy bosom with groans. know that when thou neglectest my counsels, the gods will refuse their aid. dare, then, to affranchise thyself from the trammels of superstition, my self-conceited, pragmatic rival, who mistakes my rights; renounce those empty theories, which are usurpers of my privileges; return under the dominion of my laws, which, however severe, are mild in comparison with those of bigotry. it is in my empire alone that true liberty reigns. tyranny is unknown to its soil; equity unceasingly watches over the rights of all my subjects, maintains them in the possession of their just claims; benevolence, grafted upon humanity, connects them by amicable bonds; truth enlightens them; never can imposture blind them with his obscuring mists. return, then, my child, to thy fostering mother's arms! deserter, trace back thy wandering steps to nature! she will console thee for thine evils; she will drive from thine heart those appalling fears which overwhelm thee; those inquietudes that distract thee; those transports which agitate thee; those hatreds that separate thee from thy fellow man, whom thou shouldst love as thyself. return to nature, to humanity, to thyself! strew flowers over the road of life: cease to contemplate the future; live to thine own happiness; exist for thy fellow creatures; retire into thyself, examine thine own heart, then consider the sensitive beings by whom thou art surrounded: leave to their inventors those systems which can effect nothing towards thy felicity. enjoy thyself, and cause others also to enjoy, those comforts which i have placed with a liberal hand, for all the children of the earth; who all equally emanate from my bosom: assist them to support the sorrows to which necessity has submitted them in common with thyself. know, that i approve thy pleasures, when without injuring thyself, they are not fatal to thy brethren, whom i have rendered indispensably necessary to thine own individual happiness. these pleasures are freely permitted thee, if thou indulgest them with moderation; with that discretion which i myself have fixed. be happy, then, o man! nature invites thee to participate in it; but always remember, thou canst not be so alone; because i invite all mortals to happiness as well as thyself; thou will find it is only in securing their felicity that thou canst consolidate thine own. such is the decree of thy destiny: if thou shalt attempt to withdraw thyself from its operation, recollect that hatred will pursue thee; vengeance overtake thy steps; and remorse be ever ready at hand to punish the infractions of its irrevocable mandates. "follow then, o man! in whatever station thou findest thyself, the routine i have described for thee, to obtain that happiness to which thou hast an indispensable right to challenge pretension. let the sensations of humanity interest thee for the condition of other men, who are thy fellow creatures; let thine heart have commisseration for their misfortunes: let thy generous hand spontaneously stretch forth to lend succour to the unhappy mortal who is overwhelmed by his destiny; always bearing in thy recollection, that it may fall heavy upon thyself, as it now does upon him. acknowledge, then, without guile, that every unfortunate has an inalienable right to thy kindness. above all, wipe from the eyes of oppressed innocence the trickling crystals of agonized feeling; let the tears of virtue in distress, fall upon thy sympathizing bosom; let the genial glow of sincere friendship animate thine honest heart; let the fond attachment of a mate, cherished by thy warmest affection, make thee forget the sorrows of life: be faithful to her love, responsible to her tenderness, that she may reward thee by a reciprocity of feeling; that under the eyes of parents united in virtuous esteem, thy offspring may learn to set a proper value on practical virtue; that after having occupied thy riper years, they may comfort thy declining age, gild with content thy setting sun, cheer the evening of thine existence, by a dutiful return of that care which thou shalt have bestowed on their imbecile infancy. "be just, because equity is the support of human society! be good, because goodness connects all hearts in adamantine bonds! be indulgent, because feeble thyself, thou livest with beings who partake of thy weakness! be gentle, because mildness attracts attention! be thankful, because gratitude feeds benevolence, nourishes generosity! be modest, because haughtiness is disgusting to beings at all times well with themselves. forgive injuries, because revenge perpetuates hatred! do good to him who injureth thee, in order to shew thyself more noble than he is; to make a friend of him, who was once thine enemy! be reserved in thy demeanor, temperate in thine enjoyment, chaste in thy pleasures, because voluptuousness begets weariness, intemperance engenders disease; forward manners are revolting: excess at all times relaxes the springs of thy machine, will ultimately destroy thy being, and render thee hateful to thyself, contemptible to others. "be a faithful citizen; because the community is necessary to thine own security; to the enjoyment of thine own existence; to the furtherance of thine own happiness. be loyal, but be brave; submit to legitimate authority; because it is requisite to the maintenance of that society which is necessary to thyself. be obedient to the laws; because they _are_, or _ought to be_, the expression of the public will, to which thine own particular will ought ever to be subordinate. defend thy country with zeal; because it is that which renders thee happy, which contains thy property, as well as those beings dearest to thine heart: do not permit this common parent of thyself, as well as of thy fellow citizens, to fall under the shackles of tyranny; because from thence it will be no more than thy common prison. if thy country, deaf to the equity of thy claims, refuses thee happiness--if, submitted to an unjust power, it suffers thee to be oppressed, withdraw thyself from its bosom in silence, but never disturb its peace. "in short, be a man; be a sensible, rational being; be a faithful husband; a tender father; an equitable master; a zealous citizen; labour to serve thy country by thy prowess; by thy talents; by thine industry; above all, by thy virtues. participate with thine associates those gifts which nature has bestowed upon thee; diffuse happiness, among thy fellow mortals; inspire thy fellow citizens with content; spread joy over all those who approach thee, that the sphere of thine actions, enlivened by thy kindness, illumined by thy benevolence, may re-act upon thyself; be assured that the man who makes others happy cannot himself be miserable. in thus conducting thyself, whatever may be the injustice of others, whatever may be the blindness of those beings with whom it is thy destiny to live, thou wilt never be totally bereft of the recompense which is thy due; no power on earth be able to ravish from thee that never failing source of the purest felicity, inward content; at each moment thou wilt fall back with pleasure upon thyself; thou wilt neither feel the rankling of shame, the terror of internal alarm, nor find thy heart corroded by remorse. thou wilt esteem thyself; thou wilt be cherished by the virtuous, applauded and loved by all good men, whose suffrages are much more valuable than those of the bewildered multitude. nevertheless, if externals occupy thy contemplation, smiling countenances will greet thy presence; happy faces will express the interest they have in thy welfare; jocund beings will make thee participate in their placid feelings. a life so spent, will each moment be marked by the serenity of thine own soul, by the affection of the beings who environ thee; will be made cheerful by the friendship of thy fellows; will enable thee to rise a contented, satisfied guest from the general feast; conduct thee gently down the declivity of life, lead thee peaceably to the period of thy days; for die thou must: but already thou wilt survive thyself in thought; thou wilt always live in the remembrance of thy friends; in the grateful recollection of those beings whose comforts have been augmented by thy friendly attentions; thy virtues will, beforehand have erected to thy fame an imperishable monument: if heaven occupies itself with thee, it will feel satisfied with thy conduct, when it shall thus have contented the earth. "beware, then, how thou complainest of thy condition; be just, be kind, be virtuous, and thou canst never be wholly destitute of felicity. take heed how thou enviest the transient pleasure of seductive crime; the deceitful power of victorious tyranny; the specious tranquillity of interested imposture; the plausible manners of venal justice; the shewy, ostentatious parade of hardened opulence. never be tempted to increase the number of sycophants to an ambitious despot; to swell the catalogue of slaves to an unjust tyrant; never suffer thyself to be allured to infamy, to the practice of extortion, to the commission of outrage, by the fatal privilege of oppressing thy fellows; always recollect it will be at the expence of the most bitter remorse thou wilt acquire this baneful advantage. never be the mercenary accomplice of the spoilers of thy country; they are obliged to blush secretly whenever they meet the public eye. "for, do not deceive thyself, it is i who punish, with an unerring hand, all the crimes of the earth; the wicked may escape the laws of man, but they never escape mine. it is i who have formed the hearts, as well an the bodies of mortals; it is i who have fixed the laws which govern them. if thou deliverest thyself up to voluptuous enjoyment, the companions of thy debaucheries may applaud thee; but i shall punish thee with the most cruel infirmities; these will terminate a life of shame with deserved contempt. if thou givest, thyself up to intemperate indulgences, human laws may not correct thee, but i shall castigate thee severely by abridging thy days. if thou art vicious, thy fatal habits will recoil on thine own head. princes, those terrestrial divinities, whose power places them above the laws of mankind, are nevertheless obliged to tremble under the silent operation of my decrees. it is i who chastise them; it is i who fill their breasts with suspicion; it is i who inspire them with terror; it is i who make them writhe under inquietude; it is i who make them shudder with horror, at the very name of august truth; it is i who, amidst the crowd of nobles who surround them, make them feel the inward workings of shame; the keen anguish of guilt; the poisoned arrows of regret; the cruel stings of remorse; it is i who, when they abuse my bounty, diffuse weariness over their benumbed souls; it is i who follow uncreated, eternal justice; it is i who, without distinction of persons, know how to make the balance even; to adjust the chastisement to the fault; to make the misery bear its due proportion to the depravity; to inflict punishment commensurate with the crime. the laws of man are just, only when they are in conformity with mine; his judgements are rational, only when i have dictated them: my laws alone are immutable, universal, irrefragable; formed to regulate the condition of the human race, in all ages, in all places, under all circumstances. "if thou doubtest mine authority, if thou questionest the irresistible power i possess over mortals, contemplate the vengeance i wreak on all those who resist my decrees. dive into the recesses of the hearts of those various criminals, whose countenances, assuming a forced smile, cover souls torn with anguish. dost thou not behold ambition tormented day and night, with an ardour which nothing can extinguish? dost not thou see the mighty conquerer become the lord of devastated solitudes; his victorious career, marked by a blasted cultivation, reign sorrowfully over smoking ruins; govern unhappy wretches who curse him in their hearts; while his soul, gnawed by remorse, sickens at the gloomy aspect of his own triumphs? dost thou believe that the tyrant, encircled with his flatterers, who stun him with their praise, is unconscious of the hatred which his oppression excites; of the contempt which his vices draw upon him; of the sneers which his inutility call forth; of the scorn which his debaucheries entail upon his name? dost thou think that the haughty courtier does not inwardly blush at the galling insults he brooks; despise, from the bottom of his soul, those meannesses by which he is compelled to purchase favours; feel at his heart's core the wretched dependence in which his cupidity places him. "contemplate the indolent child of wealth, behold him a prey to the lassitude of unmeasured enjoyment, corroded by the satiety which always follows his exhausted pleasures. view the miser with an emaciated countenance, the consequence of his own penurious disposition, whose callous heart is inaccessible to the calls of misery, groaning over the accumulating load of useless treasure, which at the expense of himself, he has laboured to amass. behold the gay voluptuary, the smiling debaucheé, secretly lament the health they have so inconsiderately damaged so prodigally thrown away: see disdain, joined to hatred, reign between those adulterous married couples, who have reciprocally violated the sacred vows they mutually pledged at the altar of hymen; whose appetencies have rendered them the scorn of the world; the jest of their acquaintance; polluted tributaries to the surgeon. see the liar deprived of all confidence; the knave stript of all trust; the hypocrite fearfully avoiding the penetrating looks of his inquisitive neighbour; the impostor trembling at the very name of formidable truth. bring under your review the heart of the envious, uselessly dishonored; that withers at the sight of his neighbour's prosperity. cast your eyes on the frozen soul of the ungrateful wretch, whom no kindness can warm, no benevolence thaw, no beneficence convert into a genial fluid. survey the iron feelings of that monster whom the sighs of the unfortunate cannot mollify. behold the revengeful being nourished with venemous gall, whose very thoughts are serpents; who in his rage consumes himself. envy, if thou canst, the waking slumbers of the homicide; the startings of the iniquitous judge; the restlessness of the oppressor of innocence; the fearful visions of the extortioner; whose couches are infested with the torches of the furies. thou tremblest without doubt at the sight of that distraction which, amidst their splendid luxuries, agitates those farmers of the revenue, who fatten upon public calamnity--who devour the substance of the orphan--who consume the means of the widow--who grind the hard earnings of the poor: thou shudderest at witnessing the remorse which rends the souls of those reverend criminals, whom the uninformed believe to be happy, whilst the contempt which they have for themselves, the unerring shafts of secret upbraidings, are incessantly revenging an outraged nation. thou seest, that content is for ever banished the heart; quiet for ever driven from the habitations of those miserable wretches on whose minds i have indelibly engraved the scorn, the infamy, the chastisement which they deserve. but, no! thine eyes cannot sustain the tragic spectacle of my vengeance. humanity obliges thee to partake of their merited sufferings; thou art moved to pity for these unhappy people, to whom consecrated errors renders vice necessary; whose fatal habits make them familiar with crime. yes; thou shunnest them without hating them; thou wouldst succour them, if their contumacious perversity had left thee the means. when thou comparest thine own condition, when thou examinest thine own soul, thou wilt have just cause to felicitate thyself, if thou shalt find that peace has taken up her abode with thee; that contentment dwells at the bottom of thine own heart. in short, thou seest accomplished upon them, as well as, upon thyself, the unalterable decrees of destiny, which imperiously demand, that crime shall punish itself, that virtue never shall be destitute of remuneration." such is the sum of those truths which are contained in the _code of nature_; such are the doctrines, which its disciples can announce. they are unquestionably preferable to that supernatural superstition which never does any thing but mischief to the human species. such is the worship that is taught by that sacred reason, which is the object of contempt with the theologian; which meets the insult of the fanatic; who only estimates that which man can neither conceive nor practise; who make his morality consist in fictitious duties; his virtue in actions generally useless, frequently pernicious to the welfare of society; who for want of being acquainted with nature, which is before their eyes, believe themselves obliged to seek in ideal worlds imaginary motives, of which every thing proves the inefficacy. the motive which the morality of nature employs, is the self-evident interest of each individual, of each community, of the whole human species, in all times, in every country, under all circumstances. its worship is the sacrifice of vice, the practise of real virtues; its object is the conservation of the human race, the happiness of the individual, the peace of mankind; its recompences are affection, esteem, and glory; or in their default, contentment of mind, with merited self-esteem, of which no power will ever be able to deprive virtuous mortals; its punishments, are hatred, contempt, and indignation; which society always reserves for those who outrage its interests; from which even the most powerful can never effectually shield themselves. those nations who shall be disposed to practise a morality so wise, who shall inculcate it in infancy, whose laws shall unceasingly confirm it, will neither have occasion for superstition, nor for chimeras. those who shall obstinately prefer figments to their dearest interests, will certainly march forward to ruin. if they maintain themselves for a season, it is because the power of nature sometimes drives them back to reason, in despite of those prejudices which appear to lead them on to certain destruction. superstition, leagued with tyranny, for the waste of the human species, are themselves frequently obliged to implore the assistance of a reason which they contemn; of a nature which they disdain; which they debase; which they endeavour to crush under the ponderous bulk of artificial theories. superstition, in all times so fatal to mortals, when attacked by reason, assumes the sacred mantle of public utility; rests its importance on false grounds, founds its rights upon the indissoluble alliance which it pretends subsists between morality and itself; notwithstanding it never ceases for a single instant to wage against it the most cruel hostility. it is, unquestionably, by this artifice, that it has seduced so many sages. in the honesty of their hearts, they believe it useful to politics; necessary to restrain the ungovernable fury of the passions; thus hypocritical superstition, in order to mask to superficial observers, its own hideous character, like the ass with the lion's skin, always knows how to cover itself with the sacred armour of utility; to buckle on the invulnerable shield of virtue; it has therefore, been believed imperative to respect it, notwithstanding it felt awkward under these incumbrances; it consequently has become a duty to favor imposture, because it has artfully entrenched itself behind the altars of truth; its ears, however, discover its worthlessness; its natural cowardice betrays itself; it is from this intrenchment we ought to drive it; it should be dragged forth to public view; stripped of its surreptitious panoply; exposed in its native deformity; in order that the human race may become acquainted with its dissimulation; that mankind may have a knowledge of its crimes; that the universe may behold its sacrilegious hands, armed with homicidal poniards, stained with the blood of nations, whom it either intoxicates with its fury, or immolates without pity to the violence of its passions. the morality of nature is the only creed which her interpreter offers to his fellow citizens; to nations; to the human species; to future races, weaned from those prejudices which have so frequently disturbed the felicity of their ancestors. the friend of mankind cannot be the friend of delusion, which at all times has been a real scourge to the earth. the apostle of nature will not be the instrument of deceitful chimeras, by which this world is made only an abode of illusions; the adorer of truth will not compromise with falsehood; he will make no covenant with error; conscious it must always be fatal to mortals. he knows that the happiness of the human race imperiously exacts that the dark unsteady edifice of superstition should be razed to its foundations; in order to elevate on its ruins a temple suitable to peace--a fane sacred to virtue. he feels it is only by extirpating, even to the most slender fibres, the poisonous tree, that during so many ages has overshadowed the universe, that the inhabitants of this world will be able to use their own optics--to bear with steadiness that light which is competent to illumine their understanding--to guide their wayward steps--to give the necessary ardency to their souls. if his efforts should be vain; if he cannot inspire with courage, beings too much accustomed to tremble; he will, at least, applaud himself for having dared the attempt. nevertheless, he will not judge his exertions fruitless, if he has only been enabled to make a single mortal happy: if his principles have calmed the conflicting transports of one honest soul; if his reasonings have cheered up some few virtuous hearts. at least he will have the advantage of having banished from his own mind the importunate terror of superstition; of having expelled from his own heart the gall which exasperates zeal; of having trodden under foot those chimeras with which the uninformed are tormented. thus, escaped from the peril of the storm, he will calmly contemplate from the summit of his rock, those tremendous hurricanes which superstition excites; he will hold forth a succouring hand to those who shall be willing to accept it; he will encourage them with his voice; he will second them with his best exertions, and in the warmth of his own compassionate heart, he will exclaim: o nature; sovereign of all beings! and ye, her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, and truth! remain for ever our revered protectors: it is to you that belong the praises of the human race; to you appertains the homage of the earth. shew, us then, o nature! that which man ought to do, in order to obtain the happiness which thou makest him desire. virtue! animate him with thy beneficent fire. reason! conduct his uncertain steps through the paths of life. truth! let thy torch illumine his intellect, dissipate the darkness of his road. unite, o assisting deities! your powers, in order to submit the hearts of mankind to your dominion. banish error from our mind; wickedness from our hearts; confusion from our footsteps; cause knowledge to extend its salubrious reign; goodness to occupy our souls; serenity to dwell in our bosoms. let imposture, confounded, never again dare to shew its head. let our eyes, so long, either dazzled or blindfolded, be at length fixed upon those objects we ought to seek. dispel for ever those mists of ignorance, those hideous phantoms, together with those seducing chimeras, which only serve to lead us astray. extricate us from that dark abyss into which we are plunged by superstition; overthrow the fatal empire of delusion; crumble the throne of falsehood; wrest from their polluted hands the power they have usurped. command men, without sharing your authority with mortals: break the chains that bind them down in slavery: tear away the bandeau by which they are hoodwinked; allay the fury that intoxicates them; break in the hands of sanguinary, lawless tyrants, that iron sceptre with which they are crushed to exile; the imaginary regions, from whence fear has imported them, those theories by which they are afflicted. inspire the intelligent being with courage; infuse energy into his system, that, at length, he may feel his own dignity; that he may dare to love himself; to esteem his own actions when they are worthy; that a slave only to your eternal laws, he may no longer fear to enfranchise himself from all other trammels; that blest with freedom, he may have the wisdom to cherish his fellow creature; and become happy by learning to perfection his own condition; instruct him in the great lesson, that the high road to felicity, is prudently to partake himself, and also to cause others to enjoy, the rich banquet which thou, o nature! hast so bountifully set before him. console thy children for those sorrows to which their destiny submits them, by those pleasures which wisdom allows them to partake; teach them to be contented with their condition; to banish envy from their mind; to yield silently to necessity. conduct them without alarm to that period which all beings must find; _let them learn that time changes all things, that consequently they are made neither to avoid its scythe nor to fear its arrival._ [translator's appendix] a brief sketch of the life and writings of m. de. mirabaud. at a time when we are on the eve of an important change in our political affairs, which must evidently lead either to the recovery and re-establishment of our liberties, or to a military despotism, those who are connected with the press ought to use every exertion to enlighten their fellow-citizens, and to assert their right of canvassing, in the most free and unrestrained manner, every subject connected with the happiness of man. the priesthood have ever been convenient tools in the hands of tyrants, to keep the bulk of the people in a degraded servility. by the superstitious and slavish doctrines which they infuse into their minds, they prevent them from thinking for themselves and asserting their own independence. at a moment when national schools are erecting in every quarter of the country, not with a sincere desire of enlightening the rising generation, but with the insidious design of instilling into their minds the doctrines of "church and king," in order to bolster up a little longer the present rotten, tottering, and corrupt system: at a moment, too, when thousands of fanatic preachers are traversing the country, with a view to subjugate the human mind to the baleful empire of visonary enthusiasm and sectarian bigotry to the utter extinction of every noble, manly, liberal, and pilanthropic principle;--at such a moment as this, we thought that the "system of nature" could not fail to render essential service to the cause both of civil and religious liberty. no work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it, in the eloquence and sublimity of its language, or in the facility with which it treats the most abtruse and difficult subjects. it is, without exception, the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced, in the investigation of morals and theology--in the destruction of priestcraft and superstition--and in developing the sources of all those passions and prejudices which have proved so fatal to the tranquillity of the world. the republic of letters has never produced an author whose pen was so well calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which the nurse, the schoolmaster and the priest have successively locked up their noblest faculties, before they were capable of reasoning and judging for themselves. the frightful apprehensions of the gloomy bigot, and all the appalling terrors of superstition, are here utterly annihilated, to the complete satisfaction of every unbiassed and impartial person.--these we considered as necessary observations to make, previous to any attempt at the biography of the author. biography may be reckoned among the most interesting of literary productions. its intrinsic value is such, that, though capable of extraordinary embellishment from the hand of genius, yet no inferiority of execution can so degrade it, as to deprive it of utility. whatever relates even to man in general, considered only as an aggregate of active and intelligent beings, has a strong claim upon our notice; but that which relates to our author, as distinguished from the rest of his species, moving in a more exalted sphere, and towering above them by the resplendent excellencies of his mind, seems to me to be peculiarly calculated for our contemplation, and ought to form the highest pleasure of our lives. there is a principle of curiosity implanted in us, which leads us, in an especial manner, to investigate our fellow creatures; the eager inquisitiveness with which the mechanic seeks to know the history of his fellow-workmen and the ardour with which the philosopher, the poet, or the historian hunts for details that may familiarize him with, a descartes or a newton, with a milton, a hume, or a gibbon--spring from the same source. their object, however, may perhaps vary; for, in the former, it may be for the sake of detraction, invidious cavil, or malice; in the latter, it is a sweet homage paid by the human heart to the memory of departed genius. it has been repeatedly observed that the life of a scholar affords few materials for biography. this is only negatively true;--could every scholar have a boswell, the remark would vanish; or were every scholar a rousseau, a gibbon, or a cumberland it would be equally nugatory. what can present higher objects of contemplation--what can claim more forcibly our attention--where can we seek for subjects of a more precious nature, than in the elucidation of the operations of mind, the acquisition of knowledge, the gradual expansion of genius; its application, its felicities, its sorrows, its wreaths of fame, its cold, undeserved neglect? such scenes, painted by, the artist himself, are a rich bequest to mankind: even when traced by the hand of friendship or the pencil of admiration, they possess a permanent interest in our hearts. i cannot conceive a life more worthy of public notice, more important, more interesting to human nature, than the life of a literary man, were it executed according to the ideas i have formed of it: did it exhibit a faithful delineation of the progress of intellect, from the cradle upwards; did it portray, in accurate colors, the production of what we call genius: by what accident it was first awakened; what were its first tendencies; how directed to a particular object; by what means it was nourished and unfolded; the gradual progress of its operation in the production of a work; its hopes and fears; its delights; its miseries; its inspirations; and all the thousand fleeting joys that so often invest its path but for a moment, and then fade like the dews of the morning. let it contain too a transcript of the many nameless transports that float round the heart, that dance in the gay circle before the ardent gazing eye, when the first conception of some future effort strikes the mind; how it pictures undefined delights of fame and popular applause; how it anticipates the bright moments of invention, and dwells with prophetic ecstasy on the felicitous execution of particular parts, that already start into existence by the magic touch of a heated imagination. let it depict the tender feelings of solitude, the breathings of midnight silence, the scenes of mimic life, of imaged trial, that often occupy the musing mind; let it be such a work, so drawn, so coloured, and who shall pronounce it inferior? who rather will not confess that it presents a picture of human nature, where every heart may find some corresponding harmony? when, therefore, it is said, that the life of a scholar is barren, it is so only because it has never been properly delineated; because those parts only have been selected which are common, and fail to distinguish him from the common man; because we have never penetrated into his closet, or into his heart; because we have drawn him only as an outward figure, and left unnoticed that internal structure that would delight, astonish, and improve. and then, when we compare the life of such a man with the more active one of a soldier, a statesman, or a lawyer, we pronounce it insipid, uninteresting. true;--the man of study has not fought for hire--he has not slaughtered at the command of a master: he would disdain to do so. though unaccompanied with the glaring actions of public men, which confound and dazzle by their publicity, but shrink from the estimation of moral truth, it would present a far nobler picture; yes, and a more instructive one:--the calm disciple of reason meditates in silence; he walks his road with innoxious humility; he is poor, but his mind is his treasure; he cultivates his reason, and she lifts him to the pinnacle of truth; he learns to tear away the veil of self-love, folly, pride, and prejudice, and bares the human heart to his inspection; he corrects and amends; he repairs the breaches made by passion; the proud man passes him by, and looks upon him with scorn; but he feels his own worth, that ennobling consciousness which swells in every vein, and inspires him with true pride--with manly independence: to such a man i could sooner bow in reverence, than to the haughtiest, most successful candidate for the world's ambition. but of such men, for the reason i have already mentioned, our information is scanty. while of others, who have commanded a greater share of public notoriety, venal or mistaken admiration has given more than we wished to know. among these respected individuals of human nature, may be placed mirabaud. had mirabaud been an englishman, who doubts but that we should have possessed at least ample details of the usual subjects of biographical notice; while all that has been collected among his own countrymen, is a scanty memoir in a common dictionary. that we are doomed to remain ignorant of the life of such men, speaks a loud disgrace.--i lament it. john baptiste mirabaud, was born at paris in the year . he prosecuted his infantile studies under the direction of his parents, and was afterwards entered a member of the _congregation of the priests of the oratory_, where he passed several years, and produced some very bold writings, which were never intended for publication. he was subsequently appointed tutor to the princesses of the house of orleans, and then took the resolution of destroying the greater part of the manuscripts that he produced while a member of the _congregation_; but the treachery of some of his friends, to whom he had confided his manuscripts, rendered this precaution useless, for some of his works were published during the time he remained the preceptor to his royal pupils; among which number may be reckoned his "new liberties of thought," a work but little calculated for gaining him friends in the purlieus of the court of orleans. the "origin and antiquity of the world," in three parts, was also published at this period, and from the publication of this work, may be dated the resolution of m. de mirabaud to quit his office of preceptor, which he relinquished, having become more independent; he now gave himself up entirely to his philosophical studies, and produced the "system of nature," with which he was assisted by diderot, d'alembert, baron d'olbac, and others. the profound metaphysical knowledge displayed throughout the system of nature, and the doctrines which are therein advanced, warrants the conclusion, that it is at once the most decisive, boldest, and most extraordinary work, that the human understanding ever had the courage to produce. the study of metaphysics his generally been considered the most terrific to the indolent mind; but the clear and perspicuous reasoning of a mirabaud, who has united the most profound argument, with the most fascinating eloquence, charm and instruct us at the same time. but it was not, to be expected that such doctrines as are contained in the system of nature, would be advanced without meeting with some opposition from the superficial and bigoted metaphysicians, who feel an interest in upholding a system of delusion and superstition. no! certainly not, their interest was threatened, and their _craft_ in danger, and the consequence was, that the _atheist_ or _disciple of nature_, has been abused with every scurrilous epithet, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." atheism is stigmatized with having "opened a wide door for libertinism, destroying the social and moral compact; and striking a deadly blow at religion. it is asserted that the atheist, who by his opinions has deprived himself of the hope and consolation of a future life, has no motive for the practise of virtue, or to contribute to the well being of society. deprived of a chimera which religion every where presents him, he wanders through the cheerless gloom of scepticism, regardless of the consequences of an abandoned life. without a god, he acknowledges no benefactor; without divine laws, he knows no rule for the conduct of life, and submits to no law but his passions. an enemy to all social order, he spurns at human laws, and breaks through every barrier opposed to his wickedness." under such colours is an atheist painted: a short digression must be suffered to examine this picture, and to disprove the assertions so sweepingly made. i admit that atheism strikes a deadly blow at religion; because under the cloak of religion, mankind have been oppressed in all ages; but that it encourages libertinism, or destroys the "social and moral compact," i have yet to learn. in all organized governments, men are restrained from crime and compelled to submission by laws supposed to be made for the general benefit. these laws are the effect of the first formation of society for mutual preservation. here then is a sufficient motive for the one as well as the other, to contribute to the well-being of society. the laws of nature are the same in effect on the atheist and the religionist. if man be led captive by his passions, and gives himself to debauchery and voluptuousness, nature will punish him with bodily infirmities and a debilitated mind. if he be intemperate, she will shorten his days and bring him to the grave with the most poignant remorse. the fatal effects of his vicious propensities will fall upon his own head. a disturber of social order will live in continual fear of the vengeance of society, and that very fear is a more dreadful punishment than the just vengeance which perhaps he escapes. it renders life burdensome, and makes a man hateful to himself. can men have stronger motives for the practise of virtue? the atheist is in full possession of these motives, and the religionist is most completely swayed by them, whatever may be his pretensions to others derived from religion. but we are assured he has other motives; more powerful incentives, in the promise of future rewards and punishments. this, like all other chimerical doctrines, cannot be maintained if we look at the general practise of mankind. let us trace the effects of this doctrine, or rather let us examine the actions, conduct, and character of men professing it, and we shall see how little influence it has over them. the bulk of society believe they shall answer in a future life for the deeds done in the present. nay, i hardly think one in a hundred thousand will say they doubt it. what then is its effect? with this dreadful sentence, _"thou shalt go into everlasting punishment,"_ continually sounded in their ears, do we not daily see the greatest enormities committed? are not the most horrid crimes perpetrated in all parts of the world? the most vicious propensities and the most extravagant follies are almost indiscriminately gratified. is not vice frequently triumphant, and virtue compelled to seek her own reward in retirement? the laws of society are broken by the most flagrant injustice, and the laws of nature outraged by the most shocking depravity. all this evil exists in nations believing themselves to be accountable beings after death. where then are the beneficial effects arising, to mankind from the promulgation of this doctrine? men who cannot be restrained from doing evil by human laws, have no dread of any other. their whole lives and conduct confirm this. others who live in submission to the laws of society, give themselves up to those vicious habits, (without fear of divine laws) which the law does not take cognizance of. men, not wholly depraved, or not without the pale of society, generally respect the laws, and fear the bad opinion of others. hence we observe, when interest or passion leads them into secret vices, they invariably play the hypocrite; and although they are aware of the denunciations of their god, whom they acknowledge is a witness to all their actions, while they preserve their fair fame they still persevere. in fact, they live as if they disbelieved in his existence; and yet the greatest criminal, the most depraved wretch, would shudder at being told there is no god. the atheist, as a man, is liable to commit the same crimes, and fall into the same vices as the believer; but because he is an atheist, is he a worse criminal than the other? in one respect, i conceive he is not so bad. he only acts in defiance of _human_ laws,--he only offends men; the other infringes _both divine_ and _human_;--he defies both god and man. both are injurious to society and themselves, and both are actuated by the came motives. again we are told, that the well disposed part of mankind are rendered more virtuous, and the vicious less vicious by this doctrine. how are we to know that? if the virtuous man acts uprightly, does good to his fellow creatures, restrains his passions, and returns good for evil, experience teaches him it is his interest so to do. those who are viciously disposed are only deterred from crime by penal laws. societies cannot long exist, where evil has the ascendency. without social laws, this would really be the case, notwithstanding the threats of an avenging god. if men were told they would not be answerable for the evil committed in this life to human laws, but that god would punish them after death, it is evident the human race would soon be exterminated. on the other hand, tell them their crimes will never be punished by god, or, in other words, there is no other god than nature, but that the laws of men will avenge the offences against society; so long as those laws are administered with justice and impartiality, so long will such society continue to improve. hence it is evident that the system which will maintain order in society by itself, must be the best and most rational. a good government without religion would be more solid and lasting, and tend more to the preservation of mankind, than all the theocratical or ecclesiastical governments that ever the world was subject to.--thus much for the opponents of atheism. it has been asserted with a perverse obstinacy, by the advocates for the existence of a deity, that the system of nature was never written by the author whose name it bears.--it is granted that it was not published during his life: but that circumstance forms no reason why such a conclusion should be drawn. the persecutions which the atheists have endured, were a sufficient excuse for the work not appearing in any form during the life time of its venerable author. the athenians sought to try diagoras the melian, for atheism; but he fled from athens, and a price was offered for his head. protagoras was banished from athens, and his books burnt, because he ventured to assert, that he knew nothing of the gods. stephen dolet was burnt at paris for atheism. giordano bruno was burnt by the inquisitors in italy. lucilio vanini was burnt at thoulouse, through the kind offices of an attorney-general. bayle was under the necessity of fleeing to holland. casimio liszynski was executed at grodno;--and akenhead at edinborough. and the body of the eloquent and erudite hume, was obliged to be watched many nights by his friends, lest it should be taken up by the fanatics, who considered him one of the greatest monsters of iniquity, because he did not happen to believe as they believed.--with these pictures of christian persecution before his eyes, is it surprising that m. de mirabaud should adopt the resolution of suffering the system of nature to appear as a posthumous work? that the same fate would have attended him, the most devout christian will not undertake to deny. however the sentiments of m. de mirabaud may be condemned by the fanatics, all those who knew him bear the most brilliant testimony of his integrity, candour, and the soundness of his understanding; in a word, to his social virtues, and the innocence of his manners. he died universally regretted, at paris, the twenty-fourth of june, , in the eighty-sixth year of his age. the following works, written by him at different periods, were never published:--_the life of jesus christ. impartial reflections on the gospel. the morality of nature. an abridged history of the priesthood; ancient and modern. the opinions of the ancients concerning the jews._ a wretched mutilated edition of this last work was published at amsterdam, in , in two small volumes, under the title of _miscellaneous dissertations_. finis. the system of nature, volume i (of ii) by paul henri thiery (baron d'holbach) introduction by robert d. richardson, jr. production notes: first published in french in under the pseudonym of mirabaud. this e-book based on a facsimile reprint of an english translation originally published - . this e-text covers the first of the original two volumes. introduction paul henri thiery, baron d'holbach ( - ), was the center of the radical wing of the _philosophes_. he was friend, host, and patron to a wide circle that included diderot, d'alembert, helvetius, and hume. holbach wrote, translated, edited, and issued a stream of books and pamphlets, often under other names, that has made him the despair of bibliographers but has connected his name, by innuendo, gossip, and association, with most of what was written in defense of atheistic materialism in late eighteenth-century france. holbach is best known for _the system of nature_ ( ) and deservedly, since it is a clear and reasonably systematic exposition of his main ideas. his initial position determines all the rest of his argument. "there is not, there can be nothing out of that nature which includes all beings." conceiving of nature as strictly limited to matter and motion, both of which have always existed, he flatly denies that there is any such thing as spirit or a supernatural. mythology began, holbach claims, when men were still in a state of nature and at the point when wise, strong, and for the most part benign men were arising as leaders and lawgivers. these leaders "formed discourses by which they spoke to the imaginations of their willing auditors," using the medium of poetry, because it "seem{ed} best adapted to strike the mind." through poetry, then, and by means of "its images, its fictions, its numbers, its rhyme, its harmony... the entire of nature, as well as all its parts, was personified, by its beautiful allegories." thus mythology is given an essentially political origin. these early poets are literally legislators of mankind. "the first institutors of nations, and their immediate successors in authority, only spoke to the people by fables, allegories, enigmas, of which they reserved to themselves the right of giving an explanation." holbach is rather condescending about the process, but since mythology is a representation of nature itself, he is far more tolerant of mythology than he is of the next step. "natural philosophers and poets were transformed by leisure into metaphysicians and theologians," and at this point a fatal error was introduced: the theologians made a distinction between the power of nature and nature itself, separated the two, made the power of nature prior to nature, and called it god. thus man was left with an abstract and chimerical being on one side and a despoiled inert nature, destitute of power, on the other. in holbach's critique the point at which theology split off from mythology marks the moment of nature's alienation from itself and paves the way for man's alienation from nature. holbach is thus significant for romantic interest in myth in two ways. first, he provides a clear statement of what can be loosely called the antimythic position, that rationalist condescension and derogation of all myth and all religion that was never far from the surface during the romantic era. holbach was and is a reminder that the romantic affirmation of myth was never easy, uncritical, or unopposed. any new endorsement of myth had to be made in the teeth of holbach and the other skeptics. the very vigor of the holbachian critique of myth impelled the romantics to think more deeply and defend more carefully any new claim for myth. secondly, although holbach's argument generally drove against myth and religion both, he did make an important, indeed a saving distinction between mythology and theology. mythology is the more or less harmless personification of the power in and of nature; theology concerns itself with what for holbach was the nonexistent power beyond or behind nature. by exploiting this distinction it would become possible for a shelley, for example, to take a strong antitheological--even an anti-christian--position without having to abandon myth. holbach was one of william godwin's major sources for his ideas about political justice, and shelley, who discussed holbach with godwin, quotes extensively from _the system of nature_ in _queen mab_. furthermore, volney's _ruins_, another important book for shelley, is directly descended from _the system of nature_. on the other side, holbach was a standing challenge to such writers as coleridge and goethe and was reprinted and retranslated extensively in america, where his work was well known to the rationalist circle around jefferson and barlow. issued in as though by jean baptiste de mirabaud (a former perpetual secretary to the académie française who had died ten years before), _la système de la nature_ was translated and reprinted frequently. the samuel wilkinson translation we have chosen to reprint was the most often reprinted or pirated version in english. a useful starting point for holbach's work is jerome vercruysse, _bibliographie descriptive des écrits du baron d'holbach_ (paris, ). the difficult subject of the essentially clandestine evolution of biblical criticism as an anti-christian and antimyth critique in the early part of the eighteenth century, before the well-documented era of the biblical critic eichhorn in germany, is illuminated in ira wade, _the clandestine organization and diffusion of philosophic ideas in france from - _ (princeton univ. press, ). robert d. richardson, jr. university of denver * * * * * {illustration: parke sculp't m. de mirabaud} the system of nature; or, _the laws_ of the moral and physical world. translated from the original french of m. de mirabaud vol. i. contents preface part i--laws of nature.--of man.--the faculties of the soul. --doctrine of immortality.--on happiness. chap. i. nature and her laws. chap. ii. of motion and its origin. chap. iii. of matter--of its various combinations--of its diversified motion--or of the course of nature. chap. iv. laws of motion common to every being of nature--attraction and repulsion--inert force-necessity. chap. v. order and confusion--intelligence--chance. chap. vi. moral and physical distinctions of man--his origin. chap. vii. the soul and the spiritual system. chap. vii. the soul and the spiritual system. chap. viii. the intellectual faculties derived from the faculty of feeling. chap. ix. the diversity of the intellectual faculties; they depend on physical causes, as do their moral qualities.--the natural principles of society--morals--politics. chap. x. the soul does not derive its ideas from itself--it has no innate ideas. chap. xi. of the system of man's free-agency. chap. xii. an examination of the opinion which pretends that the system of fatalism is dangerous. chap. xiii. of the immortality of the soul--of the doctrine of a future state--of the fear of death. chap. xiv. education, morals, and the laws suffice to restrain man--of the desire of immortality--of suicide. chap. xv. of man's true interest, or of the ideas he forms to himself of happiness.--man cannot be happy without virtue. chap. xvi. the errors of man.--upon what constitutes happiness.--the true source of his evils.--remedies that may be applied. chap. xvii. those ideas which are true, or founded upon nature, are the only remedies for the evil of man.--recapitulation.--conclusions of the first part. preface _the source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of nature. the pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error. he resembles a child destitute of experience, full of ideal notions: a dangerous leaven mixes itself with all his knowledge: it is of necessity obscure, it is vacillating and false:--he takes the tone of his ideas on the authority of others, who are themselves in error, or else have an interest in deceiving him. to remove this cimmerian darkness, these barriers to the improvement of his condition; to disentangle him from the clouds of error that envelope him; to guide him out of this cretan labyrinth, requires the clue of ariadne, with all the love she could bestow on theseus. it exacts more than common exertion; it needs a most determined, a most undaunted courage--it is never effected but by a persevering resolution to act, to think for himself; to examine with rigour and impartiality the opinions he has adopted. he will find that the most noxious weeds have sprung up beside beautiful flowers; entwined themselves around their stems, overshadowed them with an exuberance of foliage, choaked the ground, enfeebled their growth, diminished their petals; dimmed the brilliancy of their colours; that deceived by their apparent freshness of their verdure, by the rapidity of their exfoliation, he has given them cultivation, watered them, nurtured them, when he ought to have plucked out their very roots. man seeks to range out of his sphere: notwithstanding the reiterated checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the impossible; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world; and hunts out misery in imaginary regions. he would be a metaphysician before he has become a practical philosopher. he quits the contemplation of realities to meditate on chimeras. he neglects experience to feed on conjecture, to indulge in hypothesis. he dares not cultivate his reason, because from his earliest days he has been taught to consider it criminal. he pretends to know his date in the indistinct abodes of another life, before he has considered of the means by which he is to render himself happy in the world he inhabits: in short, man disdains the study of nature, except it be partially: he pursues phantoms that resemble an _ignis-fatuus_, which at once dazzle, bewilders, and affright: like the benighted traveller led astray by these deceptive exhalations of a swampy soil, he frequently quits the plain, the simple road of truth, by pursuing of which, he can alone ever reasonably hope to reach the goal of happiness. the most important of our duties, then, is to seek means by which we may destroy delusions that can never do more than mislead us. the remedies for these evils must be sought for in nature herself; it is only in the abundance of her resources, that we can rationally expect to find antidotes to the mischiefs brought upon us by an ill directed, by an overpowering enthusiasm. it is time these remedies were sought; it is time to look the evil boldly in the face, to examine its foundations, to scrutinize its superstructure: reason, with its faithful guide experience, must attack in their entrenchments those prejudices, to which the human race has but too long been the victim. for this purpose reason must be restored to its proper rank,--it must be rescued from the evil company with which it is associated. it has been too long degraded--too long neglected--cowardice has rendered it subservient to delirium, the slave to falsehood. it must no longer be held down by the massive claims of ignorant prejudice. truth is invariable--it is requisite to man--it can never harm him--his very necessities, sooner or later, make him sensible of this; oblige him to acknowledge it. let us then discover it to mortals--let us exhibit its charms--let us shed it effulgence over the darkened road; it is the only mode by which man can become disgusted with that disgraceful superstition which leads him into error, and which but too often usurps his homage by treacherously covering itself with the mask of truth--its lustre can wound none but those enemies to the human race whose power is bottomed solely on the ignorance, on the darkness in which they have in almost every claimed contrived to involve the mind of man. truth speaks not to those perverse beings:--her voice can only be heard by generous souls accustomed to reflection, whose sensibilities make them lament the numberless calamities showered on the earth by political and religious tyranny--whose enlightened minds contemplate with horror the immensity, the ponderosity of that series of misfortunes which error has in all ages overwhelmed mankind. to error must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants, which priests have forged for most nations. to error must be equally attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every country have fallen. nature designed they should pursue their happiness by the most perfect freedom.--to error must be attributed those religious terrors which, in almost every climate, have either petrified man with fear, or caused him to destroy himself for coarse or fanciful beings. to error must be attributed those inveterate hatreds, those barbarous persecutions, those numerous massacres, those dreadful tragedies, of which, under pretext of serving the interests of heaven, the earth has been but too frequently made the theatre. it is error consecrated by religious enthusiasm, which produces that ignorance, that uncertainty in which man ever finds himself with regard to his most evident duties, his clearest rights, the most demonstrable truths. in short, man is almost everywhere a poor degraded captive, devoid of greatness of soul, of reason, or of virtue, whom his inhuman gaolers have never permitted to see the light of day. let us then endeavour to disperse those clouds of ignorance, those mists of darkness, which impede man on his journey, which obscure his progress, which prevent his marching through life with a firm, with a steady grip. let us try to inspire him with courage--with respect for his reason--with an inextinguishable love for truth--with a remembrance of gallileo--to the end that he may learn to know himself--to know his legitimate rights--that he may learn to consult his experience, and no longer be the dupe of an imagination led astray by authority--that he may renounce the prejudices of his childhood--that he may learn to found his morals on his nature, on his wants, on the real advantage of society--that he may dare to love himself--that he may learn to pursue his true happiness by promoting that of others--in short, that he may no longer occupy himself with reveries either useless or dangerous--that he may become a virtuous, a rational being, in which case he cannot fail to become happy. if he must have his chimeras, let him at least learn to permit others to form theirs after their own fashion; since nothing can be more immaterial than the manner of men's thinking on subjects not accessible to reason, provided those thoughts be not suffered to embody themselves into actions injurious to others: above all, let him be fully persuaded that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this world to be just, kind, and peaceable. far from injuring the cause of virtue, an impartial examination of the principles of this work will shew that its object is to restore truth to its proper temple, to build up an altar whose foundations shall be consolidated by morality, reason, and justice: from this sacred pane, virtue guarded by truth, clothed with experience, shall shed forth her radiance on delighted mortals; whose homage flowing consecutively shall open to the world a new aera, by rendering general the belief that happiness, the true end of man's existence, can never be attained but by promoting that of his fellow creature. in short, man should learn to know, that happiness is simply an emanative quality formed by reflection; that each individual ought to be the sun of his own system, continually shedding around him his genial rays; that these, re-acting, will keep his own existence constantly supplied with the requisite heat to enable him to put forth kindly fruit._ mirabaud's system of nature translated from the original, by samuel wilkinson. part i. laws of nature--of man--the faculties of the soul--doctrine of immortality--on happiness. chap. i. _nature and her laws_. man has always deceived himself when he abandoned experience to follow imaginary systems.--he is the work of nature.--he exists in nature.--he is submitted to the laws of nature.--he cannot deliver himself from them:--cannot step beyond them even in thought. it is in vain his mind would spring forward beyond the visible world: direful and imperious necessity ever compels his return--being formed by nature, he is circumscribed by her laws; there exists nothing beyond the great whole of which he forms a part, of which he experiences the influence. the beings his fancy pictures as above nature, or distinguished from her, are always chimeras formed after that which he has already seen, but of which it is utterly impossible he should ever form any finished idea, either as to the place they occupy, or their manner of acting--for him there is not, there can be nothing out of that nature which includes all beings. therefore, instead of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings who can procure him a happiness denied to him by nature, let him study this nature, learn her laws, contemplate her energies, observe the immutable rules by which she acts.--let him apply these discoveries to his own felicity, and submit in silence to her precepts, which nothing can alter.--let him cheerfully consent to be ignorant of causes hid from him under the most impenetrable veil.--let him yield to the decrees of a universal power, which can never be brought within his comprehension, nor ever emancipate him from those laws imposed on him by his essence. the distinction which has been so often made between the _physical_ and the _moral_ being, is evidently an abuse of terms. man is a being purely physical: the moral man is nothing more than this physical being considered under a certain point of view; that is to say, with relation to some of his modes of action, arising out of his individual organization. but is not this organization itself the work of nature? the motion or impulse to action, of which he is susceptible, is that not physical? his visible actions, as well as the invisible motion interiorly excited by his will or his thoughts, are equally the natural effects, the necessary consequences, of his peculiar construction, and the impulse he receives from those beings by whom he is always surrounded. all that the human mind has successively invented, with a view to change or perfect his being, to render himself happy, was never more than the necessary consequence of man's peculiar essence, and that of the beings who act upon him. the object of all his institutions, all his reflections, all his knowledge, is only to procure that happiness toward which he is continually impelled by the peculiarity of his nature. all that he does, all that he thinks, all that he is, all that he will be, is nothing more than what universal nature has made him. his ideas, his actions, his will, are the necessary effects of those properties infused into him by nature, and of those circumstances in which she has placed him. in short, art is nothing but nature acting with the tools she has furnished. nature sends man naked and destitute into this world which is to be his abode: he quickly learns to cover his nakedness--to shelter himself from the inclemencies of the weather, first with artlessly constructed huts, and the skins of the beasts of the forest; by degrees he mends their appearance, renders them more convenient: he establishes manufactories to supply his immediate wants; he digs clay, gold, and other fossils from the bowels of the earth; converts them into bricks for his house, into vessels for his use, gradually improves their shape, and augments their beauty. to a being exalted above our terrestrial globe, man would not appear less subjected to the laws of nature when naked in the forest painfully seeking his sustenance, than when living in civilized society surrounded with ease, or enriched with greater experience, plunged in luxury, where he every day invents a thousand new wants and discovers a thousand new modes of supplying them. all the steps taken by man to regulate his existence, ought only to be considered as a long succession of causes and effects, which are nothing more than the development of the first impulse given him by nature. the same animal, by virtue of his organization, passes successively from the most simple to the most complicated wants; it is nevertheless the consequence of his nature. the butterfly whose beauty we admire, whose colours are so rich, whose appearance is so brilliant, commences as an inanimate unattractive egg; from this, heat produces a worm, this becomes a chrysalis, then changes into that beautiful insect adorned with the most vivid tints: arrived at this stage he reproduces, he generates; at last despoiled of his ornaments, he is obliged to disappear, having fulfilled the task imposed on him by nature, having performed the circle of transformation marked out for beings of his order. the same course, the same change takes place in the vegetable world. it is by a series of combinations originally interwoven with the energies of the aloe, that this plant is insensibly regulated, gradually expanded, and at the end of a number of years produces those flowers which announce its dissolution. it is equally so with man, who in all his motion, all the changes he undergoes, never acts but according to the laws peculiar to his organization, and to the matter of which he is composed. the _physical man_, is he who acts by the causes our faculties make us understand. the _moral man_, is he who acts by physical causes, with which our prejudices preclude us from becoming perfectly acquainted. the _wild man_ is a child destitute of experience, incapable of proceeding in his happiness, because he has not learnt how to oppose resistance to the impulses he receives from those beings by whom he is surrounded. the _civilized man_, is he whom experience and sociality have enabled to draw from nature the means of his own happiness, because he has learned to oppose resistance to those impulses he receives from exterior beings, when experience has taught him they would be destructive to his welfare. the _enlightened man_ is man in his maturity, in his perfection; who is capable of advancing his own felicity, because he has learned to examine, to think for himself, and not to take that for truth upon the authority of others, which experience has taught him a critical disquisition will frequently prove erroneous. the _happy man_ is he who knows how to enjoy the benefits bestowed upon him by nature: in other words, he who thinks for himself; who is thankful for the good he possesses; who does not envy the welfare of others, nor sigh after imaginary benefits always beyond his grasp. the _unhappy man_ is he who is incapacitated to enjoy the benefits of nature; that is, he who suffers others to think for him; who neglects the absolute good he possesses, in a fruitless search after ideal benefits; who vainly sighs after that which ever eludes his pursuit. it necessarily results, that man in his enquiry ought always to contemplate experience, and natural philosophy: these are what he should consult in his religion,--in his morals,--in his legislation,--in his political government,--in the arts,--in the sciences,--in his pleasures,--above all, in his misfortunes. experience teaches that nature acts by simple, regular, and invariable laws. it is by his senses, man is bound to this universal nature; it is by his perception he must penetrate her secrets; it is from his senses he must draw experience of her laws. therefore, whenever he neglects to acquire experience or quits its path, he stumbles into an abyss; his imagination leads him astray. all the errors of man are physical: he never deceives himself but when he neglects to return back to nature, to consult her laws, to call practical knowledge to his aid. it is for want of practical knowledge he forms such imperfect ideas of matter, of its properties, of its combinations, of its power, of its mode of action, and of the energies which spring from its essence. wanting this experience, the whole universe, to him, is but one vast scene of error. the most ordinary results appear to him the most astonishing phenomena; he wonders at every thing, understands nothing, and yields the guidance of his actions to those interested in betraying his interests. he is ignorant of nature, and he has mistaken her laws; he has not contemplated the necessary routine which she has marked out for every thing she holds. mistaken the laws of nature, did i say? he has mistaken himself: the consequence is, that all his systems, all his conjectures, all his reasonings, from which he has banished experience, are nothing more than a tissue of errors, a long chain of inconsistencies. error is always prejudicial to man: it is by deceiving himself, the human race is plunged into misery. he neglected nature; he did not comprehend her laws; he formed gods of the most preposterous and ridiculous kinds: these became the sole objects of his hope, and the creatures of his fear: he was unhappy, he trembled under these visionary deities; under the supposed influence of visionary beings created by himself; under the terror inspired by blocks of stone; by logs of wood; by flying fish; or the frowns of men, mortal as himself, whom his disturbed fancy had elevated above that nature of which alone he is capable of forming any idea. his very posterity laughs at his folly, because experience has convinced them of the absurdity of his groundless fears--of his misplaced worship. thus has passed away the ancient mythology, with all the trifling and nonsensical attributes attached to it by ignorance. not understanding that nature, equal in her distributions, entirely destitute of malice, follows only necessary and immutable laws, when she either produces beings or destroys them, when she causes those to suffer, whose construction creates sensibility; when she scatters among them good and evil; when she subjects them to incessant change--he did not perceive it was in the breast of nature herself, that it was in her exuberance he ought to seek to satisfy his deficiencies; for remedies against his pains; for the means of rendering himself happy: he expected to derive these benefits from fantastic beings, whom he supposed to be above nature; whom he mistakingly imagined to be the authors of his pleasures, and the cause of his misfortunes. from hence it appears that to his ignorance of nature, man owes the creation of those illusive powers; under which he has so long trembled with fear; that superstitious worship, which has been the source of all his misery, and the evils entailed upon posterity. for want of clearly comprehending his own peculiar nature, his proper course, his wants, and his rights, man has fallen in society, from freedom into slavery. he had forgotten the purpose of his existence, or else he believed himself obliged to suppress the natural desires of his heart, to sacrifice his welfare to the caprice of chiefs, either elected by himself, or submitted to without examination. he was ignorant of the true policy of association--of the object of government; he disdained to listen to the voice of nature, which loudly proclaimed the price of all submission to be protection and happiness: the end of all government is the benefit of the governed, not the exclusive advantage of the governors. he gave himself up without enquiry to men like himself, whom his prejudices induced him to contemplate as beings of a superior order, as gods upon earth, they profited by his ignorance, took advantage of his prejudices, corrupted him, rendered him vicious, enslaved him, and made him miserable. thus man, intended by nature for the full enjoyment of liberty, to patiently search out her laws, to investigate her secrets, to cling to his experience; has, from a neglect of her salutary admonitions, from an inexcusable ignorance of his own peculiar essence, fallen into servility: has been wickedly governed. having mistaken himself, he has remained ignorant of the indispensable affinity that subsists between him, and the beings of his own species: having mistaken his duty to himself, it consequently follows, he has mistaken his duty to others. he made a calculation in error of what his happiness required; he did not perceive, what he owed to himself, the excesses he ought to avoid, the desires he ought to resist, the impulses he ought to follow, in order to consolidate his felicity, to promote his comfort, and to further his advantage. in short, he was ignorant of his true interests; hence his irregularities, his excesses, his shameful extravagance, with that long train of vices, to which he has abandoned himself, at the expense of his preservation, at the hazard of his permanent prosperity. it is, therefore, ignorance of himself that has hindered man from enlightening his morals. the corrupt authorities to which he had submitted, felt an interest in obstructing the practice of his duties, even when he knew them. time, with the influence of ignorance, aided by his corruption, gave them a strength not to be resisted by his enfeebled voice. his duties continued unperformed, and he fell into contempt both with himself and with others. the ignorance of man has endured so long, he has taken such slow, such irresolute steps to ameliorate his condition, only because he has neglected to study nature, to scrutinize her laws, to search out her expedients, to discover her properties, that his sluggishness finds its account, in permitting himself to be guided by example, rather than to follow experience, which demands activity; to be led by routine, rather than by his reason, which enjoins reflection; to take that for truth upon the authority of others, which would require a diligent and patient investigation. from hence may be traced the hatred man betrays for every thing that deviates from those rules to which he has been accustomed; hence his stupid, his scrupulous respect for antiquity, for the most silly, the most absurd and ridiculous institutions of his fathers: hence those fears that seize him, when the most beneficial changes are proposed to him, or the most likely attempts are made to better his condition. he dreads to examine, because he has been taught to hold it irreverent of something immediately connected with his welfare; his credulity suffers him to believe the interested advice, and spurns at those who wish to show him the danger of the road he is travelling. this is the reason why nations linger on in the most shameful lethargy, suffering under abuses handed down from century to century, trembling at the very idea of that which alone can repair their calamities. it is for want of energy, for want of consulting experience, that medicine, natural philosophy, agriculture, painting, in fact, all the useful sciences, have so long remained under the fetters of authority, have progressed so little: those who profess these sciences, prefer treading the beaten paths, however imperfect, rather than strike out new ones,--they prefer the phrensy of their imagination, their voluntary conjectures, to that laboured experience which alone can extract her secrets from nature. man, in short, whether from sloth or from terror, having abnegated the evidence of his senses, has been guided in all his actions, in all his enterprizes, by imagination, by enthusiasm, by habit, by preconceived opinions, but above all, by the influence of authority, which knew well how to deceive him, to turn his ignorance to esteem, his sloth to advantage. thus imaginary, unsubstantial systems, have supplied the place of experience--of mature reflection--of reason. man, petrified with his fears, intoxicated with the marvellous, stupified with sloth, surrendered his experience: guided by his credulity, he was unable to fall back upon it; he became consequently inexperienced; from thence he gave birth to the most ridiculous opinions, or else adopted all those vague chimeras, all those idle notions offered to him by men whose interest it was to continue him in that lamentable state of ignorance. thus the human race has continued so long in a state of infancy, because man has been inattentive to nature; has neglected her ways, because he has disdained experience--because he has thrown by his reason--because he has been enraptured with the marvellous and the supernatural,--because he has unnecessarily trembled. these are the reasons there is so much trouble in conducting him from this state of childhood to that of manhood. he has had nothing but the most trifling hypotheses, of which he has never dared to examine either the principles or the proofs, because he has been accustomed to hold them sacred, to consider them as the most perfect truths, and which he is not permitted to doubt, even for an instant. his ignorance made him credulous; his curiosity made him swallow the wonderful: time confirmed him in his opinions, and he passed his conjectures from race to race for realities; a tyrannical power maintained him in his notions, because by those alone could society be enslaved. it was in vain that some faint glimmerings of nature occasionally attempted the recall of his reason--that slight corruscations of experience sometimes threw his darkness into light, the interest of the few was founded on his enthusiasm; their pre-eminence depended on his love of the marvellous; their very existence rested on the firmness of his ignorance; they consequently suffered no opportunity to escape, of smothering even the transient flame of intelligence. the many were thus first deceived into credulity, then forced into submission. at length the whole science of man became a confused mass of darkness, falsehood, and contradictions, with here and there a feeble ray of truth, furnished by that nature, of which he can never entirely divest himself; because, without his perception, his necessities are continually bringing him back to her resources. let us then, if possible, raise ourselves above these clouds of prepossession! let us quit the heavy atmosphere in which we are enucleated; let us in a more unsullied medium--in a more elastic current, contemplate the opinions of men, and observe their various systems. let us learn to distrust a disordered conception; let us take that faithful monitor, experience, for our guide; let us consult nature, examine her laws, dive into her stores; let us draw from herself, our ideas of the beings she contains; let us recover our senses, which interested error has taught us to suspect; let us consult that reason, which, for the vilest purposes has been so infamously calumniated, so cruelly dishonoured; let us examine with attention the visible world; let us try, if it will not enable us to form a supportable judgment of the invisible territory of the intellectual world: perhaps it may be found there has been no sufficient reason for distinguishing them--that it is not without motives, well worthy our enquiry, that two empires have been separated, which are equally the inheritance of nature. the universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects; some of these causes are known to us, because they either strike immediately on our senses, or have been brought under their cognizance, by the examination of long experience; others are unknown to us, because they act upon us by effects, frequently very remote from their primary cause. an immense variety of matter, combined under an infinity of forms, incessantly communicates, unceasingly receives a diversity of impulses. the different qualities of this matter, its innumerable combinations, its various methods of action, which are the necessary consequence of these associations, constitute for man what he calls the essence of beings: it is from these varied essences that spring the orders, the classes, or the systems, which these beings respectively possess, of which the sum total makes up that which is known by the term _nature_. nature, therefore, in its most significant meaning, is the great whole that results from the collection of matter, under its various combinations, with that contrariety of motion, which the universe presents to our view. nature, in a less extended sense, or considered in each individual, is the whole that results from its essence; that is to say, the peculiar qualities, the combination, the impulse, and the various modes of action, by which it is discriminated from other beings. it is thus that man is, as a whole, or in his nature, the result of a certain combination of matter, endowed with peculiar properties, competent to give, capable of receiving, certain impulses, the arrangement of which is called _organization_; of which the essence is, to feel, to think, to act, to move, after a manner distinguished from other beings, with which he can be compared. man, therefore, ranks in an order, in a system, in a class by himself, which differs from that of other animals, in whom we do not perceive those properties of which he is possessed. the different systems of beings, or if they will, their _particular natures_, depend on the general system of the great whole, or that universal nature, of which they form a part; to which every thing that exists is necessarily submitted and attached. having described the proper definition that should be applied to the word nature, i must advise the reader, once for all, that whenever in the course of this work the expression occurs, that "nature produces such or such an effect," there is no intention of personifying that nature which is purely an abstract being; it merely indicates that the effect spoken of necessarily springs from the peculiar properties of those beings which compose the mighty macrocosm. when, therefore, it is said, _nature demands that man should pursue his own happiness_, it is to prevent circumlocution--to avoid tautology; it is to be understood, that it is the property of a being that feels, that thinks, that acts, to labour to its own happiness; in short, that is called _natural_, which is conformable to the essence of things, or to the laws, which nature prescribes to the beings she contains, in the different orders they occupy, under the various circumstances through which they are obliged to pass. thus health is _natural_ to man in a certain state; disease is _natural_ to him under other circumstances; dissolution, or if they will, death, is a _natural_ state for a body, deprived of some of those things, necessary to maintain the existence of the animal, &c. by essence is to be understood, that which constitutes a being, such as it is; the whole of the properties or qualities by which it acts as it does. thus, when it is said, it is the _essence_ of a stone to fall, it is the same as saying that its descent is the necessary effect of its gravity--of its density--of the cohesion of its parts--of the elements of which it is composed. in short, the _essence_ of a being is its particular, its individual nature. chap. ii. _of motion, and its origin._ motion is an effect by which a body either changes, or has a tendency to change, its position: that is to say, by which it successively corresponds with different parts of space, or changes its relative distance to other bodies. it is motion alone that establishes the relation between our senses and exterior or interior beings: it is only by motion that these beings are impressed upon us--that we know their existence--that we judge of their properties--that we distinguish the one from the other--that we distribute them into classes. the beings, the substances, or the various bodies of which nature is the assemblage, are themselves effects of certain combinations or causes which become causes in their turn. a cause is a being which puts another in motion, or which produces some change in it. the effect is the change produced in one body, by the motion or presence of another. each being, by its essence, by its peculiar nature, has the faculty of producing, is capable of receiving, has the power of communicating, a variety of motion. thus some beings are proper to strike our organs; these organs are competent to receiving the impression, are adequate to undergoing changes by their presence. those which cannot act on any of our organs, either immediately and by themselves, or immediately by the intervention of other bodies, exist not for us; since they can neither move us, nor consequently furnish us with ideas: they can neither be known to us, nor of course be judged of by us. to know an object, is to have felt it; to feel it, it is requisite to have been moved by it. to see, is to have been moved, by something acting on the visual organs; to hear, is to have been struck, by something on our auditory nerves. in short, in whatever mode a body may act upon us, whatever impulse we may receive from it, we can have no other knowledge of it than by the change it produces in us. nature, as we have already said, is the assemblage of all the beings, consequently of all the motion of which we have a knowledge, as well as of many others of which we know nothing, because they have not yet become accessible to our senses. from the continual action and re-action of these beings, result a series of causes and effects; or a chain of motion guided by the constant and invariable laws peculiar to each being; which are necessary or inherent to its particular nature--which make it always act or move after a determinate manner. the different principles of this motion are unknown to us, because we are in many instances, if not in all, ignorant of what constitutes the essence of beings. the elements of bodies escape our senses; we know them only in the mass: we are neither acquainted with their intimate combination, nor the proportion of these combinations; from whence must necessarily result their mode of action, their impulse, or their different effects. our senses bring us generally acquainted with two sorts of motion in the beings that surround us: the one is the motion of the mass, by which an entire body is transferred from one place to another. of the motion of this genus we are perfectly sensible.--thus, we see a stone fall, a ball roll, an arm move, or change its position. the other is an internal or concealed motion, which always depends on the peculiar energies of a body: that is to say, on its _essence_, or the combination, the action, and re-action of the minute--of the insensible particles of matter, of which that body is composed. this motion we do not see; we know it only by the alteration or change, which after some time we discover in these bodies or mixtures. of this genus is that concealed motion which fermentation produces in the particles that compose flour, which, however scattered, however separated, unite, and form that mass which we call bread. such also is the imperceptible motion by which we see a plant or animal enlarge, strengthen, undergo changes, and acquire new qualities, without our eyes being competent to follow its progression, or to perceive the causes which have produced these effects. such also is the internal motion that takes place in man, which is called his intellectual faculties, his thoughts, his passions, his will. of these we have no other mode of judging, than by their action; that is, by those sensible effects which either accompany or follow them. thus, when we see a man run away, we judge him to be interiorly actuated by the passion of fear. motion, whether visible or concealed, is styled acquired, when it is impressed on one body by another; either by a cause to which we are a stranger, or by an exterior agent which our senses enable us to discover. thus we call that _acquired motion_, which the wind gives to the sails of a ship. that motion which is excited in a body, that contains within itself the causes of those changes we see it undergo, is called spontaneous. then it is said, this body acts or moves by its own peculiar energies. of this kind is the motion of the man who walks, who talks, who thinks. nevertheless, if we examine the matter a little closer, we shall be convinced, that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as spontaneous motion in any of the various bodies of nature; seeing they are perpetually acting one upon the other; that all their changes are to be attributed to the causes, either visible or concealed, by which they are moved. the will of man is secretly moved or determined by some exterior cause that produces a change in him: we believe he moves of himself, because we neither see the cause that determined him, the mode in which it acted, nor the organ that it put in motion. that is called simple motion, which is excited in a body by a single cause. compound motion, that which is produced by two or more different causes; whether these causes are equal or unequal, conspiring differently, acting together or in succession, known or unknown. let the motion of beings be of whatsoever nature it may, it is always the necessary consequence of their essence, or of the properties which compose them, and of those causes of which they experience the action. each being can only move and act after a particular manner; that is to say, conformably to those laws which result from its peculiar essence, its particular combination, its individual nature: in short, from its specific energies, and those of the bodies from which it receives an impulse. it is this that constitutes the invariable laws of motion: i say _invariable_, because they can never change, without producing confusion in the essence of things. it is thus that a heavy body must necessarily fall, if it meets with no obstacle sufficient to arrest its descent; that a sensible body must naturally seek pleasure, and avoid pain; that fire must necessarily burn, and diffuse light. each being, then, has laws of motion, that are adapted to itself, and constantly acts or moves according to these laws; at least when no superior cause interrupts its action. thus, fire ceases to burn combustible matter, as soon as sufficient water is thrown into it, to arrest its progress. thus, a sensible being ceases to seek pleasure, as soon as he fears that pain will be the result. the communication of motion, or the medium of action, from one body to another, also follows certain and necessary laws; one being can only communicate motion to another, by the affinity, by the resemblance, by the conformity, by the analogy, or by the point of contact, which it has with that other being. fire can only propagate when it finds matter analogous to itself: it extinguishes when it encounters bodies which it cannot embrace; that is to say, that do not bear towards it a certain degree of relation or affinity. every thing in the universe is in motion: the essence of matter is to act: if we consider its parts, attentively, we shall discover there is not a particle that enjoys absolute repose. those which appear to us to be without motion, are, in fact, only in relative or apparent rest; they experience such an imperceptible motion, and expose it so little on their surfaces, that we cannot perceive the changes they undergo. all that appears to us to be at rest, does not, however, remain one instant in the same state. all beings are continually breeding, increasing, decreasing, or dispersing, with more or less dullness or rapidity. the insect called ephemeron, is produced and perishes in the same day; of consequence, it experiences the greatest changes of its being very rapidly, in our eyes. those combinations which form the most solid bodies, which appear to enjoy the most perfect repose, are nevertheless decomposed, and dissolved in the course of time. the hardest stones, by degrees, give way to the contact of air. a mass of iron, which time, and the action of the atmosphere, has gnawed into rust, must have been in motion, from the moment of its formation, in the bowels of the earth, until the instant we behold it in this state of dissolution. natural philosophers, for the most part, seem not to have sufficiently reflected on what they call the _nisus_; that is to say, the incessant efforts one body is making on another, but which, notwithstanding appear, to our superficial observation, to enjoy the most perfect repose. a stone of five hundred weight seems to rest quiet on the earth, nevertheless, it never ceases for an instant, to press with force upon the earth, which resists or repulses it in its turn. will the assertion be ventured, that the stone and earth do not act? do they wish to be undeceived? they have nothing to do but interpose their hand betwixt the earth and the stone; it will then be discovered, that notwithstanding its seeming repose, the stone has power adequate to bruise it; because the hand has not energies sufficient, within itself, to resist effectually both the stone and earth.--action cannot exist in bodies without re-action. a body that experiences an impulse, an attraction, or a pressure of any kind, if it resists, clearly demonstrates by such resistance that it re-acts; from whence it follows, there is a concealed force, called by these philosophers _vis inertia_, that displays itself against another force; and this clearly demonstrates, that this inert force is capable of both acting and re-acting. in short, it will be found, on close investigation, that those powers which are called _dead_, and those which are termed _live_ or _moving_, are powers of the same kind; which only display themselves after a different manner. permit us to go a greater distance yet. may we not say, that in those bodies, or masses, of which their whole become evident from appearances to us to be at rest, there is notwithstanding, a continual action, and counter-action, constant efforts, uninterrupted or communicated force, and continued opposition? in short, a _nisus_, by which the constituting portions of these bodies press one upon another, mutually resisting each other, acting and re-acting incessantly? that this reciprocity of action, this simultaneous re-action, keeps them united, causes their particles to form a mass, a body, and a combination, which, viewed in its whole, has the appearance of complete rest, notwithstanding no one of its particles really ceases to be in motion for a single instant? these collective masses appear to be at rest, simply by the equality of the motion--by the responsory impulse of the powers acting in them. thus it appears that bodies enjoying perfect repose, really receive, whether upon their surface, or in their interior, a continual communicated force, from those bodies by which they are either surrounded or penetrated, dilated or contracted, rarified or condensed: in fact, from those which compose them; whereby their particles are incessantly acting and re-acting, or in continual motion, the effects of which are displayed by extraordinary changes. thus heat rarifies and dilates metals, which is evidence deducible that a bar of iron, from the change of the atmosphere alone, must be in continual motion; that there is not a single particle in it that can be said to enjoy rest even for a single moment. in those hard bodies, indeed, the particles of which are in actual contact, and which are closely united, how is it possible to conceive, that air, cold, or heat, can act upon one of these particles, even exteriorly, without the motion being communicated to those which are most intimate and minute in their union? without motion, how should we be able to comprehend the manner in which our sense of smelling is affected, by emanations escaping from the most solid bodies, of which all the particles appear to be at perfect rest? how could we, even by the assistance of a telescope, see the most distant stars, if there was not a progressive motion of light from these stars to the retina of our eye? observation and reflection ought to convince us, that every thing in nature is in continual motion--that there is not a single part, however small, that enjoys repose--that nature acts in all--that she would cease to be nature if she did not act. practical knowledge teaches us, that without unceasing motion, nothing could be preserved--nothing could be produced--nothing could act in this nature. thus the idea of nature necessarily includes that of motion. but it will be asked, and not a little triumphantly, from whence did she derive her motion? our reply is, we know not, neither do they--that _we_ never shall, that _they_ never will. it is a secret hidden from us, concealed from them, by the most impenetrable veil. we also reply, that it is fair to infer, unless they can logically prove to the contrary, that it is in herself, since she is the great whole, out of which nothing can exist. we say this motion is a manner of existence, that flows, necessarily, out of the nature of matter; that matter moves by its own peculiar energies; that its motion is to be attributed to the force which is inherent in itself; that the variety of motion, and the phenomena which result, proceed from the diversity of the properties--of the qualities--of the combinations, which are originally found in the primitive matter, of which nature is the assemblage. natural philosophers, for the most part, have regarded as inanimate, or as deprived of the faculty of motion, those bodies which are only moved by the intervention of some agent or exterior cause; they have considered themselves justified in concluding, that the matter which forms these bodies is perfectly inert in its nature. they have not forsaken this error, although they must have observed, that whenever a body is left to itself, or disengaged from those obstructions which oppose themselves to its descent, it has a tendency to fall or to approach the centre of the earth, by a motion uniformly accelerated; they have rather chosen to suppose a visionary exterior cause, of which they themselves had but an imperfect idea, than admit that these bodies held their motion from their own peculiar nature. these philosophers, also, notwithstanding they saw above them an infinite number of globes that moved with great rapidity round a common centre, still adhered to their favourite opinions; and never ceased to suppose some whimsical causes for these movements, until the immortal newton clearly demonstrated that it was the effect of the gravitation of these celestial bodies towards each other. experimental philosophers, however, and amongst them the great newton himself, have held the cause of gravitation as inexplicable. notwithstanding the great weight of this authority, it appears manifest that it may be deduced from the motion of matter, by which bodies are diversely determined. gravitation is nothing more than a mode of moving--a tendency towards a centre: to speak strictly, all motion is relative gravitation; since that which falls relatively to us, rises, with relation to other bodies. from this it follows, that every motion in our microcosm is the effect of gravitation; seeing that there is not in the universe either top or bottom, nor any absolute centre. it should appear, that the weight of bodies depends on their configuration, as well external as internal, which gives them that form of action which is called gravitation. thus, for instance, a piece of lead, spherically formed, falls quickly and direct: reduce this ball into very thin plates, it will be sustained in the air for a much longer time: apply to it the action of fire, this lead will rise in the atmosphere: here, then, the same metal, variously modified, has very different modes of action. a very simple observation would have sufficed to make the philosophers, antecedent to newton, feel the inadequateness of the causes they admitted to operate with such powerful effect. they had a sufficiency to convince themselves, in the collision of two bodies, which they could contemplate, and in the known laws of that motion, which these always communicate by reason of their greater or less compactness; from whence they ought to have inferred, that the density of _subtle_ or _ethereal_ matter, being considerably less than that of the planets, it could only communicate to them a very feeble motion, quite insufficient to produce that velocity of action, of which they could not possibly avoid being the witnesses. if nature had been viewed uninfluenced by prejudice, they must have been long since convinced that matter acts by its own peculiar activity; that it needs no exterior communicative force to set it in motion. they might have perceived that whenever mixed bodies were placed in a situation to act on each other, motion was instantly excited; and that these mixtures acted with a force capable of producing the most surprising results. if particles of iron, sulphur, and water be mixed together, these bodies thus capacitated to act on each other, are heated by degrees, and ultimately produce a violent combustion. if flour be wetted with water, and the mixture closed up, it will be found, after some lapse of time, (by the aid of a microscope) to have produced organized beings that enjoy life, of which the water and the flour were believed incapable: it is thus that inanimate matter can pass into life, or animate matter, which is in itself only an assemblage of motion. reasoning from analogy, which the philosophers of the present day do not hold incompatible, the production of a man, independent of the ordinary means, would not be more astonishing than that of an insect with flour and water. fermentation and putrid substances, evidently produce living animals. we have here the principle; with proper materials, principles can always be brought into action. that generation which is styled _uncertain_ is only so for those who do not reflect, or who do not permit themselves, attentively, to observe the operations of nature. the generative of motion, and its developement, as well as the energy of matter, may be seen everywhere; more particularly in those unitions in which fire, air, and water, find themselves combined. these elements, or rather these mixed bodies, are the most volatile, the most fugitive of beings; nevertheless in the hands of nature, they are the essential agents employed to produce the most striking phenomena. to these we must ascribe the effects of thunder, the eruption of volcanoes, earthquakes, &c. science offers to our consideration an agent of astonishing force, in gunpowder, the instant it comes in contact with fire. in short, the most terrible effects result from the combination of matter, which is generally believed to be dead and inert. these facts prove, beyond a doubt, that motion is produced, is augmented, is accelerated in matter, without the help of any exterior agent: therefore it is reasonable to conclude that motion is the necessary consequence of immutable laws, resulting from the essence, from the properties existing in the different elements, and the various combinations of these elements. are we not justified, then, in concluding, from these precedents, that there may be an infinity of other combinations, with which we are unacquainted, competent to produce a great variety of motion in matter, without being under the necessity of having recourse, for the explanation, to agents who are more difficult to comprehend than even the effects which are attributed to them? had man but paid proper attention to what passed under his review, he would not have sought out of nature, a power distinguished from herself, to set her in action, and without which he believes she cannot move. if, indeed, by nature is meant a heap of dead matter, destitute of peculiar qualities purely passive, we must unquestionably seek out of this nature the principle of her motion. but if by nature be understood, what it really is, a whole, of which the numerous parts are endowed with various properties, which oblige them to act according to these properties; which are in a perpetual ternateness of action and reaction; which press, which gravitate towards a common center, whilst others depart from and fly off towards the periphery, or circumference; which attract and repel; which by continual approximation and constant collision, produce and decompose all the bodies we behold; then, i say, there is no necessity to have recourse to supernatural powers, to account for the formation of things, and those extraordinary appearances which are the result of motion. those who admit a cause exterior to matter, are obliged to believe that this cause produced all the motion by which matter is agitated in giving it existence. this belief rests on another, namely, that matter could begin to exist; an hypothesis that, until this moment, has never been satisfactorily demonstrated. to produce from nothing, or the creation, is a term that cannot give us the least idea of the formation of the universe; it presents no sense, upon which the mind can rely. in fact, the human mind is not adequate to conceive a moment of non-existence, or when all shall have passed away; even admitting this to be a truth, it is no truth for us, because by the very nature of our organization, we cannot admit positions as facts, of which no evidence can be adduced that has relation to our senses; we may, indeed, consent to believe it, because others say it; but will any rational being be satisfied with such an admission? can any moral good spring from such blind assurance? is it consistent with sound doctrine, with philosophy, or with reason? do we, in fact, pay any respect to the intellectual powers of another, when we say to him, "i will believe this, because in all the attempts you have ventured, for the purpose of proving what you say, you have entirely failed; and have been at last obliged to acknowledge you know nothing about the matter?" what moral reliance ought we to have on such people? hypothesis may succeed hypothesis; system may destroy system: a new set of ideas may overturn the ideas of a former day. other gallileos may be condemned to death--other newtons may arise--we may reason--argue--dispute--quarrel--punish and destroy: nay, we may even exterminate those who differ from us in opinion; but when we have done all this, we shall be obliged to fall back upon our original darkness--to confess, that that which has no relation with our senses, that which cannot manifest itself to us by some of the ordinary modes by which other things are manifested, has no existence for us--is not comprehensible by us--can never entirely remove our doubt--can never seize on our stedfast belief; seeing it is that of which we cannot form even a notion; in short, that it is that, which as long as we remain what we are, must be hidden from us by a veil, which no power, no faculty, no energy we possess, is able to remove. all who are not enslaved by prejudice agree to the truth of the position, that _nothing can be made of nothing_. many theologians have acknowledged nature to be an active whole. almost all the ancient philosophers were agreed to regard the world as eternal. ocellus lucanus, speaking of the universe, says, "_it has always been, and it always will be_." vatable and grotius assure us, that to render the hebrew phrase in the first chapter of genesis correctly, we must say, "_when god made heaven and earth, matter was without form._" if this be true, and every hebraist can judge for himself, then the word which has been rendered _created_, means only to fashion, form, arrange. we know that the greek words _create_ and _form_, have always indicated the same thing. according to st. jerome, _creare_ has the same meaning as _condere_, to found, to build. the bible does not anywhere say in a clear manner, that the world was made of nothing. tertullian and the father petau both admit, that "_this is a truth established more by reason than by authority._" st. justin seems to have contemplated matter as eternal, since he commends plato for having said, that "_god, in the creation of the world, only gave impulse to matter, and fashioned it._" burnet and pythagoras were entirely of this opinion, and even our church service may be adduced in support; for although it admits by implication a beginning, it expressly denies an end: "_as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end._" it is easy to perceive that that which cannot cease to exist, must have always been. motion becomes still more obscure, when creation, or the formation of matter, is attributed to a spiritual being; that is to say, to a being which has no analogy, no point of contact, with it--to a being which has neither extent or parts, and cannot, therefore, be susceptible of motion, as we understand the term; this being only the change of one body, relatively to another body, in which the body moved presents successively different parts to different points of space. moreover, as all the world are nearly agreed that matter can never be totally annihilated, or cease to exist; by what reasoning, i would ask, do they comprehend--how understand--that that which cannot cease to be, could ever have had a beginning? if, therefore, it be asked, whence came matter? it is very reasonable to say it has always existed. if it be inquired, whence proceeds the motion that agitates matter? the same reasoning furnishes the answer; namely, that as motion is coeval with matter, it must have existed from all eternity, seeing that motion is the necessary consequence of its existence--of its essence--of its primitive properties, such as its extent, its gravity, its impenetrability, its figure, &c. by virtue of these essential constituent properties, inherent in all matter, and without which it is impossible to form an idea of it, the various matter of which the universe is composed must from all eternity have pressed against, each other--have gravitated towards a center--have clashed--have come in contact--have been attracted--have been repelled--have been combined--have been separated: in short, must have acted and moved according to the essence and energy peculiar to each genus, and to each of its combinations. existence supposes properties in the thing that exists: whenever it has properties, its mode of action must necessarily flow from those properties which constitute, its mode of being. thus, when a body is ponderous, it must fall; when it falls, it must come in collision with the bodies it meets in its descent; when it is dense, when it is solid, it must, by reason of this density, communicate motion to the bodies with which it clashes; when it has analogy, when it has affinity with these bodies, it must be attracted, must be united with them; when it has no point of analogy with them, it must be repulsed. from which it may be fairly inferred, that in supposing, as we are under the necessity of doing, the existence of matter, we must suppose it to have some kind of properties; from which its motion, or modes of action, must necessarily flow. to form the universe, descartes asked but matter and motion: a diversity of matter sufficed for him; variety of motion was the consequence of its existence, of its essence, of its properties: its different modes of action would be the necessary consequence of its different modes of being. matter without properties would be a mere nothing; therefore, as soon as matter exists, it must act; as soon as it is various, it must act variously; if it cannot commence to exist, it must have existed from all eternity; if it has always existed, it can never cease to be: if it can never cease to be, it can never cease to act by its own energy. motion is a manner of being, which matter derives from its peculiar existence. the existence, then, of matter is a fact: the existence of motion is another fact. our visual organs point out to us matter with different essences, forming a variety of combinations, endowed with various properties that discriminate them. indeed, it is a palpable error to believe that matter is a homogeneous body, of which the parts differ from each other only by their various modifications. among the individuals of the same species that come under our notice, no two resemble exactly; and it is therefore evident that the difference of situation alone will, necessarily, carry a diversity more or less sensible, not only in the modifications, but also in the essence, in the properties, in the entire system of beings. this truth was well understood by the profound and subtle leibnitz. if this principle be properly digested, and experience seems always to produce evidence of its truth, we must be convinced that the matter or primitive elements which enter into the composition of bodies, are not of the same nature, and consequently, can neither have the same properties, nor the same modifications; and if so, they cannot have the same mode of moving and acting. their activity or motion, already different, can be diversified to infinity, augmented or diminished, accelerated or retarded, according to the combinations, the proportions, the pressure, the density, the volume of the matter, that enters their composition. the endless variety to be produced, will need no further illustration than the commonest book of arithmetic furnishes us, where it will be found, that to ring all the changes that can be produced on twelve bells only, would occupy a space of more than ninety-one years. the element of fire is visibly more active and more inconstant than that of earth. this is more solid and ponderous than fire, air, or water. according to the quantity of these elements, which enter the composition of bodies, these must act diversely, and their motion must in some measure partake the motion peculiar to each of their constituent parts. elementary fire appears to be in nature the principle of activity; it may be compared to a fruitful leaven, that puts the mass into fermentation and gives it life. earth appears to be the principle of solidity in bodies, from its impenetrability, and by the firm coherence of its parts. water is a medium, to facilitate the combination of bodies, into which it enters itself, as a constituent part. air is a fluid whose business it seems to be, to furnish the other elements with the space requisite to expand, to exercise their motion, and which is, moreover, found proper to combine with them. these elements, which our senses never discover in a pure state--which are continually and reciprocally set in motion by each other--which are always acting and re-acting, combining and separating, attracting and repelling--are sufficient to explain to us the formation of all the beings we behold. their motion is uninterruptedly and reciprocally produced from each other; they are alternately causes and effects. thus, they form a vast circle of generation and destruction--of combination and decomposition, which, it is quite reasonable to suppose, could never have had a beginning, and which, consequently can never have an end. in short, nature is but an immense chain of causes and effects, which unceasingly flow from each other. the motion of particular beings depends on the general motion, which is itself maintained by individual motion. this is strengthened or weakened, accelerated or retarded, simplified or complicated, procreated or destroyed, by a variety of combinations and circumstances, which every moment change the directions, the tendency, the modes of existing, and of acting, of the different beings that receive its impulse. if it were true, as has been asserted by some philosophers, that every thing has a tendency to form one unique or single mass, and in that unique mass the instant should arrive when all was in _nisus_, all would eternally remain in this state; to all eternity there would be no more than one being and one effort: this would be eternal and universal death. if we desire to go beyond this, to find the principle of action in matter, to trace the origin of things, it is for ever to fall back upon difficulties; it is absolutely to abridge the evidence of our senses; by which only we can understand, by which alone we can judge of the causes acting upon them, or the impulse by which they are set in action. let us, therefore, content ourselves with saying what is supported by our experience, and by all the evidence we are capable of understanding; against the truth of which not a shadow of proof, such as our reason can admit, has ever been adduced--which has been maintained by philosophers in every age--which theologians themselves have not denied, but which many of them have upheld; namely, that _matter always existed; that it moves by virtue of its essence; that all the phenomena of nature is ascribable to the diversified motion of the variety of matter she contains; and which, like the phoenix, is continually regenerating out of its own ashes._ chap. iii. _of matter.--of its various combinations.--of its diversified motion, or of the course of nature._ we know nothing of the elements of bodies, but we know some of their properties or qualities; and we distinguish their various matter by the effect or change produced on our senses; that is to say, by the variety of motion their presence excites in us. in consequence, we discover in them, extent, mobility, divisibility, solidity, gravity, and inert force. from these general and primitive properties flow a number of others, such as density, figure, colour, ponderosity, &c. thus, relatively to us, matter is all that affects our senses in any manner whatever; the various properties we attribute to matter, by which we discriminate its diversity, are founded on the different impressions we receive on the changes they produce in us. a satisfactory definition of matter has not yet been given. man, deceived and led astray by his prejudices, formed but vague, superficial, and imperfect notions concerning it. he looked upon it as an unique being, gross and passive, incapable of either moving by itself, of forming combinations, or of producing any thing by its own energies. instead of this unintelligible jargon, he ought to have contemplated it as a _genus_ of beings, of which the individuals, although they might possess some common properties, such as extent, divisibility, figure, &c. should not, however, be all ranked in the same class, nor comprised under the same general denomination. an example will serve more fully to explain what we have asserted, throw its correctness into light, and facilitate the application. the properties common to all matter, are extent, divisibility, impenetrability, figure, mobility, or the property of being moved in mass. fire, beside these general properties, common to all matter, enjoys also the peculiar property of being put into activity by a motion that produces on our organs of feeling the sensation of heat; and by another, that communicates to our visual organs the sensation of light. iron, in common with matter in general, has extent and figure; is divisible, and moveable in mass: if fire be combined with it in a certain proportion, the iron acquires two new properties; namely, those of exciting in us similar sensations of heat and light, which were excited by the element of fire, but which the iron had not, before its combination with the igneous matter. these distinguishing properties are inseparable from matter, and the phenomena that result, may, in the strictest sense of the word, be said to result necessarily. if we contemplate a little the paths of nature--if, for a time, we trace the beings in this nature, under the different states through which, by reason of their properties, they are compelled to pass; we shall discover, that it is to motion, and motion only, that is to be ascribed all the changes, all the combinations, all the forms, in short, all the various modifications of matter. that it is by motion every thing that exists is produced, experiences change, expands, and is destroyed. it is motion that alters the aspect of beings; that adds to, or takes away from their properties; which obliges each of them, by a consequence of its nature, after having occupied a certain rank or order, to quit it, to occupy another, and to contribute to the generation, maintenance, and decomposition of other beings, totally different in their bulk, rank, and essence. in what experimental philosophers have styled the three orders of nature, that is to say, the _mineral_, the _vegetable_, and _animal_ worlds, they have established, by the aid of motion, a transmigration, an exchange, a continual circulation in the particles of matter. nature has occasion in one place, for those particles which, for a time, she has placed in another. these particles, after having, by particular combinations, constituted beings endued with peculiar essences, with specific properties, with determinate modes of action, dissolve and separate with more or less facility; and combining in a new manner, they form new beings. the attentive observer sees this law execute itself, in a manner more or less prominent, through all the beings by which he is surrounded. he sees nature full of _erratic germe_, some of which expand themselves, whilst others wait until motion has placed them in their proper situation, in suitable wombs or matrices, in the necessary circumstances, to unfold, to increase, to render them more perceptible by the addition of other substances of matter analogous to their primitive being. in all this we see nothing but the effect of motion, necessarily guided, modified, accelerated or slackened, strengthened or weakened, by reason of the various properties that beings successively acquire and lose; which, every moment, infallibly produces alterations in bodies more or less marked. indeed, these bodies cannot be, strictly speaking, the same in any two successive moments of their existence; they must, every instant, either acquire or lose: in short, they are obliged to undergo continual variations in their essences, in their properties, in their energies, in their masses, in their qualities, in their mode of existence. animals, after they have been expanded in, and brought out of, the wombs that are suitable to the elements of their machine, enlarge, strengthen, acquire new properties, new energies, new faculties; either by deriving nourishment from plants analogous to their being, or by devouring other animals whose substance is suitable to their preservation; that is to say, to repair the continual deperdition or loss of some portion of their own substance, that is disengaging itself every instant. these same animals are nourished, preserved, strengthened, and enlarged, by the aid of air, water, earth, and fire. deprived of air, or of the fluid that surrounds them, that presses on them, that penetrates them, that gives them their elasticity, they presently cease to live. water, combined with this air, enters into their whole mechanism of which it facilitates the motion. earth serves them for a basis, by giving solidity to their texture: it is conveyed by air and water, which carry it to those parts of the body with which it can combine. fire itself, disguised and enveloped under an infinity of forms, continually received into the animal, procures him heat, continues him in life, renders him capable of exercising his functions. the aliments, charged with these various principles, entering into the stomach, re-establish the nervous system, and restore, by their activity, and the elements which compose them, the machine which begins to languish, to be depressed, by the loss it has sustained. forthwith the animal experiences a change in his whole system; he has more energy, more activity; he feels more courage; displays more gaiety; he acts, he moves, he thinks, after a different manner; all his faculties are exercised with more ease. this igneous matter, so congenial to generation--so restorative in its effect--so necessary to life, was the jupiter of the ancients: from all that has preceded, it is clear, that what are called the elements, or primitive parts of matter, variously combined, are, by the agency of motion, continually united to, and assimilated with, the substance of animals--that they visibly modify their being--have an evident influence over their actions, that is to say, upon the motion they undergo, whether visible or concealed. the same elements, which under certain circumstances serve to nourish, to strengthen, to maintain the animal, become, under others, the principles of his weakness, the instruments of his dissolution--of his death: they work his destruction, whenever they are not in that just proportion which renders them proper to maintain his existence: thus, when water becomes too abundant in the body of the animal, it enervates him, it relaxes the fibres, and impedes the necessary action of the other elements: thus, fire admitted in excess, excites in him disorderly motion destructive of his machine: thus, air, charged with principles not analogous to his mechanism, brings upon him dangerous diseases and contagion. in fine, the aliments modified after certain modes, in the room of nourishing, destroy the animal, and conduce to his ruin: the animal is preserved no longer than these substances are analogous to his system. they ruin him when they want that just equilibrium that renders them suitable to maintain his existence. plants that serve to nourish and restore animals are themselves nourished by earth; they expand on its bosom, enlarge and strengthen at its expense, continually receiving into their texture, by their roots and their pores, water, air, and igneous matter: water visibly reanimates them whenever their vegetation or genus of life languishes; it conveys to them those analogous principles by which they are enabled to reach perfection: air is requisite to their expansion, and furnishes them with water, earth, and the igneous matter with which it is charged. by these means they receive more or less of the inflammable matter; the different proportions of these principles, their numerous combinations, from whence result an infinity of properties, a variety of forms, constitute the various families and classes into which botanists have distributed plants: it is thus we see the cedar and the hyssop develop their growth; the one rises to the clouds, the other creep humbly on the earth. thus, by degrees, from an acorn springs the majestic oak, accumulating, with time, its numerous branches, and overshadowing us with its foliage. thus, a grain of corn, after having drawn its own nourishment from the juices of the earth, serves, in its turn, for the nourishment of man, into whose system it conveys the elements or principles by which it has been itself expanded, combined, and modified in such a manner, as to render this vegetable proper to assimilate and unite with the human frame; that is to say, with the fluids and solids of which it is composed. the same elements, the same principles, are found in the formation of minerals, as well as in their decomposition, whether natural or artificial. we find that earth, diversely modified, wrought, and combined, serves to increase their bulk, and give them more or less density and gravity. air and water contribute to make their particles cohere; the igneous matter, or inflammable principle, tinges them with colour, and sometimes plainly indicates its presence, by the brilliant scintillation which motion elicits from them. these stones and metals, these bodies, so compact and solid, are disunited, are destroyed, by the agency of air, water, and fire; which the most ordinary analysis is sufficient to prove, as well as a multitude of experience, to which our eyes are the daily evidence. animals, plants, and minerals, after a lapse of time, give back to nature; that is to say, to the general mass of things, to the universal magazine, the elements, or principles, which they have borrowed: the earth retakes that portion of the body of which it formed the basis and the solidity; the air charges itself with these parts, that are, analogous to it, and with those particles which are light and subtle; water carries off that which is suitable to liquescency; fire, bursting its chains, disengages itself, and rushes into new combinations with other bodies. the elementary particles of the animal, being thus dissolved, disunited, and dispersed; assume new activity, and form new combinations: thus, they serve to nourish, to preserve, or destroy new beings; among others, plants, which arrived at their maturity, nourish and preserve new animals; these in their turn yielding to the same fate as the first. such is the constant, the invariable course, of nature; such is the eternal circle of mutation, which all that exists is obliged to describe. it is thus motion generates, preserves for a time, and successively, destroys, one part of the universe by the other; whilst the sum of existence remains eternally the same. nature, by its combinations, produces suns, which place themselves in the centre of so many systems: she forms planets, which, by their peculiar essence, gravitate and describe their revolutions round these suns: by degrees the motion is changed altogether, and becomes eccentric: perhaps the day may arrive when these wondrous masses will disperse, of which man, in the short space of his existence, can only have a faint and transient glimpse. it is clear, then, that the continual motion inherent in matter, changes and destroys all beings; every instant depriving them of some of their properties, to substitute others: it is motion, which, in thus changing their actual essence, changes also their order, their direction, their tendency, and the laws which regulate their mode of acting and being: from the stone formed in the bowels of the earth, by the intimate combination and close coherence of similar and analogous particles, to the sun, that vast reservoir of igneous particles, which sheds torrents of light over the firmament; from the benumbed oyster, to the thoughtful and active man; we see an uninterrupted progression, a perpetual chain of motion and combination; from which is produced, beings that only differ from each other by the variety of their elementary matter--by the numerous combinations of these elements, from whence springs modes of action and existence, diversified to infinity. in generation, in nutrition, in preservation, we see nothing more than matter, variously combined, of which each has its peculiar motion, regulated by fixed and determinate laws, which oblige them to submit to necessary changes. we shall find, in the formation, in the growth, in the instantaneous life, of animals, vegetables, and minerals, nothing but matter; which combining, accumulating, aggregating, and expanding by degrees, forms beings, who are either feeling, living, vegetating, or else destitute of these faculties; which, having existed some time under one particular form, are obliged to contribute by their ruin to the production of other forms. thus, to speak strictly, nothing in nature is either born, or dies, according to the common acceptation of those terms. this truth was felt by many of the ancient philosophers. plato says, that according to tradition, "the living were born of the dead, the same as the dead did come of the living; and that this is the constant routine of nature." he adds from himself, "who knows, if to live, be not to die; and if to die, be not to live?" this was the doctrine of pythagoras, a man of great talent and no less note. empedocles asserts, "there is neither birth nor death, for any mortal; but only a combination, and a separation of that which was combined, and that this is what amongst men they call birth, and death." again he remarks, "those are infants, or short-sighted persons, with very contracted understandings, who imagine any thing is born, which did not exist before, or that any thing can die or perish totally." chap. iv. _laws of motion, common to every being of nature.--attraction and repulsion.--inert force.--necessity._ man is never surprised at those effects, of which he thinks he knows the cause; he believes he does know the cause, as soon as he sees them act in an uniform and determinate manner, or when the motion excited is simple: the descent of a stone, that falls by its own peculiar weight, is an object of contemplation to the philosopher only; to whom the mode by which the most immediate causes act, and the most simple motion, are no less impenetrable mysteries than the most complex motion, and the manner by which the most complicated causes give impulse. the uninformed are seldom tempted either to examine the effects which are familiar to them, or to recur to first principles. they think they see nothing in the descent of a stone, which ought to elicit their surprise, or become the object of their research: it requires a newton to feel that the descent of heavy bodies is a phenomenon, worthy his whole, his most serious attention; it requires the sagacity of a profound experimental philosopher, to discover the laws by which heavy bodies fall, by which they communicate to others their peculiar motion. in short, the mind that is most practised in philosophical observation, has frequently the chagrin to find, that the most simple and most common effects escape all his researches, and remain inexplicable to him. when any extraordinary, any unusual, effect is produced, to which our eyes have not been accustomed; or when we are ignorant of the energies of the cause, the action of which so forcibly strikes our senses, we are tempted to meditate upon it, and take it into our consideration. the european, accustomed to the use of gunpowder, passes it by, without thinking much of its extraordinary energies; the workman, who labours to manufacture it, finds nothing marvellous in its properties, because he daily handles the matter that forms its composition. the american, to whom this powder was a stranger, who had never beheld its operation, looked upon it as a divine power, and its energies as supernatural. the uninformed, who are ignorant of the true cause of thunder, contemplate it as the instrument of divine vengeance. the experimental philosopher considers it as the effect of the electric matter, which, nevertheless, is itself a cause which he is very far from perfectly understanding.--it required the keen, the penetrating mind of a franklin, to throw light on the nature of this subtle fluid--to develop the means by which its effects might be rendered harmless--to turn to useful purposes, a phenomenon that made the ignorant tremble--that filled their minds with terror, their hearts with dismay, as indicating the anger of the gods: impressed with this idea, they prostrated themselves, they sacrificed to jupiter, to deprecate his wrath. be this as it may, whenever we see a cause act, we look upon its effect as natural: when this cause becomes familiar to the sight, when we are accustomed to it, we think we understand it, and its effects surprise us no longer. whenever any unusual effect is perceived, without our discovering the cause, the mind sets to work, becomes uneasy; this uneasiness increases in proportion to its extent: as soon as it is believed to threaten our preservation, we become completely agitated; we seek after the cause with an earnestness proportioned to our alarm; our perplexity augments in a ratio equivalent to the persuasion we are under: how essentially requisite it is, we should become acquainted with the cause that has affected us in so lively a manner. as it frequently happens that our senses can teach us nothing respecting this cause which so deeply interests us--which we seek with so much ardour, we have recourse to our imagination; this, disturbed with alarm, enervated by fear, becomes a suspicious, a fallacious guide: we create chimeras, fictitious causes, to whom we give the credit, to whom we ascribe the honour of those phenomena by which we have been so much alarmed. it is to this disposition of the human mind that must be attributed, as will be seen in the sequel, the religious errors of man, who, despairing of the capacity to trace the natural causes of those perplexing phenomena to which he was the witness, and sometimes the victim, created in his brain (heated with terror) imaginary causes, which have become to him a source of the most extravagant folly. in nature, however, there can be only natural causes and effects; all motion excited in this nature, follows constant and necessary laws: the natural operations, to the knowledge of which we are competent, of which we are in a capacity to judge, are of themselves sufficient to enable us to discover those which elude our sight; we can at least judge of them by analogy. if we study nature with attention, the modes of action which she displays to our senses will teach us not to be disconcerted by those which she refuses to discover. those causes which are the most remote from their effects, unquestionably act by intermediate causes; by the aid of these, we can frequently trace out the first. if in the chain of these causes we sometimes meet with obstacles that oppose themselves to our research, we ought to endeavour by patience and diligence to overcome them; when it so happens we cannot surmount the difficulties that occur, we still are never justified in concluding the chain to be broken, or that the cause which acts is super-natural. let us, then, be content with an honest avowal, that nature contains resources of which we are ignorant; but never let us substitute phantoms, fictions, or imaginary causes, senseless terms, for those causes which escape our research; because, by such means we only confirm ourselves in ignorance, impede our enquiries, and obstinately remain in error. in spite of our ignorance with respect to the meanderings of nature, (for of the essence of being, of their properties, their elements, their combinations, their proportions, we yet know the simple and general laws, according to which bodies move;) we see clearly, that some of these laws, common to all beings, never contradict themselves; although, on some occasions, they appear to vary, we are frequently competent to discover that the cause becoming complex, from combination with other causes, either impedes or prevents its mode of action being such as in its primitive state we had a right to expect. we know that active, igneous matter, applied to gunpowder, must necessarily cause it to explode: whenever this effect does not follow the combination of the igneous matter with the gunpowder--whenever our senses do not give us evidence of the fact, we are justified in concluding, either that the powder is damp, or that it is united with some other substance that counteracts its explosion. we know that all the actions of man have a tendency to render him happy: whenever, therefore, we see him labouring to injure or destroy himself, it is just to infer that he is moved by some cause opposed to his natural tendency; that he is deceived by some prejudice; that, for want of experience, he is blind to consequences: that he does not see whither his actions will lead him. if the motion excited in beings was always simple; if their actions did not blend and combine with each other, it would be easy to know, and we should be assured, in the first instance, of the effect a cause would produce. i know that a stone, when descending, ought to describe a perpendicular: i also know, that if it encounters any other body which changes its course, it is obliged to take an oblique direction, but if its fall be interrupted by several contrary powers, which act upon it alternately, i am no longer competent to determine what line it will describe. it may be a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, &c. this will depend on the impulse, it receives, and the powers by which it is impelled. the most complex motion, however, is never more than the result of simple motion combined: therefore as soon as we know the general laws of beings and their action, we have only to decompose, to analyse them, in order to discover those of which they are combined; experience teaches us the effects we are to expect. thus it is clear, the simplest motion causes that necessary junction of different matter, of which all bodies are composed: that matter, varied in its essence, in its properties, in its combinations, has each its several modes of action or motion, peculiar to itself; the whole motion of a body is consequently the sum total of each particular motion that is combined. amongst the matter we behold, some is constantly disposed to unite, whilst other is incapable of union; that which is suitable to unite, forms combinations, more or less intimate, possessing more or less durability: that is to say, with more or less capacity to preserve their union, to resist dissolution. those bodies which are called solids, receive into their composition a great number of homogeneous, similar, and analogous particles, disposed to unite themselves with energies conspiring or tending to the same point. the primitive beings, or elements of bodies, have need of supports, of props; that is to say, of the presence of each other, for the purpose of preserving themselves; of acquiring consistence or solidity: a truth, which applies with equal uniformity to what is called _physical_, as to what is termed _moral_. it is upon this disposition in matter and bodies, with relation to each other, that is founded those modes of action which natural philosophers designate by the terms _attraction, repulsion, sympathy, antipathy, affinities, relations_; that moralists describe under the names of _love, hatred, friendship, aversion_. man, like all the beings in nature, experiences the impulse of attraction and repulsion; the motion excited in him differing from that of other beings, only, because it is more concealed, and frequently so hidden, that neither the causes which excite it, nor their mode of action are known. this system of attraction and repulsion is very ancient, although it required a newton to develop it. that love, to which the ancients attributed the unfolding, or disentanglement of chaos, appears to have been nothing more than a personification of the principle of attraction. all their allegories and fables upon chaos, evidently indicate nothing more than the accord or union that exists between analogous and homogeneous substances; from whence resulted the existence of the universe: whilst discord or repulsion, which they called sois, was the cause of dissolution, confusion, and disorder; there can scarcely remain a doubt, but this was the origin of the doctrines of the two principles. according to diogenes laertius, the philosopher, empedocles, asserted, that "_there is a kind of affection by which the elements unite themselves; and a sort of discord, by which they separate or remove themselves._" however it may be, it is sufficient for us to know that by an invariable law, certain bodies are disposed to unite with more or less facility; whilst others cannot combine or unite themselves: water combines itself readily with salt, but will not blend with oil. some combinations are very strong, cohering with great force, as metals; others are extremely feeble, their cohesion slight and easily decomposed, as in fugitive colours. some bodies, incapable of uniting by themselves, become susceptible of union by the agency of other bodies, which serve for common bonds or mediums. thus, oil and water, naturally heterogeneous, combine and make soap, by the intervention of alkaline salt. from matter diversely combined, in proportions varied almost to infinity, result all physical and moral bodies; the properties and qualities of which are essentially different, with modes of action more or less complex: which are either understood with facility, or difficult of comprehension, according to the elements or matter that has entered into their composition, and the various modifications this matter has undergone. it is thus, from the reciprocity of their attraction, the primitive imperceptible particles of matter, which constitute bodies, become perceptible, form compound substances, aggregate masses; by the union of similar and analogous matter, whose essences fit them to cohere. the same bodies are dissolved, their union broken, whenever they undergo the action of matter inimical to their junction. thus by degrees are formed, plants, metals, animals, men; each grows, expands, and increases in its own system or order; sustaining itself in its respective existence, by the continual attraction of analogous matter; to which it becomes united, and by which it is preserved and strengthened. thus, certain aliments become fit for the sustenance of man, whilst others destroy his existence: some are pleasant to him, strengthen his habit; others are repugnant to him, weaken his system: in short, never to separate physical from moral laws, it is thus that men, mutually attracted to each other by their reciprocal wants, form those unions which we designate by the terms, marriage, families, societies, friendships, connexions: it is thus that virtue strengthens and consolidates them; that vice relaxes or totally dissolves them. of whatever nature may be the combination of beings, their motion has always one direction or tendency: without direction we could not have any idea of motion: this direction is regulated by the properties of each being; as soon as they have any given properties, they necessarily act in obedience to them: that is to say, they follow the law invariably determined by these same properties; which, of themselves, constitute the being such as he is found, and settle his mode of action, which is always the consequence of his manner of existence. but what is the general direction, or common tendency, we see in all beings? what is the visible and known end of all their motion? it is to conserve their actual existence--to preserve themselves--to strengthen their several bodies--to attract that which is favorable to them--to repel that which is injurious them--to avoid that which can harm them--to resist impulsions contrary to their manner of existence, and to their natural tendency. to exist, is to experience the motion peculiar to a determinate essence: to conserve this existence, is to give and receive that motion from which results its maintenance:--it is to attract matter suitable to corroborate its being--to avoid that by which it may be either endangered or enfeebled. thus, all beings of which we have any knowledge, have a tendency to conserve themselves, each after its peculiar manner: the stone, by the firm adhesion of its particles, opposes resistance to its destruction. organized beings conserve themselves by more complicated means, but which are, nevertheless, calculated to maintain their existence against that by which it may be injured. man, both in his physical and in his moral capacity, is a living, feeling, thinking, active being; who, every instant of his duration, strives equally to avoid that which may be injurious, and to procure that which is pleasing to him, or that which is suitable to his mode of existence; all his actions tending solely to conserve himself. st. augustine admits this tendency in all whether organized or not. conservation, then, is the common point to which all the energies, all the powers, all the faculties of beings, seem continually directed. natural philosophers call this direction or tendency, self-gravitation: newton calls it inert force: moralists denominate it in man, self-love which is nothing more than the tendency he has to preserve himself--a desire of happiness--a love of his own welfare--a wish for pleasure--a promptitude in seizing on every thing that appears favourable to his conservation--a marked aversion to all that either disturbs his happiness, or menaces his existence--primitive sentiments, that are common to all beings of the human species; which all their faculties are continually striving to satisfy; which all their passions, their wills, their actions, have eternally for their object and their end. this self-gravitation, then, is clearly a necessary disposition in man, and in all other beings; which, by a variety means, contribute to the preservation of the existence they have received, as long as nothing deranges the order of their machine, or its primitive tendency. cause always produces effect; there can be no effect without cause. impulse is always followed by some motion, more or less sensible; by some change, more or less remarkable in the body which receives it. but motion, and its various modes of displaying itself, is, as has been already shewn, determined by the nature, the essence, the properties, the combinations of the beings acting. it must, then, be concluded that motion, or the modes by which beings act, arises from some cause; that as this cause is not able to move or act, but in conformity with the manner of its being or its essential properties, it must equally be concluded, that all the phenomena we perceive are necessary; that every being in nature, under the circumstances in which it is placed, and with the given properties it possesses, cannot act otherwise than it does. necessity is the constant and infallible relation of causes with their effects. fire consumes, of necessity, combustible matter plated within its circuit of action: man, by fatality, desires either that which really is, or appears to be serviceable to his welfare. nature, in all the extraordinary appearances she exhibits, necessarily acts after her own peculiar essence: all the beings she contains, necessarily act each after its own a individual nature: it is by motion that the whole has relation with its parts; and these parts with the whole: it is thus that in the general system every thing is connected: it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing, one from the other. if we reflect, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that every thing we see is necessary; that it cannot be otherwise than it is; that all the beings we behold, as well as those which escape our sight, act by invariable laws. according to these laws, heavy bodies fall--light bodies ascend--analogous substances attract each other--beings tend to preserve themselves--man cherishes himself; loves that which he thinks advantageous--detests that which he has an idea may prove unfavourable to him.--in fine, we are obliged to admit, there can be no perfectly independent energy--no separated cause--no detached action, in a nature where all the beings are in a reciprocity of action--who, without interruption, mutually impel and resist each other--who is herself nothing more than an eternal circle of motion, given and received according to necessary laws; which under the same given incidents, invariably produce the same effect. two examples will serve to throw the principle here laid down, into light--one shall be taken from physics, the other from morals. in a whirlwind of dust, raised by elemental force, confused as it appears to our eyes, in the most frightful tempest excited by contrary winds, when the waves roll high as mountains, there is not a single particle of dust, or drop of water, that has been placed by chance, that has not a cause for occupying the place where it is found; that does not, in the most rigorous sense of the word, act after the manner in which it ought to act; that is, according to its own peculiar essence, and that of the beings from whom it receives this communicated force. a geometrician exactly knew the different energies acting in each case, with the properties of the particles moved, could demonstrate that after the causes given, each particle acted precisely as it ought to act, and that it could not have acted otherwise than it did. in those terrible convulsions that sometimes agitate political societies, shake their foundations, and frequently produce the overthrow of an empire; there is not a single action, a single word, a single thought, a single will, a single passion in the agents, whether they act as destroyers, or as victims, that is not the necessary result of the causes operating; that does not act, as, of necessity, it must act, from the peculiar essence of the beings who give the impulse, and that of the agents who receive it, according to the situation these agents fill in the moral whirlwind. this could be evidently proved by an understanding capacitated to rate all the action and re-action, of the minds and bodies of those who contributed to the revolution. in fact, if all be connected in nature, if all motion be produced, the one from the other, notwithstanding their secret communications frequently elude our sight; we ought to feel convinced of this truth, that there is no cause, however minute, however remote, that does not sometimes produce the greatest and most immediate effects on man. it may, perhaps, be in the parched plains of lybia, that are amassed the first elements of a storm or tempest, which, borne by the winds, approach our climate, render our atmosphere dense, and thus operating on the temperament, may influence the passions of a man, whose circumstances shall have capacitated him to influence many others, who shall decide after his will the fate of many nations. man, in fact, finds himself in nature, and makes a part of it: he acts according to laws, which are appropriate to him; he receives in a manner more or less distinct, the action and impulse of the beings who surround him; who themselves act after laws that are peculiar to their essence. thus he is variously modified; but his actions are always the result of his own energy, and that of the beings who act upon him, and by whom he is modified. this is what gives such variety to his determinations--what generally produces such contradiction in his thoughts, his opinions, his will, his actions; in short, in that motion, whether concealed or visible, by which he is agitated. we shall have occasion, in the sequel, to place this truth, at present so much contested, in a clearer light: it will be sufficient for our purpose at present to prove, generally, that every thing in nature is necessary--that nothing to be found in it can act otherwise than it does. motion, alternately communicated and received, establishes the connection or relation between the different orders of beings: when they are in the sphere of reciprocal action, attraction approximates them; repulsion dissolves and separates them; the one strengthens and preserves them; the other enfeebles and destroys them. once combined, they have a tendency to conserve themselves in that mode of existence, by virtue of their _inert force_; in this they cannot succeed, because they are exposed to the continual influence of all other beings, who perpetually and successively act upon them; their change of form, their dissolution, is requisite to the preservation of nature herself: this is the sole end we are able to assign her--to which we see her tend without intermission--which she follows without interruption, by the destruction and reproduction of all subordinate beings, who are obliged to submit to her laws--to concur, by their mode of action, to the maintenance of her active existence, so essentially requisite to the great whole. it is thus each being is an individual, who, in the great family, performs his necessary portion of the general labour--who executes the unavoidable task assigned to him. all bodies act according to laws, inherent in their peculiar essence, without the capability to swerve, even for a single instant, from those according to which nature herself acts. this is the central power, to which all other powers, essences, and energies, are submitted: she regulates the motions of beings, by the necessity of her own peculiar essence: she makes them concur by various modes to the general plan: this appears to be nothing more than the life, action, and maintenance of the whole, by the continual change of its parts. this object she obtains, in removing them, one by the other; by that which establishes, and by that which destroys, the relation subsisting between them; by that which gives them, and that which deprives them of, their forms, combinations, proportions, and qualities, according to which they act for a time, after a given mode; these are afterwards taken from them, to make them act after a different manner. it is thus that nature makes them expand and change, grow and decline, augment and diminish, approximate and remove, forms and destroys them, according as she finds it requisite to maintain the whole; towards the conservation which this nature is herself essentially necessitated to have a tendency. this irresistible power, this universal necessity, this general energy, then, is only a consequence of the nature of things; by virtue of which every thing acts, without intermission, after constant and immutable laws: these laws not varying more for the whole than for the beings of which it is composed. nature is an active living whole, to which all its parts necessarily concur; of which, without their own knowledge, they maintain the activity, the life, and the existence. nature acts and exists necessarily: all that she contains, necessarily conspires to perpetuate her active existence. this is the decided opinion of plato, when he says, "_matter and necessity are the same thing; this necessity is the mother of the world._" in point of fact, we cannot go beyond this aphorism, matter acts, because it exists; and exists, to act. if it be enquired how, or for why, matter exists? we answer, we know not: but reasoning by analogy, of what we do not know by that which we do, we should be of opinion it exists necessarily, or because it contains within itself a sufficient reason for its existence. in supposing it to be created or produced by a being distinguished from it, or less known than itself, (which it may be, for any thing we know to the contrary,) we must still admit, that this being is necessary, and includes a sufficient reason for his own existence. we have not then removed any of the difficulty, we have not thrown a clearer light upon the subject, we have not advanced a single step; we have simply laid aside a being, of which we know some few of the properties, but of which we are still extremely ignorant, to have recourse to a power, of which it is utterly impossible we can, as long as we are men, form any distinct idea; of which, notwithstanding it may be a truth, we cannot, by any means we possess, demonstrate the existence. as, therefore, these must be at best but speculative points of belief, which each individual, by reason of its obscurity, may contemplate with different optics, under various aspects, they surely ought to be left free for each to judge after his own fashion: the hindoo can have no just cause of enmity against the christian for his faith: this has no moral right to question the mussulman upon his; the numerous sects of each of the various persuasions spread over the face of the earth, ought to make it a creed to look with an eye of complacency on the deviation of the others; and rest upon that great moral axiom, which is strictly conformable to nature, which contains the whole of man's happiness--"_do not unto another, that which do you not wish another should do unto you_;" for it is evident, according to their own doctrines, out of all the variety of systems, one only can be right. we shall see in the sequel, how much man's imagination labours to form an idea, of the energies of that nature he has personified, and distinguished from herself: in short, we shall examine some of the ridiculous and pernicious inventions, which, for want of understanding nature, have been imagined to impede her course, to suspend her eternal laws, to place obstacles to the necessity of things. chap. v. _order and confusion.--intelligence.--chance._ the observation of the necessary, regular, and periodical motion in the universe, generated in the mind of man the idea of order; this term, in its original signification, represents nothing more than a mode of considering, a facility of perceiving, together and separately, the different relations of a whole; in which is discovered, by its manner of existing and acting, a certain affinity or conformity with his own. man, in extending this idea to the universe, carried with him those methods of considering things which are peculiar to himself: he has consequently supposed there really existed in nature affinities and relations, which he classed under the name of order; and others which appeared to him not to conform to those, which he has ranked under the term of confusion. it is easy to comprehend, that this idea of order and confusion can have no absolute existence in nature, where every thing is necessary; where the whole follows constant and invariable laws, which oblige each being, in every moment of its duration, to submit to other laws, which flow from its own peculiar mode of existence. therefore it is in his imagination, only, man finds a model of that which he terms order or confusion; which, like all his abstract, metaphysical ideas, supposes nothing beyond his reach. order, however, is never more than the faculty of conforming himself with the beings by whom he is environed, or with the whole of which he forms a part. nevertheless, if the idea of order be applied to nature, it will be found to be nothing but a series of action or motion, which he judges to conspire to one common end. thus, in a body that moves, order is the chain of action, the series of motion, proper to constitute it what it is, and to maintain it in its actual state. order, relatively to the whole of nature, is the concatenation of causes and effects, necessary to her _active_ existence--to maintaining her constantly together; but, as it has been proved in the chapter preceding, every individual being is obliged to concur to this end, in the different ranks they occupy; from whence it is a necessary deduction, that what is called the order of nature, can never be more than a certain manner of considering the necessity of things, to which all, of which man has any knowledge, is submitted. that which is styled confusion, is only a relative term, used to designate that series of necessary action, that chain of requisite motion, by which an individual being is necessarily changed or disturbed in its mode of existence--by which it is instantaneously obliged to alter its manner of action; but no one of these actions, no part of this motion is capable, even for a single instant, of contradicting or deranging the general order of nature; from which all beings derive their existence, their properties, the motion appropriate to each. what is termed confusion in a being, is nothing more than its passage into a new class, a new mode of existence; which necessarily carries with it a new series of action, a new chain of motion, different from that of which this being found itself susceptible in the preceding rank it occupied. that which is called order, in nature, is a mode of existence, or a disposition of its particles, strictly _necessary_. in every other assemblage of causes and effects, of worlds, as well as in that which we inhabit, some sort of arrangement, some kind of order would necessarily be established. suppose the most incongruous, the most heterogeneous substances were put into activity, and assembled by a concatenation of extraordinary circumstances; they would form amongst themselves, a complete order, a perfect arrangement. this is the true notion of a property, which may be defined, an aptitude to constitute a being, such as it is actually found, such as it is with respect to the whole of which it makes a part. order, then, is nothing but necessity, considered relatively to the series of actions, or the connected chain of causes and effects, that it produces in the universe. what is the motion in our planetary system; but a series of phenomena, operated upon according to necessary laws, that regulate the bodies of which it is composed? in conformity to these laws, the sun occupies the centre; the planets gravitate towards it, and revolve round it, in regulated periods: the satellites of these planets gravitate towards those which are in the centre of their sphere of action, and describe round them their periodical route. one of these planets, the earth which man inhabits, turns on its own axis; and by the various aspects which its revolution obliges it to present to the sun, experiences those regular variations which are called seasons. by a sequence of the sun's action upon different parts of this globe, all its productions undergo vicissitudes: plants, animals, men, are in a sort of morbid drowsiness during _winter_: in _spring_, these beings re-animate, to come as it were out of a long lethargy. in short, the mode in which the earth receives the sun's beams, has an influence on all its productions; these rays, when darted obliquely, do not act in the same manner as when they fall perpendicularly; their periodical absence, caused by the revolution of this sphere on itself, produces _night_ and _day_. however, in all this, man never witnesses more than necessary effects, flowing from the nature of things, which, whilst that remains the same, can never be opposed with propriety. these effects are owing to gravitation, attraction, centrifugal power, &c. on the other hand, this _order_, which man admires as a supernatural effect, is sometimes disturbed, or changed into what he calls _confusion_: this confusion is, however, always a necessary consequence of the laws of nature; in which it is requisite to the support of the whole that some of her parts should be deranged and thrown out of the ordinary course. it is thus, comets present themselves so unexpectedly to man's wondering eyes; their eccentric motion disturbs the tranquillity of his planetary system; they excite the terror of the misinstructed to whom every thing unusual is marvellous. the natural philosopher, himself, conjectures that in former ages, these comets have overthrown the surface of this mundane ball, and caused great revolutions on the earth. independent of this extraordinary _confusion_, he is exposed to others more familiar to him: sometimes, the seasons appear to have usurped each other's place; to have quitted their regular order: sometimes the opposing elements seem to dispute among themselves the dominion of the world; the sea bursts its limits; the solid earth is shaken and rent asunder; mountains are in a state of conflagration; pestilential diseases destroy both men and animals; sterility desolates a country: then affrighted man utters piercing cries, offers up his prayers to recall order; tremblingly raises his hands towards the being he supposes to be the author of all these calamities; nevertheless, the whole of this afflicting confusion are necessary effects, produced by natural causes; which act according to fixed laws, determined by their own peculiar essence, and the universal essence of nature: in which every thing must necessarily be changed, moved, and dissolved; where that which is called order, must sometimes be disturbed and altered into a new mode of existence; which to his deluded mind, to his imagination, led astray by ignorance and want of reflection, appears confusion. there cannot possibly exist what is generally termed _a confusion of nature_: man finds order in every thing that is conformable to his own mode of being; confusion in every thing by which it is opposed: nevertheless, in nature, all is in order; because none of her parts are ever able to emancipate themselves from those invariable rules which flow from their respective essences: there _is_ not, there _cannot_ be confusion in a whole, to the maintenance of which what is _called_ confusion is absolutely requisite; of which the general course can never be discomposed, although individuals may be, and necessarily are; where all the effects produced are the consequence of natural causes, that under the circumstances in which they are placed, act only as they infallibly are obliged to act. it therefore follows, there can be neither monsters nor prodigies; wonders nor miracles in nature: those which are designated monsters, are certain combinations, with which the eyes of man are not familiarized; but which, therefore, are not less the necessary effects of natural causes. those which he terms prodigies, wonders, or supernatural effects, are phenomena of nature, with whose mode of action he is unacquainted; of which his ignorance does not permit him to ascertain the principles; whose causes he cannot trace; but which his impatience, his heated imagination, aided by a desire to explain, makes him foolishly attribute to imaginary causes; which, like the idea of order, have no existence but in himself; and which, that he may conceal his own ignorance, that he may obtain more respect with the uninformed, he places beyond nature, out of which his experience is every instant demonstrably proving that none of these things can have existence. as for those effects which are called miracles, that is to say, contrary to the unalterable laws of nature, it must be felt such things are impossible; because, nothing can, for an instant, suspend the necessary course of beings, without the whole of nature was arrested; without she was disturbed in her tendency. there have neither been wonders nor miracles in nature; except for those, who have not sufficiently studied the laws, who consequently do not feel, that those laws can never be contradicted, even in the most minute parts, without the whole being destroyed, or at least without changing her essence, her mode of action; that it is the height of folly to recur to supernatural causes to explain the phenomena man beholds, before he becomes fully acquainted with natural causes--with the powers and capabilities which nature herself contains. _order_ and _confusion_, then, are only relative terms, by which man designates the state in which particular beings find themselves. he says, a being is in order, when all the motion it undergoes conspires to favor its tendency to its own preservation; when it is conducive to the maintenance of its actual existence: that it is in confusion when the causes which move it disturb the harmony of its existence, or have a tendency to destroy the equilibrium necessary to the conservation of its actual state. nevertheless, confusion, as we have shown, is nothing but the passage of a being into a new order; the more rapid the progress, the greater the confusion for the being that is submitted to it: that which conducts man to what is called death, is, for him, the greatest of all possible confusion. yet this death is nothing more than a passage into a new mode of existence: it is the eternal, the invariable, the unconquerable law of nature, to which the individuals of his order, each in his turn, is obliged to submit. the human body is said to be in order, when its various component parts act in that mode, from which results the conservation of the whole; from which emanates that which is the tendency of his actual existence; in other words, when all the impulse he receives, all the motion he communicates, tends to preserve his health, to render him happy, by promoting the happiness of his fellow men. he is said to be in health when the fluids and solids of his body concur to render him robust, to keep his mind in vigour; when each lends mutual aid towards this end. he is said to be in _confusion_, or in ill health, whenever this tendency is disturbed; when any of the essential parts of his body cease to concur to his preservation, or to fulfil its peculiar functions. this it is that happens in a state of sickness, in which, however, the motion excited in the human machine is as necessary, is regulated by laws as certain, as natural, as invariable, as that which concurs to produce health. sickness merely produces in him a new order of motion, a new series of action, a new chain of things. man dies: to him, this appears the greatest confusion he can experience; his body is no longer what it was--its parts no longer concur to the same end--his blood has lost its circulation--he is deprived of feeling--his ideas have vanished--he thinks no more--his desires have fled--death is the epoch, the cessation of his human existence.--his frame becomes an inanimate mass, by the subtraction of those principles by which it was animated; that is, which made it act after a determinate manner: its tendency has received a new direction; its action is changed; the motion excited in its ruins conspires to a new end. to that motion, the harmony of which he calls order, which produced life, sentiment, thought, passions, health, succeeds a series of motion of another species; that, nevertheless, follows laws as necessary as the first; all the parts of the dead man conspire to produce what is called dissolution, fermentation, putrefaction: these new modes of being, of acting, are just as natural to man, reduced to this state, as sensibility, thought, the periodical motion of the blood, &c. were to the living man: his essence having changed, his mode of action can no longer be the same. to that regulated motion, to that necessary action, which conspired to the production of life, succeeds that determinate motion, that series of action which concurs to produce the dissolution of the dead carcass; the dispersion of its parts; the formation of new combinations, from which result new beings; and which, as we have before seen, is the immutable order of active nature. how then can it be too often repeated, that relatively to the great whole, all the motion of beings, all their modes of action, can never be but in order, that is to say, are always conformable to nature; that in all the stages through which beings are obliged to pass, they invariably act after a mode necessarily subordinate to the universal whole? to say more, each individual being always acts in order; all its actions, the whole system of its motion, are the necessary consequence of its peculiar mode of existence; whether that be momentary or durable. order, in political society, is the effect of a necessary series of ideas, of wills, of actions, in those who compose it; whose movements are regulated in a manner, either calculated to maintain its indivisibility, or to hasten its dissolution. man constituted, or modified, in the manner we term virtuous, acts necessarily in that mode, from whence results the welfare of his associates: the man we stile wicked, acts necessarily in that mode, from whence springs the misery of his fellows: his nature, being essentially different, he must necessarily act after a different mode: his individual order is at variance, but his relative order is complete: it is equally the essence of the one, to promote happiness, as it is of the other to induce misery. thus, order and confusion in individual beings, is nothing more than the manner of man's considering the natural and necessary effects, which they produce relatively to himself. he fears the wicked man; he says that he will carry confusion into society, because he disturbs its tendency and places obstacles to its happiness. he avoids a falling stone, because it will derange in him the order necessary to his conservation. nevertheless, order and confusion, are always, as we have shewn, consequences, equally necessary to either the transient or durable state of beings. it is in order that fire burns, because it is of its essence to burn; on the other hand, it is in order, that an intelligent being should remove himself from whatever can disturb his mode of existence. a being, whose organization renders him sensible, must in virtue of his essence, fly from every thing that can injure his organs, or that can place his existence in danger. man calls those beings _intelligent_, who are organized after his own manner; in whom he sees faculties proper for their preservation; suitable to maintain their existence in the order that is convenient to them; that can enable them to take the necessary measures towards this end, with a consciousness of the motion they undergo. from hence, it will be perceived, that the faculty called intelligence, consists in a possessing capacity to act comformably to a known end, in the being to which it is attributed. he looks upon these beings as deprived of intelligence, in which he finds no conformity with himself; in whom he discovers neither the same construction, nor the same faculties: of which he knows neither the essence, the end to which they tend, the energies by which they act, nor the order that is necessary to them. the whole cannot have a distinct name, or end, because there is nothing out of itself, to which it can have a tendency. if it be in himself, that he arranges the idea of _order_, it is also in himself, that he draws up that of _intelligence_. he refuses to ascribe it to those beings, who do not act after his own manner: he accords it to all those whom he supposes to act like himself: the latter he calls intelligent agents: the former blind causes; that is to say, intelligent agents who act by _chance_: thus chance is an empty word without sense, but which is always opposed to that of intelligence, without attaching any determinate, or any certain idea. man, in fact, attributes to _chance_ all those effects, of which the connection they have with their causes is not seen. thus he uses the word _chance_, to cover his ignorance of those natural causes, which produce visible effects, by means which he cannot form an idea of; or that act by a mode of which he does not perceive the order; or whose system is not followed by actions conformable to his own. as soon as he sees, or believes he sees, the order of action, or the manner of motion, he attributes this order to an _intelligence_; which is nothing more than a quality borrowed from himself--from his own peculiar mode of action--from the manner in which he is himself affected. thus an _intelligent being_ is one who thinks, who wills, and who acts, to compass an end. if so, he must have organs, an aim conformable to those of man: therefore, to say nature is governed by an intelligence, is to affirm that she is governed by a being, furnished with organs; seeing that without this organic construction, he can neither have sensations, perceptions, ideas, thought, will, plan, nor action which he understands. man always makes himself the center of the universe: it is to himself that he relates all he beholds. as soon as he believes he discovers a mode of action that has a conformity with his own, or some phenomenon that interests his feelings, he attributes it to a cause that resembles himself--that acts after his manner--that has faculties similar to those he possesses--whose interests are like his own--whose projects are in unison with and have the same tendency as those he himself indulges: in short, it is from himself, or the properties which actuate him, that he forms the model of this cause. it is thus that man beholds, out of his own species, nothing but beings who act differently from himself; yet believes that he remarks in nature an order similar to his own ideas--views conformable to those which he himself possesses. he imagines that nature is governed by a cause whose intelligence is conformable to his own, to whom he ascribes the honor of the order which he believes he witnesses--of those views that fall in with those that are peculiar to himself--of an aim which quadrates with that which is the great end of all his own actions. it is true that man, feeling his incapability of producing the vast, the multiplied effects of which he witnesses the operation, when contemplating the universe, was under the necessity of making a distinction between himself and the cause which he supposed to be the author of such stupendous effects; he believed he removed every difficulty, by amplifying in this cause all those faculties of which he was himself in possession; adding others of which his own self-love made him desirous, or which he thought would render his being more perfect: thus, he gave jupiter wings, with the faculty of assuming any form he might deem convenient: it was thus, by degrees, he arrived at forming an idea of that intelligent cause, which he has placed above nature, to preside over action--to give her that motion of which he has chosen to believe she was in herself incapable. he obstinately persists in regarding this nature as a heap of dead, inert matter, without form, which has not within itself the power of producing any of those great effects, those regular phenomena, from which emanates what he styles _the order of the universe_. anaxagoras is said to have been the first who supposed the universe created and governed by an intelligence: aristotle reproaches him with having made an automaton of this intelligence; or in other words, with ascribing to it the production of things, only when he was at a loss to account for their appearance. from whence it may be deduced, that it is for want of being acquainted with the powers of nature, or the properties of matter, that man has multiplied beings without necessity--that he has supposed the universe under the government of an intelligent cause, which he is, and perhaps always will be, himself the model: in fine, this cause has been personified under such a variety of shapes, sexes, and names, that a list of the deities he has at various times supposed to guide this nature, or to whom he has submitted her, makes a large volume that occupies some years of his youthful education to understand. he only rendered this cause more inconceivable, when he extended in it his own faculties too much. he either annihilates, or renders it altogether impossible, when he would attach to it incompatible qualities, which he is obliged to do, to enable him to account for the contradictory and disorderly effects he beholds in the world. in fact, he sees confusion in the world; yet, notwithstanding his confusion contradicts the plan, the power, the wisdom, the bounty of this intelligence, and the miraculous order which he ascribes to it; he says, the extreme beautiful arrangement of the whole, obliges him to suppose it to be the work of a sovereign intelligence: unable, however, to reconcile this seeming confusion with the benevolence he attaches to this cause, he had recourse to another effort of his imagination; he made a new cause, to whom he ascribed all the evil, all the misery, resulting from this confusion: still, his own person served for the model; to which he added those deformities which he had learned to hold in disrespect: in multiplying these counter or destroying causes, he peopled pandemonium. it will no doubt be argued, that as nature contains and produces intelligent beings, either she must be herself intelligent, or else she must be governed by an intelligent cause. we reply, intelligence is a faculty peculiar to organized beings, that it is to say, to beings constituted and combined after a determinate manner; from whence results certain modes of action, which are designated under various names; according to the different effects which these beings produce: wine has not the properties called _wit_ and _courage_; nevertheless, it is sometimes seen that it communicates those qualities to men, who are supposed to be in themselves entirely devoid of them. it cannot be said nature is intelligent after the manner of any of the beings she contains; but she can produce intelligent beings by assembling matter suitable to their particular organization, from whose peculiar modes of action will result the faculty called intelligence; who shall be capable of producing certain effects which are the necessary consequence of this property. i therefore repeat, that to have intelligence, designs and views, it is requisite to have ideas; to the production of ideas, organs or senses are necessary: this is what is neither said of nature nor of the causes he has supposed to preside over her actions. in short experience warrants the assertion, it does more, it proves beyond a doubt, that matter, which is regarded as inert and dead, assumes sensible action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined and organized after particular modes. from what has been said, it must rationally be concluded that _order_ is never more than the necessary or uniform connection of causes with their effects; or that series of action which flows from the peculiar properties of beings, so long as they remain in a given state; that _confusion_ is nothing more than the change of this state; that in the universe, all is necessarily in order, because every thing acts and moves according to the various properties of the different beings it contains; that in nature there cannot be either confusion or real evil, since every thing follows the laws of its natural existence; that there is neither _chance_ nor any thing fortuitous in this nature, where no effect is produced without a sufficient, without a substantial cause; where all causes act necessarily according to fixed and certain laws, which are themselves dependant on the essential properties of these causes or beings, as well as on the combination, which constitutes either their transitory or permanent state; that intelligence is a mode of acting, a method of existence natural to some particular beings; that if this intelligence should be attributed to nature, it would then be nothing more than the faculty of conserving herself in active existence by necessary means. in refusing to nature the intelligence he himself enjoys--in rejecting the intelligent cause which is supposed to be the contriver of this nature, or the principle of that _order_ he discovers in her course, nothing is given to _chance_, nothing to a blind cause, nothing to a power which is indistinguishable; but every thing he beholds is attributed to real, to known causes; or to those which by analogy are easy of comprehension. all that exists is acknowledged to be a consequence of the inherent properties of eternal matter, which by contact, by blending, by combination, by change of form, produces order and confusion; with all those varieties which assail his sight, it is himself who is blind, when he imagines blind causes:--man only manifested his ignorance of the powers of motion, of the laws of nature, when he attributed, any of its effects to _chance_. he did not shew a more enlightened feeling when he ascribed them to an intelligence, the idea of which he borrowed from himself, but which is never in conformity with the effects which he attributes to its intervention--he only imagined words to supply the place of things--he made jupiter, saturn, juno, and a thousand others, operate that which he found himself inadequate to perform; he distinguished them from nature, gave them an amplification of his own properties, and believed he understood them by thus obscuring ideas, which he never dared either define or analyze. chap. vi. _moral and physical distinctions of man.--his origin._ let us now apply the general laws we have scrutinized, to those beings of nature who interest us the most. let us see in what man differs from the other beings by which he is surrounded. let us examine if he has not certain points in conformity with them, that oblige him, notwithstanding the different properties they respectively possess, to act in certain respects according to the universal laws to which every thing is submitted. finally, let us enquire if the ideas he has formed of himself in meditating on his own peculiar mode of existence, be chimerical, or founded in reason. man occupies a place amidst that crowd, that multitude of beings, of which nature is the assemblage. his essence, that is to say, the peculiar manner of existence, by which he is distinguished from other beings, renders him susceptible of various modes of action, of a variety of motion, some of which are simple and visible, others concealed and complicated. his life itself is nothing more than a long series, a succession of necessary and connected motion; which operates perpetual changes in his machine; which has for its principle either causes contained within himself, such as blood, nerves, fibres, flesh, bones; in short, the matter, as well solid as fluid, of which his body is composed--or those exterior causes, which, by acting upon him, modify him diversely; such as the air with which he is encompassed, the aliments by which he is nourished, and all those objects from which he receives any impulse whatever, by the impression they make on his senses. man, like all other beings in nature, tends to his own destruction--he experiences inert force--he gravitates upon himself--he is attracted by objects that are contrary or repugnant to his existence--he seeks after some--he flies, or endeavours to remove himself from others. it is this variety of action, this diversity of modification of which the human being is susceptible, that has been designated under such different names, by such varied nomenclature. it will be necessary, presently, to examine these closely and go more into detail. however marvellous, however hidden, however secret, however complicated may be the modes of action, which the human frame undergoes, whether interiorly or exteriorly; whatever may be, or appear to be the impulse he either receives or communicates, examined closely, it will be found that all his motion, all his operations, all his changes, all his various states, all his revolutions, are constantly regulated by the same laws, which nature has prescribed to all the beings she brings forth--which she developes--which she enriches with faculties--of which she increases the bulk--which she conserves for a season--which she ends by decomposing, by destroying: obliging them to change their form. man, in his origin, is an imperceptible point, a speck, of which the parts are without form; of which the mobility, the life, escapes his senses; in short, in which he does not perceive any sign of those qualities, called sentiment, feeling, thought, intelligence, force, reason, &c. placed in the womb suitable to his expansion, this point unfolds, extends, increases, by the continual addition of matter he attracts, that is analogous to his being, which consequently assimilates itself with him. having quitted this womb, so appropriate to conserve his existence, to unfold his qualities, to strengthen his habits; so competent to give, for a season, consistence to the weak rudiments of his frame; he travels through the stage of infancy; he becomes adult: his body has then acquired a considerable extension of bulk, his motion is marked, his action is visible, he is sensible in all his parts; he is a living, an active mass; that is to say, a combination that feels and thinks; that fulfils the functions peculiar to beings of his species. but how has he become sensible? because he has been by degrees nourished, enlarged, repaired by the continual attraction that takes place within himself, of that kind of matter which is pronounced inert, insensible, inanimate; which is, nevertheless, continually combining itself with his machine; of which it forms an active whole, that is living, that feels, judges, reasons, wills, deliberates, chooses, elects; that has the capability of labouring, more or less efficaciously, to his own individual preservation; that is to say, to the maintenance of the harmony of his existence. all the motion and changes that man experiences in the course of his life, whether it be from exterior objects or from those substances contained within himself, are either favorable or prejudicial to his existence; either maintain its order, or throw it into confusion; are either in conformity with, or repugnant to, the essential tendency of his peculiar mode of being. he is compelled by nature to approve of some, to disapprove of others; some of necessity render him happy, others contribute to his misery; some become the objects of his most ardent desire, others of his determined aversion: some elicit his confidence, others make him tremble with fear. in all the phenomena man presents, from the moment he quits the womb of his mother, to that wherein he becomes the inhabitant of the silent tomb, he perceives nothing but a succession of necessary causes and effects, which are strictly conformable to those laws that are common to all the beings in nature. all his modes of action--all his sensations--all his ideas--all his passions--every act of his will--every impulse which he either gives or receives, are the necessary consequences of his own peculiar properties, and those which he finds in the various beings by whom he is moved. every thing he does--every thing that passes within himself--his concealed motion--his visible action, are the effects of inert force--of self-gravitation--the attractive or repulsive powers contained in his machine--of the tendency he has, in common with other beings, to his own individual preservation; in short, of that energy which is the common property of every being he beholds. nature, in man, does nothing more than shew, in a decided manner, what belongs to the peculiar nature by which he is distinguished from the beings of a different system or order. the source of those errors into which man has fallen, when he has contemplated himself, has its rise, as will presently be shown, in the opinion he has entertained, that he moved by himself--that he always acts by his own natural energy--that in his actions, in the will that gave him impulse, he was independent of the general laws of nature; and of those objects which, frequently, without his knowledge, always in spite of him, in obedience to these laws, are continually acting upon him. if he had examined himself attentively, he must have acknowledged, that none of the motion he underwent was spontaneous--he must have discovered, that even his birth depended on causes, wholly out of the reach of his own powers--that, it was without his own consent he entered into the system in which he occupies a place--that, from the moment in which he is born, until that in which he dies, he is continually impelled by causes, which, in spite of himself, influence his frame, modify his existence, dispose of his conduct. would not the slightest reflection have sufficed to prove to him, that the fluids, the solids, of which his body is composed, as well as that concealed mechanism, which he believes to be independent of exterior causes, are, in fact, perpetually under the influence of these causes; that without them he finds himself in a total incapacity to act? would he not have seen, that his temperament, his constitution, did in no wise depend on himself--that his passions are the necessary consequence of this temperament--that his will is influenced, his actions determined by these passions; consequently by opinions, which he has not given to himself, of which he is not the master? his blood, more or less heated or abundant; his nerves more or less braced, his fibres more or less relaxed, give him dispositions either transitory or durable--are not these, at every moment decisive of his ideas; of his thoughts: of his desires: of his fears: of his motion, whether visible or concealed? the state in which he finds himself, does it not necessarily depend on the air which surrounds him diversely modified; on the various properties of the aliments which nourish him; on the secret combinations that form themselves in his machine, which either preserve its order, or throw it into confusion? in short, had man fairly studied himself, every thing must have convinced him, that in every moment of his duration, he was nothing more than a passive instrument in the hands of necessity. thus it must appear, that where all is connected, where all the causes are linked one to the other, where the whole forms but one immense chain, there cannot be any independent, any isolated energy; any detached power. it follows then, that nature, always in action, marks out to man each point of the line he is bound to describe; establishes the route, by which he must travel. it is nature that elaborates, that combines the elements of which he must be composed;--it is nature that gives him his being, his tendency, his peculiar mode of action. it is nature that develops him, expands him, strengthens him, increases his bulk--preserves him for a season, during which he is obliged to fulfil the task imposed on him. it is nature, that in his journey through life, strews on the road those objects, those events; those adventures, that modify him in a variety of ways, that give him impulses which are sometimes agreeable and beneficial, at others prejudicial and disagreeable. it is nature, that in giving him feeling, in supplying him with sentiment, has endowed him with capacity to choose, the means to elect those objects, to take those methods that are most conducive, most suitable, most natural, to his conservation. it is nature, who when he has run his race, when he has finished his career, when he has described the circle marked out for him, conducts him in his turn to his destruction; dissolves the union of his elementary particles, and obliges him to undergo the constant, the universal law; from the operation of which nothing is exempted. it is thus, motion places man in the matrix of his mother; brings him forth out of her womb; sustains him for a season; at length destroys him; obliges him to return into the bosom of nature; who speedily reproduces him, scattered under an infinity of forms; in which each of his particles run over again, in the same manner, the different stages, as necessary as the whole had before run over those of his preceding existence. the beings of the human species, as well as all other beings, are susceptible of two sorts of motion: the one, that of the mass, by which an entire body, or some of its parts, are visibly transferred from one place to another; the other, internal and concealed, of some of which man is sensible, while some takes place without his knowledge, and is not even to be guessed at, but by the effect it outwardly produces. in a machine so extremely complex as man, formed by the combination of such a multiplicity of matter, so diversified in its properties, so different in its proportions, so varied in its modes of action, the motion necessarily becomes of the most complicated kind; its dullness, as well as its rapidity, frequently escapes the observation of those themselves, in whom it takes place. let us not, then, be surprised, if, when man would account to himself for his existence, for his manner of acting, finding so many obstacles to encounter, he invented such strange hypotheses to explain the concealed spring of his machine--if then this motion appeared to him, to be different from that of other bodies, he conceived an idea, that he moved and acted in a manner altogether distinct from the other beings in nature. he clearly perceived that his body, as well as different parts of it, did act; but, frequently, he was unable to discover what brought them into action: from whence he received the impulse: he then conjectured he contained within himself a moving principle distinguished from his machine, which secretly gave an impulse to the springs which set this machine in motion; that moved him by its own natural energy; that consequently he acted according to laws totally distinct from those which regulated the motion of other beings: he was conscious of certain internal motion, which he could not help feeling; but how could he conceive, that this invisible motion was so frequently competent to produce such striking effects? how could he comprehend, that a fugitive idea, an imperceptible act of thought, was so frequently capacitated to bring his whole being into trouble and confusion? he fell into the belief, that he perceived within himself a substance distinguished from that self, endowed with a secret force; in which he supposed existed qualities distinctly differing from those, of either the visible causes that acted on his organs, or those organs themselves. he did not sufficiently understand, that the primitive cause which makes a stone fall, or his arm move, are perhaps as difficult of comprehension, as arduous to be explained, as those internal impulses, of which his thought or his will are the effects. thus, for want of meditating nature--of considering her under her true point of view--of remarking the conformity--of noticing the simultaneity, the unity of the motion of this fancied motive-power with that of his body--of his material organs--he conjectured he was not only a distinct being, but that he was set apart, with different energies, from all the other beings in nature; that he was of a more simple essence having nothing in common with any thing by which he was surrounded; nothing that connected him with all that he beheld. it is from thence has successively sprung his notions of spirituality, immateriality, immortality; in short, all those vague unmeaning words he has invented by degrees, in order to subtilize and designate the attributes of the unknown power, which he believes he contains within himself; which he conjectures to be the concealed principle of all his visible actions when man once imbibes an idea that he cannot comprehend, he meditates upon it until he has given it a complete personification: thus he saw, or fancied he saw, the igneous matter pervade every thing; he conjectured that it was the only principle of life and activity; he proceeded to embody it; he gave it his own form; called it jupiter, and ended by worshipping this image of his own creation, as the power from whom he derived every good he experienced, every evil he sustained. to crown the bold conjectures he ventured to make on this internal motive-power, he supposed, that different from all other beings, even from the body that served to envelope it, it was not bound to undergo dissolution; that such was its perfect simplicity, that it could not be decomposed, nor even change its form; in short, that it was by its essence exempted from those revolutions to which he saw the body subjected, as well as all the compound beings with which nature is filled. thus man, in his own ideas, became double; he looked upon himself as a whole, composed by the inconceivable assemblage of two different, two distinct natures, which have no point of analogy between themselves: he distinguished two substances in himself; one evidently submitted to the influence of gross beings, composed of coarse inert matter: this he called body;--the other, which he supposed to be simple, of a purer essence, was contemplated as acting from itself: giving motion to the body, with which it found itself so miraculously united: this he called soul, or spirit; the functions of the one, he denominated _physical, corporeal, material_; the functions of the other he styled _spiritual, intellectual._ man, considered relatively to the first, was termed the physical man; viewed with relation to the last, he was designated the moral man. these distinctions, although adopted by the greater number of the philosophers of the present day, are, nevertheless, only founded on gratuitous suppositions. man has always believed he remedied his ignorance of things, by inventing words to which he could never attach any true sense or meaning. he imagined he understood matter, its properties, its faculties, its resources, its different combinations, because he had a superficial glimpse of some of its qualities: he has, however, in reality, done nothing more than obscure the faint ideas he has been capacitated to form of this matter, by associating it with a substance much less intelligible than itself. it is thus, speculative man, in forming words, in multiplying beings, has only plunged himself into greater difficulties than those he endeavoured to avoid; and thereby placed obstacles to the progress of his knowledge: whenever he has been deficient of facts, he has had recourse to conjecture, which he quickly changed into fancied realities. thus, his imagination, no longer guided by experience, hurried on by his new ideas, was lost, without hope of return, in the labyrinth of an ideal, of an intellectual world, to which he had himself given birth; it was next to impossible to withdraw him from this delusion, to place him in the right road, of which nothing but experience can furnish him the clue. nature points out to man, that in himself, as well as in all those objects which act upon him, there is never more than matter endowed with various properties, diversely modified, that acts by reason of these properties: that man is an organized whole, composed of a variety of matter; that like all the other productions of nature, he follows general and known laws, as well as those laws or modes of action which are peculiar to himself and unknown. thus, when it shall be inquired, what is man? we say, he is a material being, organized after a peculiar manner; conformed to a certain mode of thinking--of feeling; capable of modification in certain modes peculiar to himself--to his organization--to that particular combination of matter which is found assembled in him. if, again, it be asked, what origin we give to beings of the human species? we reply, that, like all other beings, man is a production of nature, who resembles them in some respects, and finds himself submitted to the same laws; who differs from them in other respects, and follows particular laws, determined by the diversity of his conformation. if, then, it be demanded, whence came man? we answer, our experience on this head does not capacitate us to resolve the question: but that it cannot interest us, as it suffices for us to know that man exists; that he is so constituted, as to be competent to the effects we witness. but it will be urged, has man always existed? has the human species existed from all eternity; or is it only an instantaneous production of nature? have there been always men like ourselves? will there always be such? have there been, in all times, males and females? was there a first man, from whom all others are descended? was the animal anterior to the egg, or did the egg precede the animal? is this species without beginning? will it also be without end? the species itself, is it indestructible, or does it pass away like its individuals? has man always been what he now is; or has he, before he arrived at the state in which we see him, been obliged to pass under an infinity of successive developements? can man at last flatter himself with having arrived at a fixed being, or must the human species again change? if man is the production of nature, it will perhaps be asked, is this nature competent to the production of new beings, to make the old species disappear? adopting this supposition, it may be inquired, why nature does not produce under our own eyes new beings--new species? it would appear on reviewing these questions, to be perfectly indifferent, as to the stability of the argument we have used, which side was taken; that, for want of experience, hypothesis must settle a curiosity that always endeavours to spring forward beyond the boundaries prescribed to our mind. this granted, the contemplator of nature will say, that he sees no contradiction, in supposing the human species, such as it is at the present day, was either produced in the course of time, or from all eternity: he will not perceive any advantage that can arise from supposing that it has arrived by different stages, or successive developements, to that state in which it is actually found. matter is eternal, it is necessary, but its forms are evanescent and contingent. it may be asked of man, is he any thing more than matter combined, of which the former varies every instant? notwithstanding, some reflections seem to favor the supposition, to render more probable the hypothesis, that man is a production formed in the course of time; who is peculiar to the globe he inhabits, who is the result of the peculiar laws by which it is directed; who, consequently, can only date his formation as coeval with that of his planet. existence is essential to the universe, or the total assemblage of matter essentially varied that presents itself to our contemplation; the combinations, the forms, however, are not essential. this granted, although the matter of which the earth is composed has always existed, this earth may not always have had its present form--its actual properties; perhaps it may be a mass detached in the course of time from some other celestial body;--perhaps it is the result of the spots, or those encrustations which astronomers discover in the sun's disk, which have had the faculty to diffuse themselves over our planetary system;--perhaps the sphere we inhabit may be an extinguished or a displaced comet, which heretofore occupied some other place in the regions of space;--which, consequently, was then competent to produce beings very different from those we now behold spread over its surface; seeing that its then position, its nature, must have rendered its productions different from those which at this day it offers to our view. whatever may be the supposition adopted, plants, animals, men, can only be regarded as productions inherent in and natural to our globe, in the position and in the circumstances in which it is actually found: these productions it would be reasonable to infer would be changed, if this globe by any revolution should happen to shift its situation. what appears to strengthen this hypothesis, is, that on our ball itself, all the productions vary, by reason of its different climates: men, animals, vegetables, minerals, are not the same on every part of it: they vary sometimes in a very sensible manner, at very inconsiderable distances. the elephant is indigenous to, or native of the torrid zone: the rein deer is peculiar to the frozen climates of the north; indostan is the womb that matures the diamond; we do not find it produced in our own country: the pine-apple grows in the common atmosphere of america; in our climate it is never produced in the open ground, never until art has furnished a sun analogous to that which it requires--the european in his own climate finds not this delicious fruit. man in different climates varies in his colour, in his size, in his conformation, in his powers, in his industry, in his courage, and in the faculties of his mind. but, what is it that constitutes climate? it is the different position of parts of the same globe, relatively to the sun; positions that suffice to make a sensible variety in its productions. there is, then, sufficient foundation to conjecture that if by any accident our globe should become displaced, all its productions would of necessity be changed; seeing that causes being no longer the same, or no longer acting after the same manner, the effects would necessarily no longer be what they now are, all productions, that they may be able to conserve themselves, or maintain their actual existence, have occasion to co-order themselves with the whole from which they have emanated. without this they would no longer be in a capacity to subsist: it is this faculty of co-ordering themselves,--this relative adaption, which is called the order of the universe: the want of it is called confusion. those productions which are treated as monstrous, are such as are unable to co-order themselves with the general or particular laws of the beings who surround them, or with the whole in which they find themselves placed: they have had the faculty in their formation to accommodate themselves to these laws; but these very laws are opposed to their perfection: for this reason they are unable to subsist. it is thus that by a certain analogy of conformation, which exists between animals of different species, mules are easily produced; but these mules, unable to co-order themselves with the beings that surround them, are not able to reach perfection, consequently cannot propagate their species. man can live only in air, fish only in water: put the man into the water, the fish into the air, not being able to co-order themselves with the fluids which surround them, these animals will quickly be destroyed. transport by imagination, a man from our planet into saturn, his lungs will presently be rent by an atmosphere too rarified for his mode of being, his members will be frozen with the intensity of the cold; he will perish for want of finding elements analogous to his actual existence: transport another into mercury, the excess of heat, beyond what his mode of existence can bear, will quickly destroy him. thus, every thing seems to authorise the conjecture, that the human species is a production peculiar to our sphere, in the position in which it is found: that when this position may happen to change, the human species will, of consequence, either be changed or will be obliged to disappear; seeing that there would not then be that with which man could co-order himself with the whole, or connect himself with that which can enable him to subsist. it is this aptitude in man to co-order himself with the whole, that not only furnishes him with the idea of order, but also makes him exclaim "_whatever is, is right_;" whilst every thing is only that which it can be, as long as the whole is necessarily what it is; whilst it is positively neither good nor bad, as we understand those terms: it is only requisite to displace a man, to make him accuse the universe of confusion. these reflections would appear to contradict the ideas of those, who are willing to conjecture that the other planets, like our own, are inhabited by beings resembling ourselves. but if the laplander differs in so marked a manner from the hottentot, what difference ought we not rationally to suppose between an inhabitant of our planet and one of saturn or of venus? however it may be, if we are obliged to recur by imagination to the origin of things, to the infancy of the human species, we may say that it is probable that man was a necessary consequence of the disentangling of our globe; or one of the results of the qualities, of the properties, of the energies, of which it is susceptible in its present position--that he was born male and female--that his existence is co-ordinate with that of the globe, under its present position--that as long as this co-ordination shall subsist, the human specie will conserve himself, will propagate himself, according to the impulse, after the primitive laws, which he has originally received--that if this co-ordination should happen to cease; if the earth, displaced, should cease to receive the same impulse, the same influence, on the part of those causes which actually act upon it, or which give it energy; that then the human species would change, to make place for new beings, suitable to co-order themselves with the state that should succeed to that which we now see subsist. in thus supposing the changes in the position of our globe, the primitive man did, perhaps, differ more from the actual man, than the quadruped differs from the insect. thus man, the same as every thing else that exists on our planet, as well as in all the others, may be regarded as in a state of continual vicissitude: thus the last term of the existence of man is to us as unknown and as indistinct as the first: there is, therefore, no contradiction in the belief that the species vary incessantly--that to us it is as impossible to know what he will become, as to know what he has been. with respect to those who may ask why nature does not produce new beings? we may enquire of them in turn, upon what foundation they suppose this fact? what it is that authorizes them to believe this sterility in nature? know they if, in the various combinations which she is every instant forming, nature be not occupied in producing new beings, without the cognizance of these observers? who has informed them that this nature is not actually assembling, in her immense elaboratory, the elements suitable to bring to light, generations entirely new, that will have nothing in common with those of the species at present existing? what absurdity then, or what want of just inference would there be, to imagine that the man, the horse, the fish, the bird, will be no more? are these animals so indispensably requisite to nature, that without them she cannot continue her eternal course? does not all change around us? do we not ourselves change? is it not evident that the whole universe has not been, in its anterior eternal duration, rigorously the same that it now is? that it is impossible, in its posterior eternal duration, it can be rigidly in the same state that it now is for a single instant? how, then, pretend to divine that, to which the infinite succession of destruction, of reproduction, of combination, of dissolution, of metamorphosis, of change, of transposition, may be able eventually to conduct it by their consequence? suns encrust themselves, and are extinguished; planets perish and disperse themselves in the vast plains of air; other suns are kindled, and illumine their systems; new planets form themselves, either to make revolutions round these suns, or to describe new routes; and man, an infinitely small portion of the globe, which is itself but an imperceptible point in the immensity of space, vainly believes it is for himself this universe is made; foolishly imagines he ought to be the confident of nature; confidently flatters himself he is eternal: and calls himself king of the universe!!! o man! wilt thou never conceive, that thou art but an ephemeron? all changes in the great macrocosm: nothing remains the same an instant, in the planet thou inhabitest: nature contains no one constant form, yet thou pretendest thy species can never disappear; that thou shalt be exempted from the universal law, that wills all shall experience change! alas! in thy actual being, art not thou submitted to continual alterations? thou, who in thy folly, arrogantly assumest to thyself the title of king of nature! thou, who measurest the earth and the heavens! thou, who in thy vanity imaginest, that the whole was made, because thou art intelligent! there requires but a very slight accident, a single atom to be displaced, to make thee perish; to degrade thee; to ravish from thee this intelligence of which thou appearest so proud. if all the preceding conjectures be refused by those opposed to us; if it be pretended that nature acts by a certain quantum of immutable and general laws; if it be believed that men, quadrupeds, fish, insects, plants, are from all eternity, and will remain eternally, what they now are: if i say it be contended, that from all eternity the stars have shone, in the immense regions of space, have illuminated the firmament; if it be insisted, we must no more demand why man is such as he appears, then ask why nature is such as we behold her, or why the world exists? we are no longer opposed to such arguments. whatever may be the system adopted, it will perhaps reply equally well to the difficulties with which our opponents endeavour to embarrass the way: examined closely, it will be perceived they make nothing against those truths, which we have gathered from experience. it is not given to man to know every thing--it is not given him to know his origin--it is not given him to penetrate into the essence of things, nor to recur to first principles--but it is given him, to have reason, to have honesty, to ingenuously allow he is ignorant of that which he cannot know, and not to substitute unintelligible words, absurd suppositions, for his uncertainty. thus, we say to those, who to solve difficulties far above their reach, pretend that the human species descended from a first man and a first woman, created diversely according to different creeds;--that we have some ideas of nature, but that we have none of creation;--that the human mind is incapable of comprehending the period when all was nothing;--that to use words we cannot understand, is only in other terms to acknowledge our ignorance of the powers of nature;--that we are unable to fathom the means by which she has been capacitated to produce the phenomena we behold. let us then conclude, that man has no just, no solid reason to believe himself a privileged being in nature; because he is subject to the same vicissitudes, as all her other productions. his pretended prerogatives have their foundation in error, arising from mistaken opinions concerning his existence. let him but elevate himself by his thoughts above the globe he inhabits, he will look upon his own species with the same eyes he does all other beings in nature: he will then clearly perceive that in the same manner that each tree produces its fruit, by reason of its energies, in consequence of its species: so each man acts by reason of his particular energy; that he produces fruit, actions, works, equally necessary: he will feel that the illusion which he anticipates in favour of himself, arises from his being, at one and the same time, a spectator and a part of the universe. he will acknowledge, that the idea of excellence which he attaches to his being, has no other foundation than his own peculiar interest; than the predilection he has in favour of himself--that the doctrine he has broached with such seeming confidence, bottoms itself on a very suspicious foundation, namely ignorance and self-love. chap. vii. _the soul and the spiritual system_. man, after having gratuitously supposed himself composed of two distinct independent substances, that have no common properties, relatively with each other; has pretended, as we have seen, that that which actuated him interiorly, that motion which is invisible, that impulse which is placed within himself, is essentially different from those which act exteriorly. the first he designated, as we have already said, by the name of a spirit or a soul. if however it be asked, what is a spirit? the moderns will reply, that the whole fruit of their metaphysical researches is limited to learning that this motive-power, which they state to be the spring of man's action, is a substance of an unknown nature; so simple, so indivisible, so deprived of extent, so invisible, so impossible to be discovered by the senses, that its parts cannot be separated, even by abstraction or thought. the question then arises, how can we conceive such a substance, which is only the negation of every thing of which we have a knowledge? how form to ourselves an idea of a substance, void of extent, yet acting on our senses; that is to say, on those organs which are material, which have extent? how can a being without extent be moveable; how put matter in action? how can a substance devoid of parts, correspond successively with different parts of space? but a very cogent question presents itself on this occasion: if this distinct substance that is said to form one of the component parts of man, be really what it is reported, and if it be not, it is not what it is described; if it be unknown, if it be not pervious to the senses; if it be invisible, by what means did the metaphysicians themselves become acquainted with it? how did they form ideas of a substance, that taking their own account of it, is not, under any of its circumstances, either directly or by analogy, cognizable to the mind of man? if they could positively achieve this, there would no longer be any mystery in nature: it would be as easy to conceive the time when all was nothing, when all shall have passed away, to account for the production of every thing we behold, as to dig in a garden or read a lecture.--doubt would vanish from the human species; there could no longer be any difference of opinion, since all must necessarily be of one mind on a subject so accessible to every enquirer. but it will be replied, the materialist himself admits, the natural philosophers of all ages have admitted, elements and atoms, beings simple and indivisible, of which bodies are composed:--granted; they have no more: they have also admitted that many of these atoms, many of these elements, if not all, are unknown to them: nevertheless, these simple beings, these atoms of the materialist, are not the same thing with the spirit, or the soul of the metaphysician. when the natural philosopher talks of atoms--when he describes them as simple beings, he indicates nothing more than that they are homogeneous, pure, without mixture: but then he allows that they have extent, consequently parts, are separable by thought, although no other natural agent with which he is acquainted is capable of dividing them: that the simple beings of this genus are susceptible of motion--can impart action--receive impulse--are material--are placed in nature--are indestructible;--that consequently, if he cannot know them from themselves, he can form some idea of them by analogy: thus he has done that intelligibly, which the metaphysician would do unintelligibly: the latter, with a view to render man immortal, finding difficulties to his wish, from seeing that the body decayed--that it has submitted to the great, the universal law--has, to solve the difficulty, to remove the impediment, given him a soul, distinct from the body, which he says is exempted from the action of the general law: to account for this, he has called it a spiritual being, whose properties are the negation of all known properties, consequently inconceivable: had he, however, had recourse to the atoms of the former--had he made this substance the last possible term of the division of matter--it would at least have been intelligible; it would also have been immortal, since, according to the reasonings of all men, whether metaphysicians, theologians, or natural philosophers, an atom is an indestructible element, that must exist to all eternity. all men are agreed in this position, that motion is the successive change of the relations of one body with other bodies, or with the different parts of space. if that which is called _spirit_ be susceptible of communicating or receiving motion--if it acts--if it gives play to the organs of body--to produce these effects, it necessarily follows that this being changes successively its relation, its tendency, its correspondence, the position of its parts, either relatively to the different points of space, or to the different organs of the body which it puts in action: but to change its relation with space, with the organs to which it gives impulse, it follows of necessity that this spirit most have extent, solidity, consequently distinct parts: whenever a substance possesses these qualities, it is what we call matter, it can no longer be regarded as a simple pure being, in the sense attached to it by the moderns, or by theologians. thus it will be seen, that those who, to conquer insurmountable difficulties, have supposed in man an immaterial substance, distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves; indeed they have done nothing more than imagined a negative quality, of which they cannot have any correct idea: matter alone is capable of acting on our senses; without this action nothing would be capable of making itself known to us. they have not seen that a being without extent is neither in a capacity to move itself, nor has the capability of communicating motion to the body; since such a being, having no parts, has not the faculty of changing its relation, or its distance, relatively to other bodies, nor of exciting motion in the human body, which is itself material. that which is called our soul moves itself with us; now motion is a property of matter--this soul gives impulse to the arm; the arm, moved by it, makes an impression, a blow, that follows the general law of motion: in this case, the force remaining the same, if the mass was two-fold, the blow should be double. this soul again evinces its materiality in the invincible obstacles it encounters on the part of the body. if the arm be moved by its impulse when nothing opposes it, yet this arm can no longer move, when it is charged with a weight beyond its strength. here then is a mass of matter that annihilates the impulse given by a spiritual cause, which spiritual cause having no analogy with matter, ought not to find more difficulty in moving the whole world, than in moving a single atom, nor an atom, than the universe. from this, it is fair to conclude, such a substance is a chimera--a being of the imagination. that it required a being differently endowed, differently constituted, to set matter in motion--to create all the phenomena we behold: nevertheless, it is a being the metaphysicians have made the contriver, the author of nature. as man, in all his speculations, takes himself for the model, he no sooner imagined a spirit within himself, than giving it extent, he made it universal; then ascribed to it all those causes with which his ignorance prevents him from becoming acquainted, thus he identified himself with the author of nature--then availed himself of the supposition to explain the connection of the soul with the body: his self-complacency prevented his perceiving that he was only enlarging the circle of his errors, by pretending to understand that which it is more than possible he will never be permitted to know; his self-love prevented him from feeling, that whenever he punished another for not thinking as he did, that he committed the greatest injustice, unless he was satisfactorily able to prove that other wrong, and himself right: that if he himself was obliged to have recourse to hypothesis--to gratuitous suppositions, whereon to found his doctrine, that from the very fallibility of his nature, these might be erroneous: thus gallileo was persecuted, because the metaphysicians, the theologians of his day, chose to make others believe what it was evident they did not themselves understand. as soon as i feel an impulse, or experience motion, i am under the necessity to acknowledge extent, solidity, density, impenetrability in the substance i see move, or from which i receive impulse: thus, when action is attributed to any cause whatever, i am obliged to consider it material. i may be ignorant of its individual nature, of its mode of action, or of its generic properties; but i cannot deceive myself in general properties, which are common to all matter: this ignorance will only be increased, when i shall take that for granted of a being, of which from that moment i am precluded by what i admit from forming any idea, which moreover deprives it completely either of the faculty of moving itself, giving an impulse, or acting. thus, according to the received idea of the term, a spiritual substance that moves itself, that gives motion to matter, and that acts, implies a contradiction, that necessarily infers a total impossibility. the partizans of spirituality believe they answer the difficulties they have accumulated, by asserting that "_the soul is entire--is whole under each point of its extent_." if an absurd answer will solve difficulties, they certainly have done it. but let us examine this reply:--it will be found that this indivisible part which is called soul, however insensible or however minute, must yet remain something: then an infinity of unextended substances, or the same substance having no dimensions, repeated an infinity of times, would constitute a substance that has extent: this cannot be what they mean, because according to this principle, the human soul would then be as infinite as the author of nature; seeing that they have stated this to be a being without extent, who is an infinity of times whole in each part of the universe. but when there shall appear as much solidity in the answer as there is a want of it, it must be acknowledged that in whatever manner the spirit or the soul finds itself in its extent, when the body moves forward the soul does not remain behind; if so, it has a quality in common with the body, peculiar to matter; since it is conveyed from place to place jointly with the body. thus, when even the soul should be admitted to be immaterial, what conclusion must be drawn? entirely submitted to the motion of the body, without this body it would remain dead and inert. this soul would only be part of a two-fold machine, necessarily impelled forward by a concatenation, or connection with the whole. it would resemble a bird, which a child conducts at its pleasure, by the string with which it is bound. thus, it is for want of consulting experience, by not attending to reason, that man has darkened his ideas upon the concealed principle of his motion. if, disentangled from prejudice--if, destitute of gratuitous suppositions--if, throwing aside error, he would contemplate his soul, or the moving principle that acts within him, he would be convinced that it forms a part of its body, that it cannot be distinguished from it, but by abstraction; that it is only the body itself, considered relatively with some of its functions, or with those faculties of which its nature, or its peculiar organization, renders it susceptible:--he will perceive that this soul is obliged to undergo the same changes as the body; that it is born with it; that it expands itself with it; that like the body, it passes through a state of infancy, a period of weakness, a season of inexperience; that it enlarges itself, that it strengthens itself, in the same progression; that like the body, it arrives at an adult age or reaches maturity; that it is then, and not till then, it obtains the faculty of fulfilling certain functions; that it is in this stage, and in no other, that it enjoys reason; that it displays more or less wit, judgment, and manly activity; that like the body, it is subject to those vicissitudes which exterior causes obliges it to undergo by their influence; that, conjointly with the body, it suffers, enjoys, partakes of its pleasures, shares its pains, is sound when the body is healthy, and diseased when the body is oppressed with sickness; that like the body, it is continually modified by the different degrees of density in the atmosphere; by the variety of the seasons, and by the various properties of the aliments received into the stomach: in short, he would be obliged to acknowledge that at some periods it manifests visible signs of torpor, stupefaction, decrepitude, and death. in despite of this analogy, or rather this continual identity, of the soul with the body, man has been desirous of distinguishing their essence; he has therefore made the soul an inconceivable being: but in order that he might form to himself some idea of it, he was, notwithstanding, obliged to have recourse to material beings, and to their manner of acting. the word _spirit_, therefore, presents to the mind no other ideas than those of breathing, of respiration, of wind. thus, when it is said the _soul is a spirit_, it really means nothing more than that its mode of action is like that of breathing: which though invisible in itself, or acting without being seen, nevertheless produces very visible effects. but breath, it is acknowledged, is a material cause; it is allowed to be air modified; it is not, therefore, a simple or pure substance, such as the moderns designate under the name of spirit. it is rather singular that in the hebrew, the greek, and the latin, the synonymy, or corresponding term for spirit should signify _breath_. the metaphysicians themselves can best say why they have adopted such a word, to designate the substance they have distinguished from matter: some of them, fearful they should not have distinct beings enough, have gone farther, and compounded man of three substances, body, soul, and intellect. although the word _spirit_ is so very ancient among men, the sense attached to it by the moderns is quite new: the idea of spirituality, as admitted at this day, is a recent production of the imagination. neither pythagoras nor plato, however heated their brain, however decided their taste for the marvellous, appear to have understood by spirit an immaterial substance, or one without extent, devoid of parts; such as that of which the moderns have formed the human soul, the concealed author of motion. the ancients, by the word spirit, were desirous to define matter of an extreme subtilty, of a purer quality than that which acted grossly on our senses. in consequence, some have regarded the soul as an ethereal substance; others as igneous matter; others again have compared it to light. democritus made it consist in motion, consequently gave it a manner of existence. aristoxenes, who was himself a musician, made it harmony. aristotle regarded the soul as the moving faculty, upon which depended the motion of living bodies. the earliest doctors of christianity had no other idea of the soul, than that it was material. tertullian, arnobius, clement of alexandria, origen, saint justin, irenaeus, have all of them discoursed upon it; but have never spoken of it other than as a corporeal substance--as matter. it was reserved for their successors at a great distance of time, to make the human soul and the soul of the world _pure spirits_; that is to say, immaterial substances, of which it is impossible they could form any accurate idea: by degrees this incomprehensible doctrine of spirituality, conformable without doubt to the views of those who make it a principle to annihilate reason, prevailed over the others: but it might be fairly asked, if the pretended proofs of this doctrine owe themselves to a man, who on a much more comprehensible point has been proved in error; if, on that which time has shewn was accessible to man's reason, the great champion in support of this dogma was deceived; are we not bound to examine, with the most rigorous investigation, the reasonings, the evidence, of one who was the decided, the proven child of enthusiasm and error? yet descartes, to whose sublime errors the world is indebted for the newtonian system, although before him the soul had been considered spiritual, was the first who established that, "_that which thinks ought to be distinguished from matter_;" from whence he concludes rather hastily, that the soul, or that which thinks in man, is a spirit; or a simple indivisible substance. perhaps it would have been more logical, more consistent with reason, to have said, since man, who is matter, who has no idea but of matter, enjoys the faculty of thought, matter can think; that is, it is susceptible of that particular modification called thought. however this may be, this doctrine was believed divine, supernatural, because it was inconceivable to man. those who dared believe even that which was believed before; namely, _that the soul was material_, were held as rash inconsiderate madmen, or else treated as enemies to the welfare and happiness of the human race. when man had once renounced experience; when he had abjured his reason; when he had joined the banner of this enthusiastic novelty; he did nothing more, day after day, than subtilize the delirium, the ravings of his imagination: he pleased himself by continually sinking deeper into the most unfathomable depths of error: he felicitated himself on his discoveries; on his pretended knowledge; in an exact ratio as his understanding became enveloped in the mists of darkness, environed with the clouds of ignorance. thus, in consequence of man's reasoning upon false principles; of having relinquished the evidence of his senses; the moving principle within him, the concealed author of motion, has been made a mere chimera, a mere being of the imagination, because he has divested it of all known properties; because he has attached to it nothing but properties which, from the very nature of his existence, he is incapacitated to comprehend. the doctrine of spirituality, such as it now exists, offers nothing but vague ideas; or rather is the absense of all ideas. what does it present to the mind, but a substance which possesses nothing of which our senses enable us to have a knowledge? can it be truth that a man is able to figure to himself a being not material, having neither extent nor parts, which, nevertheless, acts upon matter without having any point of contact, any kind of analogy with it; and which itself receives the impulse of matter by means of material organs, which announce to it the presence of other beings? is it possible to conceive the union of the soul with the body; to comprehend how this material body can bind, enclose, constrain, determine a fugitive being which escapes all our senses? is it honest, is it plain dealing, to solve these difficulties, by saying there is a mystery in them; that they are the effects of a power, more inconceivable than the human soul; than its mode of acting, however concealed from our view? when to resolve these problems, man is obliged to have recourse to miracles or to make the divinity interfere, does he not avow his own ignorance? when, notwithstanding the ignorance he is thus obliged to avow by availing himself of the divine agency, he tells us, this immaterial substance, this soul, shall experience the action of the element of fire, which he allows to be material; when he confidently says this soul shall be burnt; shall suffer in purgatory; have we not a right to believe, that either he has a design to deceive us, or else that he does not himself understand that which he is so anxious we should take upon his word? let us not then be surprised at those subtile hypotheses, as ingenious as they are unsatisfactory, to which theological prejudice has obliged the most profound modern speculators to recur; when they have undertaken to reconcile the spirituality of the soul, with the physical action of material beings, on this incorporeal substance; its re-action upon these beings; its union with the body. when the human mind permits itself to be guided by authority without proof, to be led forward by enthusiasm; when it renounces the evidence of its senses; what can it do more than sink into error? let those who doubt this, read the metaphysical romances of leibnitz, descartes, malebranche, cudworth, and many others: let them coolly examine the ingenious, but fanciful systems entitled _the pre-established harmony of occasional causes; physical pre-motion, &c._ if man wishes to form to himself clear, perspicuous ideas of his soul, let him throw himself back on his experience--let him renounce his prejudices--let him avoid theological conjecture--let him tear the bandages which he has been taught to think necessary, but with which he has been blind-folded, only to confound his reason. if it be wished to draw man to virtue, let the natural philosopher, let the anatomist, let the physician, unite their experience; let them compare their observations, in order to show what ought to be thought of a substance, so disguised, so hidden by absurdities, as not easily to be known. their discoveries may perhaps teach moralists the true motive-power that ought to influence the actions of man--legislators, the true motives that should actuate him, that should excite him to labour to the welfare of society--sovereigns, the means of rendering their subjects truly happy; of giving solidity to the power of the nations committed to their charge. physical souls have physical wants, and demand physical happiness. these are real, are preferable objects, to that variety of fanciful chimeras, each in its turn giving place to the other, with which the mind of man has been fed during so many ages. let us, then, labour to perfect the morality of man; let us make it agreeable to him; let us excite in him an ardent thirst for its purity: we shall presently see his morals become better, himself become happier; his soul become calm and serene; his will determined to virtue, by the natural, by the palpable motives held out to him. by the diligence, by the care which legislators shall bestow on natural philosophy, they will form citizens of sound understandings; robust and well constituted; who, finding themselves happy, will be themselves accessary to that useful impulse so necessary for their soul. when the body is suffering, when nations are unhappy, the soul cannot be in a proper state. _mens sana in corpore sano_, a sound mind in a sound body, will be always able to make a good citizen. the more man reflects, the more he will be convinced that the soul, very far from being distinguished from the body, is only the body itself, considered relatively to some of its functions, or to some of the modes of existing or acting, of which it is susceptible whilst it enjoys life. thus, the soul is man, considered relatively to the faculty he has of feeling, of thinking, of acting in a mode resulting from his peculiar nature; that is to say, from his properties, from his particular organization: from the modifications, whether durable or transitory, which the beings who act upon him cause his machine to undergo. those who have distinguished the soul from the body, appear only to have distinguished their brain from themselves. indeed, the brain is the common center, where all the nerves, distributed through every part of the body, meet and blend themselves: it is by the aid of this interior organ that all those operations are performed which are attributed to the soul: it is the impulse, or the motion, communicated to the nerve, which modifies the brain: in consequence, it re-acts, or gives play to the bodily organs; or rather it acts upon itself, and becomes capable of producing within itself a great variety of motion, which has been designated _intellectual faculties_. from this it may be seen that some philosophers have been desirous to make a spiritual substance of the brain. it is evidently nothing but ignorance that has given birth to and accredited this system, which embraces so little, either of the natural or the rational. it is from not having studied himself, that man has supposed he was compounded with an agent, essentially different from his body: in examining this body, he will find that it is quite useless to recur to hypothesis for the explanation of the various phenomena it presents to his contemplation; that hypothesis can do nothing more than lead him out of the right road to the information after which he seeks. what obscures this question, arises from this, that man cannot see himself: indeed, for this purpose, that would be requisite which is impossible; namely, that he could he at one and the same moment both within and without himself: he may be compared to an eolian harp, that issues sounds of itself, and should demand what it is that causes it to give them forth? it does not perceive that the sensitive quality of its chords causes the air to brace them; that being so braced, it is rendered sonorous by every gust of wind with which it happens to come in contact. when a theologian, obstinately bent on admitting into man two substances essentially different, is asked why he multiplies beings without necessity? he will reply, because _"thought cannot be a property of matter."_ if, then, it be enquired of him, _cannot god give to matter the faculty of thought?_ he will answer, _"no! seeing that god cannot do impossible things!"_ according to his principles, it is as impossible that spirit or thought can produce matter, as it is impossible that matter can produce spirit or thought: it might, therefore, be concluded against him, that the world was not made by a spirit, any more than a spirit was made by the world. but in this case, does not the theologian, according to his own assertion, acknowledge himself to be the true atheist? does he not, in fact, circumscribe the attributes of the deity, and deny his power, to suit his own purpose? yet these men demand implicit belief in doctrines, which they are obliged to maintain by the most contradictory assertions. the more experience we collect, the more we shall be convinced that the word _spirit_, in its present received usage, conveys no one sense that is tangible, either to ourselves or to those that invented it; consequently cannot be of the least use, either in physics or morals. what modern metaphysicians believe and understand by the word, is nothing more than an _occult_ power, imagined to explain _occult_ qualities and actions, but which, in fact, explains nothing. savage nations admit of spirits, to account to themselves for those effects, which to them appear marvellous, as long as their ignorance knows not the cause to which they ought to be attributed. in attributing to spirits the phenomena of nature, as well as those of the human body, do we, in fact, do any thing more than reason like savages? man has filled nature with spirits, because he has almost always been ignorant of the true causes of those effects by which he was astonished. not being acquainted with the powers of nature, he has supposed her to be animated by a _great spirit_: not understanding the energy of the human frame, he has in like manner conjectured it to be animated by a _minor spirit_: from this it would appear, that whenever he wished to indicate the unknown cause of a phenomena, he knew not how to explain in a natural manner, he had recourse to the word _spirit_. in short, _spirit_ was a term by which he solved all his doubts, and cleared up his ignorance to himself. it was according to these principles that when the americans first beheld the terrible effects of gunpowder, they ascribed the cause to wrathful spirits, to their enraged divinities: it was by adopting these principles, that our ancestors believed in a plurality of gods, in ghosts, in genii, &c. pursuing the same track, we ought to attribute to spirits gravitation, electricity, magnetism, &c. &c. it is somewhat singular, that priests have in all ages so strenuously upheld those systems which time has exploded; that they have appeared to be either the most crafty or the most ignorant of men. where are now the priests of apollo, of juno, of the sun, and a thousand others? yet these are the men, who in all times have persecuted those who have been the first to give natural explanations of the phenomena of nature, as witness anaxagoras, aristotle, gallileo, descartes, &c. &c. chap. viii. _the intellectual faculties derived from the faculty of feeling_. to convince ourselves that the faculties called _intellectual_, are only certain modes of existence, or determinate manners of acting, which result from the peculiar organization of the body, we have only to analyze them; we shall then see that all the operations which are attributed to the soul, are nothing more than certain modifications of the body; of which a substance that is without extent, that has no parts, that is immaterial, is not susceptible. the first faculty we behold in the living man, and that from which all his others flow, is _feeling_: however inexplicable this faculty may appear, on a first view, if it be examined closely, it will be found to be a consequence of the essence, or a result of the properties of organized beings; the same as _gravity, magnetism, elasticity, electricity_, &c. result from the essence or nature of some others. we shall also find these last phenomena are not less inexplicable than that of feeling. nevertheless, if we wish to define to ourselves a clear and precise idea of it, we shall find that feeling is a particular manner of being moved--a mode of receiving an impulse peculiar to certain organs of animated bodies, which is occasioned by the presence of a material object that acts upon these organs, and transmit the impulse or shock to the brain. man only feels by the aid of nerves dispersed through his body; which is itself, to speak correctly, nothing more than a great nerve; or may be said to resemble a large tree, of which the branches experience the action of the root, communicated through the trunk. in man the nerves unite and lose themselves in the brain; that intestine is the true seat of feeling: like the spider in the centre of his web, it is quickly warned of all the changes that happen to the body, even at the extremities to which it sends its filaments and branches. experience enables us to ascertain, that man ceases to feel in those parts of his body of which the communication with the brain is intercepted; he feels very little, or not at all, whenever this organ is itself deranged or affected in too lively a manner. a proof of this is afforded in the transactions of the royal academy of sciences at paris: they inform us of a man who had his scull taken off, in the room of which his brain was recovered with skin; in proportion as a pressure was made by the hand on his brain, the man fell into a kind of insensibility, which deprived him of all feeling. bartolin says, the brain of a man is twice as big as that of an ox. this observation had been already made by aristotle. in the dead body of an idiot dissected by willis, the brain was found smaller than ordinary: he says the greatest difference he found between the parts of the body of this idiot, and those of wiser men, was, that the plexus of the intercostal nerves, which is the mediator between the brain and the heart, was extremely small, accompanied by a less number of nerves than usual. according to willis, the ape is, of all animals, that which has the largest brain, relatively to his size: he is also, after man, that which has the most intelligence: this is further confirmed, by the name he bears in the soil, to which he is indigenous, which is _ourang outang_, or the man beast. there is, therefore, every reason to believe that it is entirely in the brain, that consists the difference, that is found not only between man and beasts, but also between the man of wit, and the fool: between the thinking man, and he who is ignorant; between the man of sound understanding, and the madman: a multitude of experience, serves to prove, that those persons who are most accustomed to use their intellectual faculties, have their brain more extended than others: the same has been remarked of watermen, that they have arms much longer than other men. however this may be, the sensibility of the brain, and all its parts, is a fact: if it be asked, whence comes this property? we shall reply, it is the result of an arrangement, of a combination, peculiar to the animal: it is thus that milk, bread, wine, change themselves in the substance of man, who is a sensible being: this insensible matter becomes sensible, in combining itself with a sensible whole. some philosophers think that sensibility is a universal quality of matter: in this case, it would be useless to seek from whence this property is derived, as we know it by its effects. if this hypothesis be admitted, in like manner as two kinds of motion are distinguished in nature, the one called _live_ force, the other _dead_, or _inert_ force, two sorts of sensibility will be distinguished, the one active or alive, the other inert or dead. then to animalize a substance, is only to destroy the obstacles that prevent its being active or sensible. in fact, sensibility is either a quality which communicates itself like motion, and which is acquired by combination; or this sensibility is a property inherent in all matter: in both, or either case, an unextended being, without parts, such as the human soul is said to be, can neither be the cause of it nor submitted to its operation; but we may fairly conclude, that all the parts of nature enjoy the capability to arrive at animation; the obstacle is only in the state, not in the quality. life is the perfection of nature: she has no parts which do not tend to it--which do not attain it by the same means. life in an insect, a dog, a man, has no other difference, than that this act is more perfect, relatively to ourselves in proportion to the structure of the organs: if, therefore, it be asked, what is requisite to animate a body? we reply, it needs no foreign aid; it is sufficient that the power of nature be joined to its organization. the conformation, the arrangement, the texture, the delicacy of the organs, as well exterior as interior, which compose men and animals, render their parts extremely mobile, or make their machine susceptible of being moved with great facility. in a body, which is only a heap of fibres, a mass of nerves, contiguous one to the other, united in a common center, always ready to act; in a whole, composed of fluids and solids, of which the parts are in equilibrium, the smallest touching each other, are active in their motion, communicating reciprocally, alternately and in succession, the impression, oscillations, and shocks they receive; in such a composition, it is not surprising that the slightest impulse propagates itself with celerity; that the shocks excited in its remotest parts, make themselves quickly felt in the brain, whose delicate texture renders it susceptible of being itself very easily modified. air, fire, water, agents the most inconstant, possessing the most rapid motion, circulate continually in the fibres, incessantly penetrate the nerves: without doubt these contribute to that incredible celerity with which the brain is acquainted with what passes at the extremities of the body. notwithstanding the great mobility with which man's organization renders him susceptible, although exterior as well as interior causes are continually acting upon him, he does not always feel in a distinct, in a decided manner, the impulse given to his senses: indeed, he does not feel it, until it has produced some change, or given some shock to his brain. thus, although completely environed by air, he does not feel its action, until it is so modified, as to strike with a sufficient degree of force on his organs; to penetrate his skin, through which his brain is warned of its presence. thus, during a profound and tranquil sleep, undisturbed by any dream, man ceases to feel. in short, notwithstanding the continued motion that agitates his frame, man does not appear to feel, when this motion acts in a convenient order; he does not perceive a state of health, but he discovers a state of grief or sickness; because, in the first, his brain does not receive too lively an impulse, whilst in the others, his nerves are contracted, shocked, and agitated, with violent, with disorderly motion: these communicating with his brain, give notice that some cause acts strongly upon them--impels them in a manner that bears no analogy with their natural habit: this constitutes, in him, that peculiar mode of existing which he calls _grief_. on the other hand, it sometimes happens that exterior objects produce very considerable changes on his body, without his perceiving them at the moment. often, in the heat of battle, the soldier perceives not that he is dangerously wounded, because, at the time, the rapidity, the multiplicity of impetuous motion that assails his brain, does not permit him to distinguish the particular change a part of his body has undergone by the wound. in short, when a great number of causes are simultaneously acting on him with too much vivacity, he sinks under their accumulated pressure,--he swoons--he loses his senses--he is deprived of feeling. in general, feeling only obtains, when the brain can distinguish distinctly, the impressions made on the organs with which it has communication; it is the distinct shock, the decided modification man undergoes, that constitutes _conscience_. doctor clarke, says to this effect: "conscience is the act of reflecting, by means of which i know that i think, and that my thoughts, or my actions belong to me, and not to another." from this it will appear, that _feeling_ is a mode of being, a marked change, produced on our brain, occasioned by the impulse communicated to our organs, whether by interior or exterior agents, by which it is modified either in a durable or transient manner: it is not always requisite that man's organs should be moved by an exterior object, to enable him to feel that he should be conscious of the changes effected in him: he can feel them within himself by means of an interior impulse; his brain is then modified, or rather he renews within himself the anterior modifications. we are not to be astonished that the brain should be necessarily warned of the shocks, of the impediments, of the changes that may happen to so complicated a machine as the human body, in which, notwithstanding all the parts are contiguous to the brain, and concentrate themselves in this brain, and are by their essence in a continual state of action and re-action. when a man experiences the pains of the gout, he is conscious of them; in other words, he feels interiorly, that it has produced very marked, very distinct changes in him, without his perceiving, that he has received an impulse from any exterior cause; nevertheless, if he will recur to the true source of these changes, he will find that they have been wholly produced by exterior agents: they have been the consequence, either of his temperament; of the organization received from his parents; of the aliments with which his frame has been nourished; besides a thousand trivial, inappreciable causes, which congregating themselves by degrees produce in him the gouty humour; the effect of which is to make him feel in an acute and very lively manner. the pain of the gout engenders in his brain an idea, so modifies it that it acquires the faculty of representing to itself, of reiterating as it were, this pain when even he shall be no longer tormented with the gout: his brain, by a series of motion interiorly excited, is again placed in a state analogous to that in which it was when he really experienced this pain: but if he had never felt it, he would never have been in a capacity to form to himself any just idea of its excruciating torments. the visible organs of man's body, by the intervention of which his brain is modified, take the name of _senses_. the various modifications which his brain receives by the aid of these senses, assumes a variety of names. _sensation_, _perception_, and _idea_, are terms that designate nothing more than the changes produced in this interior organ, in consequence of impressions made on the exterior organs by bodies acting on them: these changes considered by themselves, are called _sensations_; they adopt the term _perception_ when the brain is warned of their presence; _ideas_ is that state of them in which the brain is able to ascribe them to the objects by which they have been produced. every _sensation_, then, is nothing more than the shock given to the organs, every _perception_ is this shock propagated to the brain; every _idea_ is the image of the object to which the sensation and the perception is to be ascribed. from whence it will be seen, that if the senses be not moved, there can neither be sensations, perceptions, nor ideas: this will be proved to those, who can yet permit themselves to doubt so demonstrable and striking a truth. it is the extreme mobility of which man is capable, owing to his peculiar organization, that distinguishes him from other beings that are called insensible or inanimate; the different degrees of this mobility, of which the individuals of his species are susceptible, discriminate them from each other; make that incredible variety, that infinity of difference which is to be found, as well in their corporeal faculties, as in those which are mental or intellectual. from this mobility, more or less remarkable in each human being, results wit, sensibility, imagination, taste, &c.: for the present, however, let us follow the operation of the senses; let us examine in what manner they are acted upon, and are modified by exterior objects:--we will afterwards scrutinize the re-action of the interior organ or brain. the eyes are very delicate, very movable organs, by means of which the sensation of light or colour is experienced: these give to the brain a distinct perception, in consequence of which, man forms an idea, generated by the action of luminous or coloured bodies: as soon as the eyelids are opened, the retina is affected in a peculiar manner; the fluid, the fibres, the nerves, of which they are composed, are excited by shocks which they communicate to the brain; to which they delineate the images of the bodies from which they have received the impulse; by this means, an idea is acquired of the colour, the size, the form, the distance of these bodies: it is thus that may be explained the mechanism of _sight_. the mobility and the elasticity of which the skin is rendered susceptible, by the fibres and nerves which form its texture, accounts for the rapidity with which this envelope to the human body is affected when applied to any other body; by their agency, the brain has notice of its presence, of its extent, of its roughness, of its smoothness, of its surface, of its pressure of its ponderosity, &c. qualities from which the brain derives distinct perceptions, which breed in it a diversity of ideas; it is this that constitutes the _touch_ or _feeling_. the delicacy of the membrane by which the interior of the nostrils is covered, renders them easily susceptible of irritation, even by the invisible and impalpable corpuscles that emanate from odorous bodies: by these means sensations are excited, the brain has perceptions, and generates ideas: it is this that forms the sense of _smelling_. the mouth, filled with nervous, sensible, movable, irritable glands, saturated with juices suitable to the dissolution of saline substances, is affected in a very lively manner by the aliments which pass through it for the nourishment of the body; these glands transmit to the brain the impressions received: perceptions are of consequence; ideas follow: it is from this mechanism that results _taste_. the ear, whose conformation fits it to receive the various impulses of air, diversely modified, communicates to the brain the shocks or sensations; these breed the perception of sound, and generate the idea of sonorous bodies: it is this that constitutes _hearing_. such are the only means by which man receives sensations, perceptions, and ideas. these successive modifications of his brain are effects produced by objects that give impulse to his senses; they become themselves causes, producing in his soul new modifications, which are denominated _thought, reflection, memory, imagination, judgment, will, action_; the basis, however, of all these is _sensation_. to form a precise notion of _thought_, it will be requisite to examine, step by step, what passes in man during the presence of any object whatever. suppose for a moment this object to be a peach: this fruit makes, at the first view, two different impressions on his eyes; that is to say, it produces two modifications, which are transmitted to the brain, which on this occasion experiences two new perceptions, or has two new ideas or modes of existence, designated by the terms _colour_ and _rotundity_; in consequence, he has an idea of a body possessing roundness and colour: if he places his hand on this fruit, the organ of feeling having been set in action, his hand experiences three new impressions, which are called _softness, coolness, weight_, from whence result three new perceptions in the brain, he has consequently three new ideas: if he approximates this peach to his nose, the organ of _smelling_ receives an impulse, which, communicated to the brain, a new perception arises, by which he acquires a new idea, called _odour_: if he carries this fruit to his mouth, the organ of taste becomes affected in a very lively manner: this impulse communicated to the brain, is followed by a perception that generates in him the idea of _flavour_. in re-uniting all these impressions, or these various modifications of his organs, which it have been consequently transmitted to his brain; that is to say, in combining the different sensations, perceptions, and ideas, that result from the impulse he has received, he has an idea of a whole, which he designates by the name of a peach, with which he can then occupy his thoughts. from this it is sufficiently proved that thought has a commencement, a duration, an end; or rather a generation, a succession, a dissolution, like all the other modifications of matter; like them, thought is excited, is determined, is increased, is divided, is compounded, is simplified, &c. if, therefore, the soul, or the principle that thinks, be indivisible; how does it happen, that this soul has the faculty of memory, or of forgetfulness; is capacitated to think successively, to divide, to abstract, to combine, to extend its ideas, to retain them, or to lose them? how can it cease to think? if forms appear divisible in matter, it is only in considering them by abstraction, after the method, of geometricians; but this divisibility of form exists not in nature, in which there is neither a point, an atom, nor form perfectly regular; it must therefore be concluded, that the forms of matter are not less indivisible than thought. what has been said is sufficient to show the generation of sensations, of perceptions, of ideas, with their association, or connection in the brain: it will be seen that these various modifications are nothing more than the consequence of successive impulses, which the exterior organs transmit to the interior organ, which enjoys the faculty of thought, that is to say, to feel in itself the different modifications it has received, or to perceive the various ideas which it has generated; to combine them, to separate them, to extend them, to abridge them, to compare them, to renew them, &c. from whence it will be seen, that thought is nothing more than the perception of certain modifications, which the brain either gives to itself, or has received from exterior objects. indeed, not only the interior organ perceives the modifications it receives from without, but again it has the faculty of modifying itself; of considering the changes which take place in it, the motion by which it is agitated in its peculiar operations, from which it imbibes new perceptions and new ideas. it is the exercise of this power to fall back upon itself, that is called _reflection_. from this it will appear, that for man to think and to reflect, is to feel, or perceive within himself the impressions, the sensations, the ideas, which have been furnished to his brain by those objects which give impulse to his senses, with the various changes which his brain produced on itself in consequence. _memory_ is the faculty which the brain has of renewing in itself the modifications it has received, or rather, to restore itself to a state similar to that in which it has been placed by the sensations, the perceptions, the ideas, produced by exterior objects, in the exact order it received them, without any new action on the part of these objects, or even when these objects are absent; the brain perceives that these modifications assimilate with those it formerly experienced in the presence of the objects to which it relates, or attributes them. memory is faithful, when these modifications are precisely the same; it is treacherous, when they differ from those which the organs have exteriorly experienced. _imagination_ in man is only the faculty which the brain has of modifying itself, or of forming to itself new perceptions, upon the model of those which it has anteriorly received through the action of exterior objects on the senses. the brain, then, does nothing more than combine ideas which it has already formed, which it recalls to itself, from which it forms a whole, or a collection of modifications, which it has not received, which exists no-where but in itself, although the individual ideas, or the parts of which this ideal whole is composed, have been previously communicated to it, in consequence of the impulse given to the senses by exterior objects: it is thus man forms to himself the idea of _centaurs_, or a being composed of a man and a horse, of _hyppogriffs_, or a being composed of a horse with wings and a griffin, besides a thousand other objects, equally ridiculous. by memory, the brain renews in itself the sensations, the perceptions, and the ideas which it has received or generated; represents to itself the objects which have actually moved its organs. by imagination it combines them variously: forms objects in their place which have not moved its organs, although it is perfectly acquainted with the elements or ideas of which it composes them. it is thus that man, by combining a great number of ideas borrowed from himself, such as justice, wisdom, goodness, intelligence, &c. by the aid of imagination, has formed various ideal beings, or imaginary wholes, which he has called jupiter, juno, bramah, saturn, &c. _judgment_ is the faculty which the brain possesses of comparing with each other the modifications it receives, the ideas it engenders, or which it has the power of awakening within itself, to the end that it may discover their relations, or their effects. _will_ is a modification of the brain, by which it is disposed to action, that is to say, to give such an impulse to the organs of the body, as can induce to act in a manner, that will procure for itself what is requisite to modify it in a mode analogous to its own existence, or to enable it to avoid that by which it can be injured. to _will_ is to be disposed to _action_. the exterior objects, or the interior ideas, which give birth to this disposition are called _motives_, because they are the springs or movements which determine it to act, that is to say, which give play to the organs of the body. thus, _voluntary actions_ are the motion of the body, determined by the modification of the brain. fruit hanging on a tree, through the agency of the visual organs, modifies the brain in such a manner as to dispose the arm to stretch itself forth to cull it; again, it modifies it in another manner, by which it excites the hand to carry it to the mouth. all the modifications which the interior organ or the brain receives, all the sensations, all the perceptions, all the ideas that are generated by the objects which give impulse to the senses, or which it renews within itself by its own peculiar faculties, are either favourable or prejudicial to man's mode of existence, whether that be transitory or habitual: they dispose the interior organ to action, which it exercises by reason of its own peculiar energy: this action is not, however, the same in all the individuals of the human species, depending much on their respective temperaments. from hence the passions have their birth: these are more or less violent; they are, however, nothing more than the motion of the will, determined by the objects which give it activity; consequently composed of the analogy or of the discordance which is found between these objects, man's peculiar mode of existence, and the force of his temperament. from this it results, that the passions are modes of existence or modifications of the brain; which either attract or repel those objects by which man is surrounded; that consequently they are submitted in their action to the physical laws of attraction and repulsion. the faculty of perceiving or of being modified, as well by itself as exterior objects which the brain enjoys is sometimes designated by the term _understanding_. to the assemblage of the various faculties of which this interior organ is susceptible, is applied the name of _intelligence_. to a determined mode in which the brain exercises the faculties peculiar to itself, is given the appellation of _reason_. the dispositions or the modifications of the brain, some of them constant, others transitory, which give impulse to the beings of the human species, causing them to act, are styled _wit, wisdom, goodness, prudence, virtue, &c_. in short, as there will be an opportunity presently to prove, all the intellectual faculties--that is to say, all the modes of action attributed to the soul, may be reduced to the modifications, to the qualities, to the modes of existence, to the changes produced by the motion of the brain; which is visibly in man the seat of feeling, the principle of all his actions. these modifications are to be attributed to the objects that strike on his senses; of which the impression is transmitted to the brain, or rather to the ideas, which the perceptions caused by the action of these objects on his senses have there generated, and which it has the faculty to re-produce. this brain moves itself in its turn, re-acts upon itself, gives play to the organs, which concentrate themselves in it, or which are rather nothing more than an extension of its own peculiar substance. it is thus the concealed motion of the interior organ, renders itself sensible by outward and visible signs. the brain, affected by a modification which is called fear, diffuses a paleness over the countenance, excites a tremulous motion in the limbs called trembling. the brain, affected by a sensation of grief, causes tears to flow from the eyes, even without being moved by any exterior object; an idea which it retraces with great strength, suffices to give it very little modifications, which visibly have an influence on the whole frame. in all this, nothing more is to be perceived than the same substance which acts diversely on the various parts of the body. if it be objected that this mechanism does not sufficiently explain the principles of the motion or the faculties of the soul; we reply, that it is in the same situation as all the other bodies of nature, in which the most simple motion, the most ordinary phenomena, the most common modes of action are inexplicable mysteries, of which we shall never be able to fathom the first principles. indeed, how can we flatter ourselves we shall ever be enabled to compass the true principle of that gravity by which a stone falls? are we acquainted with the mechanism which produces attraction in some substances, repulsion in others? are we in a condition to explain the communication of motion from one body to another? but it may be fairly asked,--are the difficulties that occur, when attempting to explain the manner in which the soul acts, removed by making it a _spiritual being_, a substance of which we have not, nor cannot form one idea, which consequently must bewilder all the notions we are capable of forming to ourselves of this being? let us then be contented to know that the soul moves itself, modifies itself, in consequence of material causes, which act upon it which give it activity: from whence the conclusion may be said to flow consecutively, that all its operations, all its faculties, prove that it is itself _material_. chap. ix. _the diversity of the intellectual faculties: they depend on physical causes, as do their moral qualities.--the natural principles of society.--morals.--politics_. nature is under the necessity of diversifying all her works. elementary matter, different in its essence, must necessarily form different beings, various in their combinations, in their properties, in their modes of action, in their manner of existence. there is not, neither can there be, two beings, two combinations, which are mathematically and rigorously the same; because the place, the circumstances, the relations; the proportions, the modifications, never being exactly alike, the beings that result can never bear a perfect resemblance to each other: their modes of action must of necessity vary in something, even when we believe we find between them the greatest conformity. in consequence of this principle, which every thing we see conspires to prove to be a truth, there are not two individuals of the human species who have precisely the same traits--who think exactly in the same manner--who view things under the same identical point of sight--who have decidedly the same ideas; consequently no two of them have uniformly the same system of conduct. the visible organs of man, as well as his concealed organs, have indeed some analogy, some common points of resemblance, some general conformity; which makes them appear, when viewed in the gross, to be affected in the same manner by certain causes: but the difference is infinite in the detail. the human soul may be compared to those instruments, of which the chords, already diversified in themselves, by the manner in which they have been spun, are also strung upon different notes: struck by the same impulse, each chord gives forth the sound that is peculiar to itself; that is to say, that which depends on its texture, its tension, its volume, on the momentary state in which it is placed by the circumambient air. it is this that produces the diversified spectacle, the varied scene, which the moral world offers to our view: it is from this that results the striking contrariety that is to be found in the minds, in the faculties, in the passions, in the energies, in the taste, in the imagination, in the ideas, in the opinions of man. this diversity is as great as that of his physical powers: like them it depends on his temperament, which is as much varied as his physiognomy. this variety gives birth to that continual series of action and reaction, which constitutes the life of the moral world: from this discordance results the harmony which at once maintains and preserves the human race. the diversity found among the individuals of the human species, causes inequalities between man and man: this inequality constitutes the support of society. if all men were equal in their bodily powers, in their mental talents, they would not have any occasion for each other: it is the variation of his faculties, the inequality which this places him in, with regard to his fellows, that renders morals necessary to man: without these, he would live by himself, he would remain an isolated being. from whence it may be perceived, that this inequality of which man so often complains without cause--this impossibility which each man finds when in an isolated state, when left to himself, when unassociated with his fellow men, to labour efficaciously to his own welfare, to make his own security, to ensure his own conservation; places him in the happy situation of associating with his like, of depending on his fellow associates, of meriting their succour, of propitiating them to his views, of attracting their regard, of calling in their aid to chase away, by common and united efforts, that which would have the power to trouble or derange the order of his existence. in consequence of man's diversity, of the inequality that results, the weaker is obliged to seek the protection of the stronger; this, in his turn, recurs to the understanding, to the talents, to the industry of the weaker, whenever his judgment points out he can be useful to him: this natural inequality furnishes the reason why nations distinguish those citizens who have rendered their country eminent services. it is in consequence of his exigencies that man honors and recompenses those whose understanding, good deeds, assistance, or virtues, have procured for him real or supposed advantages, pleasures, or agreeable sensations of any sort: it is by this means that genius gains an ascendancy over the mind of man, and obliges a whole people to acknowledge its powers. thus, the diversity and inequality of the faculties, as well corporeal as mental or intellectual, renders man necessary to his fellow man, makes him a social being, and incontestibly proves to him the necessity of morals. according to this diversity of faculties, the individuals of the human species are divided into different classes, each in proportion to the effects produced, or the different qualities that may be remarked: all these varieties in man flow from the individual properties of his soul, or from the particular modification of his brain. it is thus, that wit, imagination, sensibility, talents, &c. diversify to infinity the differences that are to be found in man. it is thus, that some are called good, others wicked; some are denominated virtuous, others vicious; some are ranked as learned, others as ignorant; some are considered reasonable, others unreasonable, &c. if all the various faculties attributed to the soul are examined, it will be found that like those of the body they are to be ascribed to physical causes, to which it will be very easy to recur. it will be found that the powers of the soul are the same as those of the body; that they always depend on the organization of this body, on its peculiar properties, on the permanent or transitory modifications that it undergoes; in a word, on its temperament. _temperament_ is, in each individual, the habitual state in which he finds the fluids and the solids of which his body is composed. this temperament varies, by reason of the elements or matter that predominate in him, in consequence of the different combinations, of the various modifications, which this matter, diversified in itself, undergoes in his machine. thus, in one, the blood is superabundant; in another, the bile; in a third, phlegm, &c. it is from nature--from his parents--from causes, which from the first moment of his existence have unceasingly modified him, that man derives his temperament. it is in his mother's womb that he has attracted the matter which, during his whole life, shall have an influence on his intellectual faculties--on his energies--on his passions--on his conduct. the very nourishment he takes, the quality of the air he respires, the climate he inhabits, the education he receives, the ideas that are presented to him, the opinions he imbibes, modify this temperament. as these circumstances can never be rigorously the same in every point for any two men, it is by no means surprising that such an amazing variety, so great a contrariety, should be found in man; or that there should exist as many different temperaments, as there are individuals in the human species. thus, although man may bear a general resemblance, he differs essentially, as well by the texture of his fibres and the disposition of his nerves, as by the nature, the quality, the quantity of matter that gives them play, that sets his organs in motion. man, already different from his fellow, by the elasticity of his fibres, the tension of his nerves, becomes still more distinguished by a variety of other circumstances: he is more active, more robust, when he receives nourishing aliments, when he drinks wine, when he takes exercise: whilst another, who drinks nothing but water, who takes less juicy nourishment, who languishes in idleness, shall be sluggish and feeble. all these causes have necessarily an influence on the mind, on the passions, on the will; in a word, on what are called the intellectual faculties. thus, it may be observed, that a man of a sanguine constitution, is commonly lively, ingenious, full of imagination, passionate, voluptuous, enterprising; whilst the phlegmatic man is dull, of a heavy understanding, slow of conception, inactive, difficult to be moved, pusillanimous, without imagination, or possessing it in a less lively degree, incapable of taking any strong measures, or of willing resolutely. if experience was consulted, in the room of prejudice, the physician would collect from morals, the key to the human heart: in curing the body, he would sometimes be assured of curing the mind. man, in making a spiritual substance of his soul, has contented himself with administering to it spiritual remedies, which either have no influence over his temperament, or do it an injury. the doctrine of the spirituality of the soul has rendered morals a conjectural science, that does not furnish a knowledge of the true motives which ought to be put in activity, in order to influence man to his welfare. if, calling experience to his assistance, man sought out the elements which form the basis of his temperament, or of the greater number of the individuals composing a nation, he would then discover what would be most proper for him,--that which could be most convenient to his mode of existence--which could most conduce to his true interest--what laws would be necessary to his happiness--what institutions would be most useful for him--what regulations would be most beneficial. in short, morals and politics would be equally enabled to draw from _materialism_, advantages which the dogma of spirituality can never supply, of which it even precludes the idea. man will ever remain a mystery, to those who shall obstinately persist in viewing him with eyes prepossessed by metaphysics; he will always be an enigma to those who shall pertinaciously attribute his actions to a principle, of which it is impossible to form to themselves any distinct idea. when man shall be seriously inclined to understand himself, let him sedulously endeavour to discover the matter that enters into his combination, which constitutes his temperament; these discoveries will furnish him with the clue to the nature of his desires, to the quality of his passions, to the bent of his inclinations--will enable him to foresee his conduct on given occasions--will indicate the remedies that may be successfully employed to correct the defects of a vicious organization, of a temperament, as injurious to himself as to the society of which he is a member. indeed, it is not to be doubted that man's temperament is capable of being corrected, of being modified, of being changed, by causes as physical as the matter of which it is constituted. we are all in some measure capable of forming our own temperament: a man of a sanguine constitution, by taking less juicy nourishment, by abating its quantity, by abstaining from strong liquor, &c. may achieve the correction of the nature, the quality, the quantity, the tendency, the motion of the fluids, which predominate in his machine. a bilious man, or one who is melancholy, may, by the aid of certain remedies, diminish the mass of this bilious fluid; he may correct the blemish of his humours, by the assistance of exercise; he may dissipate his gloom, by the gaiety which results from increased motion. an european transplanted into hindostan, will, by degrees, become quite a different man in his humours, in his ideas, in his temperament, in his character. although but few experiments have been made with a view to learn what constitutes the temperament of man, there are still enough if he would but deign to make use of them--if he would vouchsafe to apply to useful purposes the little experience he has gleaned. it would appear, speaking generally, that the igneous principle which chemists designate under the name of _phlogiston_, or inflammable matter, is that which in man yields him the most active life, furnishes him with the greatest energy, affords the greatest mobility to his frame, supplies the greatest spring to his organs, gives the greatest elasticity to his fibres, the greatest tension to his nerves, the greatest rapidity to his fluids. from these causes, which are entirely material, commonly result the dispositions or faculties called sensibility, wit, imagination, genius, vivacity, &c. which give the tone to the passions, to the will, to the moral actions of man. in this sense, it is with great justice we apply the expressions, 'warmth of soul,' 'ardency of imagination,' 'fire of genius,' &c. it is this fiery element, diffused unequally, distributed in various proportions through the beings of the human species, that sets man in motion, gives him activity, supplies him with animal heat, and which, if we may be allowed the expression, renders him more or less alive. this igneous matter, so active, so subtle, dissipates itself with great facility, then requires to be reinstated in his system by means of aliments that contain it, which thereby become proper to restore his machine, to lend new warmth to the brain, to furnish it with the elasticity requisite to the performance of those functions which are called intellectual. it is this ardent matter contained in wine, in strong liquor, that gives to the most torpid, to the dullest, to the most sluggish man, a vivacity of which, without it, he would be incapable--which urges even the coward on to battle. when this fiery element is too abundant in man, whilst he is labouring under certain diseases, it plunges him into delirium; when it is in too weak or in too small a quantity, he swoons, he sinks to the earth. this igneous matter diminishes in his old age--it totally dissipates at his death. it would not be unreasonable to suppose, that what physicians call the nervous fluid, which so promptly gives notice to the brain of all that happens to the body, is nothing more than electric matter; that the various proportions of this matter diffused through his system, is the cause of that great diversity to be discovered in the human being, and in the faculties he possesses. if the intellectual faculties of man, or his moral qualities, be examined according to the principles here laid down, the conviction must be complete that they are to be attributed to material causes, which have an influence more or less marked, either transitory or durable, over his peculiar organization. but where does he derive this organization, except it be from the parents from whom he receives the elements of a machine necessarily analogous to their own? from whence does he derive the greater or less quantity of igneous matter, or vivifying heat, that decides upon, that gives the tone to his mental qualities? it is from the mother who bore him in her womb, who has communicated to him a portion of that fire with which she was herself animated, which circulated through her veins with her blood;--it is from the aliments that have nourished him,--it is from the climate he inhabits,--it is from the atmosphere that surrounds: all these causes have an influence over his fluids, over his solids, and decide on his natural dispositions. in examining these dispositions, from whence his faculties depend, it will ever be found, that they are _corporeal_, that they are _material_. the most prominent of these dispositions in man, is that physical sensibility from which flows all his intellectual or moral qualities. to feel, according to what has been said, is to receive an impulse, to be moved, to have a consciousness of the changes operated on his system. to have sensibility is nothing more than to be so constituted as to feel promptly, and in a very lively manner, the impressions of those objects which act upon him. a sensible soul is only man's brain, disposed in a mode to receive the motion communicated to it with facility, to re-act with promptness, by giving an instantaneous impulse to the organs. thus the man is called sensible, whom the sight of the distressed, the contemplation of the unhappy, the recital of a melancholy tale, the witnessing of an afflicting catastrophe, or the idea of a dreadful spectacle, touches in so lively a manner as to enable the brain to give play to his lachrymal organs, which cause him to shed tears; a sign by which we recognize the effect of great grief, of extreme anguish in the human being. the man in whom musical sounds excite a degree of pleasure, or produce very remarkable effects, is said to have a _sensible_ or a fine ear. in short, when it is perceived that eloquence--the beauty of the arts--the various objects that strike his senses, excite in him very lively emotions, he is said to possess a soul full of sensibility. _wit_, is a consequence of this physical sensibility; indeed, wit is nothing more than the facility which some beings, of the human species possess, of seizing with promptitude, of developing with quickness, a whole, with its different relations to other objects. _genius_, is the facility with which some men comprehend this whole, and its various relations when they are difficult to be known, but useful to forward great and mighty projects. wit may be compared to a piercing eye which perceives things quickly. genius is an eye that comprehends at one view, all the points of an extended horizon: or what the french term _coup d'oeil_. true wit is that which perceives objects with their relations such as they really are. false wit is that which catches at relations, which do not apply to the object, or which arises from some blemish in the organization. true wit resembles the direction on a hand-post. _imagination_ is the faculty of combining with promptitude ideas or images; it consists in the power man possesses of re-producing with ease the modifications of his brain: of connecting them, of attaching them to the objects to which they are suitable. when imagination does this, it gives pleasure; its fictions are approved, it embellishes nature, it is a proof of the soundness of the mind, it aids truth: when on the contrary, it combines ideas, not formed to associate themselves with each other--when it paints nothing but disagreeable phantoms, it disgusts, its fictions are censured, it distorts nature, it advocates falsehood, it is the proof of a disordered, of a deranged mind: thus poetry, calculated to render nature more pathetic, more touching, pleases when it creates ideal beings, but which move us agreeably: we, therefore, forgive the illusions it has held forth, on account of the pleasure we have reaped from them. the hideous chimeras of superstition displease, because they are nothing more than the productions of a distempered imagination, that can only awaken the most afflicting sensations, fills us with the most disagreeable ideas. imagination, when it wanders, produces fanaticism, superstitious terrors, inconsiderate zeal, phrenzy, and the most enormous crimes: when it is well regulated, it gives birth to a strong predilection for useful objects, an energetic passion for virtue, an enthusiastic love of our country, and the most ardent friendship: the man who is divested of imagination, is commonly one in whose torpid constitution phlegm predominates over the igneous fluid, over that sacred fire, which is the great principle of his mobility, of that warmth of sentiment, which vivifies all his intellectual faculties. there must be enthusiasm for transcendent virtues as well as for atrocious crimes; enthusiasm places the soul in a state similar to that of drunkenness; both the one and the other excite in man that rapidity of motion which is approved, when good results, when its effects are beneficial; but which is censured, is called folly, delirium, crime, fury; when it produces nothing but disorder and confusion. the mind is out of order, it is incapable of judging sanely--the imagination is badly regulated, whenever man's organization is not so modified, as to perform its functions with precision. at each moment of his existence, man gathers experience; every sensation he has, furnishes a fact that deposits in his brain an idea which his memory recalls with more or less fidelity: these facts connect themselves, these ideas are associated; their chain constitutes _experience_; this lays the foundation of _science_. knowledge is that consciousness which arises from reiterated experience--from experiments made with precision of the sensations, of the ideas, of the effects which an object is capable of producing, either in ourselves or in others. all science, to be just, must be founded on truth. truth itself rests on the constant, the faithful relation of our senses. thus, _truth_ is that conformity, that perpetual affinity, which man's senses, when well constituted, when aided by experience, discover to him, between the objects of which he has a knowledge, and the qualities with which he clothes them. in short, truth is nothing more than the just, the precise association of his ideas. but how can he, without experience, assure himself of the accuracy, of the justness of this association? how, if he does not reiterate this experience, can he compare it? how prove its truth? if his senses are vitiated, how is it possible they can convey to him with precision, the sensations, the facts, with which they store his brain? it is only by multiplied, by diversified, by repeated experience, that he is enabled to rectify the errors of his first conceptions. man is in error every time his organs, either originally defective in their nature, or vitiated by the durable or transitory modifications which they undergo, render him incapable of judging soundly of objects. error consists in the false association of ideas, by which qualities are attributed to objects which they do not possess. man is in error, when he supposes those beings really to have existence, which have no local habitation but in his own imagination: he is in error, when he associates the idea of happiness with objects capable of injuring him, whether immediately or by remote consequences which he cannot foresee. but how can he foresee effects of which he has not yet any knowledge? it is by the aid of experience: by the assistance which this experience affords, it is known that analogous, that like causes, produce analogous, produce like effects. memory, by recalling these effects, enables him to form a judgment of those he may expect, whether it be from the same causes, or from causes that bear a relation to those of which he has already experienced the action. from this it will appear, that _prudence_, _foresight_, are faculties that are ascribable to, that grow out of experience. if he has felt that fire excited in his organs painful sensation, this experience suffices him to know, to foresee, that fire so applied, will consequently excite the same sensations. if he has discovered that certain actions, on his part, stirred up the hatred, elicited the contempt of others, this experience sufficiently enables him to foresee, that every time he shall act in a similar manner, he will be either hated or despised. the faculty man has of gathering experience, of recalling it to himself, of foreseeing effects by which he is enabled to avoid whatever may have the power to injure him, to procure that which may be useful to the conservation of his existence, which may contribute to that which is the sole end of all his actions, whether corporeal or mental,--his felicity--constitutes that, which, in one word, is designated under the name of _reason_. sentiment, imagination, temperament, may be capable of leading him astray--may have the power to deceive him; but experience and reflection will rectify his errors, point out his mistakes, place him in the right road, teach him what can really conduce to, what can truly conduct him to happiness. from this, it will appear, that _reason_ is man's nature, modified by experience, moulded by judgment, regulated by reflection: it supposes a moderate, sober temperament; a just, a sound mind; a well-regulated, orderly imagination; a knowledge of truth, grounded upon tried, upon reiterated experience; in fact, prudence and foresight: this will serve to prove, that although nothing is more commonly asserted, although the phrase is repeated daily, nay, hourly, that _man is a reasonable being_, yet there are but a very small number of the individuals who compose the human species, of whom it can with truth be said; who really enjoy the faculty of reason, or who combine the dispositions, the experience, by which it is constituted. it ought not, then to excite surprise, that the individuals of the human race, who are in a capacity to make true experience, are so few in number. man, when he is born, brings with him into the world organs susceptible of receiving impulse, amassing ideas, of collecting experience; but whether it be from the vice of his system, the imperfection of his organization, or from those causes by which it is modified, his experience is false, his ideas are confused, his images are badly associated, his judgment is erroneous, his brain is saturated with vicious, with wicked systems, which necessarily have an influence over his conduct, which are continually disturbing his mind, and confounding his reason. man's senses, as it has been shewn, are the only means by which he is enabled to ascertain whether his opinions are true or false, whether his conduct is useful to himself and beneficial to others, whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous. but that his senses may be competent to make a faithful relation--that they may be in a capacity to impress true ideas on his brain, it is requisite they should be sound; that is to say, in the state necessary to maintain his existence; in that order which is suitable to his preservation--that condition which is calculated to ensure his permanent felicity. it is also indispensable that his brain itself should be healthy, or in the proper circumstances to enable it to fulfil its functions with precision, to exercise its faculties with vigour. it is necessary that memory should faithfully delineate its anterior sensations, should accurately retrace its former ideas; to the end, that he may be competent to judge, to foresee the effects he may have to hope, the consequences he may have to fear, from those actions to which he may be determined by his will. if his organic system be vicious, if his interior or exterior organs be defective, whether by their natural conformation or from those causes by which they are regulated, he feels but imperfectly--in a manner less distinct than is requisite; his ideas are either false or suspicious, he judges badly, he is in a delusion, in a state of ebriety, in a sort of intoxication that prevents his grasping the true relation of things. in short, if his memory is faulty, if it is treacherous, his reflection is void, his imagination leads him astray, his mind deceives him, whilst the sensibility of his organs, simultaneously assailed by a crowd of impressions, shocked by a variety of impulsions, oppose him to prudence, to foresight, to the exercise of his reason. on the other hand, if the conformation of his organs, as it happens with those of a phlegmatic temperament, of a dull habit, does not permit him to move, except with feebleness, in a sluggish manner, his experience is slow, frequently unprofitable. the tortoise and the butterfly are alike incapable of preventing their destruction. the stupid man, equally with him who is intoxicated, are in that state which renders it impossible for them to arrive at or attain the end they have in view. but what is the end? what is the aim of man in the sphere he occupies? it is to preserve himself; to render his existence happy. it becomes then of the utmost importance, that he should understand the true means which reason points out, which prudence teaches him to use, in order that he may with certainty, that he may constantly arrive at the end which he proposes to himself. these he will find are his natural faculties--his mind--his talents--his industry--his actions, determined by those passions of which his nature renders him susceptible, which give more or less activity to his will. experience and reason again shew him, that the men with whom he is associated are necessary to him, are capable of contributing to his happiness, are in a capacity to administer to his pleasures, are competent to assist him by those faculties which are peculiar to them; experience teaches him the mode he must adopt to induce them to concur in his designs, to determine them to will and incline them to act in his favour. this points out to him the actions they approve--those which displease them--the conduct which attracts them--that which repels them--the judgment by which they are swayed--the advantages that occur--the prejudicial effects that result to him from their various modes of existence and from their diverse manner of acting. this experience furnishes him with the ideas of virtue and of vice, of justice and of injustice, of goodness and of wickedness, of decency and of indecency, of probity and of knavery: in short, he learns to form a judgment of men--to estimate their actions--to distinguish the various sentiments excited in them, according to the diversity of those effects which they make him experience. it is upon the necessary diversity of these effects that is founded the discrimination between good and evil--between virtue and vice; distinctions which do not rest, as some thinkers have believed, on the conventions made between men; still less, as some metaphysicians have asserted, upon the chimerical will of supernatural beings: but upon the solid, the invariable, the eternal relations that subsist between beings of the human species congregated together, and living in society: which relations will have existence as long as man shall remain, as long as society shall continue to exist. thus _virtue_ is every thing that is truly beneficial, every thing that is constantly useful to the individuals of the human race, living together in society; _vice_ every thing that is really prejudicial, every thing that is permanently injurious to them. the greatest virtues are those which procure for man the most durable advantages, from which he derives the most solid happiness, which preserves the greatest degree of order in his association: the greatest vices, are those which most disturb his tendency to happiness, which perpetuate error, which most interrupt the necessary order of society. the _virtuous man_, is he whose actions tend uniformly to the welfare, constantly to the happiness, of his fellow creatures. the _vicious man_, is he whose conduct tends to the misery, whose propensities form the unhappiness of those with whom he lives; from whence his own peculiar misery most commonly results. every thing that procures for a man true and permanent happiness is reasonable; every thing that disturbs his individual felicity, or that of the beings necessary to his happiness, is foolish and unreasonable. the man who injures others, is wicked; the man who injures himself, is an imprudent being, who neither has a knowledge of reason, of his own peculiar interests, nor of truth. man's _duties_ are the means pointed out to him by experience, the circle which reason describes for him, by which he is to arrive at that goal he proposes to himself; these duties are the necessary consequence of the relations subsisting between mortals, who equally desire happiness, who are equally anxious to preserve their existence. when it is said these duties _compel him_, it signifies nothing more than that, without taking these means, he could not reach the end proposed to him by his nature. thus, _moral obligation_ is the necessity of employing the natural means to render the beings with whom he lives happy; to the end that he may determine them in turn to contribute to his own individual happiness: his obligation toward himself, is the necessity he is under to take those means, without which he would be incapable to conserve himself, or render his existence solidly and permanently happy. morals, like the universe, is founded upon necessity, or upon the eternal relation of things. _happiness_ is a mode of existence of which man naturally wishes the duration, or in which he is willing to continue. it is measured by its duration, by its vivacity. the greatest happiness is that which has the longest continuance: transient happiness, or that which has only a short duration, is called _pleasure_; the more lively it is, the more fugitive, because man's senses are only susceptible of a certain quantum of motion. when pleasure exceeds this given quantity, it is changed into _anguish_, or into that painful mode of existence, of which he ardently desires the cessation: this is the reason why pleasure and pain frequently so closely approximate each other as scarcely to be discriminated. immoderate pleasure is the forerunner of regret. it is succeeded by ennui, it is followed by weariness, it ends in disgust: transient happiness frequently converts itself into durable misfortune. according to these principles it will be seen that man, who in each moment of his duration seeks necessarily after happiness, ought, when he is reasonable, to manage, to husband, to regulate his pleasures; to refuse himself to all those of which the indulgence would be succeeded by regret; to avoid those which can convert themselves into pain; in order that he may procure for himself the most permanent felicity. happiness cannot be the same for all the beings of the human species; the same pleasures cannot equally affect men whose conformation is different, whose modification is diverse. this no doubt, is the true reason why the greater number of moral philosophers are so little in accord upon those objects in which they have made man's happiness consist, as well as on the means by which it may be obtained. nevertheless, in general, happiness appears to be a state, whether momentary or durable, in which man readily acquiesces, because he finds it conformable to his being. this state results from the accord, springs out of the conformity, which is found between himself and those circumstances in which he has been placed by nature; or, if it be preferred, _happiness is the co-ordination of man, with the causes that give him impulse_. the ideas which man forms to himself of happiness depend not only on his temperament, on his individual conformation, but also upon the habits he has contracted. _habit_ is, in man, a mode of existence--of thinking--of acting, which his organs, as well interior as exterior, contract, by the frequent reiteration of the same motion; from whence results the faculty of performing these actions with promptitude, of executing them with facility. if things be attentively considered, it will be found that almost the whole conduct of man--the entire system of his actions--his occupations--his connexions--his studies--his amusements--his manners--his customs--his very garments--even his aliments, are the effect of habit. he owes equally to habit, the facility with which he exercises his mental faculties of thought--of judgment--of wit--of reason--of taste, &c. it is to habit he owes the greater part of his inclinations--of his desires--of his opinions--of his prejudices--of the ideas, true or false, he forms to himself of his welfare. in short, it is to habit, consecrated by time, that he owes those errors into which everything strives to precipitate him; from which every thing is calculated to prevent him emancipating himself. it is habit that attaches him either to virtue or to vice: experience proves this: observation teaches incontrovertibly that the first crime is always accompanied by more pangs of remorse than the second; this again, by more than the third; so on to those that follow. a first action is the commencement of a habit; those which succeed confirm it: by force of combatting the obstacles that prevent the commission of criminal actions, man arrives at the power of vanquishing them with ease; of conquering them with facility. thus he frequently becomes wicked from habit. man is so much modified by habit, that it is frequently confounded with his nature: from hence results, as will presently be seen, those opinions or those ideas, which he has called _innate_: because he has been unwilling to recur back to the source from whence they sprung: which has, as it were, identified itself with his brain. however this may be, he adheres with great strength of attachment to all those things to which he is habituated; his mind experiences a sort of violence, an incommodious revulsion, a troublesome distaste, when it is endeavoured to make him change the course of his ideas: a fatal predilection frequently conducts him back to the old track in despite of reason. it is by a pure mechanism that may be explained the phenomena of habit, as well physical as moral; the soul, notwithstanding its spirituality, is modified exactly in the same manner as the body. habit, in man, causes the organs of voice to learn the mode of expressing quickly the ideas consigned to his brain, by means of certain motion, which, during his infancy, the tongue acquires the power of executing with facility: his tongue, once habituated to move itself in a certain manner, finds much trouble, has great pain, to move itself after another mode; the throat yields with difficulty to those inflections which are exacted by a language different from that to which he has, been accustomed. it is the same with regard to his ideas; his brain, his interior organ, his soul, inured to a given manner of modification, accustomed to attach certain ideas to certain objects, long used to form to itself a system connected with certain opinions, whether true or false, experiences a painful sensation, whenever he undertakes to give it a new impulse, or alter the direction of its habitual motion. it is nearly as difficult to make him change his opinions as his language. here, then, without doubt, is the cause of that almost invincible attachment which man displays to those customs--those prejudices--those institutions of which it is in vain that reason, experience, good sense prove to him the inutility, or even the danger. habit opposes itself to the clearest, the most evident demonstrations; these can avail nothing against those passions, those vices, which time has rooted in him--against the most ridiculous systems--against the most absurd notions--against the most extravagant hypotheses--against the strangest customs: above all, when he has learned to attach to them the ideas of utility, of common interest, of the welfare of society. such is the source of that obstinacy, of that stubbornness, which man evinces for his religion, for ancient usages, for unreasonable customs, for laws so little accordant with justice, for abuses, which so frequently make him suffer, for prejudices of which he sometimes acknowledges the absurdity, yet is unwilling to divest himself of them. here is the reason why nations contemplate the most useful novelties as mischievous innovations--why they believe they would be lost, if they were to remedy those evils to which they have become habituated; which they have learned to consider as necessary to their repose; which they have been taught to consider dangerous to be cured. _education_ is only the art of making man contract, in early life, that is to say, when his organs are extremely flexible, the habits, the opinions, the modes of existence, adopted by the society in which he is placed. the first moments of his infancy are employed in collecting experience; those who are charged with the care of rearing him, or who are entrusted to bring him up, teach him how to apply it: it is they who develope reason in him: the first impulse they give him commonly decides upon his condition, upon his passions, upon the ideas he forms to himself of happiness, upon the means he shall employ to procure it, upon his virtues, and upon his vices. under the eyes of his masters, the infant acquires ideas: under their tuition he learns to associate them,--to think in a certain manner,--to judge well or ill. they point out to him various objects, which they accustom him either to love or to hate, to desire or to avoid, to esteem or to despise. it is thus opinions are transmitted from fathers, mothers, nurses, and masters, to man in his infantine state. it is thus, that his mind by degrees saturates itself with truth, or fills itself with error; after which he regulates his conduct, which renders him either happy or miserable, virtuous or vicious, estimable or hateful. it is thus he becomes either contented or discontented with his destiny, according to the objects towards which they have directed his passions--towards which they have bent the energies of his mind; that is to say, in which they have shewn him his interest, in which they have taught him to place his felicity: in consequence, he loves and searches after that which they have taught him to revere--that which they have made the object of his research; he has those tastes, those inclinations, those phantasms, which, during the whole course of his life, he is forward to indulge, which he is eager to satisfy, in proportion to the activity they have excited in him, and the capacity with which he has been provided by nature. _politics_ ought to be the art of regulating the passions of man--of directing them to the welfare of society--of diverting them into a genial current of happiness--of making them flow gently to the general benefit of all: but too frequently it is nothing more than the detestible art of arming the passions of the various members of society against each other,--of making them the engines to accomplish their mutual destruction,--of converting them into agents which embitter their existence, create jealousies among them, and fill with rancorous animosities that association from which, if properly managed, man ought to derive his felicity. society is commonly so vicious because it is not founded upon nature, upon experience, and upon general utility; but on the contrary, upon the passions, upon the caprices, and upon the particular interests of those by whom it is governed. in short, it is for the most part the advantage of the few opposed to the prosperity of the many. politics, to be useful, should found its principles upon nature; that is to say, should conform itself to the essence of man, should mould itself to the great end of society: but what is society? and what is its end? it is a whole, formed by the union of a great number of families, or by a collection of individuals, assembled from a reciprocity of interest, in order that they may satisfy with greater facility their reciprocal wants--that they may, with more certainty, procure the advantages they desire--that they may obtain mutual succours--above all, that they may gain the faculty of enjoying, in security, those benefits with which nature and industry may furnish them: it follows, of course, that politics, which are intended to maintain society, and to consolidate the interests of this congregation, ought to enter into its views, to facilitate the means of giving them efficiency, to remove all those obstacles that have a tendency to counteract the intention with which man entered into association. man, in approximating to his fellow man, to live with him in society, has made, either formally or tacitly, a covenant; by which he engages to render mutual services, to do nothing that can be prejudicial to his neighbour. but as the nature of each individual impels him each instant to seek after his own welfare, which he has mistaken to consist in the gratification of his passions, and the indulgence of his transitory caprices, without any regard to the convenience of his fellows; there needed a power to conduct him back to his duty, to oblige him to conform himself to his obligations, and to recall him to his engagements, which the hurry of his passions frequently make him forget. this power is the _law_; it is, or ought to be, the collection of the will of society, reunited to fix the conduct of its members, to direct their action in such a mode, that it may concur to the great end of his association--the general good. but as society, more especially when very numerous, is incapable of assembling itself, unless with great difficulty, as it cannot with tumult make known its intentions, it is obliged to choose citizens in whom it places a confidence, whom it makes the interpreter of its will, whom it constitutes the depositaries of the power requisite to carry it into execution. such is the origin of all _government_, which to be legitimate can only be founded on the free consent of society. those who are charged with the care of governing, call themselves sovereigns, chiefs, legislators: according to the form which society has been willing to give to its government: these sovereigns are styled monarchs, magistrates, representatives, &c. government only borrows its power from society: being established for no other purpose than its welfare, it is evident society can revoke this power whenever its interest shall exact it; change the form of its government; extend or limit the power which it has confided to its chiefs, over whom, by the immutable laws of nature, it always conserves a supreme authority: because these laws enjoin, that the part shall always remain subordinate to the whole. thus sovereigns are the ministers of society, its interpreters, the depositaries of a greater or of a less portion of its power; but they are not its absolute masters, neither are they the proprietors of nations. by a _covenant_, either expressed or implied, they engage themselves to watch over the maintenance, to occupy themselves with the welfare of society; it is only upon these conditions society consents to obey them. the price of obedience is protection. there is or ought to be a reciprocity of interest between the governed and the governor: whenever this reciprocity is wanting, society is in that state of confusion of which we spoke in the fifth chapter: it is verging on destruction. no society upon earth was ever willing or competent to confer irrevocably upon its chiefs the power, the right, of doing it injury. such a concession, such a compact, would be annulled, would be rendered void by nature; because she wills that each society, the same as each individual of the human species shall tend to its own conservation; it has not therefore the capacity to consent to its permanent unhappiness. _laws_, in order that they may be just, ought invariably to have for their end, the general interest of society; that is to say, to assure to the greater number of citizens those advantages for which man originally associated. these advantages are _liberty, property, security_. _liberty_, to man, is the faculty of doing, for his own peculiar happiness, every thing which does not injure or diminish the happiness of his associates: in associating, each individual renounced the exercise of that portion of his natural liberty which would be able to prejudice or injure the liberty of his fellows. the exercise of that liberty which is injurious to society is called _licentiousness_. _property_, to man, is the faculty of enjoying those advantages which spring from labour; those benefits which industry or talent has procured to each member of society. _security_, to man, is the certitude, the assurance, that each individual ought to have, of enjoying in his person, of finding for his property the protection of the laws, as long as he shall faithfully observe, as long as he shall punctually perform, his engagements with society. _justice_, to man, assures to all the members of society, the possession of these advantages, the enjoyment of those rights, which belong to them. from this, it will appear, that without justice, society is not in a condition to procure the happiness of any man. justice is also called _equity_, because by the assistance of the laws made to command the whole, she reduces all its members to a state of equality; that is to say, she prevents them from prevailing one over the other, by the inequality which nature or industry may have made between their respective powers. _rights_, to man, are every thing which society, by equitable laws, permits each individual to do for his own peculiar felicity. these rights are evidently limited by the invariable end of all association: society has, on its part, rights over all its members, by virtue of the advantages which it procures for them; all its members, in turn, have a right to claim, to exact from society, or secure from its ministers those advantages for the procuring of which they congregated, in favour of which they renounced a portion of their natural liberty. a society, of which the chiefs, aided by the laws, do not procure any good for its members, evidently loses its right over them: those chiefs who injure society lose the right of commanding. it is not our country, without it secures the welfare of its inhabitants; a society without equity contains only enemies; a society oppressed is composed only of tyrants and slaves; slaves are incapable of being citizens; it is liberty, property, and security, that render our country dear to us; it is the true love of his country that forms the citizen. for want of having a proper knowledge of these truths, or for want of applying them when known, some nations have become unhappy--have contained nothing but a vile heap of slaves, separated from each other, detached from society, which neither procures for them any good, nor secures to them any one advantage. in consequence of the imprudence of some nations, or of the craft, cunning, and violence of those to whom they have confided the power of making laws, and carrying them into execution, their sovereigns have rendered themselves absolute masters of society. these, mistaking the true source of their power, pretended to hold it from heaven, to be accountable for their actions to god alone, to owe nothing, not to have any obligation to society, in a word, to be gods upon earth, to possess the right of governing arbitrarily. from thence politics became corrupted: they were only a mockery. such nations, disgraced and grown contemptible, did not dare resist the will of their chiefs; their laws were nothing more than the expression of the caprice of these chiefs; public welfare was sacrificed to their peculiar interests; the force of society was turned against itself; its members withdrew to attach themselves to its oppressors, to its tyrants; these to seduce them, permitted them to injure it with impunity and to profit by its misfortunes. thus liberty, justice, security, and virtue, were banished from many nations; politics was no longer any thing more than the art of availing itself of the forces of a people and of the treasure of society; of dividing it on the subject of its interest, in order to subjugate it by itself; at length a stupid, a mechanical habit, made them cherish their oppressors, and love their chains. man when he has nothing to fear, presently becomes wicked; he who believes he has not occasion for his fellow, persuades himself he may follow the inclinations of his heart without caution or discretion. thus fear is the only obstacle society can effectually oppose to the passions of its chiefs; without it they will quickly become corrupt, and will not scruple to avail themselves of the means society has placed in their hands, to make them accomplices in their iniquity. to prevent these abuses, it is requisite society should set bounds to its confidence; should limit the power which it delegates to its chiefs; should reserve to itself a sufficient portion of authority to prevent them from injuring it; it must establish prudent checks: it must cautiously divide the power it confers, because re-united, it will by such reunion be infallibly oppressed. the slightest reflection, the most scanty review, will make men feel that the burthen of governing and weight of administration, is too ponderous and overpowering to be borne by an individual; that the scope of his jurisdiction, that the range of his surveillance, and multiplicity of his duties must always render him negligent; that the extent of his power has ever a tendency to render him mischievous. in short, the experience of all ages will convince nations that man is continually tempted to the abuse of power: that as an abundance of strong liquor intoxicates his brain, so unlimited power corrupts his heart; that therefore the sovereign ought to be subject to the law, not the law to the sovereign. _government_ has necessarily an equal influence over the philosophy, as over the morals of nations. in the same manner that its care produces labour, activity, abundance, salubrity and justice; its negligence induces idleness, sloth, discouragement, penury, contagion, injustice, vices and crimes. it depends upon government either to foster industry, mature genius, give a spring to talents, or stifle them. indeed government, the disturber of dignities, of riches, of rewards, and punishments; the master of those objects in which man from his infancy has learned to place his felicity, and contemplate as the means of his happiness; acquires a necessary influence over his conduct: it kindles his passions; gives them direction; makes him instrumental to whatever purpose it pleases; it modifies him; determines his manners; which in a whole people, as in the individual, is nothing more than the conduct, the general system of wills, of actions that necessarily result from his education, government, laws, and religious opinions--his institutions, whether rational or irrational. in short, manners are the habits of a people: these are good whenever society draws from them true felicity and solid happiness; they are bad, they are detestable in the eye of reason, when the happiness of society does not spring from them; they are unwholesome when they have nothing more in their favour than the suffrage of time, and the countenance of prejudice which rarely consults experience, which is almost ever at variance with good sense: notwithstanding they may have the sanction of the law, custom, religion, public opinion, or example, they may be unworthy and may be disgraceful, provided society is in disorder; that crime abounds; that virtue shrinks beneath the basilisk eye of triumphant vice; they may then be said to resemble the upas, whose luxuriant yet poisonous foliage, the produce of a rank soil, becomes more baneful to those who are submitted to its vortex, in proportion as it extends its branches. if experience he consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that has not received the applause, that has not obtained the approbation of some people. parricide, the sacrifice of children, robbery, usurpation, cruelty, intolerance, and prostitution, have all in their turn been licensed actions; have been advocated; have been deemed laudable and meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. above all, _superstition_ has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting customs. man's passions result from and depend on the motion of attraction or repulsion, of which he is rendered susceptible by nature; who enables him, by his peculiar essence, to be attracted by those objects which appear useful to him, to be repelled by those which he considers prejudicial; it follows that government, by holding the magnet, can put these passions into activity, has the power either of restraining them, or of giving them a favorable or an unfavorable direction. all his passions are constantly limited by either loving or hating, seeking or avoiding, desiring or fearing. these passions, so necessary to the conservation of man, are a consequence of his organization; they display themselves with more or less energy, according to his temperament; education and habit develope them; government gives them play, conducts them towards those objects, which it believes itself interested in making desirable to its subjects. the various names which have been given to these passions, are relative to the different objects by which they are excited, such as pleasure, grandeur, or riches, which produce voluptuousness, ambition, vanity and avarice. if the source of those passions which predominate in nations be attentively examined it will be commonly found in their governments. it is the impulse received from their chiefs that renders them sometimes warlike, sometimes superstitious, sometimes aspiring after glory, sometimes greedy after wealth, sometimes rational, and sometimes unreasonable; if sovereigns, in order to enlighten and render happy their dominions, were to employ only the _tenth_ part of the vast expenditures which they lavish, only a _tythe_ of the pains which they employ to render them brutish, to stupify them, to deceive them, and to afflict them; their subjects would presently be as wise, would quickly be as happy, as they are now remarkable for being blind, ignorant, and miserable. let the vain project of destroying, the delusive attempt at rooting his passions from the heart of man, he abandoned; let an effort be made to direct them towards objects that may be useful to himself, beneficial to his associates. let education, let government, let the laws, habituate him to restrain his passions within those just bounds that experience fixes and reason prescribes. let the ambitious have honours, titles, distinctions, and power, when they shall have usefully served their country; let riches be given to those who covet them, when they shall have rendered themselves necessary to their fellow citizens; let commendations, let eulogies, encourage those who shall be actuated by the love of glory. in short, let the passions of man have a free, an uninterrupted course, whenever there shall result from their exercise, real, substantial, and durable advantages to society. let education kindle only those, which are truly beneficial to the human species; let it favour those alone which are really necessary to the maintenance of society. the passions of man are dangerous, only because every thing conspires to give them an evil direction. nature does not make man either good or wicked: she combines machines more or less active, mobile, and energetic; she furnishes him with organs and temperament, of which his passions, more or less impetuous, are the necessary consequence; these passions have always his happiness for their object, his welfare for their end: in consequence they are legitimate, they are natural, they can only be called bad or good, relatively, to the influence they have on the beings of his species. nature gives man legs proper to sustain his weight, and necessary to transport him from one place to another; the care of those who rear them strengthens them, habituates him to avail himself of him, accustoms him to make either a good or a bad use of them. the arm which he has received from nature is neither good nor bad; it is necessary to a great number of the actions of life; nevertheless, the use of this arm becomes criminal, if he has contracted the habit of using it to rob, to assassinate, with a view to obtain that money which he has been taught from his infancy to desire, and which the society in which he lives renders necessary to him, but which his industry will enable him to obtain without doing injury to his fellow man. the heart of man is a soil which nature has made equally suitable to the production of brambles, or of useful grain--of deleterous poison, or of refreshing fruit, by virtue of the seeds which may be sown in it--by the cultivation that may be bestowed upon it, in his infancy, those objects are pointed out to him which he is to estimate or to despise, to seek after or to avoid, to love or to hate. it is his parents, his instructors, who render him either virtuous or wicked, wise or unreasonable, studious or dissipated, steady or trifling, solid or vain. their example, their discourse, modify him through his whole life, teaching him what are the things he ought either to desire or to avoid; what the objects he ought to fear or to love: he desires them, in consequence; and he imposes on himself the task of obtaining them, according to the energy of his temperament, which ever decides the force of his passions. it is thus that education, by inspiring him with opinions, by infusing into him ideas, whether true or false, gives him those primitive impulsions after which he acts, in a manner either advantageous or prejudicial both to himself and to others. man, at his birth, brings with him into the world nothing but the necessity of conserving himself, of rendering his existence happy: instruction, example, the customs of the world, present him with the means, either real or imaginary, of achieving it; habit procures for him the facility of employing these means: he attaches himself strongly to those he judges best calculated, most proper to secure to him the possession of those objects which they have taught him, which he has learned to desire as the preferable good attached to his existence. whenever his education--whenever the examples which have been afforded him--whenever the means with which he has been provided, are approved by reason, are the result of experience, every thing concurs to render him virtuous; habit strengthens these dispositions in him; he becomes, in consequence, a useful member of society; to the interests of which, every thing ought to prove to him his own permanent well-being, his own durable felicity, is necessarily allied. if, on the contrary, his education--his institutions--the examples which are set before him--the opinions which are suggested to him in his infancy, are of a nature to exhibit to his mind virtue as useless and repugnant--vice as useful and congenial to his own individual happiness, he will become vicious; he will believe himself interested in injuring society, in rendering his associates unhappy; he will be carried along by the general current: he will renounce virtue, which to him will no longer be any thing more than a vain idol, without attractions to induce him to follow it; without charms to tempt his adoration; because it will appear to exact, that he should immolate at its shrine, that he should sacrifice at its altar all those objects which he has been constantly taught to consider the most dear to himself; to contemplate as benefits the most desirable. in order that man may become virtuous, it is absolutely requisite that he should have an interest, that he should find advantages in practising virtue. for this end, it is necessary that education should implant in him reasonable ideas; that public opinion should lean towards virtue, as the most desirable good; that example should point it out as the object most worthy esteem; that government should faithfully recompense, should regularly reward it; that honor should always accompany its practice; that vice should constantly be despised; that crime should invariably be punished. is virtue in this situation amongst men? does the education of man infuse into him just, faithful ideas of happiness--true notions of virtue--dispositions really favourable to the beings with whom he is to live? the examples spread before him, are they suitable to innocence and manners? are they calculated to make him respect decency--to cause him to love probity--to practice honesty--to value good faith--to esteem equity--to revere conjugal fidelity--to observe exactitude in fulfilling his duties? religion, which alone pretends to regulate his manners, does it render him sociable--does it make him pacific--does it teach him to be humane? the arbiters, the sovereigns of society, are they faithful in recompensing, punctual in rewarding, those who have best served their country? in punishing those who have pillaged, who have robbed, who have plundered, who have divided, who have ruined it? justice, does she hold her scales with a firm, with an even hand, between all the citizens of the state? the laws, do they never support the strong against the weak--favor the rich against the poor--uphold the happy against the miserable? in short, is it an uncommon spectacle to behold crime frequently justified, often applauded, sometimes crowned with success, insolently triumphing, arrogantly striding over that merit which it disdains, over that virtue which it outrages? well then, in societies thus constituted, virtue can only be heard by a very small number of peaceable citizens, a few generous souls, who know how to estimate its value, who enjoy it in secret. for the others, it is only a disgusting object; they see in it nothing but the supposed enemy to their happiness, or the censor of their individual conduct. if man, according to his nature, is necessitated to desire his welfare, he is equally obliged to love and cherish the means by which he believes it is to be acquired: it would be useless, it would perhaps be unjust, to demand that a man should be virtuous, if he could not be so without rendering himself miserable. whenever he thinks vice renders him happy, he must necessarily love vice; whenever he sees inutility recompensed, crime rewarded--whenever he witnesses either or both of them honored,--what interest will he find in occupying himself with the happiness of his fellow-creatures? what advantage will he discover in restraining the fury of his passions? whenever his mind is saturated with false ideas, filled with dangerous opinions, it follows, of course, that his whole conduct will become nothing more than a long chain of errors, a tissue of mistakes, a series of depraved actions. we are informed, that the savages, in order to flatten the heads of their children, squeeze them between two boards, by that means preventing them from taking the shape designed for them by nature. it is pretty nearly the same thing with the institutions of man; they commonly conspire to counteract nature, to constrain and divert, to extinguish the impulse nature has given him, to substitute others which are the source of all his misfortunes. in almost all the countries of the earth, man is bereft of truth, is fed with falsehoods, and amused with marvellous chimeras: he is treated like those children whose members are, by the imprudent care of their nurses, swathed with little fillets, bound up with rollers, which deprive them of the free use of their limbs, obstruct their growth, prevent their activity, and oppose themselves to their health. most of the superstitious opinions of man have for their object only to display to him his supreme felicity in those illusions for which they kindle his passions: but as the phantoms which are presented to his imagination are incapable of being considered in the same light by all who contemplate them, he is perpetually in dispute concerning these objects; he hates his fellow, he persecutes his neighbour, his neighbour in turn persecutes him, and he believes that in doing this he is doing well: that in committing the greatest crimes to sustain his opinions he is acting right. it is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism: if he has a heated imagination, it drives him on to fury; if he has activity, it makes him a madman, who is frequently as cruel himself, as he is dangerous to his fellow-creatures, as he is incommodious to others: if, on the contrary, he be phlegmatic, and of a slothful habit, he becomes melancholy and useless to society. _public opinion_ every instant offers to man's contemplation false ideas of honor, and wrong notions of glory: it attaches his esteem not only to frivolous advantages, but also to prejudicial interests and injurious actions; which example authorizes, which prejudice consecrates, which habit precludes him from viewing with the disgust and horror which they merit. indeed, habit familiarizes his mind with the most absurd ideas, the most unreasonable customs, the most blameable actions; with prejudices the most contrary to his own interests, and detrimental to the society in which he lives. he finds nothing strange, nothing singular, nothing despicable, nothing ridiculous, except those opinions and objects to which he is himself unaccustomed. there are countries in which the most laudable actions appear very blameable and ridiculous--where the foulest and most diabolical actions pass for very honest and perfectly rational conduct. in some nations they kill the old men; in some the children strangle their fathers. the phoenicians and carthaginians immolated their children to their gods. europeans approve duels; he who refuses to cut the throat of another, or to blow out the brains of his neighbour, is contemplated by them as dishonoured. the spaniards and portuguese think it meritorious to burn an heretic. in some countries women prostitute themselves without dishonour; in others it is the height of hospitality for a man to present his wife to the embraces of the stranger: the refusal to accept this, excites his scorn and calls forth his resentment. _authority_ commonly believes itself interested in maintaining the received opinions: those prejudices and errors which it considers requisite to the maintenance of its power and the consolidation of its interests, are sustained by force, which is never rational. princes themselves, filled with deceptive images of happiness, mistaken notions of power, erroneous opinions of grandeur, and false ideas of glory, are surrounded with flattering courtiers, who are interested in keeping up the delusion of their masters: these contemptible men have acquired ideas of virtue, only that they may outrage it: by degrees they corrupt the people, these become depraved, lend themselves to their debaucheries, pander to the vices of the great, then make a merit of imitating them in their irregularities. a court is too frequently the true focus of the corruption of a people. this is the true source of moral evil. it is thus that every thing conspires to render man vicious, and give a fatal impulse to his soul: from whence results the general confusion of society, which becomes unhappy, from the misery of almost every one of its members. the strongest motive-powers are put in action to inspire man with a passion for futile objects which are indifferent to him; which make him become dangerous to his fellow man, by the means which he is compelled to employ, in order to obtain them. those who have the charge of guiding his steps, either impostors themselves, or the dupes to their own prejudices, forbid him to hearken to reason; they make truth appear dangerous to him; they exhibit error as requisite to his welfare, not only in this world, but in the next. in short, habit strongly attaches him to his irrational opinions, to his perilous inclinations, and to his blind passion for objects either useless or dangerous. here, then, is the reason why for the most part man finds himself necessarily determined to evil; the reason why the passions, inherent in his nature and necessary to his conservation, become the instruments of his destruction, and the bane of that society, which properly conducted, they ought to preserve; the reason why society becomes a state of warfare; why it does nothing but assemble enemies, who are envious of each other, and are always rivals for the prize. if some virtuous beings are to be found in these societies, they must be sought for in the very small number of those, who born with a phlegmatic temperament have moderate passions, who therefore, either do not desire at all, or desire very feebly, those objects with which their associates are continually inebriated. man's nature, diversely cultivated, decides upon his faculties, as well corporeal as intellectual; upon his qualities, as well moral as physical. the man who is of a sanguine, robust constitution, must necessarily have strong passions; he who is of a bilious, melancholy habit, will as necessarily have fantastical and gloomy passions; the man of a gay turn, of a sprightly imagination, will have cheerful passions; while the man in whom phlegm abounds, will have those which are gentle, or which have a very slight degree of violence. it appears to be upon the equilibrium of the humours, that depends the state of the man who is called _virtuous_; his temperament seems to be the result of a combination, in which the elements or principles are balanced with such precision that no one passion predominates over another, or carries into his machine more disorder than its neighbour. habit, as we have seen, is man's nature modified: this latter furnishes the matter; education, domestic example, national manners, give it the form: these, acting on his temperament, make him either reasonable, or irrational--enlightened, or stupid--a fanatic, or a hero--an enthusiast for the public good, or an unbridled criminal--a wise man, smitten with the advantages of virtue, or a libertine, plunged into every kind of vice. all the varieties of the moral man, depend on the diversity of his ideas; which are themselves arranged and combined in his brain by the intervention of his senses. his temperament is the produce of physical substances, his habits are the effect of physical modifications; the opinions, whether good or bad, injurious or beneficial, true or false, which form themselves in his mind, are never more than the effect of those physical impulsions which the brain receives by the medium of the senses. chap. x. _the soul does not derive its ideas from itself--it has no innate ideas._ what has preceded suffices to prove, that the interior organ of man, which is called his _soul_, is purely material. he will be enabled to convince himself of this truth, by the manner in which he acquires his ideas,--from those impressions which material objects successively make on his organs, which are themselves acknowledged to be material. it has been seen, that the faculties which are called intellectual, are to be ascribed to that of feeling; the different qualities of those faculties which are called moral, have been explained after the necessary laws of a very simple mechanism: it now remains, to reply to those who still obstinately persist in making the soul a substance distinguished from the body, or who insist on giving it an essence totally distinct. they seem to found their distinction upon this, that this interior organ has the faculty of drawing its ideas from within itself; they will have it, that man, at his birth, brings with him ideas into the world, which, according to this wonderful notion, they have called _innate_. the jews have a similar doctrine which they borrowed from the chaldeans: their rabbins taught, that each soul, before it was united to the seed that must form an infant in the womb of a woman, is confided to the care of an angel, which causes him to behold heaven, earth, and hell: this, they pretend, is done by the assistance of a lamp, which extinguishes itself as soon as the infant comes into the world. some ancient philosophers have held, that the soul originally contains the principles of several notions or doctrines: the stoics designated this by the term prolepsis, _anticipated opinions_; the greek mathematicians, koinas ennoias, _universal ideas_. they have believed that the soul, by a special privilege, in a nature where every thing is connected, enjoyed the faculty of moving itself without receiving any impulse; of creating to itself ideas, of thinking on a subject, without being determined to such action, by any exterior object; which by moving its organs should furnish it with an image of the subject of its thoughts. in consequence of these gratuitous suppositions, of these extraordinary pretensions, which it is only requisite to expose, in order to confute some very able speculators, who were prepossessed by their superstitious prejudices; have ventured the length to assert, that without model, without prototype to act on the senses, the soul is competent to delineate to itself, the whole universe with all the beings it contains. descartes and his disciples have assured us, that the body went absolutely for nothing, in the sensations, in the perceptions, in the ideas of the soul; that it can feel, that it can perceive, that it can understand, that it can taste, that it can touch, even when there should exist nothing that is corporeal or material exterior to ourselves. but what shall be said of a berkeley, who has endeavoured, who has laboured to prove to man, that every thing in this world is nothing more than a chimerical illusion; that the universe exists nowhere but in himself; that it has no identity but in his imagination; who has rendered the existence of all things problematical by the aid of sophisms, insolvable even to those who maintain the doctrine of the spirituality of the soul. extravagant as this doctrine of the bishop of cloyne may appear, it cannot well be more so than that of malebranche, the champion of innate ideas; who makes the divinity the common bond between the soul and the body: or than that of those metaphysicians, who maintain that the soul is a substance heterogeneous to the body; who by ascribing to this soul the thoughts of man, have in fact rendered the body superfluous. they have not perceived they were liable to one solid objection, which is, that if the ideas of man are innate, if he derives them from a superior being, independent of exterior causes, if he sees every thing in god; how comes it that so many false ideas are afloat, that so many errors prevail, with which the human mind is saturated? from whence comes these opinions, which according to the theologians are so displeasing to god? might it not be a question to the malebranchists, was it in the divinity that spinoza beheld his system? nevertheless, to justify such monstrous opinions, they assert that ideas are only the objects of thought. but according to the last analysis, these ideas can only reach man from exterior objects, which in giving impulse to his senses modify his brain; or from the material beings contained within the interior of his machine, who make some parts of his body experience those sensations which he perceives, which furnish him with ideas, which he relates, faithfully or otherwise, to the cause that moves him. each idea is an effect, but however difficult it may be to recur to the cause, can we possibly suppose it is not ascribable to a cause? if we can only form ideas of material substances, how can we suppose the cause of our ideas can possibly be immaterial? to pretend that man without the aid of exterior objects, without the intervention of his senses, is competent to form ideas of the universe, is to assert, that a blind man is in a capacity to form a true idea of a picture, that represents some fact of which he has never heard any one speak. it is very easy to perceive the source of those errors, into which men, otherwise extremely profound and very enlightened have fallen, when they have been desirous to speak of the soul: to describe its operations. obliged either by their own prejudices, or by the fear of combatting the opinions of some imperious theologian, they have become the advocates of the principle, that the soul was a pure spirit: an immaterial substance; of an essence directly different from that of the body; from every thing we behold: this granted, they have been incompetent to conceive how material objects could operate, in what manner gross and corporeal organs were enabled to act on a substance, that had no kind of analogy with them; how they were in a capacity to modify it by conveying its ideas; in the impossibility of explaining this phenomenon, at the same time perceiving that the soul had ideas, they concluded that it must draw them from itself, and not from those beings, which according to their own hypothesis, were incapable of acting on it, or rather, of which they could not conceive the manner of action; they therefore imagined that all the modifications, all the actions of this soul, sprung from its own peculiar energy, were imprinted on it from its first formation, by the author of nature: that these did not in any manner depend upon the beings of which we have a knowledge, or which act upon it, by the gross means of our senses. there are, however, some phenomena, which, considered superficially, appear to support the opinion of these philosophers; to announce a faculty in the human soul of producing ideas within itself, without any exterior aid; these are _dreams_, in which the interior organ of man, deprived of objects that move it visibly, does not, however, cease to have ideas--to be set in activity--to be modified in a manner that is sufficiently sensible--to have an influence upon his body. but if a little reflection be called in, the solution to this difficulty will be found: it will be perceived that, even during sleep, his brain is supplied with a multitude of ideas, with which the eye or time before has stocked it; these ideas were communicated to it by exterior or corporeal objects, by which they have been modified: it will be found that these modifications renew themselves, not by any spontaneous, not by any voluntary motion on its part, but by a chain of involuntary movements which take place in his machine, which determine, which excite those that give play to the brain; these modifications renew themselves with more or less fidelity, with a greater or lesser degree of conformity to those which it has anteriorly experienced. sometimes in dreaming, he has memory, then he retraces to himself the objects which have struck him faithfully;--at other times, these modifications renew themselves without order, and without connection, very differently from those, which real objects have before excited in his interior organ. if in a dream he believes he sees a friend, his brain renews in itself the modifications or the ideas which this friend had formerly excited--in the same order that they arranged themselves when his eyes really beheld him--this is nothing more than an effect of memory. if in his dream he fancies he sees a monster which has no model in nature, his brain is then modified in the same manner that it was by the particular, by the detached ideas, with which it then does nothing more than compose an ideal whole; by assembling, and associating, in a ridiculous manner, the scattered ideas that were consigned to its keeping; it is then, that in dreaming he has imagination. those dreams that are troublesome, extravagant, whimsical, or unconnected, are commonly the effect of some confusion in his machine; such as painful indigestion--an overheated blood--a prejudicial fermentation, &c.--these material causes excite in his body a disorderly motion, which precludes the brain from being modified in the same manner it was on the day before; in consequence of this irregular motion the brain is disturbed, it only represents to itself confused ideas that want connection. when in a dream, he believes he sees a sphinx, a being supposed by the poets to have a head and face like a woman, a body like a dog, wings like a bird, and claws like a lion, who put forth riddles and killed those who could not expound them; either, he has seen the representation of one when he was awake, or else the disorderly motion of the brain is such that it causes it to combine ideas, to connect parts, from which there results a whole without model, of which the parts were not formed to be united. it is thus, that his brain combines the head of a woman, of which it already has the idea, with the body of a lioness, of which it also has the image. in this his head acts in the same manner, as when by any defect in the interior organ, his disordered imagination paints to him some objects, notwithstanding he is awake. he frequently dreams, without being asleep: his dreams never produce any thing so strange but that they have some resemblance, with the objects which have anteriorly acted on his senses; which have already communicated ideas to his brain. the watchful theologians have composed, at their leisure, in their waking hours, those phantoms, of which they avail themselves, to terrify or frighten man; they have done nothing more than assemble the scattered traits which they have found in the most terrible beings of their own species; by exaggerating the powers, by enlarging the rights claimed by tyrants, they have formed ideal beings, before whom man trembles, and is afraid. thus, it is seen, that dreams, far from proving that the soul acts by its own peculiar energy, that it draws its ideas from its own recesses; prove, on the contrary, that in sleep it is intirely passive, that it does not even renew its modifications, but according to the involuntary confusion, which physical causes produce in the body, of which every thing tends to shew the identity, the consubstantiality with the soul. what appears to have led those into a mistake, who maintained that the soul drew its ideas from itself, is this, they have contemplated these ideas, as if they were real beings, when, in point of fact, they are nothing more than the modifications produced in the brain of man, by objects to which this brain is a stranger; they are these objects, who are the true models, who are the real archetypes to which it is necessary to recur: here is the source of all their errors. in the individual who dreams, the soul does not act more from itself, than it does in the man who is drunk, that is to say, who is modified by some spirituous liquor: or than it does in the sick man, when he is delirious, that is to say, when he is modified by those physical causes which disturb his machine, which obstruct it in the performance of its functions; or than it, does in him, whose brain is disordered: dreams, like these various states, announce nothing more than a physical confusion in the human machine, under the influence of which the brain ceases to act, after a precise and regular manner: this disorder may be traced to physical causes, such as the aliments--the humours--the combinations--the fermentations, which are but little analogous to the salutary state of man; from hence it will appear, that his brain is necessarily confused, whenever his body is agitated in an extraordinary manner. do not let him, therefore, believe that his soul acts by itself, or without a cause, in any one moment of his existence; it is, conjointly with the body, submitted to the impulse of beings, who act on him necessarily, according to their various properties. wine taken in too great a quantity, necessarily disturbs his ideas, causes confusion in his corporeal functions, occasions disorder in his mental faculties. if there really existed a being in nature, with the capability of moving itself by its own peculiar energies, that is to say, able to produce motion, independent of all other causes, such a being would have the power of arresting itself, or of suspending the motion of the universe; which is nothing more than an immense chain of causes linked one to another, acting and re-acting by necessary immutable laws, and which cannot be changed, which are incapable of being suspended, unless the essences of every thing in it were changed, without the properties of every thing were annihilated. in the general system of the world, nothing more can be perceived than a long series of motion, received and communicated in succession, by beings capacitated to give impulse to each other: it is thus, that each body is moved by the collision of some other body. the invisible motion of some soul is to be attributed to causes concealed within himself; he believes that it is moved by itself, because he does not see the springs which put it in motion, or because he conceives those powers are incapable of producing the effects he so much admires: but, does he more clearly conceive, how a spark in exploding gunpowder, is capable of producing the terrible effects he witnesses? the source of his errors arise from this, that he regards his body as gross and inert, whilst this body is a sensible machine, which has necessarily an instantaneous conscience the moment it receives an impression; which is conscious of its own existence by the recollection of impressions successively experienced; memory by resuscitating an impression anteriorly received, by detaining it, or by causing an impression which it receives to remain, whilst it associates it with another, then with a third, gives all the mechanism of _reasoning_. an idea, which is only an imperceptible modification of the brain, gives play to the organ of speech, which displays itself by the motion it excites in the tongue: this, in its turn, breeds ideas, thoughts, and passions, in those beings who are provided with organs susceptible of receiving analagous motion; in consequence of which, the wills of a great number of men are influenced, who, combining their efforts, produce a revolution in a state, or even have an influence over the entire globe. it is thus, that an alexander decided the fate of asia, it is thus, that a mahomet changed the face of the earth; it is thus, that imperceptible causes produce the most terrible, the most extended effects, by a series of necessary motion imprinted on the brain of man. the difficulty of comprehending the effects produced on the soul of man, has made him attribute to it those incomprehensible qualities which have been examined. by the aid of imagination, by the power of thought, this soul appears to quit his body, to carry itself with the greatest ease, to transport itself with the utmost facility towards the most distant objects; to run over, to approximate in the twinkling of an eye, all the points of the universe: he has therefore believed, that a being who is susceptible of such rapid motion, must be of a nature very distinguished from all others; he has persuaded himself that this soul in reality does travel, that it actually springs over the immense space necessary to meet these various objects; he did not perceive, that to do it in an instant, it had only to run over itself to approximate the ideas consigned to its keeping, by means of the senses. indeed, it is never by any other means than by his senses, that beings become known to man, or furnish him with ideas; it is only in consequence of the impulse given to his body, that his brain is modified, or that his soul thinks, wills, and acts. if, as aristotle asserted more than two thousand years ago,--"_nothing enters the mind of man but through the medium of his senses_,"--it follows as a consequence, that every thing that issues from it must find some sensible object to which it can attach its ideas, whether immediately, as a man, a tree, a bird, &c. or in the last analysis or decomposition, such as pleasure, happiness, vice, virtue, &c. this principle, so true, so luminous, so important in its consequence, has been set forth in all its lustre, by a great number of philosophers; among the rest, by the great locke. whenever, therefore, a word or its idea does not connect itself with some sensible object to which it can be related, this word or this idea is unmeaning, and void of sense; it were better for man that the idea was banished from his mind, struck out of his language: this principle is only the converse of the axiom of aristotle,--"_if the direct be evident, the inverse must be so likewise_." how has it happened, that the profound locke, who, to the great mortification of the metaphysicians, has placed this principle of aristotle in the clearest point of view? how is it, that all those who, like him, have recognized the absurdity of the system of innate ideas, have not drawn the immediate, the necessary consequences? how has it come to pass, that they have not had sufficient courage to apply so clear a principle to all those fanciful chimeras with which the human mind has for such a length of time been so vainly occupied? did they not perceive that their principle sapped the very foundations of those metaphysical speculations, which never occupy man but with those objects of which, as they are inaccessible to his senses, he consequently can never form to himself any accurate idea? but prejudice, when it is generally held sacred, prevents him from seeing the most simple application of the most self-evident principles. in metaphysical researches, the greatest men are frequently nothing more than children, who are incapable of either foreseeing or deducing the consequence of their own data. locke, as well as all those who have adopted his system, which is so demonstrable,--or to the axiom of aristotle, which is so clear, ought to have concluded from it that all those wonderful things with which metaphysicians have amused themselves, are mere chimeras; mere wanderings of the imagination; that an immaterial spirit or substance, without extent, without parts, is, in fact, nothing more than an absence of ideas; in short, they ought to have felt that the ineffable intelligence which they have supposed to preside at the helm of the world, is after all nothing more than a being of their own imagination, on which man has never been in accord, whom he has pictured under all the variety of forms, to which he has at different periods, in different climes, ascribed every kind of attribute, good or bad; but of which it is impossible his senses can ever prove either the existence or the qualities. for the same reason, moral philosophers ought to have concluded, that what is called moral sentiment, _moral instinct_, that is, innate ideas of virtue, anterior to all experience of the good or bad effects resulting from its practice, are mere chimerical notions, which, like a great many others, have for their guarantee and base only metaphysical speculation. before man can judge, he must feel; before he can distinguish good from evil, he must compare. _morals_, is a science of facts: to found them, therefore, on an hypothesis inaccessible to his senses, of which he has no means of proving the reality, is to render them uncertain; it is to cast the log of discord into his lap, to cause him unceasingly to dispute upon that which he can never understand. to assert that the ideas of morals are _innate_, or the effect of _instinct_, is to pretend that man knows how to read before he has learned the letters of the alphabet; that he is acquainted with the laws of society before they are either made or promulgated. to undeceive him, with respect to innate ideas or modifications, imprinted on his soul, at the moment of his birth, it is simply requisite to recur to their source; he will then see that those with which he is familiar, which have, as it were, identified themselves with his existence, have all come to him through the medium of some of his senses; that they are sometimes engraven on his brain with great difficulty,--that they have never been permanent,--that they have perpetually varied in him: he will see that these pretended inherent ideas of his soul, are the effect of education, of example, above all, of habit, which by reiterated motion has taught his brain to associate his ideas either in a confused or a perspicuous manner; to familiarize itself with systems either rational or absurd. in short, he takes those for innate ideas of which he has forgotten the origin; he no longer recals to himself, either the precise epoch, or the successive circumstances when these ideas were first consigned to his brain: arrived at a certain age he believes he has always had the same notions; his memory, crowded with experience, loaded with a multitude of facts, is no longer able to distinguish the particular circumstances which have contributed to give his brain its present modifications; its instantaneous mode of thinking; its actual opinions. for example, not one of his race, perhaps, recollects the first time the word god struck his ears--the first ideas that it formed in him--the first thoughts that it produced in him; nevertheless, it is certain that from thence he has searched for some being with whom to connect the idea which he has either formed to himself, or which has been suggested to him: accustomed to hear god continually spoken of, he has, when in other respects, the most enlightened, regarded this idea as if it were infused into him by nature; whilst it is visibly to be attributed to those delineations of it, which his parents or his instructors have made to him; which he has, in consequence, modified according to his own particular organization, and the circumstances in which he has been placed; it is thus, that each individual forms to himself a god, of which he is himself the model, or which he modifies after his own fashion. his ideas of morals, although more real than those of metaphysics, are not however innate: the moral sentiments he forms on the will, or the judgment he passes on the actions of man, are founded on experience; which alone can enable him to discriminate those which are either useful or prejudicial, virtuous or vicious, honest or dishonest, worthy his esteem, or deserving his censure. his moral sentiments are the fruit of a multitude of experience that is frequently very long and very complicated. he gathers it with time; it is more or less faithful, by reason of his particular organization and the causes by which he is modified; he ultimately applies this experience with greater or less facility; to this is to be attributed his habit of judging. the celerity with which he applies his experience when he judges of the moral actions of his fellow man, is what has been termed _moral instinct_. that which in natural philosophy is called _instinct_, is only the effect of some want of the body, the consequence of some attraction or some repulsion in man or animals. the child that is newly born, sucks for the first time; the nipple of the breast is put into his mouth: by the natural analogy, that is found between the conglomerate glands, filled with nerves; which line his mouth, and the milk which flows from the bosom of the nurse, through the medium of the nipple, causes the child to press it with his mouth, in order to express the fluid appropriate to nourish his tender age; from all this the infant gathers experience; by degrees the idea of a nipple, of milk, of pleasure, associate themselves in his brain: every time he sees the nipple, he seizes it, promptly conveys it to his mouth, and applies it to the use for which it is designed. what has been said, will enable us to judge of those prompt and sudden sentiments, which have been designated _the force of blood_. those sentiments of love, which fathers and mothers have for their children--those feelings of affection, which children, with good inclinations, bear towards their parents, are by no means _innate sentiments_; they are nothing more, than the effect of experience, of reflection, of habit, in souls of sensibility. these sentiments do not even exist in a great number of human beings. we but too often witness tyrannical parents, occupied with making enemies of their children, who appear to have been formed, only to be the victims of their irrational caprices or their unreasonable desires. from the instant in which man commences, until that in which he ceases to exist, he feels--he is moved either agreeably or unpleasantly--he collects facts--he gathers experience; these produce ideas in his brain, that are either cheerful or gloomy. not one individual has all this experience present to his memory at the same time, it does not ever represent to him the whole clew at once: it is, however, this experience that mechanically directs him, without his knowledge, in all his actions; it was to designate the rapidity with, which he applied this experience, of which he so frequently loses the connection--of which he is so often at a loss to render himself an account, that he imagined the word _instinct_: it appears to be the effect of magic, the operation of a supernatural power, to the greater number of individuals: it is a word devoid of sense to many others; but to the philosopher it is the effect of a very lively feeling to him it consists in the faculty of combining, promptly, a multitude of experience--of arranging with facility--of comparing with quickness, a long and numerous train of extremely complicated ideas. it is want that causes the inexplicable instinct we behold in animals which have been denied souls without reason, whilst they are susceptible of an infinity of actions that prove they think--judge--have memory--are capable of experience--can combine ideas--can apply them with more or less facility to satisfy the wants engendered by their particular organization; in short, that prove they have passions that are capable of being modified. nothing but the height of folly can refuse intellectual faculties to animals; they feel, choose, deliberate, express love, show hatred; in many instances their senses are much keener than those of man. fish will return periodically to the spot where it is the custom to throw them bread. it is well known the embarrassments which animals have thrown in the way of the partizans of the doctrine of spirituality; they have been fearful, if they allowed them to have a spiritual soul, of elevating them to the condition of human creatures; on the other hand, in not allowing them to have a soul, they have furnished their adversaries with authority to deny it in like manner to man, who thus finds himself debased to the condition of the animal. metaphysicians have never known how to extricate themselves from this difficulty. descartes fancied he solved it by saying that beasts have no souls, but are mere machines. nothing can be nearer the surface, than the absurdity of this principle. whoever contemplates nature without prejudice, will readily acknowledge that there is no other difference between the man and the beast, than that which is to be attributed to the diversity of his organization. in some beings of the human species, who appear to be endowed with a greater sensibility of organs than others, may be seen an instinct, by the assistance of which they very promptly judge of the concealed dispositions of their fellows, simply by inspecting the lineaments of their face. those who are denominated _physiognomists_, are only men of very acute feelings; who have gathered an experience of which others, whether from the coarseness of their organs, from the little attention they have paid, or from some defect in their senses, are totally incapable: these last do not believe in the science of physiognomy, which appears to them perfectly ideal. nevertheless, it is certain, that the action of this soul, which has been made spiritual, makes impressions that are extremely marked upon the exterior of the body; these impressions, continually reiterated, their image remains: thus the habitual passions of man paint themselves on his countenance; by which the attentive observer, who is endowed with acute feeling, is enabled to judge with great rapidity of his mode of existence, and even to foresee his actions, his inclinations, his desires, his predominant passions, &c. although the science of physiognomy appears chimerical to a great number of persons, yet there are few who have not a clear idea of a tender regard--of a cruel eye--of an austere aspect--of a false, dissimulating look--of an open countenance, &c. keen practised optics acquire without doubt the faculty of penetrating the concealed motion of the soul, by the visible traces it leaves upon features that it has continually modified. above all, the eyes of man very quickly undergo changes according to the motion which is excited in him: these delicate organs are visibly altered by the smallest shock communicated to his brain. serene eyes announce a tranquil soul; wild eyes indicate a restless mind; fiery eyes pourtray a choleric, sanguine temperament; fickle or inconstant eyes give room to suspect a soul either alarmed or dissimulating. it is the study of this variety of shades that renders man practised and acute: upon the spot he combines a multitude of acquired experience, in order to form his judgment of the person he beholds. his judgment, thus rapidly formed, partakes in nothing of the supernatural, in nothing of the wonderful: such a man is only distinguished by the fineness of his organs, and by the celerity with which his brain performs its functions. it is the same with some beings of the human species, in whom may be discovered an extraordinary sagacity, which, to the uninformed, appears miraculous. the most skilful practitioners in medicine, are, no doubt, men endowed with very acute feelings, similar to that of the physiognomists, by the assistance of which they judge with great facility of diseases, and very promptly draw their prognostics. indeed, we see men who are capable of appreciating in the twinkling of an eye a multitude of circumstances, who have sometimes the faculty of foreseeing the most distant events; yet, this species of prophetic talent has nothing in it of the supernatural; it indicates nothing more than great experience, with an extremely delicate organization, from which they derive the faculty of judging with extreme faculty of causes, of foreseeing their very remote effects. this faculty, however, is also found in animals, who foresee much better than man, the variations of the atmosphere with the various changes of the weather. birds have long been the prophets, and even the guides of several nations who pretend to be extremely enlightened. it is, then, to their organization, exercised after a particular manner, that must be attributed those wonderous faculties which distinguish some beings, that astonish others. to have _instinct_, only signifies to judge quickly, without requiring to make a long, reasoning on the subject. man's ideas upon vice and upon virtue, are by no means innate; they are, like all others, acquired: the judgment he forms, is founded upon experience, whether true or false,--this depends upon his conformation, and upon the habits that have modified him. the infant has no ideas either of the divinity or of virtue; it is from those who instruct him that he receives these ideas; he makes more or less use of them, according to his natural organization, or as his dispositions have been more or less exercised. nature gives man legs, the nurse teaches him their use, his agility depends upon their natural conformation, and the manner in which he exercises them. what is called _taste_, in the fine arts, is to be attributed, in the same manner, only to the acuteness of man's organs, practised by the habit of seeing, of comparing, of judging certain objects; from whence results, to some of his species, the faculty of judging with great rapidity, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole with its various relations. it is by the force of seeing, of feeling, of experiencing objects, that he attains to a knowledge of them; it is in consequence of reiterating this experience, that he acquires the power, that he gains the habit of judging with celerity. but this experience is by no means innate, he did not possess it before he was born; he is neither able to think, to judge, nor to have ideas, before he has feeling; he is neither in a capacity to love, nor to hate; to approve, nor to blame, before he has been moved, either agreeably or disagreeably. nevertheless, this is precisely what must be supposed by those who are desirous to make man admit of innate ideas, of opinions; infused by nature, whether in morals, metaphysics, or any other science. that his mind should have the faculty of thought, that it should occupy itself with an object, it is requisite it should be acquainted with its qualities; that it may have a knowledge of these qualities, it is necessary some of his senses should have been struck by them: those objects, therefore, of which he does not know any of the qualities, are nullities; or at least they do not exist for him. it will be asserted, perhaps, that the universal consent of man, upon certain propositions, such as _the whole is greater than its part_, upon all geometrical demonstrations, appear to warrant the supposition of certain primary notions that are innate, not acquired. it may be replied, that these notions are always acquired; that they are the fruit of an experience more or less prompt; that it is requisite to have compared the whole with its part, before conviction can ensue, that the whole is the greater of the two. man when he is born, does not bring with him the idea that two and two make four; but he is, nevertheless, speedily convinced of its truth. before forming any judgment whatever, it is absolutely necessary to have compared facts. it is evident, that those who have gratuitously supposed innate ideas, or notions inherent in man, have confounded his organization, or his natural dispositions, with the habit by which he is modified; with the greater or less aptitude he has of making experience, and of applying it in his judgment. a man who has taste in painting, has, without doubt, brought with him into the world eyes more acute, more penetrating than another; but these eyes would by no means enable him to judge with promptitude, if he had never had occasion to exercise them; much less, in some respects, can those dispositions which are called _natural_, be regarded as innate. man is not, at twenty years of age, the same as he was when he came into the world; the physical causes that are continually acting upon him, necessarily have an influence upon his organization, and so modify it, that his natural dispositions themselves are not at one period what they are at another. la motte le vayer says, "we think quite otherwise of things at one time than at another; when young than when old--when hungry than when our appetite is satisfied--in the night than in the day--when peevish than when cheerful. thus, varying every hour, by a thousand other circumstances, which keep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy and instability." every day may be seen children, who, to a certain age--display a great deal of ingenuity, a strong aptitude for the sciences, who finish by falling into stupidity. others may be observed, who, during their infancy, have shown dispositions but little favourable to improvement, yet develope themselves in the end, and astonish us by an exhibition of those qualities of which we hardly thought them susceptible: there arrives a moment in which the mind takes a spring, makes use of a multitude of experience which it has amassed, without its having been perceived; and, if i may be allowed the expression, without their own knowledge. thus, it cannot be too often repeated, all the ideas, all the notions, all the modes of existence, and all the thoughts of man, are acquired. his mind cannot act, cannot exercise itself, but upon that of which it has knowledge; it can understand either well or ill, only those things which it has previously felt. such of his ideas that do not suppose some exterior material object for their model, or one to which he is able to relate them, which are therefore called _abstract ideas_, are only modes in which his interior organ considers its own peculiar modifications, of which it chooses some without respect to others. the words which he uses to designate these ideas, such as _bounty, beauty, order, intelligence, virtue_, &c. do not offer any one sense, if he does not relate them to, or if he does not explain them by, those objects which his senses have shewn him to be susceptible of those qualities, or of those modes of existence, of that manner of acting, which is known to him. what is it that points out to him the vague idea of _beauty_, if he does not attach it to some object that has struck his senses in a peculiar manner, to which, in consequence, he attributes this quality? what is it that represents the word _intelligence_, if he does not connect it with a certain mode of being and of acting? does the word _order_ signify any thing, if he does not relate it to a series of actions, to a chain of motion, by which he is affected in a certain manner? is not the word _virtue_ void of sense, if he does not apply it to those dispositions of his fellows which produce known effects, different from those which result from contrary inclinations? what do the words _pain_ and _pleasure_ offer to his mind in the moment when his organs neither suffer nor enjoy, if it be not the modes in which he has been affected, of which his brain conserves the remembrance, of those impressions, which experience has shewn him to be either useful or prejudicial? but when he bears the words spirituality, immateriality, incorporeality, &c. pronounced, neither his senses nor his memory afford him any assistance; they do not furnish him with any means by which he can form an idea of their qualities, or of the objects to which he ought to apply them; in that which is not matter he can only see vacuum and emptiness, which as long as he remains what he is, cannot, to his mind, be susceptible of any one quality. all the errors, all the disputes of men, have their foundation in this, that they have renounced experience, have surrendered the evidence of their senses, to give themselves up to the guidance of notions which they have believed infused or innate; although in reality they are no more than the effect of a distempered imagination, of prejudices, in which they have been instructed from their infancy, with which habit has familiarized them, which authority has obliged them to conserve. languages are filled with abstract words, to which are attached confused and vague ideas; of which, when they come to be examined, no model can be found in nature; no object to which they can be related. when man gives himself the trouble to analyze things, he is quite surprised to find, that those words which are continually in the mouths of men, never present any fixed or determinate idea: he hears them unceasingly speaking of spirits--of the soul and its faculties--of duration--of space--of immensity--of infinity--of perfection--of virtue--of reason--of sentiment--of instinct--of taste, &c. without his being able to tell precisely, what they themselves understand by these words. nevertheless, they do not appear to have been invented, but for the purpose of representing the images of things; or to paint, by the assistance of the senses, those known objects on which the mind is able to meditate, which it is competent to appreciate, to compare, and to judge. for man to think of that which has not acted on any of his senses, is to think on words; it is for his senses to dream; it is to seek in his own imagination for objects to which he can attach his wandering ideas: to assign qualities to these objects is, unquestionably, to redouble his extravagance, to set no limits to his folly. if a word be destined to represent to him an object that has not the capacity to act on any one of his organs; of which, it is impossible for him to prove either the existence or the qualities; his imagination, by dint of racking itself, will nevertheless, in some measure, supply him with the ideas he wants; he composes some kind of a picture, with the images or colours he is always obliged to borrow, from the objects of which he has a knowledge: thus the divinity has been represented by some under the character of a venerable old man; by others, under that of a puissant monarch; by others, as an exasperated, irritated being, &c. it is evident, however, that man, with some of his qualities, has served for the model of these pictures: but if he be informed of objects that are represented as pure spirits--that have neither body nor extent--that are not contained in space--that are beyond nature,--here then he is plunged into emptiness; his mind no longer has any ideas--it no longer knows upon what it meditates. this, as will be seen in the sequel, no doubt, is the source of those unformed notions which some men have formed of the divinity; they themselves frequently annihilate him, by assembling incompatible and contradictory attributes. in giving him morals--in composing him of known qualities,--they make him a man;--in assigning him the negative attributes of every thing they know, they render him inaccessible to their senses--they destroy all antecedent ideas--they make him a mere nothing. from this it will appear, that those sublime sciences which are called _theology, psychology, metaphysics_, have been mere sciences of words: morals and politics, with which they very frequently mix, have, in consequence, become inexplicable enigmas, which there is nothing short of the study of nature can enable us to expound. man has occasion for truth; it consists in a knowledge of the true relations he has with those beings competent to have an influence on his welfare; these relations are to be known only by experience: without experience there can be no reason; without reason man is only a blind creature, who conducts himself by chance. but, how is he to acquire experience upon ideal objects, which his senses neither enable him to know nor to examine? how is he to assure himself of the existence, how ascertain the qualities of beings he is not able to feel? how can he judge whether there objects be favorable or prejudicial to him? how is he to know, without the evidence of his senses, what he ought to love, what he should hate, what to seek after, what to shun, what to do, what to leave undone? it is, however, upon this knowledge that his condition in this world rests; it is upon this knowledge that morals is founded. from whence it may be seen, that, by causing him to blend vague metaphysical notions with morals, or the science of the certain and invariable relations which subsist between mankind; or by weakly establishing them upon chimerical ideas, which have no existence but in his imagination; these morals, upon which the welfare of society so much depends, are rendered uncertain, are made arbitrary, are abandoned to the caprices of fancy, are not fixed upon any solid basis. beings essentially different by their natural organization, by the modifications they experience, by the habits they contract, by the opinions they acquire, must of necessity think differently. his temperament, as we have seen, decides the mental qualities of man: this temperament itself is diversely modified in him: from whence it consecutively follows, his imagination cannot possibly be the same; neither can it create to him the same images. each individual is a connected whole, of which all the parts have a necessary correspondence. different eyes must see differently, must give extremely varied ideas of the objects they contemplate, even when these objects are real. what, then, must be the diversity of these ideas, if the objects meditated upon do not act upon the senses? mankind have pretty nearly the same ideas, in the gross, of those substances that act upon his organs with vivacity; he is sufficiently in unison upon some qualities which he contemplates very nearly in the same manner; i say, very nearly, because the intelligence, the notion, the conviction of any one proposition, however simple, however evident, however clear it may be supposed, is not, nor cannot be, strictly the same, in any two men. indeed, one man not being another man, the first cannot, for example, have rigorously and mathematically the same notion of unity as the second; seeing that an identical effect cannot be the result of two different causes. thus, when men are in accord in their ideas, in their modes of thinking, in their judgment, in their passions, in their desires, in, their tastes, their consent does not arise from their seeing or feeling the same objects precisely in the same manner, but pretty nearly; language is not, nor cannot be, sufficiently copious to designate the vast variety of shades, the multiplicity of imperceptible differences, which is to be found in their modes of seeing and thinking. each man, then, has, to say thus, a language which is peculiar to himself alone, and this language is incommunicable to others. what harmony, what unison, then, can possibly exist between them, when they discourse with each other, upon objects only known to their imagination? can this imagination in one individual ever be the same as in another? how can they possibly understand each other, when they assign to those objects qualities that can only be attributed to the particular manner in which their brain is affected. for one man to exact from another that he shall think like himself, is to insist that he shall be organized precisely in the same manner--that he shall have been modified exactly the same in every moment of his existence: that he shall have received the same temperament, the same nourishment, the same education: in a word, that he shall require that other to be himself. wherefore is it not exacted that all men shall have the same features? is man more the master of his opinions? are not his opinions the necessary consequence of his nature, and of those peculiar circumstances which, from his infancy, have necessarily had an influence upon his mode of thinking, and his manner of acting? if man be a connected whole, whenever a single feature differs from his own, ought he not to conclude that it is not possible his brain can either think, associate ideas, imagine, or dream precisely in the same manner with that other. the diversity in the temperament of man, is the natural, the necessary source of the diversity of his passions, of his taste, of his ideas of happiness, of his opinions of every kind. thus, this same diversity will be the fatal source of his disputes, of his hatreds, of his injustice, every time he shall reason upon unknown objects, but to which he shall attach the greatest importance. he will never understand either himself or others, in speaking of a spiritual soul, or of immaterial substances distinguished from nature; he will, from that moment, cease to speak the same language, and he will never attach the same ideas to the same words. what, then, shall be, the common standard that shall decide which is the man that thinks with the greatest justice? what the scale by which to measure who has the best regulated imagination? what balance shall be found sufficiently exact to determine whose knowledge is most certain, when he agitates subjects, which experience cannot enable him to examine, that escape all his senses, that have no model, that are above reason? each individual, each legislator, each speculator, each nation, has ever formed to himself different ideas of these things; each believes, that his own peculiar reveries ought to be preferred to those of his neighbours; which always appear to him an absurd, ridiculous, and false as his own can possibly have appeared to his fellow; each clings to his own opinion, because each retains his own peculiar mode of existence; each believes his happiness depends upon his attachment to his prejudices, which he never adopts but because he believes them beneficial to his welfare. propose to a man to change his religion for yours, he will believe you a madman; you will only excite his indignation, elicit his contempt; he will propose to you, in his turn, to adopt his own peculiar opinions; after much reasoning, you will treat each other as absurd beings, ridiculously opiniated, pertinaciously stubborn: and he will display the least folly, who shall first yield. but if the adversaries become heated in the dispute, which always happens, when they suppose the matter important, or when they would defend the cause of their own self-love; from thence their passions sharpen, they grow angry, quarrels are provoked, they hate each other, and end by reciprocal injury. it is thus, that for opinions, which no man can demonstrate, we see the brahmin despised; the mahommedan hated; the pagan held in contempt; that they oppress and disdain each with the most rancorous animosity: the christian burns the jew at what is called an _auto-de-fe_, because he clings to the faith of his fathers: the roman catholic condemns the protestant to the flames, and makes a conscience of massacring him in cold blood: this re-acts in his turn; sometimes the various sects of christians league together against the incredulous turk, and for a moment suspend their own bloody disputes that they may chastise the enemies to the true faith: then, having glutted their revenge, return with redoubled fury, to wreak over again their infuriated vengeance on each other. if the imaginations of men were the same, the chimeras which they bring forth would be every where the same; there would be no disputes among them on this subject, if they all dreamt in the same manner; great numbers of human beings would be spared, if man occupied his mind with objects capable of being known, of which the existence was proved, of which he was competent to discover the true qualities, by sure, by reiterated experience. _systems of philosophy_ are not subject to dispute but when their principles are not sufficiently proved; by degrees experience, in pointing out the truth and detecting their errors, terminates these quarrels. there is no variance among _geometricians_ upon the principles of their science; it is only raised, when their suppositions are false, or their objects too much complicated. _theologians_ find so much difficulty in agreeing among themselves, simply, because, in their contests, they divide without ceasing, not known and examined propositions, but prejudices with which they have been imbued in their youth--in the schools--by each other's books, &c. they are perpetually reasoning, not upon real objects, of which the existence is demonstrated, but upon imaginary systems of which they have never examined the reality; they found these disputes, not upon averred experience, or constant facts, but upon gratuitious suppositions, which each endeavours to convince the other are without solidity. finding these ideas of long standing, that few people, refuse to admit them, they take them for incontestible truths, that ought to be received merely upon being announced; whenever they attach great importance to them, they irritate themselves against the temerity of those who have the audacity to doubt, or even to examine them. if prejudice had been laid aside, it would perhaps have been discovered that many of those objects, which have given birth to the most shocking, the most sanguinary disputes among men, were mere phantoms; which a little examination would have shown to be unworthy their notice: _the priests of apollo_ would have been harmless, if man had examined for himself, without prejudice, the tenets they held forth: he would have found, that he was fighting, that he was cutting his neighbour's throat, for words void of sense; or, at the least, he would have learned to doubt his right to act in the manner he did; he would have renounced that dogmatical, that imperious tone he assumed, by which he would oblige his fellow to unite with him in opinion. the most trifling reflection would have shewn him the necessity of this diversity in his notions, of this contrariety in his imagination, which depends upon his natural conformation diversely modified: which necessarily has an influence over his thoughts, over his will, and over his actions. in short, if he had consulted morals, if he had fallen back upon reason, every thing would have conspired to prove to him, that beings who call themselves rational, were made to think variously; on that account were designed to live peaceable with each other, to love each other, to lend each other mutual succours whatever may be their opinions upon subjects, either impossible to be known, or to be contemplated under the same point of view: every thing would have joined in evidence to convince him of the unreasonable tyranny, of the unjust violence, of the useless cruelty of those men of blood, who persecute, who destroy mankind, in order that they may mould him to their own peculiar opinions; every thing would have conducted mortals to _mildness_, to _indulgence_, to _toleration_; virtues, unquestionably of more real importance, much more necessary to the welfare of society, than the marvellous speculations by which it is divided, by which it is frequently hurried on to sacrifice to a maniacal fury, the pretended enemies to these revered flights of the imagination. from this it must be evident, of what importance it is to _morals_ to examine the ideas, to which it has been agreed to attach so much worth; to which man is continually sacrificing his own peculiar happiness; to which he is immolating the tranquillity of nations, at the irrational command of fanatical cruel guides. let him fall back on his experience; let him return to nature; let him occupy himself with reason; let him consult those objects that are real, which are useful to his permanent felicity; let him study nature's laws; let him study himself; let him consult the bonds which unite him to his fellow mortals; let him examine the fictitious bonds that enchain him to the most baneful prejudices. if his imagination must always feed itself with illusions, if he remains steadfast in his own opinions, if his prejudices are dear to him, let him at least permit others to ramble in their own manner, or seek after truth as best suits their inclination; but let him always recollect, that all the opinions--all the ideas--all the systems--all the wills--all the actions of man, are the necessary consequence of his nature, of his temperament, of his organization, and of those causes, either transitory or constant, which modify hint: in short, that _man is not more a free agent to think than to act:_ a truth that will be again proved in the following chapter. chap. xi _of the system of man's free agency._ those who have pretended that the _soul_ is distinguished from the body, is immaterial, draws its ideas from its own peculiar source, acts by its own energies without the aid of any exterior object; by a consequence of their own system, have enfranchised it from those physical laws, according to which all beings of which we have a knowledge are obliged to act. they have believed that the foul is mistress of its own conduct, is able to regulate its own peculiar operations; has the faculty to determine its will by its own natural energy; in a word, they have pretended man is a _free agent_. it has been already sufficiently proved, that the soul is nothing more than the body, considered relatively to some of its functions, more concealed than others: it has been shewn, that this soul, even when it shall be supposed immaterial, is continually modified conjointly with the body; is submitted to all its motion; that without this it would remain inert and dead: that, consequently, it is subjected to the influence of those material, to the operation those physical causes, which give impulse to the body; of which the mode of existence, whether habitual or transitory, depends upon the material elements by which it is surrounded; that form its texture; that constitute its temperament; that enter into it by the means of the aliments; that penetrate it by their subtility; the faculties which are called intellectual, and those qualities which are styled moral, have been explained in a manner purely physical; entirely natural: in the last place, it has been demonstrated, that all the ideas, all the systems, all the affections, all the opinions, whether true or false, which man forms to himself, are to be attributed to his physical powers; are to be ascribed to his material senses. thus man is a being purely physical; in whatever manner he is considered, he is connected to universal nature: submitted to the necessary, to the immutable laws that she imposes on all the beings she contains, according to their peculiar essences; conformable to the respective properties with which, without consulting them, she endows each particular species. man's life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth: without his ever being able to swerve from it even for an instant. he is born without his own consent; his organizations does in no wise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no controul; give the hue to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of acting. he is good or bad--happy or miserable--wise or foolish--reasonable or irrational, without his will going for anything in these various states. nevertheless, in despite of the shackles by which he is bound, it is pretended he is a free agent, or that independent of the causes by which he is moved, he determines his own will; regulates his own condition. however slender the foundation of this opinion, of which every thing ought to point out to him the error; it is current at this day for an incontestible truth, and believed enlightened; it is the basis or religion, which has been incapable of imagining how man could either merit reward or deserve punishment if he was not a free agent. society has been believed interested in this system, because an idea has gone abroad, that if all the actions of man were to be contemplated as necessary, the right of punishing those who injure their associates would no longer exist. at length human vanity accommodated itself to an hypothesis which, unquestionable, appears to distinguish man from all other physical beings, by assigning to him the special privilege of a total independence of all other causes; but of which a very little reflection would have shewn him the absurdity or even the impossibility. as a part, subordinate to the great whole, man is obliged to experience its influence. to be a free agent it were needful that each individual was of greater strength than the entire of nature; or, that he was out of this nature: who, always in action herself, obliges all the beings she embraces, to act, and to concur to her general motion; or, as it has been said elsewhere, to conserve her active existence, by the motion that all beings produce in consequence of their particular energies, which result from their being submitted to fixed, eternal, and immutable laws. in order that man might be a free agent, it were needful that all beings should lose their essences; it is equally necessary that he himself should no longer enjoy physical sensibility; that he should neither know good nor evil; pleasure nor pain; but if this was the case, from that moment he would no longer be in a state to conserve himself, or render his existence happy; all beings would become indifferent to him; he would no longer have any choice; he would cease to know what he ought to love; what it was right he should fear; he would not have any acquaintance with that which he should seek after; or with that which it is requisite he should avoid. in short, man would be an unnatural being; totally incapable of acting in the manner we behold. it is the actual essence of man to tend to his well-being; to be desirous to conserve his existence; if all the motion of his machine springs as a necessary consequence from this primitive impulse; if pain warns him of that which he ought to avoid; if pleasure announces to him that which he should desire; if it is in his essence to love that which either excites delight, or, that from which he expects agreeable sensations; to hate that which makes him either fear contrary impressions; or, that which afflicts him with uneasiness; it must necessarily be, that he will be attracted by that which he deems advantageous; that his will shall be determined by those objects which he judges useful; that he will be repelled by those beings which he believes prejudicial, either to his habitual, or to his transitory mode of existence; by that which he considers disadvantageous. it is only by the aid of experience, that man acquires the faculty of understanding what he ought to love; of knowing what he ought to fear. are his organs sound? his experience will be true: are they unsound? it will be false: in the first instance he will have reason, prudence, foresight; he will frequently foresee very remote effects; he will know, that what he sometimes contemplates as a good, may possibly become an evil, by its necessary or probable consequences: that what must be to him a transient evil, may by its result procure him a solid and durable good. it is thus experience enables him to foresee that the amputation of a limb will cause him painful sensation, he consequently is obliged to fear this operation, and he endeavours to avoid the pain; but if experience has also shewn him, that the transitory pain this amputation will cause him may be the means of saving his life; the preservation, of his existence being of necessity dear to him, he is obliged to submit himself to the momentary pain with a view to procuring a permanent good, by which it will be overbalanced. the will, as we have elsewhere said, is a modification of the brain, by which it is disposed to action or prepared to give play to the organs. this will is necessarily determined by the qualities, good or bad, agreeable or painful, of the object or the motive that acts upon his senses; or of which the idea remains with him, and is resuscitated by his memory. in consequence, he acts necessarily; his action is the result of the impulse he receives either from the motive, from the object, or from the idea, which has modified his brain, or disposed his will. when he does not act according to this impulse, it is because there comes some new cause, some new motive, some new idea, which modifies his brain in a different manner, gives him a new impulse, determines his will in another way; by which the action of the former impulse is suspended: thus, the sight of an agreeable object, or its idea, determines his will to set him in action to procure it; but if a new object or a new idea more powerfully attracts him, it gives a new direction to his will, annihilates the effect of the former, and prevents the action by which it was to be procured. this is the mode in which reflection, experience, reason, necessarily arrests or suspends the action of man's will; without this, he would, of necessity, have followed the anterior impulse which carried him towards a then desirable object. in all this he always acts according to necessary laws, from which he has no means of emancipating himself. if, when tormented with violent thirst, he figures to himself an idea, or really perceives a fountain, whose limpid streams might cool his feverish habit, is he sufficient master of himself to desire or not to desire the object competent to satisfy so lively a want? it will no doubt be conceded, that it is impossible he should not be desirous to satisfy it; but it will be said,--if at this moment it is announced to him, the water he so ardently desires is poisoned, he will, notwithstanding his vehement thirst, abstain from drinking it; and it has, therefore, been falsely concluded that he is a free agent. the fact, however, is, that the motive in either case is exactly the same: his own conservation. the same necessity that determined him to drink, before he knew the water was deleterious, upon this new discovery, equally determines him not to drink; the desire of conserving himself, either annihilates or suspends the former impulse; the second motive becomes stronger than the preceding; that is, the fear of death, or the desire of preserving himself, necessarily prevails over the painful sensation caused by his eagerness to drink. but, (it will be said) if the thirst is very parching, an inconsiderate man, without regarding the danger, will risque swallowing the water. nothing is gained by this remark: in this case, the anterior impulse only regains the ascendency; he is persuaded, that life may possibly be longer preserved, or that he shall derive a greater good by drinking the poisoned water, than by enduring the torment, which, to his mind, threatens instant dissolution: thus, the first becomes the strongest, and necessarily urges him on to action. nevertheless, in either case, whether he partakes of the water, or whether he does not, the two actions will be equally necessary; they will be the effect of that motive which finds itself most puissant; which consequently acts in a most coercive manner upon his will. this example will serve to explain the whole phaenomena of the human will. this will, or rather the brain, finds itself in the same situation as a bowl, which although it has received an impulse that drives it forward in a straight line, is deranged in its course, whenever a force, superior to the first, obliges it to change its direction. the man who drinks the poisoned water, appears a madman; but the actions of fools are as necessary as those of the most prudent individuals. the motives that determine the voluptuary, that actuate the debauchee to risk their health, are as powerful, their actions are as necessary, as those which decide the wise man to manage his. but, it will be insisted, the debauchee may be prevailed on to change his conduct; this does not imply that he is a free agent; but, that motives may be found sufficiently powerful to annihilate the effect of those that previously acted upon him; then these new motives determine his will to the new mode of conduct he may adopt, as necessarily as the former did to the old mode. man is said to _deliberate_ when the action of the will is suspended; this happens when two opposite motives act alternately upon him. to deliberate, is to hate and to love in succession; it is to be alternately attracted and repelled; it is to be moved sometimes by one motive, sometimes by another. man only deliberates when he does not distinctly understand the quality of the objects from which he receives impulse, or when experience has not sufficiently apprised him of the effects, more or less remote, which his actions will produce. he would take the air, but the weather is uncertain; he deliberates in consequence; he weighs the various motives that urge his will to go out or to stay at home; he is at length determined by that motive which is most probable; this removes his indecision, which necessarily settles his will either to remain within or to go abroad: this motive is always either the immediate or ultimate advantage he finds or thinks he finds in the action to which he is persuaded. man's will frequently fluctuates between two objects, of which either the presence or the ideas move him alternately: he waits until he has contemplated the objects or the ideas they have left in his brain; which solicit him to different actions; he then compares these objects or ideas: but even in the time of deliberation, during the comparison, pending these alternatives of love and hatred, which succeed each other sometimes with the utmost rapidity, he is not a free agent for a single instant; the good or the evil which he believes he finds successively in the objects, are the necessary motives of these momentary wills; of the rapid motion of desire or fear that he experiences as long as his uncertainty continues. from this it will be obvious, that deliberation is necessary; that uncertainty is necessary; that whatever part he takes, in consequence of this deliberation, it will always necessarily be that which he has judged, whether well or ill, is most probable to turn to his advantage. when the soul is assailed by two motives that act alternately upon it, or modify it successively, it deliberates; the brain is in a sort of equilibrium, accompanied with perpetual oscillations, sometimes towards one object, sometimes towards the other, until the most forcible carries the point, and thereby extricates it, from this state of suspense, in which consists the indecision of his will. but when the brain is simultaneously assailed by causes equally strong, that move it in opposite directions; agreeable to the general law of all bodies, when they are struck equally by contrary powers, it stops, it is in _nisu_; it is neither capable to will nor to act; it waits until one of the two causes has obtained sufficient force to overpower the other, to determine its will, to attract it in such a manner that it may prevail over the efforts of the other cause. this mechanism, so simple, so natural, suffices to demonstrate, why uncertainty is painful; why suspense is always a violent state for man. the brain, an organ so delicate, so mobile, experiences such rapid modifications, that it is fatigued; or when it is urged in contrary directions, by causes equally powerful, it suffers a kind of compression, that prevents the activity which is suitable to the preservation of the whole, which is necessary to procure what is advantageous to its existence. this mechanism will also explain the irregularity, the indecision, the inconstancy of man; and account for that conduct, which frequently appears an inexplicable mystery, which indeed it is, under the received systems. in consulting experience, it will be found that the soul is submitted to precisely the same physical laws as the material body. if the will of each individual, during a given time, was only moved by a single cause or passion, nothing would be more easy than to foresee his actions; but his heart is frequently assailed by contrary powers, by adverse motives, which either act on him simultaneously or in succession; then his brain, attracted in opposite directions, is either fatigued, or else tormented by a state of compression, which deprives it of activity. sometimes it is in a state of incommodious inaction; sometimes it is the sport of the alternate shocks it undergoes. such, no doubt, is the state in which man finds himself, when a lively passion solicits him to the commission of crime, whilst fear points out to him the danger by which it is attended: such, also, is the condition of him whom remorse, by the continued labour of his distracted soul, prevents from enjoying the objects he has criminally obtained. if the powers or causes, whether exterior or interior, acting on the mind of man, tend towards opposite points, his soul, is well as all other bodies, will take a mean direction between the two; in consequence of the violence with which his soul is urged, his condition becomes sometimes so painful that his existence is troublesome: he has no longer a tendency to his own peculiar conservation; he seeks after death, as a sanctuary against himself--as the only remedy to his despair: it is thus we behold men, miserable and discontented, voluntarily destroy themselves, whenever life becomes insupportable. man is competent to cherish his existence, no longer than life holds out charms to him; when he is wrought upon by painful sensations, or drawn by contrary impulsions, his natural tendency is deranged, he is under the necessity to follow a new route; this conducts him to his end, which it even displays to him as the most desirable good. in this manner may be explained, the conduct of those melancholy beings, whose vicious temperaments, whose tortured consciences, whose chagrin, whose _ennui_, sometimes determine them to renounce life. the various powers, frequently very complicated, that act either successively or simultaneously upon the brain of man, which modify him so diversely in the different periods of his existence, are the true causes of that obscurity in morals, of that difficulty which is found, when it is desired to unravel the concealed springs of his enigmatical conduct. the heart of man is a labyrinth, only because it very rarely happens that we possess the necessary gift of judging it; from whence it will appear, that his circumstances, his indecision, his conduct, whether ridiculous, or unexpected, are the necessary consequences of the changes operated in him; are nothing but the effect of motives that successively determine his will; which are dependent on the frequent variations experienced by his machine. according to these variations, the same motives have not, always, the same influence over his will, the same objects no longer enjoy the faculty of pleasing him; his temperament has changed, either for the moment, or for ever. it follows as a consequence, that his taste, his desires, his passions, will change; there can be no kind of uniformity in his conduct, nor any certitude in the effects to be expected. choice by no means proves the free-agency of man; he only deliberates when he does not yet know which to choose of the many objects that move him, he is then in an embarrassment, which does not terminate, until his will as decided by the greater advantage he believes be shall find in the object he chooses, or the action he undertakes. from whence it may be seen that choice is necessary, because he would not determine for an object, or for an action, if he did not believe that he should find in it some direct advantage. that man should have free-agency, it were needful that he should be able to will or choose without motive; or, that he could prevent motives coercing his will. action always being the effect of his will once determined, as his will cannot be determined but by a motive, which is not in his own power, it follows that he is never the master of the determination of his own peculiar will; that consequently he never acts as a free agent. it has been believed that man was a free agent, because he had a will with the power of choosing; but attention has not been paid to the fact, that even his will is moved by causes independent of himself, is owing to that which is inherent in his own organization, or which belongs to the nature of the beings acting on him. indeed, man passes a great portion of his life without even willing. his will attends the motive by which it is determined. if he was to render an exact account of every thing he does in the course of each day, from rising in the morning to lying down at night, he would find, that not one of his actions have been in the least voluntary; that they have been mechanical, habitual, determined by causes he was not able to foresee, to which he was either obliged to, yield, or with which he was allured to acquiesce; he would discover, that all the motives of his labours, of his amusements, of his discourses, of his thoughts, have been necessary; that they have evidently either seduced him or drawn him along. is he the master of willing, not to withdraw his hand from the fire when he fears it will be burnt? or has he the power to take away from fire the property which makes him fear it? is he the master of not choosing a dish of meat which he knows to be agreeable, or analogous to his palate; of not preferring it to that which he knows to be disagreeable or dangerous? it is always according to his sensations, to his own peculiar experience, or to his suppositions, that he judges of things either well or ill; but whatever way be his judgment, it depends necessarily on his mode of feeling, whether habitual or accidental, and the qualities he finds in the causes that move him, which exist in despite of himself. all the causes which by his will is actuated, must act upon him in a manner sufficiently marked, to give him some sensation, some perception, some idea, whether complete or incomplete, true or false; as soon as his will is determined, he must have felt, either strongly or feebly; if this was not the case he would have determined without motive: thus, to speak correctly, there are no causes which are truly indifferent to the will: however faint the impulse he receives, whether on the part of the objects themselves, or on the part of their images or ideas, as soon as his will acts, the impulse has been competent to determine him. in consequence of a slight, of a feeble impulse, the will is weak, it is this weakness of the will that is called _indifference_. his brain with difficulty perceives the sensation, it has received; it consequently acts with less vigour, either to obtain or remove the object or the idea that has modified it. if the impulse is powerful, the will is strong, it makes him act vigorously, to obtain or to remove the object which appears to him either very agreeable or very incommodious. it has been believed man was a free agent, because it has been imagined that his soul could at will recall ideas, which sometimes suffice to check his most unruly desires. thus, the idea of a remote evil frequently prevents him from enjoying a present and actual good: thus, remembrance, which is an almost insensible, a slight modification of his brain, annihilates, at each instant, the real objects that act upon his will. but he is not master of recalling to himself his ideas at pleasure; their association is independent of him; they are arranged in his brain, in despite of him, without his own knowledge, where they have made an impression more or less profound; his memory itself depends upon his organization; its fidelity depends upon the habitual or momentary state in which he finds himself; when his will is vigorously determined to some object or idea that excites a very lively passion in him, those objects or ideas that would be able to arrest his action no longer present themselves to his mind; in those moments his eyes are shut to the dangers that menace him, of which the idea ought to make him forbear; he marches forward headlong towards the object by whose image he is hurried on; reflection cannot operate upon him in any way; he sees nothing but the object of his desires; the salutary ideas which might be able to arrest his progress disappear, or else display themselves either too faintly or too late to prevent his acting. such is the case with all those who, blinded by some strong passion, are not in a condition to recal to themselves those motives, of which the idea alone, in cooler moments, would be sufficient to deter them from proceeding; the disorder in which they are, prevents their judging soundly; render them incapable of foreseeing the consequence of their actions; precludes them from applying to their experience; from making use of their reason; natural operations, which suppose a justness in the manner of associating their ideas; but to which their brain is then not more competent, in consequence of the momentary delirium it suffers, than their hand is to write whilst they are taking violent exercise. man's mode of thinking is necessarily determined by his manner of being; it must, therefore, depend on his natural organization, and the modification his system receives independently of his will. from this we are obliged to conclude, that his thoughts, his reflections, his manner of viewing things, of feeling, of judging, of combining ideas, is neither voluntary nor free. in a word, that his soul is neither mistress of the motion excited in it, nor of representing to itself, when wanted, those images or ideas that are capable of counterbalancing the impulse it receives. this is the reason why man, when in a passion, ceases to reason; at that moment reason is as impossible to be heard, as it is during an extacy, or in a fit of drunkenness. the wicked are never more than men who are either drunk or mad: if they reason, it is not until tranquillity is re-established in their machine; then, and not till then, the tardy ideas that present themselves to their mind, enable them to see the consequence of their actions, and give birth to ideas, that bring on them that trouble, which is designated _shame, regret, remorse_. the errors of philosophers on the free-agency of man, have arisen from their regarding his will as the _primum mobile_, the original motive of his actions; for want of recurring back, they have not perceived the multiplied, the complicated causes, which, independently of him, give motion to the will itself, or which dispose and modify his brain, whilst he himself is purely passive in the motion he receives. is he the master of desiring or not desiring an object that appears desirable to him? without doubt it will be answered, no: but he is the master of resisting his desire, if he reflects on the consequences. but, i ask, is he capable of reflecting on these consequences when his soul is hurried along by a very lively passion, which entirely depends upon his natural organization, and the causes by which he is modified? is it in his power to add to these consequences all the weight necessary to counterbalance his desire? is he the master of preventing the qualities which render an object desirable from residing in it? i shall be told, he ought to have learned to resist his passions; to contract a habit of putting a curb on his desires. i agree to it without any difficulty: but in reply, i again ask, is his nature susceptible of this modification? does his boiling blood, his unruly imagination, the igneous fluid that circulates in his veins, permit him to make, enable him to apply true experience in the moment when it is wanted? and, even when his temperament has capacitated him, has his education, the examples set before him, the ideas with which he has been inspired in early life, been suitable to make him contract this habit of repressing his desires? have not all these things rather contributed to induce him to seek with avidity, to make him actually desire those objects which you say he ought to resist. the _ambitious man_ cries out,--you will have me resist my passion, but have they not unceasingly repeated to me, that rank, honours, power, are the most desirable advantages in life? have i not seen my fellow-citizens envy them--the nobles of my country sacrifice every thing to obtain them? in the society in which i live, am i not obliged to feel, that if i am deprived of these advantages, i must expect to languish in contempt, to cringe under the rod of oppression? the _miser_ says,--you forbid me to love money, to seek after the means of acquiring it: alas! does not every thing tell me, that in this world money is the greatest blessing; that it is amply sufficient to render me happy? in the country i inhabit, do i not see all my fellow-citizens covetous of riches? but do i not also witness that they are little scrupulous in the means of obtaining wealth? as soon as they are enriched by the means which you censure, are they not cherished, considered, and respected? by what authority, then, do you object to my amassing treasure? what right have you to prevent my using means, which although you call them sordid and criminal, i see approved by the sovereign? will you have me renounce my happiness? the _voluptuary_ argues,--you pretend that i should resist my desires; but was i the maker of my own temperament, which unceasingly invites me to pleasure? you call my pleasures disgraceful; but in the country in which i live, do i not witness the most dissipated men enjoying the most distinguished rank? do i not behold, that no one is ashamed of adultery but the husband it has outraged? do not i see men making trophies of their debaucheries, boasting of their libertinism, rewarded, with applause? the _choleric_ man vociferates,--you advise me to put a curb on my passions; to resist the desire of avenging myself: but can i conquer my nature? can i alter the received opinions of the world? shall i not be for ever disgraced, infallibly dishonoured in society, if i do not wash out, in the blood of my fellow-creature, the injuries i have received? the _zealous enthusiast_ exclaims,--you recommend to me mildness, you advise me to be tolerant, to be indulgent to the opinions of my fellow-men; but is not my temperament violent? do i not ardently love my god? do they not assure me that zeal is pleasing to him; that sanguinary inhuman persecutors have been his friends? that those who do not think as i do are his enemies? i wish to render myself acceptable in his sight, i therefore adopt the means you reprobate. in short, the actions of man are never free; they are always the necessary consequence of his temperament, of the received ideas, of the notions, either true or false, which he has formed to himself of happiness: of his opinions, strengthened by example, forfeited by education, consolidated by daily experience. so many crimes are witnessed on the earth, only because every thing conspires to render man vicious, to make him criminal; very frequently, the superstitions he has adopted, his government, his education, the examples set before him, irresistibly drive him on to evil: under these circumstances morality preaches virtue to him in vain. in those societies where vice is esteemed, where crime is crowned, where venality is constantly recompenced, where the most dreadful disorders are punished, only in those who are too weak to enjoy the privilege of committing them with impunity; the practice of virtue is considered nothing more than a painful sacrifice of fancied happiness. such societies chastise, in the lower orders, those excesses which they respect in the higher ranks; and frequently have the injustice to condemn those in penalty of death, whom public prejudices, maintained by constant example, have rendered criminal. man, then, is not a free agent in any one instant of his life; he is necessarily guided in each step by those advantages, whether real or fictitious, that he attaches to the objects by which his passions are roused: these passions themselves are necessary in a being who, unceasingly tends towards his own happiness; their energy is necessary, since that depends on his temperament; his temperament is necessary, because it depends on the physical elements which enter into his composition; the modification of this temperament is necessary, as it is the infallible result, the inevitable consequence of the impulse he receives from the incessant action of moral and physical beings. in despite of these proofs of the want of free-agency in man, so clear to unprejudiced minds, it will, perhaps, be insisted upon with no small feeling of triumph, that if it be proposed to any one to move or not to move his hand, an action in the number of those called _indifferent_, he evidently appears to be the master of choosing; from which it is concluded, evidence has been offered of his free-agency. the reply is, this example is perfectly simple; man in performing some action which he is resolved on doing, does not by any means prove his free-agency: the very desire of displaying this quality, excited by the dispute, becomes a necessary motive which decides his will either for the one or the other of these actions: what deludes him in this instance, or that which persuades him he is a free agent at this moment, is, that he does not discern the true motive which sets him in action; which is neither more nor less than the desire of convincing his opponent: if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, "am i not the master of throwing myself out of the window?" i shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason, there is not even a probability that the desire of proving his free-agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful, to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt; if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warrantry to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. madness is a state that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. a fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it. there is, in point of fact, no difference between the man who is cast out of the window by another, and the man who throws himself out of it, except that the impulse in the first instance comes immediately from without, whilst that which determines the fall in the second case, springs from within his own peculiar machine, having its more remote cause also exterior. when mutius scaevola held his hand in the fire, he was as much acting under the influence of necessity, caused by interior motives, that urged him to this strange action, as if his arm had been held by strong men; pride, despair, the desire of braving his enemy, a wish to astonish him, an anxiety to intimidate him, &c. were the invisible chains that held his hand bound to the fire. the love of glory, enthusiasm for their country, in like manner, caused codrus and decius to devote themselves for their fellow citizens. the indian calanus and the philosopher peregrinus were equally obliged to burn themselves, by the desire of exciting the astonishment of the grecian assembly. it is said that free-agency is the absence of those obstacles competent to oppose themselves to the actions of man, or to the exercise of his faculties: it is pretended that he is a free agent, whenever, making use of these faculties, he produces the effect he has proposed to himself. in reply to this reasoning, it is sufficient to consider that it in no wise depends upon himself to place or remove the obstacles that either determine or resist him; the motive that causes his action is no more in his own power than the obstacle that impedes him, whether this obstacle or motive be within his own machine or exterior of his person: he is not master of the thought presented to his mind which determines his will; this thought is excited by some cause independent of himself. to be undeceived on the system of his free-agency, man has simply to recur to the motive by which his will is determined, he will always find this motive is out of his own controul. it is said, that in consequence of an idea to which the mind gives birth, man acts freely if he encounters no obstacle. but the question is, what gives birth to this idea in his brain? has he the power either to prevent it from presenting itself, or from renewing itself in his brain? does not this idea depend either upon objects that strike him exteriorly and in despite of himself, or upon causes that without his knowledge act within himself and modify his brain? can he prevent his eyes, cast without design upon any object whatever, from giving him an idea of this object, from moving his brain? he is not more master of the obstacles; they are the necessary effects of either interior or exterior causes, which always act according to their given properties. a man insults a coward, who is necessarily irritated against his insulter, but his will cannot vanquish the obstacle that cowardice places to the object of his desire, which is, to resent the insult; because his natural conformation, which does not depend upon himself, prevents his having courage. in this case the coward is insulted in despite of himself, and against his will is obliged patiently to brook the insult he has received. the partizans of the system of free-agency appear ever to have confounded constraint with necessity. man believes he acts as a free agent, every time he does not see any thing that places obstacles to his actions; he does not perceive that the motive which causes him to will is always necessary, is ever independent of himself. a prisoner loaded with chains is compelled to remain in prison, but he is not a free agent, he is not able to resist the desire to emancipate himself; his chains prevent him from acting, but they do not prevent him from willing; he would save himself if they would loose his fetters, but he would not save himself as a free agent, fear or the idea of punishment would be sufficient motives for his action. man may therefore cease to be restrained, without, for that reason, becoming a free agent: in whatever manner he acts, he will act necessarily; according to motives by which he shall be determined. he may be compared to a heavy body, that finds itself arrested in its descent by any obstacle whatever: take away this obstacle, it will gravitate or continue to fall; but who shall say this dense body is free to fall or not? is not its descent the necessary effect of its own specific gravity? the virtuous socrates submitted to the laws of his country, although they were unjust; notwithstanding the doors of his gaol were left open to him he would not save himself; but in this he did not act as a free agent; the invisible chains of opinion, the secret love of decorum, the inward respect for the laws, even when they were iniquitous, the fear of tarnishing his glory, kept him in his prison: they were motives sufficiently powerful, with this enthusiast for virtue, to induce him to wait death with tranquillity; it was not in his power to save himself, because he could find no potential motive to bring him to depart, even for an instant, from those principles to which his mind was accustomed. man, says he, frequently acts against his inclination, from whence he has falsely concluded he is a free agent; when he appears to act contrary to his inclination, he is determined to it by some motive sufficiently efficacious to vanquish this inclination. a sick man, with a view to his cure, arrives at conquering his repugnance to the most disgusting remedies: the fear of pain, the dread of death, then become necessary and intelligent motives; consequently, this sick man cannot be said, with truth, by any means, to act freely. when it is said, that man is not a free agent, it is not pretended to compare him to a body moved by a simple impulsive cause: he contains within himself causes inherent to his existence; he is moved by an interior organ, which has its own peculiar laws; which is itself necessarily determined, in consequence of ideas formed from perceptions, resulting from sensations, which it receives from exterior objects. as the mechanism of these sensations, of these perceptions, and the manner they engrave ideas on the brain of man, are not known to him, because he is unable to unravel all these motions; because he cannot perceive the chain of operations in his soul, or the motive-principle that acts within him, he supposes himself a free agent; which, literally translated, signifies that he moves himself by himself; that he determines himself without cause; when he rather ought to say, he is ignorant how or for why he acts in the manner he does. it is true the soul enjoys an activity peculiar to itself, but it is equally certain that this activity would never be displayed if some motive or some cause did not put it in a condition to exercise itself, at least it will not be pretended that the soul is able either to love or to hate without being moved, without knowing the objects, without having some idea of their qualities. gunpowder has unquestionably a particular activity, but this activity will never display itself, unless fire be applied to it; this, however, immediately sets in motion. it is the great complication of motion in man, it is the variety of his action, it is the multiplicity of causes that move him, whether simultaneously or in continual succession, that persuades him he is a free agent: if all his motions were simple, if the causes that move him did not confound themselves with each other, if they were distinct, if his machine was less complicated, he would perceive that all his actions were necessary, because he would be enabled to recur instantly to the cause that made him act. a man who should be always obliged to go towards the west would always go on that side, but he would feel extremely well, that in so going he was not a free agent: if he had another sense, as his actions or his motion augmented by a sixth would be still more varied, much more complicated, he would believe himself still more a free agent than he does with his five senses. it is, then, for want of recurring to the causes that move him, for want of being able to analyse, from not being competent to decompose the complicated motion of his machine, that man believes himself a free agent; it is only upon his own ignorance that he founds the profound yet deceitful notion he has of his free-agency, that he builds those opinions which he brings forward as a striking proof of his pretended freedom of action. if, for a short time, each man was willing to examine his own peculiar actions, to search out their true motives, to discover their concatenation, he would remain convinced that the sentiment he has of his natural free-agency is a chimera that must speedily be destroyed by experience. nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the multiplicity, the diversity of the causes which continually act upon man, frequently without even his knowledge, render it impossible, or at least extremely difficult, for him to recur to the true principles of his own peculiar actions, much less the actions of others; they frequently depend upon causes so fugitive, so remote from their effects, and which, superficially examined, appear to have so little analogy, so slender a relation with them, that it requires singular sagacity to bring them into light. this is what renders the study of the moral man a task of such difficulty; this is the reason why his heart is an abyss, of which it is frequently impossible for him to fathom the depth. he is, then, obliged to content himself with a knowledge of the general and necessary laws by which the human heart is regulated; for the individuals of his own species these laws are pretty nearly the same, they vary only in consequence of the organization that is peculiar to each, and of the modification it undergoes; this, however, is not, cannot be rigorously the same in any two. it suffices to know that by his essence man tends to conserve himself, to render his existence happy: this granted, whatever may be his actions, if he recurs back to this first principle, to this general, this necessary tendency of his will, he never can be deceived with regard to his motives. man, without doubt, for want of cultivating reason, being destitute of experience, frequently deceives himself upon the means of arriving at this end; sometimes the means he employs are unpleasant to his fellows, because they are prejudicial to their interests; or else those of which he avails himself appear irrational, because they remove him from the end to which he would approximate: but whatever may be these means, they have always necessarily and invariably for object, either an existing or imaginary happiness; are directed to preserve himself in a state analogous to his mode of existence, to his manner of feeling, to his way of thinking; whether durable or transitory. it is from having mistaken this truth, that the greater number of moral philosophers have made rather the romance, than the history of the human heart; they have attributed the actions of man to fictitious causes; at least they have not sought out the necessary motives of his conduct. politicians and legislators have been in the same state of ignorance; or else impostors have found it much shorter to employ imaginary motive-powers, than those which really have existence: they have rather chosen to make man wander out of his way, to make him tremble under incommodious phantoms, than guide him to virtue by the direct road to happiness; notwithstanding the conformity of the latter with the natural desires of his heart. so true it is, that _error can never possibly be useful, to the human species_. however this may be, man either sees or believes he sees, much more distinctly, the necessary relation of effects with their causes in natural philosophy than in the human heart; at least he sees in the former sensible causes constantly produce sensible effects, ever the same, when the circumstances are alike. after this, he hesitates not to look upon physical effects as necessary, whilst he refuses to acknowledge necessity in the acts of the human will; these he has, without any just foundation, attributed to a motive-power that acts independently by its own peculiar energy, that is capable of modifying itself without the concurrence of exterior causes, and which is distinguished from all material or physical beings. _agriculture_ is founded upon the assurance afforded by experience, that the earth, cultivated and sown in a certain manner, when it has otherwise the requisite qualities, will furnish grain, fruit, and flowers, either necessary for subsistence or pleasing to the senses. if things were considered without prejudice, it would be perceived, that in morals education is nothing more than _the agriculture of the mind_; that like the earth, by reason of its natural disposition, of the culture bestowed upon it, of the seeds with which it is sown, of the seasons, more or less favorable, that conduct it to maturity, we may be assured that the soul will produce either virtue or vice; _moral fruit_ that will be either salubrious for man or baneful to society. _morals_ is the science of the relations that subsist between the minds, the wills, and the actions of men; in the same manner that _geometry_ is the science of the relations that are found between bodies. morals would be a chimera, it would have no certain principles, if it was not founded upon the knowledge of the motives which must necessarily have an influence upon the human will, and which must necessarily determine the actions of human beings. if in the moral as well as in the physical world, a cause of which the action is not interrupted be necessarily followed by a given effect, it flows consecutively that a _reasonable education_, grafted upon truth, founded upon wise laws,--that honest principles instilled during youth, virtuous examples continually held forth, esteem attached solely to merit, recompense awarded to none but good actions, contempt regularly visiting vice, shame following falsehood as its shadow, rigorous chastisements applied without distinction to crime, are causes that would necessarily act on the will of man; that would determine the greater number of his species to exhibit virtue, to love it for its own sake, to seek after it as the most desirable good, as the surest road to the happiness he so ardently desires. but if, on the contrary, superstition, politics, example, public opinion, all labour to countenance wickedness, to train man viciously; if, instead of fanning his virtues, they stifle good principles; if, instead of directing his studies to his advantage, they render his education either useless or unprofitable; if this education itself, instead of grounding him in virtue, only inoculates him with vice; if, instead of inculcating reason, it imbues him with prejudice; if, instead of making him enamoured of truth, it furnishes him with false notions; if, instead of storing his mind with just ideas drawn from experience, it fills him with dangerous opinions; if, instead of fostering mildness and forbearance, it kindles in his breast only those passions which are incommodious to himself and hurtful to others; it must be of necessity, that the will of the greater number shall determine them to evil; shall render them unworthy, make them baneful to society. many authors have acknowledged the importance of a good education, that youth was the season to feed the human heart with wholesome diet; but they have not felt, that a good education is incompatible, nay, impossible, with the superstition of man, since this commences with giving his mind a false bias: that it is equally inconsistent with arbitrary government, because this always dreads lest he should become enlightened, and is ever sedulous to render him servile, mean, contemptible, and cringing; that it is incongruous with laws that are not founded in equity, that are frequently bottomed on injustice; that it cannot obtain with those received customs that are opposed to good sense; that it cannot exist whilst public opinion is unfavourable to virtue; above all, that it is absurd to expect it from incapable instructors, from masters with weak minds, who have only the ability to infuse into their scholars those false ideas with which they are themselves infected. here, without doubt, is the real source from whence springs that universal corruption, that wide-spreading depravity, of which moralists, with great justice, so loudly complain; without, however, pointing out those causes of the evil, which are true as they are necessary: instead of this, they search for it in human nature, say it is corrupt, blame man for loving himself, and for seeking after his own happiness, insist that he must have supernatural assistance, some marvellous interference, to enable him to become good: this is a very prejudicial doctrine for him, it is directly subversive of his true happiness; by teaching him to hold himself in contempt, it tends necessarily to discourage him; it either makes him sluggish, or drives him to despair whilst waiting for this grace: is it not easy to be perceived, that he would always have it if he was well educated; if he was honestly governed? there cannot well exist a wilder or a stranger system of morals, than that of the theologians who attribute all moral evil to an original sin, and all moral good to the pardon of it. it ought not to excite surprise if such a system is of no efficacy; what can reasonably be the result of such an hypothesis? yet, notwithstanding the supposed, the boasted free-agency of man, it is insisted that nothing less than the author of nature himself is necessary to destroy the wicked desires of his heart: but, alas! no power whatever is found sufficiently efficacious to resist those unhappy propensities, which, under the fatal constitution of things, the most vigorous motives, as before observed, are continually infusing into the will of man; no agency seems competent to turn the course of that unhappy direction these are perpetually giving to the stream of his natural passions. he is, indeed, incessantly exhorted to resist these passions, to stifle them, and to root them out of his heart; but is it not evident they are necessary to his welfare? can it not be perceived they are inherent in his nature? does not experience prove them to be useful to his conservation, since they have for object, only to avoid that which may be injurious to him; to procure that which may be advantageous to his mode of existence? in short, is it not easy to be seen, that these passions, well directed, that is to say, carried towards objects that are truly useful, that are really interesting to himself, which embrace the happiness of others, would necessarily contribute to the substantial, to the permanent well-being of society? theologians themselves have felt, they have acknowledged the necessity of the passions: many of the fathers of the church have broached this doctrine; among the rest father senault has written a book expressly on the subject: the passions of man are like fire, at once necessary to the wants of life, suitable to ameliorate the condition of humanity, and equally capable of producing the most terrible ravages, the most frightful devastation. every thing becomes an impulse to the will; a single word frequently suffices to modify a man for the whole course of his life, to decide for ever his propensities; an infant who has burned his finger by having approached it too near the flame of a lighted taper, is warned from thence, that he ought to abstain from indulging a similar temptation; a man, once punished and despised for having committed a dishonest action, is not often tempted to continue so unfavourable a course. under whatever point of man is considered, he never acts but after the impulse given to his will, whether it be by the will of others, or by more perceptible physical causes. the particular organization decides the nature of the impulse; souls act upon souls that are analogous; inflamed, fiery imaginations, act with facility upon strong passions; upon imaginations easy to be inflamed, the surprising progress of enthusiasm; the hereditary propagation of superstition; the transmission of religious errors from race to race, the excessive ardour with which man seizes on the marvellous, are effects as necessary as those which result from the action and re-action of bodies. in despite of the gratuitous ideas which man has formed to himself on his pretended free-agency; in defiance of the illusions of this suppose intimate sense, which, contrary to his experience, persuades him that he is master of his will,--all his institutions are really founded upon necessity: on this, as on a variety of other occasions, practice throws aside speculation. indeed, if it was not believed that certain motives embraced the power requisite to determine the will of man, to arrest the progress of his passions, to direct them towards an end, to modify him; of what use would be the faculty of speech? what benefit could arise from education itself? what does education achieve, save give the first impulse to the human will, make man contract habits, oblige him to persist in them, furnish him with motives, whether true or false, to act after a given manner? when the father either menaces his son with punishment, or promises him a reward, is he not convinced these things will act upon his will? what does legislation attempt, except it be to present to the citizens of a state those motives which are supposed necessary to determine them to perform some actions that are considered worthy; to abstain from committing others that are looked upon as unworthy? what is the object of morals, if it be not to shew man that his interest exacts he should suppress the momentary ebullition of his passions, with a view to promote a more certain happiness, a more lasting well-being, than can possibly result from the gratification of his transitory desires? does not the religion of all countries suppose the human race, together with the entire of nature, submitted to the irresistible will of a necessary being, who regulates their condition after the eternal laws of immutable wisdom? is not god the absolute master of their destiny? is it not this divine being who chooses and rejects? the anathemas fulminated by religion, the promises it holds forth, are they not founded upon the idea of the effects they will necessarily produce upon mankind? is not man brought into existence without his own knowledge? is he not obliged to play a part against his will? does not either his happiness or his misery depend on the part he plays? all religion has been evidently founded upon _fatalism_. among the greeks they supposed men were punished for their necessary faults, as may be seen in orestes, in oedipus, &c. who only committed crimes predicted by the oracles. it is rather singular that the theological defenders of the doctrine of _free-agency_, which they endeavour to oppose to that of _predestination_,--which according to them is irreconcileable with _christianity_, inasmuch as it is a false and dangerous system,--should not have been aware that the doctrines of _the fall of angels, original sin, the small number of the elect, the system of grace, &c._ were most incontestibly supporting, by the most cogent arguments, a _true system of fatalism_. _education_, then, is only necessity shewn to children: _legislation_ is necessity shewn to the members of the body politic: _morals_ is the necessity of the relations subsisting between men, shewn to reasonable beings: in short, man grants _necessity_ in every thing for which he believes he has certain, unerring experience: that of which he does not comprehend the necessary connection of causes with their effects he styles _probability_: he would not act as he does, if he was not convinced, or, at least, if he did not presume he was, that certain effects will necessarily follow his actions. the _moralist_ preaches reason, because he believes it necessary to man: the _philosopher_ writes, because he believes truth must, sooner or later, prevail over falsehood: _tyrants_ and _fanatical priests_ necessarily hate truth, despise reason, because they believe them prejudicial to their interests: the _sovereign_, who strives to terrify crime by the severity of his laws, but who nevertheless, from motives of state policy sometimes renders it useful and even necessary to his purposes, presumes the motives he employs will be sufficient to keep his subjects within bounds. all reckon equally upon the power or upon the necessity of the motives they make use of; each individual flatters himself, either with or without reason, that these motives will have an influence on the conduct of mankind. the education of man is commonly so defective, so inefficacious, so little calculated to promote the end he has in view, because it is regulated by prejudice: even when this education is good, it is but too often speedily counteracted, by almost every thing that takes place in society. legislation and politics are very frequently iniquitous, and serve no better purpose than to kindle passions in the bosom of man, which once set afloat, they are no longer competent to restrain. the great art of the moralist should be, to point out to man, to convince those who are entrusted with the sacred office of regulating his will, that their interests are identified; that their reciprocal happiness depends upon the harmony of their passions; that the safety, the power, the duration of empires, necessarily depend on the good sense diffused among the individual members; on the truth of the notions inculcated in the mind of the citizens, on the moral goodness that is sown in their hearts, on the virtues that are cultivated in their breasts; religion should not be admissible, unless it truly fortified, unless it really strengthened these motives. but in the miserable state into which error has plunged a considerable portion of the human species, man, for the most part, is seduced to be wicked: he injures his fellow-creature as a matter of conscience, because the strongest motives are held out to him to be persecuting; because his institutions invite him to the commission of evil, under the lure of promoting his own immediate happiness. in most countries superstition renders him a useless being, makes him an abject slave, causes him to tremble under its terrors, or else turns him into a furious fanatic, who is at once cruel, intolerant, and inhuman: in a great number of states arbitrary power crushes him, obliges him to become a cringing sycophant, renders him completely vicious: in those despotic states the law rarely visits crime with punishment, except in those who are too feeble to oppose its course? or when it has become incapable of restraining the violent excesses to which a bad government gives birth. in short, rational education is neglected; a prudent culture of the human mind is despised; it depends, but too frequently, upon bigotted, superstitious priests, who are interested in deceiving man, and who are sometimes impostors; or else upon parents or masters without understanding, who are devoid of morals, who impress on the ductile mind of their scholars those vices with which they are themselves tormented; who transmit to them the false opinions, which they believe they have an interest in making them adopt. all this proves the necessity of falling back to man's original errors, and recurring to the primitive source of his wanderings, if it be seriously intended to furnish him with suitable remedies for such enormous maladies: it is useless to dream of correcting his mistakes, of curing him of his depravity, until the true causes that move his will are unravelled; until more real, more beneficial, more certain motives are substituted for those which are found so inefficacious; which prove so dangerous both to society and to himself. it is for those who guide the human will, who regulate the condition of nations, who hold the real happiness of man in their grasp, to seek after these motives,--with which reason will readily furnish them--which experience will enable them to apply with success: even a good book, by touching the heart of a great prince, may become a very powerful cause that shall necessarily have an influence over the conduct of a whole people, and decide upon the felicity of a portion of the human race. from all that has been advanced in this chapter, it results, that in no one moment of his existence man is a free agent: he is not the architect of his own conformation; this he holds from nature, he has no controul over his own ideas, or over the modification of his brain; these are due to causes, that, in despite of him, very frequently without his own knowledge, unceasingly act upon him; he is not the master of not loving that which he finds amiable; of not coveting that which appears to him desirable; he is not capable of refusing to deliberate, when he is uncertain of the effects certain objects will produce upon him; he cannot avoid choosing that which he believes will be most advantageous to him: in the moment when his will is determined by his choice, he is not competent to act otherwise than he does: in what instance, then, is he the master of his own actions? in what moment is he a free agent? that which a man is about to do is always a consequence of that which he has been--of that which he is--of that which he has done up to the moment of the action: his total and actual existence, considered under all its possible circumstances, contains the sum of all the motives to the action he is about to commit; this is a principle, the truth of which no thinking, being will be able to refuse accrediting: his life is a series of necessary moments; his conduct, whether good or bad, virtuous or vicious, useful or prejudicial, either to himself or to others, is a concatenation of action, a chain of causes and effects, as necessary as all the moments of his existence. to _live_, is to exist in a necessary mode during the points of its duration, which succeed each other necessarily: to _will_, is to acquiesce or not in remaining such as he is: to be _free_, is to yield to the necessary motives that he carries within himself. if he understood the play of his organs, if he was able to recal to himself all the impulsions they have received, all the modifications they have undergone, all the effects they have produced, he would perceive, that all his actions are submitted to that _fatality_ which regulates his own particular system, as it does the entire system of the universe: no one effect in him, any more than in nature, produce itself by _chance_; this, as has been before proved, is a word void of sense. all that passes in him, all that is done by him, as well as all that happens in nature, or that is attributed to her, is derived from necessary laws, which produce necessary effects; from whence necessarily flow others. _fatality_ is the eternal, the immutable, the necessary order established in nature, or the indispensible connection of causes that act with the effects they operate. conforming to this order, heavy bodies fall, light bodies rise; that which is analogous in matter, reciprocally attracts; that which is heterogeneous, mutually repels; man congregates himself in society, modifies each his fellow, becomes either virtuous or wicked; either contributes to his mutual happiness, or reciprocates his misery; either loves his neighbour, or hates his companion necessarily; according to the manner in which the one acts upon the other. from whence it may be seen, that the same necessity which regulates the physical, also regulates the moral world: in which every thing is in consequence submitted to fatality. man, in running over, frequently without his own knowledge, often in despite of himself, the route which nature has marked out for him, resembles a swimmer who is obliged to follow the current that carries him along; he believes himself a free agent, because he sometimes consents, sometimes does not consent, to glide with the stream; which, notwithstanding, always hurries him forward; he believes himself the master of his condition, because he is obliged to use his arms under the fear of sinking. the false ideas he has formed to himself upon free-agency, are in general thus founded: there are certain events which he judges _necessary_; either because he sees they are effects that are constantly, are invariably linked to certain causes, which nothing seems to prevent; or because he believes he has discovered the chain of causes and effects that is put in play to produce those events: whilst he contemplates as _contingent_, other events, of whose causes he is ignorant; the concatenation of which he does not perceive; with whose mode of acting he is unacquainted: but in nature, where every thing is connected by one common bond, there exists no effect without a cause. in the moral as well as in the physical world, every thing that happens is a necessary consequence of causes, either visible or concealed; which are, of necessity, obliged to act after their peculiar essences. _in man, free-agency is nothing more than necessity contained within himself_. chap. xii. _an examination of the opinion which pretends that the system of fatalism is dangerous._ for a being whose essence obliges him to have a constant tendency to his own conservation, to continually seek to render himself happy, experience is indispensible: without it he cannot discover truth, which is nothing more, as has been already said, than a knowledge of the constant relations which subsist between man, and those objects that act upon him; according to his experience he denominates those that contribute to his permanent welfare useful and salutary; those that procure him pleasure, more or less durable, he calls agreeable. truth itself becomes the object of his desires, only when he believes it is useful; he dreads it, whenever he presumes it will injure him. but has truth the power to injure him? is it possible that evil can result to man from a correct understanding of the relations he has with other beings? can it be true, that he can be harmed by becoming acquainted with those things, of which, for his own happiness, he is interested in having a knowledge? no: unquestionably not. it is upon its utility that truth founds its worth; upon this that it builds its rights; sometimes it may be disagreeable to individuals--it may even appear contrary to their interests--but it will ever be beneficial to them in the end; it will always be useful to the whole human species; it will eternally benefit the great bulk of mankind; whose interests must for ever remain distinct from those of men, who, duped by their own peculiar passions, believe their advantage consists in plunging others into error. _utility_, then, is the touchstone of his systems, the test of his opinions, the criterion of the actions of man; it is the standard of the esteem, the measure of the love he owes to truth itself: the most useful truths are the most estimable: those truths which are most interesting for his species, he styles _eminent_; those of which the utility limits itself to the amusement of some individuals who have not correspondent ideas, similar modes of feeling, wants analogous to his own, he either disdains, or else calls them _barren_. it is according to this standard, that the principles laid down in this work, ought to be judged. those who are acquainted with the immense chain of mischief produced on the earth by erroneous systems of superstition, will acknowledge the importance of opposing to them systems more accordant with truth, schemes drawn from nature, sciences founded on experience. those who are, or believe they are, interested in maintaining the established errors, will contemplate, with horror, the truths here presented to them: in short, those infatuated mortals, who do not feel, or who only feel very faintly, the enormous load of misery brought upon mankind by metaphysical speculation; the heavy yoke of slavery under which prejudice makes him groan, will regard all our principles as useless; or, at most, as sterile truths, calculated to amuse the idle hours of a few speculators. no astonishment, therefore, need be excited at the various judgments formed by man: his interests never being the same, any more than his notions of utility, he condemns or disdains every thing that does not accord with his own peculiar ideas. this granted, let us examine, if in the eyes of the disinterested man, who is not entangled by prejudice--who is sensible to the happiness of his species--who delights in truth--the _doctrine of fatalism_ be useful or dangerous? let us see if it is a barren speculation, that his not any influence upon the felicity of the human race? at has been already shewn, that it will furnish morals with efficacious arguments, with real motives to determine the will, supply politics with the true lever to raise the proper activity in the mind of man. it will also be seen that it serves to explain in a simple manner the mechanism of man's actions; to develope in an easy way the arcana of the most striking phenomena of the human heart: on the other hand, if his ideas are only the result of unfruitful speculations, they cannot interest the happiness of the human species. whether he believes himself a free agent, or whether he acknowledges the necessity of things, he always equally follows the desires imprinted on his soul; which are to preserve his existence and render himself happy. a rational education, honest habits, wise systems, equitable laws, rewards uprightly distributed, punishments justly inflicted, will conduct man to happiness by making him virtuous; while thorny speculations, filled with difficulties, can at most only have an influence over persons unaccustomed to think. after these reflections, it will be very easy to remove the difficulties that are unceasingly opposed to the system of fatalism, which so many persons, blinded by their superstitious prejudices, are desirous to have considered as dangerous--as deserving of punishment--as calculated to disturb public tranquility--as tending to unchain the passions--to undermine the opinions man ought to have; and to confound his ideas of vice and of virtue. the opposers of necessity, say, that if all the actions of man are necessary, no right whatever exists to punish bad ones, or even to he angry with those who commit them: that nothing ought to be imputed to them; that the laws would be unjust if they should decree punishment for necessary actions; in short, that under this system man could neither have merit nor demerit. in reply, it may be argued, that, to impute an action to any one, is to attribute that action to him; to acknowledge him for the author: thus, when even an action was supposed to be the effect of an agent, and that agent _necessity_, the imputation would lie: the merit or demerit, that is ascribed to an action are ideas originating in the effects, whether favourable or pernicious, that result to those who experience its operation; when, therefore, it should be conceded, that the agent was necessity, it is not less certain, that the action would be either good or bad; estimable or contemptible, to those who must feel its influence; in short that it would be capable of either eliciting their love, or exciting their anger. love and anger are modes of existence, suitable to modify, beings of the human species: when, therefore, man irritates himself against his fellow, he intends to excite his fear, or even to punish him, in order to deter him from committing that which is displeasing to him. moreover his anger is necessary; it is the result of his nature; the consequence of his temperament. the painful sensation produced by a stone that falls on the arm, does not displease the less, because it comes from a cause deprived of will; which acts by the necessity of its nature. in contemplating man as acting necessarily, it is impossible to avoid distinguishing that mode of action or being which is agreeable, which elicits approbation, from that which is afflicting, which irritates, which nature obliges him to blame and to prevent. from this it will be seen, that the system of fatalism, does not in any manner change the actual state of things, and is by no means calculated to confound man's ideas of virtue and vice. man's nature always revolts against that which opposes it: there are men so choleric, that they infuriate themselves even against insensible and inanimate objects; reflection on their own impotence to modify these objects ought to conduct them back to reason. parents are frequently very much to be blamed for correcting their children with anger: they should be contemplated as beings who are not yet modified; or who have, perhaps, been very badly modified by themselves: nothing is more common in life, than to see men punish faults of which they are themselves the cause. laws are made with a view to maintain society; to uphold its existence; to prevent man associated, from injuring his neighbour; they are therefore competent to punish those who disturb its harmony, or those who commit actions that are injurious to their fellows; whether these associates may be the agents of necessity, or whether they are free agents, it suffices to know they are susceptible of modification, and are therefore submitted to the operation of the law. penal laws are, or ought to be, those motives which experience has shewn capable of restraining the inordinate passions of man, or of annihilating the impulse these passions give to his will; from whatever necessary cause man may derive these passions, the legislator proposes to arrest their effect, when he takes suitable means, when he adopts proper methods, he is certain of success. the judge, in decreeing to crime, gibbets, tortures, or any other chastisement whatever, does nothing more than is done by the architect, who in building a house, places gutters to carry off the rain, and prevent it from sapping the foundation. whatever may be the cause that obliges man to act, society possesses the right to crush the effects, as much as the man whose land would be ruined by a river, has to restrain its waters by a bank: or even, if he is able, to turn its course. it is by virtue of this right that society has the power to intimidate, the faculty to punish, with a view to its own conservation, those who may be tempted to injure it; or those who commit actions which are acknowledged really to interrupt its repose; to be inimical to its security; repugnant to its happiness. it will, perhaps, be argued, that society does not, usually, punish those faults in which the will has no share; that, in fact, it punishes the will alone; that this it is which decides the nature of the crime, and the degree of its atrocity; that if this will be not free, it ought not to be punished. i reply, that society is an assemblage of sensible beings, susceptible of reason, who desire their own welfare; who fear evil, and seek after good. these dispositions enable their will to be so modified or determined, that they are capable of holding such a conduct as will conduce to the end they have in view. education, the laws, public opinion, example, habit, fear, are the causes that must modify associated man, influence his will, regulate his passions, restrain the actions of him who is capable of injuring the end of his association, and thereby make him concur to the general happiness. these causes are of a nature to make impressions on every man, whose organization, whose essence, whose sanity, places him in a capacity to contract the habits, to imbibe the modes of thinking, to adopt the manner of acting, with which society is willing to inspire him. all the individuals of the human species are susceptible of fear, from whence it flows as a natural consequence, that the fear of punishment, or the privation of the happiness he desires, are motives that must necessarily more or less influence his will, and regulate his actions. if the man is to be found who is so badly constituted as to resist, whose organization is so vicious as to be insensible to those motives which operate upon all his fellows, he is not fit to live in society; he would contradict the very end of his association: he would be its enemy; he would place obstacles to its natural tendency; his rebellious disposition, his unsociable will, not being susceptible of that modification which is convenient to his own true interests and to the interests of his fellow-citizens; these would unite themselves against such an enemy; and the law which is, or ought to be the expression of the general will, would visit with condign punishment that refractory individual upon whom the motives presented to him by society, had not the effect which it had been induced to expect: in consequence, such an unsociable man would be chastised; he would be rendered miserable, and according to the nature of his crime he would be excluded from society as a being but little calculated to concur in its views. if society has the right to conserve itself, it has also the right to take the means: these means are the laws which present or ought to present to the will of man those motives which are most suitable to deter him from committing injurious actions. if these motives fail of the proper effect, if they are unable to influence him, society, for its own peculiar good, is obliged to wrest from him the power of doing it further injury. from whatever source his actions may arise, therefore, whether they are the result of free-agency, or whether they are the offspring of necessity, society coerces him if, after having furnished him with motives, sufficiently powerful to act upon reasonable beings, it perceives that these motives have not been competent to vanquish his depraved nature. it punishes him with justice, when the actions from which it dissuades him are truly injurious to society; it has an unquestionable right to punish, when it only commands those things that are conformable to the end proposed by man in his association; or defends the commission of those acts, which are contrary to this end; which are hostile to the nature of beings associated for their reciprocal advantage. but, on the other hand, the law has not acquired the right to punish him: if it has failed to present to him the motives necessary to have an influence over his will, it has not the right to coerce him if the negligence of society has deprived him of the means of subsisting; of exercising his talents; of exerting his industry; of labouring for its welfare. it is unjust, when it punishes those to whom it has, neither given an education, nor honest principles; whom it has not enabled to contract habits necessary to the maintenance of society: it is unjust when it punishes them for faults which the wants of their nature, or the constitution of society has rendered necessary to them: it is unjust, it is irrational, whenever it chastises them for having followed those propensities, which example, which public opinion, which the institutions, which society itself conspires to give them. in short, the law is defective when it does not proportion the punishment to the real evil which society has sustained. the last degree of injustice, the acme of folly is, when society is so blinded as to inflict punishment on those citizens who have served it usefully. the _penal_ laws, in exhibiting terrifying objects to man, who must be supposed susceptible of fear, presents him with motives calculated to have an influence over his will. the idea of pain, the privation of liberty, the fear of death, are, to a being well constituted, in the full enjoyment of his faculties, very puissant obstacles, that strongly oppose themselves to the impulse of his unruly desires: when these do not coerce his will, when they fail to arrest his progress, he is an irrational being; a madman; a being badly organized; against whom society has the right to guarantee itself; against whom it has a right to take measures for its own security. madness is, without doubt, an involuntary, a necessary state; nevertheless, no one feels it unjust to deprive the insane of their liberty, although their actions can only be imputed to the derangement of their brain. the wicked are men whose brain is either constantly or transitorily disturbed; still they must be punished by reason of the evil they commit; they must always be placed in the impossibility of injuring society: if no hope remains of bringing them back to a reasonable conduct--if every prospect of recalling them to their duty has vanished--if they cannot be made to adopt a mode of action conformable to the great end of association--they must be for ever excluded its benefits. it will not be requisite to examine here, how far the punishments which society inflicts upon those who offend against it, may be reasonably carried. reason should seem to indicate that the law ought to shew to the necessary crimes of man, all the indulgence that is compatible with the conservation of society. the system of fatalism, as we have seen, does not leave crime unpunished; but it is, at least, calculated to moderate the barbarity with which a number of nations punish the victims to their anger. this cruelty becomes still more absurd, when experience has shewn its inutility: the habit of witnessing ferocious punishments familiarizes criminals with the idea. if it be true that society possesses the right of taking away the life of its members--if it be really a fact, that the death of a criminal, thenceforth useless, can be advantageous for society, which it will be necessary to examine, humanity, at least, exacts that this death should not be accompanied with useless tortures; with which laws, perhaps in this instance too rigorous, frequently seem to delight in overwhelming their victim. this cruelty seems to defeat its own end, it only serves to make the culprit, who is immolated to the public vengeance, suffer without any advantage to society; it moves the compassion of the spectator, interests him in favor of the miserable offender who groans under its weight; it impresses nothing upon the wicked, but the sight of those cruelties destined for himself; which but too frequently renders him more ferocious, more cruel, more the enemy of his associates: if the example of death was less frequent, even without being accompanied with tortures, it would be more efficacious. if experience was consulted, it would be found that the greater number of criminals only look upon death as a _bad quarter of an hour_. it is an unquestionable fact, that a thief seeing one of his comrades, display a want of firmness under the punishment, said to him: _"is not this what i have often told you, that in our business, we have one evil more than the rest of mankind?"_ robberies are daily committed, even at the foot of the scaffolds where criminals are punished. in those nations, where the penalty of death is so lightly inflicted, has sufficient attention been paid to the fact, that society is yearly deprived of a great number of individuals who would be able to render it very useful service, if made to work, and thus indemnify the community for the injuries they have committed? the facility with which the lives of men are taken away, proves the incapacity of counsellors; is an evidence of the negligence of legislators: they find it a much shorter road, that it gives them less trouble to destroy the citizens than to seek after the means to render them better. what shall be said for the unjust cruelty of some nations, in which the law, that ought to have for its object the advantage of the whole, appears to be made only for the security of the most powerful? how shall we account for the inhumanity of those societies, in which punishments the most disproportionate to the crime, unmercifully take away the lives of men, whom the most urgent necessity, the dreadful alternative of famishing in a land of plenty, has obliged to become criminal? it is thus that in a great number of civilized nations, the life of the citizen is placed in the same scales with money; that the unhappy wretch who is perishing from hunger, who is writhing under the most abject misery, is put to death for having taken a pitiful portion of the superfluity of another whom he beholds rolling in abundance! it is this that, in many otherwise very enlightened societies, is called _justice_, or making the punishment commensurate with the crime. let the man of humanity, whose tender feelings are alive to the welfare of his species--let the moralist, who preaches virtue, who holds out forbearance to man--let the philosopher, who dives into the secrets of nature--let the theologian himself say, if this dreadful iniquity, this heinous sin, does not become yet more crying, when the laws decree the most cruel tortures for crimes to which the most irrational customs gave birth--which bad institutions engender--which evil examples multiply? is not this something like building a sorry, inconvenient hovel, and then punishing the inhabitant, because he does not find all the conveniences of the most complete mansion, of the most finished structure? man, as at cannot be too frequently repeated, is so prone to evil, only because every thing appears to urge him on to the commission of it, by too frequently shewing him vice triumphant: his education is void in a great number of states, perhaps defective in nearly all; in many places he receives from society no other principles, save those of an unintelligible superstition; which make but a feeble barrier against those propensities that are excited by dissolute manners; which are encouraged by corrupt examples: in vain the law cries out to him: "abstain from the goods of thy neighbour;" his wants, more powerful, loudly declare to him that he must live: unaccustomed to reason, having never been submitted to a wholesome discipline, he conceives he must do it at the expence of a society who has done nothing for him: who condemns him to groan in misery, to languish in indigence: frequently deprived of the common necessaries requisite to support his existence, which his essence, of which he is not the master, compels him to conserve. he compensates himself by theft, he revenges himself by assassination, he becomes a plunderer by profession, a murderer by trade; he plunges into crime, and seeks at the risque of his life, to satisfy those wants, whether real or imaginary, to which every thing around him conspires to give birth. deprived of education, he has not been taught to restrain the fury of his temperament--to guide his passions with discretion--to curb his inclinations. without ideas of decency, destitute of the true principles of honour, he engages in criminal pursuits that injure his country: which at the same time has been to him nothing more than a step-mother. in the paroxysm of his rage, in the exacerbation of his mind, he loses sight of his neighbour's rights, he overlooks the gibbet, he forgets the torture; his unruly desires have become too potent--they have completely absorbed his mind; by a criminal indulgence they have given an inveteracy to his habits which preclude him from changing them; laziness has made him torpid: remorse has gnawed his peace; despair has rendered him blind; he rushes on to death; and society is compelled to punish him rigorously, for those fatal, those necessary dispositions, which it has perhaps itself engendered in his heart by evil example: or which at least, it has not taken the pains seasonably to root out; which it has neglected to oppose by suitable motives--by those calculated to give him honest principles--to excite him to industrious habits, to imbue him with virtuous inclinations. thus, society frequently punishes those propensities of which it is itself the author, or which its negligence has suffered to spring up in the mind of man: it acts like those unjust fathers, who chastise their children for vices which they have themselves made them contract. however unjust, however unreasonable this conduct may be, or appear to be, it is not the less necessary: society, such as it is, whatever may be its corruption, whatever vices may pervade its institutions, like every thing else in nature, is willing to subsist; tends to conserve itself: in consequence, it is obliged to punish those excesses which its own vicious constitution has produced: in despite of its peculiar prejudices, notwithstanding its vices, it feels cogently that its own immediate security demands that it should destroy the conspiracies of those who make war against its tranquillity: if these, hurried on by the foul current of their necessary propensities, disturb its repose--if, borne on the stream of their ill-directed desires, they injure its interests, this following the natural law, which obliges it to labour to its own peculiar conservation, removes them out of its road; punishes them with more or less rigor, according to the objects to which it attaches the greatest importance, or which it supposes best suited to further its own peculiar welfare: without doubt, it deceives itself frequently, both upon these objects and the means; but it deceives itself necessarily, for want of the knowledge calculated to enlighten it, with regard to its true interests; for want of those, who regulate its movements possessing proper vigilance--suitable talents--the requisite virtue. from this it will appear, that the injustice of a society badly constituted, and blinded by its prejudices, is as necessary, as the crimes of those by whom it is hostilely attacked--by whose vices it is distracted. the body politic, when in a state of insanity, cannot act more consistently with reason, than one of its members whose brain is disturbed by madness. it will still be said that these maxims, by submitting every thing to necessity, must confound, or even destroy the notions man forms of justice and injustice; of good and evil; of merit and demerit: i deny it. although man, in every thing he does, acts necessarily, his actions are good, they are just, they are meritorious, every time they tend to the real utility of his fellows; of the society of which he makes a part: they are, of necessity, distinguished from those which are really prejudicial to the welfare of his associates. society is just, it is good, it is worthy our reverence, when it procures for all its members, their physical wants, when it affords them protection, when it secures their liberty, when it puts them in possession of their natural rights. it is ill this that consists all the happiness of which the social compact is susceptible: society is unjust, it is bad, it is unworthy our esteem, when it is partial to a few, when it is cruel to the greater number: it is then that it multiplies its enemies, obliges them to revenge themselves by criminal actions which it is under the necessity to punish. it is not upon the caprices of political society that depend the true notions of justice and injustice--the right ideas of moral good and evil--a just appreciation of merit and demerit; it is upon _utility_, upon the necessity of things, which always forces man to feel that there exists a mode of acting on which he implicitly relies, which he is obliged to venerate, which he cannot help approving either in his fellows, in himself, or in society: whilst there is another mode to which he cannot lend his confidence, which his nature makes him to hate, which his feelings compel him to condemn. it is upon his own peculiar essence that man founds his ideas of pleasure and of pain--of right and of wrong--of vice and of virtue: the only difference between these is, that pleasure and pain make them instantaneously felt in his brain; he becomes conscious of their existence upon the spot; in the place of which, the advantages that accrue to him from justice, the benefit that he derives from virtue, frequently do not display themselves but after a long train of reflections--after multiplied experience and complicated attention; which many, either from a defect in their conformation, or from the peculiarity of the circumstances under which they are placed, are prevented from making, or at least from making correctly. by a necessary consequence of this truism, the system of fatalism, although it has frequently been so accused, does not tend to encourage man in crime, to make remorse vanish from his mind. his propensities are to be ascribed to his nature; the use he makes of his passions depends upon his habits, upon his opinions, upon the ideas he has received in his education; upon the examples held forth by the society in which he lives. these things are what necessarily decide his conduct. thus, when his temperament renders him susceptible of strong passions, he is violent in his desires, whatever may be his speculations. _remorse_ is the painful sentiment excited in him by grief, caused either by the immediate or probable future effect of his indulged passions: if these effects were always useful to him, he would not experience remorse; but, as soon as he is assured that his actions render him hateful, that his passions make him contemptible; or, as soon as he fears he shall be punished in some mode or other, he becomes restless, discontented with himself--he reproaches himself with his own conduct--he feels ashamed--he fears the judgement of those beings whose affection he has learned to esteem--in whose good-will he finds his own comfort deeply interested. his experience proves to him that the wicked man is odious to all those upon whom his actions have any influence: if these actions are concealed at the moment of commission, he knows it very rarely happens they remain so for ever. the smallest reflection convinces him that there is no wicked man who is not ashamed of his own conduct--who is truly contented with himself--who does not envy the condition of the good man--who is not obliged to acknowledge that he has paid very dearly for those advantages he is never able to enjoy, without experiencing the most troublesome sensations, without making the most bitter reproaches against himself; then he feels ashamed, despises himself, hates himself, his conscience becomes alarmed, remorse follows in it train. to be convinced of the truth of this principle it is only requisite to cast our eyes on the extreme precautions that tyrants and villains, who are otherwise sufficiently powerful not to dread the punishment of man, take to prevent exposure;--to what lengths they push their cruelties against some, to what meannesses they stoop to others of those who are able to hold them up to public scorn. have they not, then, a consciousness of their own iniquities? do they not know that they are hateful and contemptible? have they not remorse? is their condition happy? persons well brought up acquire these sentiments in their education; which are either strengthened or enfeebled by public opinion, by habit, or by the examples set before them. in a depraved society, remorse either does not exist, or presently disappears; because, in all his actions, it is ever the judgment of his fellow-man that man is obliged necessarily to regard. he never feels either shame or remorse for actions he sees approved, that are practised by the world. under corrupt governments, venal souls, avaricious being, mercenary individuals, do not blush either at meanness, robbery, or rapine, when it is authorized by example; in licentious nations, no one blushes at adultery except the husband, at whose expence it is committed; in superstitious countries, man does not blush to assassinate his fellow for his opinions. it will be obvious, therefore, that his remorse, as well as the ideas, whether right or wrong, which man has of decency, virtue, justice, &c. are the necessary consequence of his temperament, modified by the society in which he lives: assassins and thieves, when they live only among themselves, have neither shame nor remorse. thus, i repeat, all the actions of man are necessary those which are always useful, which constantly contribute to the real, tend to the permanent happiness of his species, are called _virtues_, and are necessarily pleasing to all who experience their influence; at least, if their passions or false opinions do not oblige them to judge in that manner which is but little accordant with the nature of things: each man acts, each individual judges, necessarily, according to his own peculiar mode of existence--after the ideas, whether true or false, which he has formed with regard to his happiness. there are necessary actions which man is obliged to approve; there are others, that, in despite of himself, he is compelled to censure; of which the idea generates shame when his reflection permits him to contemplate them under the same point of view that they are regarded by his associates. the virtuous man and the wicked man act from motives equally necessary: they differ simply in their organization--in the ideas they form to themselves of happiness: we love the one necessarily--we detest the other from the same necessity. the law of his nature, which wills that a sensible being shall constantly labour to preserve himself, has not left to man the power to choose, or the free-agency to prefer pain to pleasure--vice to utility--crime to virtue. it is, then, the essence of man himself that obliges him to discriminate those actions which are advantageous to him, form those which are prejudicial to his interest, from those which are baneful to his felicity. this distinction subsists even in the most corrupt societies, in which the ideas of virtue, although completely effaced from their conduct, remain the same in their mind. let us suppose a matt, who had decidedly determined for villainy, who should say to himself--"it is folly to be virtuous in a society that is depraved, in a community that is debauched." let us suppose also, that he has sufficient address, the unlooked-for good fortune to escape censure or punishment, during a long series of years; i say, that in despite of all these circumstances, apparently so advantageous for himself, such a man has neither been happy nor contented with his own conduct, he has been in continual agonies--ever at war with his own actions--in a state of constant agitation. how much pain, how much anxiety, has he not endured in this perpetual conflict with himself? how many precautions, what excessive labour, what endless solicitude, has he not been compelled to employ in this continued struggle; how many embarrassments, how many cares, has he not experienced in this eternal wrestling with his associates, whose penetration he dreads, whose scorn he fears will follow a true knowledge of his pursuits. demand of him what he thinks of himself, he will shrink from the question. approach the bedside of this villain at the moment he is dying; ask him if he would be willing to recommence, at the same price, a life of similar agitation? if he is ingenuous, he will avow that he has tasted neither repose nor happiness; that each crime filled him with inquietude--that reflection prevented him from sleeping--that the world has been to him only one continued scene of alarm--an uninterrupted concatenation of terror--an everlasting, anxiety of mind;--that to live peaceably upon bread and water, appears to him to be a much happier, a more easy condition, than to possess riches, credit, reputation, honours, on the same terms that he has himself acquired them. if this villain, notwithstanding all his success, finds his condition so deplorable, what must be thought of the feelings of those who have neither the same resources nor the same advantages to succeed in their criminal projects. thus, the system of necessity is a truth not only founded upon certain experience, but, again, it establishes morals upon an immoveable basis. far from sapping the foundations of virtue, it points out its necessity; it clearly shows the invariable sentiments it must excite--sentiments so necessary, so strong, so congenial to his existence, that all the prejudices of man--all the vices of his institutions--all the effect of evil example, have never been able entirely to eradicate them from his mind. when he mistakes the advantages of virtue, it ought to be ascribed to the errors that are infused into him--to the irrationality of his institutions: all his wanderings are the fatal consequences of error,--the necessary result of prejudices which have identified themselves with his existence. let it not, therefore, any longer be imputed to his nature that he has become wicked, but to those baneful opinions which he has imbibed with his mother's milk,--that have rendered him ambitious, avaricious, envious, haughty, arrogant, debauched, intolerant, obstinate, prejudiced, incommodious to his fellows, mischievous to himself. it is education that carries into his system the germ of those vices which necessarily torment him during the whole course of his life. _fatalism_ is reproached with discouraging man--with damping the ardour of his soul--with plunging him into apathy--with destroying the bonds that should connect him with society. its opponents say, "if every thing is necessary, we must let things go on, and not be disturbed by any thing." but does it depend on man to be sensible or not? is he master of feeling or not feeling pain? if nature has endowed him with a humane, with a tender soul, is it possible he should not interest himself in a very lively manner, in the welfare of beings whom he knows are necessary to his own peculiar happiness? his feelings are necessary: they depend on his own peculiar nature, cultivated by education. his imagination, prompt to concern itself with the felicity of his race, causes his heart to be oppressed at the sight of those evils his fellow-creature is obliged to endure,--makes his soul tremble in the contemplation of the misery arising from the despotism that crushes him--from the superstition that leads him astray--from the passions that distract him in a state of warfare against his neighbour. although he knows that death is the fatal, the necessary period to the form of all beings, his soul is not affected in a less lively manner at the loss of a beloved wife,--at the demise of a child calculated to console his old age,--at the final separation from an esteemed friend who had become dear to his heart. although he is not ignorant that it is the essence of fire to burn, he does not believe he is dispensed from using his utmost efforts to arrest the progress of a conflagration. although he is intimately convinced that the evils to which he is a witness, are the necessary consequence of primitive errors with which his fellow-citizens are imbued, he feels he ought to display truth to them, if nature has given him the necessary courage; under the conviction, that if they listen to it, it will, by degrees, become a certain remedy for their sufferings, that it will produce those necessary effects which it is of its essence to operate. if the speculations of man modify his conduct, if they change his temperament, he ought not to doubt that the system of necessity would have the most advantageous influence over him; not only is it suitable to calm the greater part of his inquietude, but it will also contribute to inspire him with a useful submission, a rational resignation, to the decrees of a destiny with which his too great sensibility frequently causes him to be overwhelmed. this happy apathy, without doubt, would be, desirable to those whose souls, too tender to brook the inequalities of life, frequently render them the deplorable sport of their fate; or whose organs, too weak to make resistance to the buffettings of fortune, incessantly expose them to be dashed in pieces under the rude blows of adversity. but, of all the important advantages the human race would be enabled to derive from the doctrine of fatalism, if man was to apply it to his conduct, none would be of greater magnitude, none of more happy consequence, none that would more efficaciously corroborate his happiness, than that general indulgence, that universal toleration, that must necessarily spring from the opinion, that _all is necessary_. in consequence, of the adoption of this principle, the fatalist, if he had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his fellow-man--would lament over his wanderings--would seek to undeceive him--would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? his ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence of vicious institutions? is he not sufficiently punished by the multitude of evils that afflict him on every side? those despots who crush him with an iron sceptre, are they not continual victims to their own peculiar restlessness--mancipated to their perpetual diffidence--eternal slaves to their suspicions? is there one wicked individual who enjoys a pure, an unmixed, a real happiness? do not nations unceasingly suffer from their follies? are they not the incessant dupes to their prejudices? is not the ignorance of chiefs, the ill-will they bear to reason, the hatred they have for truth, punished by the imbecility of their citizens, by the ruin of the states they govern? in short, the fatalist would grieve to witness necessity each moment exercising its severe decrees upon mortals who are ignorant of its power, or who feel its castigation, without being willing to acknowledge the hand from whence it proceeds; he will perceive that ignorance is necessary, that credulity is the necessary result of ignorance--that slavery and bondage are necessary consequences of ignorant credulity--that corruption of manners springs necessarily from slavery--that the miseries of society, the unhappiness of its members, are the necessary offspring of this corruption. the fatalist, in consequence, of these ideas, will neither be a gloomy misanthrope, nor a dangerous citizen; he will pardon in his brethren those wanderings, he will forgive them those errors--which their vitiated nature, by a thousand causes, has rendered necessary--he will offer them consolation--he will endeavour to inspire them with courage--he will be sedulous to undeceive them in their idle notions, in their chimerical ideas; but he will never display against them bitterness of soul--he will never show them that rancorous animosity which is more suitable, to make them revolt from his doctrines, than to attract them to reason;--he will not disturb the repose of society--he will not raise the people to insurrection against the sovereign authority; on the contrary, he will feel that the miserable blindness of the great, and the wretched perverseness, the fatal obstinacy of so many conductors of the people, are the necessary consequence of that flattery that is administered to them in their infancy--that feeds their hopes with allusive falsehoods--of the depraved malice of those who surround them--who wickedly corrupt them, that they may profit by their folly--that they may take advantage of their weakness: in short, that these things are the inevitable effect of that profound ignorance of their true interest, in which every thing strives to keep them. the fatalist has no right to be vain of his peculiar talents; no privilege to be proud of his virtues; he knows that these qualities are only the consequence of his natural organization, modified by circumstances that have in no wise depended upon himself. he will neither have hatred nor feel contempt for those whom nature and circumstances have not favoured in a similar manner. it is the fatalist who ought to be humble, who should be modest from principle: is he not obliged to acknowledge, that he possesses nothing that he has not previously received? in fact, will not every thing conduct to indulgence the fatalist whom experience has convinced of the necessity of things? will he not see with pain, that it is the essence of a society badly constituted, unwisely governed, enslaved to prejudice, attached to unreasonable customs, submitted to irrational laws, degraded under despotism, corrupted by luxury, inebriated by false opinions, to be filled with trifling members; to be composed of vicious citizens; to be made up of cringing slaves, who are proud of their chains; of ambitious men, without idea of true glory; of misers and prodigals; of fanatics and libertines! convinced of the necessary connection of things, he will not be surprised to see that the supineness of their chiefs carries discouragement into their country, or that the influence of their governors stirs up bloody wars by which it is depopulated, and causes useless expenditures that impoverish it; that all these excesses united, is the reason why so many nations contain only men wanting happiness, without understanding to attain it; who are devoid of morals, destitute of virtue. in all this he will contemplate nothing more than the necessary action and re-action of physics upon morals, of morals upon physics. in short, all who acknowledge fatality, will remain persuaded that a nation badly governed is a soil very fruitful in venomous reptiles--very abundant in poisonous plants; that these have such a plentiful growth as to crowd each other and choak themselves. it is in a country cultivated by the hands of a lycurgus, that he will witness the production of intrepid citizens, of noble-minded individuals, of disinterested men, who are strangers to irregular pleasures. in a country cultivated by a tiberius, he will find nothing but villains with depraved hearts, men with mean contemptible souls, despicable informers, execrable traitors. it is the soil, it is the circumstances in which man finds himself placed, that renders him either a useful object or a prejudicial being: the wise man avoids the one, as he would those dangerous reptiles whose nature it is to sting and communicate their deadly venom; he attaches himself to the other, esteems him, loves him, as he does those delicious fruits with whose rich maturity his palate is pleasantly gratified, with whose cooling juices he finds himself agreeably refreshed: he sees the wicked without anger--he cherishes the good with pleasure--he delights in the bountiful: he knows full well that the tree which is languishing without culture in the arid, sandy desert, that is stunted for want of attention, leafless for want of moisture, that has grown crooked from neglect, become barren from want of loam, whose tender bark is gnawed by rapacious beasts of prey, pierced by innumerable insects, would perhaps have expanded far and wide its verdant boughs from a straight and stately stem, have brought forth delectable fruit, have afforded from its luxuriant foliage under its lambent leaves an umbrageous refreshing retreat from the scorching rays of a meridian sun, have offered beneath its swelling branches, under its matted tufts a shelter from the pitiless storm, it its seed had been fortunately sown in a more fertile soil, placed in a more congenial climate, had experienced the fostering cares of a skilful cultivator. let it not then be said, that it is degrading man reduce his functions to a pure mechanism; that it is shamefully to undervalue him, scandalously to abuse him, to compare him to a tree; to an abject vegetation. the philosopher devoid of prejudice does not understand this language, invented by those who are ignorant of what constitutes the true dignity of man. a tree is an object which, in its station, joins the useful with the agreeable; it merits our approbation when it produces sweet and pleasant fruit; when it affords a favourable shade. all machines are precious, when they are truly useful, when they faithfully perform the functions for which they are designed. yes, i speak it with courage, reiterate it with pleasure, the honest man, when he has talents, when he possesses virtue, is, for the beings of his species, a tree that furnishes them with delicious fruit, that affords them refreshing shelter: the honest man is a machine of which the springs are adapted to fulfil its functions in a manner that must gratify the expectation of all his fellows. no, i should not blush, i should not feel degraded, to be a machine of this sort; and my heart would leap with joy, if i could foresee that the fruit of my reflections would one day be useful to my race, consoling to my fellow-man. is not nature herself a vast machine, of which the human species is but a very feeble spring? i see nothing contemptible either in her or her productions; all the beings who come out of her hands are good, are noble, are sublime, whenever they co-operate to the production of another, to the maintenance of harmony in the sphere where they must act. of whatever nature the soul may be, whether it is made mortal, or whether it be supposed immortal; whether it is regarded as a spirit, or whether it be looked upon as a portion of the body; it will be found noble, it will be estimated great, it will be ranked good, it will be considered sublime, in a socrates, in an aristides, in a cato: it will be thought abject, it will be viewed as despicable, it will be called corrupt, in a claudius, in a sejanus, in a nero: its energies will be admired, we shall be delighted with its manner, fascinated with its efforts, in a shakespeare, in a corneille, in a newton, in a montesquieu: its baseness will be lamented, when we behold mean, contemptible men, who flatter tyranny, or who servilely cringe at the foot of superstition. all that has been said in the course of this work, proves clearly that every thing is necessary; that every thing is always in order, relatively to nature; where all beings do nothing more than follow the laws that are imposed on their respective classes. it is part of her plan, that certain portions of the earth shall bring forth delicious fruits, shall blossom beauteous flowers; whilst others shall only furnish brambles, shall yield nothing but noxious vegetables: she has been willing that some societies should produce wise men, great heroes; that others should only give birth to abject souls, contemptible men, without energy, destitute of virtue. passions, winds, tempests, hurricanes, volcanoes, wars, plagues, famines, diseases, death, are as necessary to her eternal march as the beneficent heat of the sun, the serenity of the atmosphere, the gentle showers of spring, plentiful years, peace, health, harmony, life: vice and virtue, darkness and light, and science are equally necessary; the one are not benefits, the other are not evils, except for those beings whose happiness they influence by either favouring or deranging their peculiar mode of existence. _the whole cannot be miserable, but it may contain unhappy individuals._ nature, then, distributes with the same hand that which is called _order_, and that which is called _disorder_; that which is called _pleasure_, and that which is called _pain_: in short, she diffuses by the necessity of her existence, good and evil in the world we inhabit. let not man, therefore, either arraign her bounty, or tax her with malice; let him not imagine that his feeble cries, his weak supplications, can never arrest her colossal power, always acting after immutable laws; let him submit silently to his condition; and when he suffers, let him not seek a remedy by recurring to chimeras that his own distempered imagination has created; let him draw from the stores of nature herself, the remedies which she offers for the evil she brings upon him: if she sends him diseases, let him search in her bosom for those salutary productions to which she has given birth, which will cure them: if she gives him errors, she also furnishes him with experience to counteract them; in truth, she supplies him with an antidote suitable to destroy their fatal effects. if she permits man to groan under the pressure of his vices, beneath the load of his follies, she also shews him in virtue, a sure remedy for his infirmities: if the evils that some societies experience are necessary, when they shall have become too incommodious they will be irresistibly obliged to search for those remedies which nature will always point out to them. if this nature has rendered existence insupportable, to some unfortunate beings, whom she appears to have selected for her victims, still death, is a door that will surely be opened to them--that will deliver them from their misfortunes, although in their puny, imbecile, wayward judgment, they may be deemed impossible of cure. let not man, then, accuse nature with being inexorable to him, since there does not exist in her whole circle an evil for which she has not furnished the remedy, to those who have the courage to seek it, who have the fortitude to apply it. nature follows general and necessary laws in all her operations; physical calamity and moral evil are not to be ascribed to her want of kindness, but to the necessity of things. physical calamity is the derangement produced in man's organs by physical causes which he sees act: moral evil is the derangement produced in him by physical causes of which the action is to him a secret. these causes always terminate by producing sensible effects, which are capable of striking his senses; neither the thoughts nor the will of man ever shew themselves, but by the marked effects they produce either in himself or upon those beings whom nature has rendered susceptible of feeling their impulse. he suffers, because it is of the essence of some beings to derange the economy of his machine; he enjoys, because the properties of some beings are analogous to his own mode of existence; he is born, because it is of the nature of some matter to combine itself under a determinate form; he lives, he acts, he thinks, because it is of the essence of certain combinations to maintain themselves in existence by given means for a season; at length he dies, because a necessary law prescribes that all the combinations which are formed, shall either be destroyed or dissolve themselves. from all this it results, that nature is impartial to all its productions; she submits man, like all other beings, to those eternal laws from which she has not even exempted herself; if she was to suspend these laws, even for an instant, from that moment disorder would reign in her, system; her harmony would be disturbed. those who wish to study nature, must take experience for their guide; this, and this only, can enable them to dive into her secrets, to unravel by degrees, the frequently imperceptible woof of those slender causes, of which she avails herself to operate the greatest phenomena: by the aid of experience, man often discovers in her properties, perceives modes of action entirely unknown to the ages which have preceded him; those effects which his grandfathers contemplated as marvellous, which they regarded as supernatural efforts, looked upon as miracles, have become familiar to him in the present day, and are at this moment contemplated as simple and natural consequences, of which he comprehends the mechanism--of which he understands the cause--of which he can unfold the manner of action. man, in fathoming nature, has arrived at discovering the true causes of earthquakes; of the periodical motion of the sea; of subterraneous conflagrations; of meteors; of the electrical fluid, the whole of which were considered by his ancestors, and are still so by the ignorant, by the uninformed, as indubitable signs of heaven's wrath. his posterity, in following up, in rectifying the experience already made, will perhaps go further, and discover those causes which are totally veiled from present eyes. the united efforts of the human species will one day perhaps penetrate even into the sanctuary of nature, and throw into light many of those mysteries which up to the present time she seems to have refused to all his researches. in contemplating man under his true aspect; in quitting authority to follow experience; in laying aside error to consult reason; in submitting every thing to physical laws, from which his imagination has vainly exerted its utmost power to withdraw them; it will be found that the phenomena of the moral world follow exactly the same general rules as those of the physical; that the greater part of those astonishing effects, which ignorance, aided by his prejudices, make him consider as inexplicable, and regard as wonderful, are natural consequences flowing from simple causes. he will find that the eruption of a volcano and the birth of a tamerlane are to nature the same thing; in recurring to the primitive causes of those striking events which he beholds with consternation, which he contemplates with fearful alarm, in falling back to the sources of those terrible revolutions, those frightful convulsions, those dreadful explosions that distract mankind, lay waste the fairest works of nature, ravage nations, and tear up society by the roots; he will find the wills that compassed the most surprising changes, that operated the most extensive alterations in the state of things, that brought about the most unlooked-for events, were moved by physical causes, whose exility made him treat them as contemptible; whose want of consequence in his own purblind eyes led him to believe them utterly incapable to give birth to the phenomena whose magnitude strikes him with such awe, whose stupendous range fills him with such amazement. if man was to judge of causes by their effects, there would be no small causes in the universe. in a nature where every thing is connected, where every thing acts and re-acts, moves and changes, composes and decomposes, forms and destroys, there is not an atom which does not play an important part--that does not occupy a necessary station; there is not an imperceptible particle, however minute, which, placed in convenient circumstances, does not operate the most prodigious effects. if man was in a capacity to follow the eternal chain, to pursue the concatenated links, that connect with their causes all the effects he witnesses, without losing sight of any one of its rings,--if he could unravel the ends of those insensible threads that give impulse to the thoughts, decision to the will, direction to the passions of those men who are called mighty, according to their actions, he would find, they are true atoms which nature employs to move the moral world; that it is the unexpected but necessary function of these indiscernible particles of matter, it is their aggregation, their combination, their proportion, their fermentation, which modifying the individual by degrees, in despite of himself, frequently without his own knowledge, make him think, will, and act, in a determinate, but necessary mode. if, then, the will and the actions of this individual have an influence over a great number of other men, here is the moral world in a state of the greatest combustion, and those consequences ensue which man contemplates with fearful wonder. too much acrimony in the bile of a fanatic--blood too much inflamed in the heart of a conqueror--a painful indigestion in the stomach of a monarch--a whim that passes in the mind of a woman--are sometimes causes sufficient to bring on war--to send millions of men to the slaughter--to root out an entire people--to overthrow walls--to reduce cities into ashes--to plunge nations into slavery--to put a whole people into mourning--to breed famine in a land--to engender pestilence--to propagate calamity--to extend misery--to spread desolation far and wide upon the surface of our globe, through a long series of ages. the dominant passion of an individual of the human species, when it disposes of the passions of many others, arrives at combining their will, at uniting their efforts, and thus decides the condition of man. it is after this manner that an ambitious, crafty, and voluptuous arab, gave to his countrymen an impulse of which the effect was the subjugation and desolation of vast countries in asia, in africa, and in europe; whose consequences were sufficiently potential to erect a new, extensive, but slavish empire; to give a novel system of religion to millions of human beings; to overturn the altars of their former gods; in short, to alter the opinions, to change the customs of a considerable portion of the population of the earth. but in examining the primitive sources of this strange revolution, what were the concealed causes that had an influence over this man--that excited his peculiar passions, and modified his temperament? what was the matter from the combination of which resulted a crafty, ambitious, enthusiastic, and eloquent man; in short, a personage competent to impose on his fellow-creatures--capable of making them concur in his most extravagant views. they were, undoubtedly, the insensible particles of his blood; the imperceptible texture of his fibres; the salts, more or less acrid, that stimulated his nerves; the proportion of igneous fluid that circulated in his system. from whence came these elements? it was from the womb of his mother; from the aliments which nourished him; from the climate in which he had his birth; from the ideas he received; from the air which he respired; without reckoning a thousand inappreciable, a thousand transitory causes, that in the instance given had modified, had determined the passions of this importent being, who had thereby acquired the capacity to change the face of this mundane sphere. to causes so weak in their principles, if in the origin the slightest obstacle had been opposed, these wonderful events, which have astounded man, would never have been produced. the fit of an ague, the consequence of bile a little too much inflamed, had sufficed, perhaps, to have rendered abortive all the vast projects, of the legislator of the mussulmen. spare diet, a glass of water, a sanguinary evacuation, would sometimes have been sufficient to have saved kingdoms. it will be seen, then, that the condition of the human species, as well as that of each of its individuals, every instant depends on insensible causes, to which circumstances, frequently fugitive, give birth; that opportunity developes, that convenience puts in action: man attributes their effects to chance, whilst these causes operate necessarily, act according to fixed rules: he has frequently neither the sagacity nor the honesty to recur to their true principles; he regards such feeble motives with contempt, because he has been taught to consider them as incapable of producing such stupendous events. they are, however, these motives, weak as they may appear to be, these springs, so pitiful in his eyes, is which according to her necessary laws, suffice in the hands of nature to move the universe. the conquests of a gengis-khan have nothing in them that is more strange to the eye of a philosopher than the explosion of a mine, caused in its principle by a feeble spark, which commences with setting fire to a single grain of powder; this presently communicates itself to many millions of other contiguous grains, of which the united force, the multiplied powers, terminate by blowing up mountains, overthrowing fortifications, or converting populous, well-built cities, into heaps of ruins. thus, imperceptible causes, concealed in the bosom of nature, until the moment their action is displayed, frequently decide the fate of man. the happiness or the wretchedness, the prosperity or the misery of each individual, as well as that of whole nations, are attached to powers which it is impossible for him to foresee, which he cannot appreciate, of which he is incapable to arrest the action. perhaps at this moment atoms are amassing, insensible particles are combining, of which the assemblage shall form a sovereign, who will be either the scourge or the saviour of a mighty empire. man cannot answer for his own destiny one single instant; he has no cognizance of what is passing within himself; he is ignorant of the causes which act in the interior of his machine; he knows nothing of the circumstances that will give them activity: he is unacquainted with what may develope their energy; it is, nevertheless, on these causes, impossible to be unravelled by him, that depends his condition in life. frequently, an unforeseen rencontre gives birth to a passion in his soul, of which the consequences shall, necessarily, have an influence over his felicity. it is thus that the most virtuous man, by a whimsical combination of unlooked-for circumstances, may become in an instant the most criminal of his species. this truth, without doubt, will be found frightful--this fact will unquestionably appear terrible: but at bottom, what has it more revolting than that which teaches him that an infinity of accidents, as irremediable as they are unforeseen, may every instant wrest from him that life to which he is so strongly attached? fatalism reconciles the good man easily to death: it makes him contemplate it as a certain means of withdrawing himself from wickedness; this system shews death, even to the happy man himself, as a medium between him and those misfortunes which frequently terminate by poisoning his happiness; that end with embittering the most fortunate existence. let man, then, submit to necessity: in despite of himself it will always hurry him forward: let him resign himself to nature, let him accept the good with which she presents him: let him oppose to the necessary evil which she makes him experience, those necessary remedies which she consents to afford him; let him not disturb his mind with useless inquietude; let him enjoy with moderation, because he will find that pain is the necessary companion of excess: let him follow the paths of virtue, because every thing will prove to him, even in this world of perverseness, that it is absolutely necessary to render him estimable in the eyes of others, to make him contented with himself. feeble, vain mortal, thou pretendest to be a free agent. alas! dost thou not see all the threads which enchain thee? dost thou not perceive that they are atoms which form thee; that they are atoms which move thee; that they are circumstances independent of thyself, that modify thy being; that they are circumstances over which thou hast not any controul, that rule thy destiny? in the puissant nature that environs thee, shalt thou pretend to be the only being who is able to resist her power? dost thou really believe that thy weak prayers will induce her to stop in her eternal march; that thy sickly desires can oblige her to change her everlasting course? chap. xiii. _of the immortality of the soul;--of the doctrine of a future state;--of the fear of death._ the reflections presented to the reader in this work, tend to shew what ought to be thought of the human soul, as well as of its operations and faculties: every thing proves, in the most convincing manner, that it acts, that it moves according to laws similar to those prescribed to the other beings of nature; that it cannot be distinguished from the body; that it is born with it; that it grows up with it; that it is modified in the same progression; in short, every thing ought to make man conclude that it perishes with it. this soul, as well as the body, passes through a state of weakness and infancy; it is in this stage of its existence, that it is assailed by a multitude of modifications; that it is stored with an infinity of ideas, which it receives from exterior objects through the medium of the organs; that it amasses facts, that it collects experience, whether true or false, that it forms to itself a system of conduct, according to which it thinks, in conformity with which it acts, from whence results either its happiness or its misery, its reason or its delirium, its virtues or its vices; arrived with the body at its full powers, having in conjunction with it reached maturity, it does not cease for a single instant to partake in common of its sensations, whether these are agreeable or disagreeable; it participates in all its pleasures; it shares in all its pains; in consequence it conjointly approves or disapproves its state; like it, it is either sound or diseased; active or languishing; awake or asleep. in old age man extinguishes entirely, his fibres become rigid, his nerves loose their elasticity, his senses are obtunded, his sight grows dim, his ears lose their quickness, his ideas become unconnected, his memory fails, his imagination cools: what then becomes of his soul? alas! it sinks down with the body; it gets benumbed as this loses its feeling; becomes sluggish as this decays in activity; like it, when enfeebled by years it fulfils its functions with pain; this substance, which is deemed spiritual, which is considered immaterial, which it is endeavoured to distinguish from matter, undergoes the same revolutions, experiences the same vicissitudes, submits to the same modifications, as does the body itself. in despite of this proof of the materiality of the soul, of its identity with the body, so convincing to the unprejudiced, some thinkers have supposed, that although the latter is perishable, the former does not perish: that this portion of man enjoys the especial privilege of _immortality_; that it is exempt from dissolution: free from those changes of form all the beings in nature undergo: in consequence of this, man has persuaded himself, that this privileged soul does not die: its immortality, above all, appears indubitable to those who suppose it spiritual: after having made it a simple being, without extent, devoid of parts, totally different from any thing of which he has a knowledge, he pretended that it was not subjected to the laws of decomposition common to all beings, of which experience shews him the continual operation. man, feeling within himself a concealed force, that insensibly produced action, that imperceptibly gave direction to the motion of his machine, believed that the entire of nature, of whose energies he is ignorant, with whose modes of acting he is unacquainted, owed its motion to an agent analogous to his own soul; who acted upon the great macrocosm, in the same manner that this soul acted upon his body. man, having supposed himself double, made nature double also: he distinguished her from her own peculiar energy; he separated her from her mover, which by degrees he made spiritual. thus nature, distinguished from herself, was regarded as the soul of the world; and the soul of man was considered as opinions emanating from this universal soul. this notion upon the origin of the soul is of very remote antiquity. it was that of the egyptians, of the chaldeans, of the hebrews, of the greater number of the _wise men of the east._ it should appear that moses believed with the egyptians the divine emanation of souls: according to him, _"god formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul:"_ nevertheless, the catholic, at this day, rejects this system of _divine emanation,_ seeing that it supposes the divinity divisible: which would have, been inconvenient to the romish idea of purgatory, or to the system of everlasting punishment. although moses, in the above quotation, seems to indicate that the soul was a portion of the divinity, it does not appear that the doctrine of the _immortality of the soul_ was established in any one of the books attributed to him. it was during the babylonish captivity, that the jews learned the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, taught by zoroaster to the persians, but which the hebrew legislator did not understand, or, at least, he left his people ignorant on the subject. it was in those schools, that pherecydes, pythagoras, and plato, drew up a doctrine so flattering to the vanity of human nature--so gratifying to the imagination of mortals. man thus believed himself a portion of the divinity; immortal, like the godhead, in one part of himself: nevertheless, subsequent religions have renounced these advantages, which they judged incompatible with the other parts of their systems; they held forth that the sovereign of nature, or her contriver was not the soul of man, but, that, in virtue of his omnipotence, he created human souls, in proportion as he produced the bodies which they must animate; and they taught, that these souls once produced, by an effect of the same omnipotence, enjoyed immortality. however it may be with these variations upon the origin of souls, those who supposed them emanating from the divinity, believed that after the death of the body, which served them for an envelope, they returned, by refunding to their first source. those who, without adopting the opinion of divine emanation, admired the spirituality, believed the immortality of the soul, were under the necessity to suppose a region, to find out an abode for these souls, which their imagination painted to them, each according to his fears, his hopes, his desires, and his prejudices. nothing is more popular than the doctrine of the _immortality of the soul;_ nothing is more universally diffused than the expectation of another life. nature having inspired man with the most ardent love for his existence, the desire of preserving himself for ever was a necessary consequence; this desire was presently converted into certainty: from that desire of existing eternally which nature has implanted in him, he made an argument, to prove that man would never cease to exist. abady says, "our soul has no useless desires, it naturally desires an eternal life;" and by a very strange logic, he concludes that this desire could not fail to be fulfilled. cicero, before abady, had declared the immortality of the soul to be an innate idea in man; yet, strange to tell, in another part of his works he considers pherecydes as the inventor of the doctrine. however this may be, man, thus disposed, listened with avidity to those who announced to him systems so conformable to his wishes. nevertheless, he ought not to regard as supernatural the desire of existing, which always was, and always will be, of the essence man; it ought not to excite surprise, if he received with eagerness an hypothesis that flattered his hopes, by promising that his desire would one day be gratified; but let him beware how he concludes that this desire itself is an indubitable proof of the reality of this future life, with which at present he seems to be so much occupied. the passion for existence is in man only a natural consequence of the tendency of a sensible being, whose essence it is to be willing to conserve himself: in the human being it follows the energy of his soul--keeps pace with the force of his imagination--always ready to realize that which he strongly desires. he desires the life of the body, nevertheless this desire is frustrated; wherefore should not the desire for the life of the soul be frustrated like the other? the partizans of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul reason thus: "all men desire to live for ever, therefore they will live for ever." suppose the argument retorted on them; would it be believed? if it was asserted, "all men naturally desire to be rich; therefore all men will one day be rich," how many partizans would this doctrine find? the most simple reflection upon the nature of his soul, ought to convince man that the idea of its immortality is only an illusion of the brain. indeed what is his soul, save the principle of sensibility? what is it, to think, to enjoy, to suffer; is it not to feel? what is life, except it be the assemblage of modifications, the congregation of motion, peculiar to an organized being? thus, as soon as the body ceases to live, its sensibility can no longer exercise itself; when its sensibility is no more, it can no longer have ideas, nor in consequence thoughts. ideas, as we have proved, can only reach man through his senses; now, how will they have it, that once deprived of his senses, he is yet capable of receiving sensations, of having perceptions, of forming ideas? as they have made the soul of man a being separated from the animated body, wherefore have they not made life a being distinguished from the living body? life in a body is the totality of this motion; feeling and thought make a part of this motion: thus it is reasonable to suppose, that in the dead man these motions will cease, like all the others. indeed, by what reasoning will it be proved, that this soul, which cannot feel, think, will, or act, but by aid of man's organs, can suffer pain, be susceptible of pleasure, or even have a consciousness of its own existence, when the organs which should warn it of their presence are decomposed or destroyed? is it not evident, that the soul depends on the arrangement of the various parts of the body; on the order with which these parts conspire to perform their functions; on the combined motion of the whole? thus the organic structure once destroyed, can it be reasonably doubted the soul will be destroyed also? is it not seen, that during the whole course of human life this soul is stimulated, changed, deranged, disturbed, by all the changes man's organs experience? and yet it will be insisted, that this soul acts, thinks, subsists, when these same organs have entirely disappeared! an organized being may be compared to a clock, which once broken, is no longer suitable to the use for which it was designed. to say, that the soul shall feel, shall think, shall enjoy, shall suffer after the death of the body; is to pretend that a clock, shivered into a thousand pieces, will continue to strike the hour; shall yet have the faculty of marking the progress of time. those who say, that the soul of man is able to subsist, notwithstanding the destruction of the body, evidently support the position, that the modification of a body will be enabled to conserve itself after the subject is destroyed: this on any other occasion would be considered as completely absurd. it will be said that the conservation of the soul after the death of the body, is an effect of the divine omnipotence: but this is supporting an absurdity by a gratuitous hypothesis. it surely is not meant by divine omnipotence, of whatever nature it may be supposed, that a thing shall exist and not exist at the same time: unless this be granted, it will be rather difficult to prove, that a soul shall feel and think without the intermediates necessary to thought. let them then, at least, forbear asserting, that reason is not wounded by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; or by the expectation of a future life. these notions, formed to flatter man, to disturb the imagination of the uninformed, who do not reason, cannot appear either convincing or probable to enlightened minds. reason, exempted from the illusions of prejudice, is, without doubt, wounded by the supposition of a soul, that feels, that thinks, that is afflicted, that rejoices, that has ideas, without having organs; that is to say, destitute of the only known medium, wanting all the natural means, by which, according to what we can understand, it is possible for it to feel sensations, have perceptions, or form ideas. if it be replied, other means are able to exist, which are _supernatural_ or _unknown_, it may be answered, that these means of transmitting ideas to the soul, separated from the body, are not better known to, or more within the reach of, those who suppose it, that they are of other men. it is, at least, very certain, it cannot admit even of a controversy, that all those who reject the system of innate ideas, cannot, without contradicting their own principles, admit the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. in defiance of the consolation that so many persons pretend to find in the notion of an eternal existence; in despite of that firm persuasion which such numbers of men assure us they have, that their souls will survive their bodies, they seem so very much alarmed at the dissolution of this body, that they do not contemplate their end, which they ought to desire as the period of so many miseries, but with the greatest inquietude; so true it is, that the real, the present, even accompanied with pain, has much more influence over mankind, than the most beautiful chimeras of the future; which he never views but through the clouds of uncertainty. indeed the most religious men, notwithstanding the conviction they express of a blessed eternity, do not find these flattering hopes sufficiently consoling to repress their fears; to prevent their trembling, when they think on the necessary dissolution of their bodies. death was always, for mortals, the most frightful point of view; they regard it as a strange phenomenon, contrary to the order of things, opposed to nature; in a word, as an effect of the celestial vengeance, as the _wages of sin_. although every thing proves to man that death is inevitable, he is never able to familiarize himself with its idea; he never thinks on it without shuddering; the assurance of possessing an immortal soul but feebly indemnifies him for the grief he feels in the deprivation of his perishable body. two causes contribute to strengthen his fears, to nourish his alarm; the one is, that this death, commonly accompanied with pain, wrests from him an existence that pleases him--with which he is acquainted--to which he is accustomed; the other is the uncertainty of the state that must succeed his actual existence. the illustrious bacon has said, that "men fear death for the same reason that children dread being alone in darkness." man naturally challenges every thing with which he is unacquainted; he is desirous to see clearly to the end, that he may guarantee himself against those objects which may menace his safety; that he may also be enabled to procure for himself those which may be useful to him; the man who exists cannot form to himself any idea of non-existence; as this circumstance disturbs him, for want of experience, his imagination sets to work; this points out to him, either well or ill, this uncertain state: accustomed to think, to feel, to be stimulated into activity, to enjoy society, he contemplates as the greatest misfortune, a dissolution that will strip him of these objects, that will deprive him of those sensations which his present nature has rendered necessary to him; he views with dismay a situation that will prevent his being warned of his own existence--that shall bereave him of his pleasures--to plunge him into nothing. in supposing it even exempt from pain, he always looks upon this nothing as an afflicting solitude--as an heap of profound darkness; he sees himself in a state of general desolation; destitute of all assistance; and he feels keenly all the rigour of this frightful situation. but does not a profound sleep help to give him a true idea of this nothing? does not that deprive him of every thing? does it not appear to annihilate the universe to him, and him to the universe? is death any thing more than a profound, a permanent steep? it is for want of being able to form an idea of death that man dreads it; if he could figure to himself a true image of this state of annihilation, he would from thence cease to fear it; but he is not able to conceive a state in which there is no feeling; he therefore believes, that when he shall no longer exist, he will have the same feelings, the same consciousness of things, which, during his existence, appear so sad to his mind; which his fancy paints in such gloomy colours. imagination pictures to him his funeral pomp--the grave they are digging for him--the lamentations that will accompany him to his last abode-the epicedium that surviving friendship may dictate; he persuades himself that these melancholy objects will affect him as painfully even after his decease, as they do in his present condition, in which he is in full possession of his senses. mortal, led astray by fear! after thy death thine eyes will see no more; thine ears will hear no longer; in the depth of thy grave thou wilt no more be witness to this scene, which thine imagination, at present, represents to thee under such dismal colours; thou wilt no longer take part in what shall be done in the world; thou wilt no more be occupied with what may befal thine inanimate remains, than thou wast able to be the day previous to that which ranked thee among the beings of thy species. to die is to cease to think; to lack feeling; no longer to enjoy; to find a period to suffering; thine ideas will perish with thee; thy sorrows will not follow thee to the silent tomb. think of death, not to feed thy fears--not to nourish thy melancholy--but to accustom thyself to look upon it with a peaceable eye; to cheer thee up against those false terrors with which the enemies to thy repose labour to inspire thee! the fears of death are vain illusions, that must disappear as soon as we learn to contemplate this necessary event under its true point of view. a great man has defined philosophy to be _a meditation on death;_ he is not desirous by that to have it understood that man ought to occupy himself sorrowfully with his end, with a view to nourish his fears; on the contrary, he wishes to invite him to familiarize himself with an object that nature has rendered necessary to him; to accustom himself to expect it with a serene countenance. if life is a benefit, if it be necessary to love it, it is no less necessary to quit it; reason ought to teach him a calm resignation to the decrees of fate: his welfare exacts that he should contract the habit of contemplating with placidity, of viewing without alarm, an event that his essence has rendered inevitable: his interest demands that he should not brood gloomily over his misfortune; that he should not, by continual dread, embitter his life; the charms of which he must inevitably destroy, if he can never view its termination but with trepidation. reason and his interest then, concur to assure him against those vague terrors with which his imagination inspires him, in this respect. if he was to call them to his assistance, they would reconcile him to an object that only startles him, because he has no knowledge of it; because it is only shewn to him with those hideous accompaniments with which it is clothed by superstition. let him then, endeavour to despoil death of these vain illusions, and he will perceive that it is only the sleep of life; that this sleep will not be disturbed with disagreeable dreams; that an unpleasant awakening is never likely to follow it. to die is to sleep; it is to enter into that state of insensibility in which he was previous to his birth; before he had senses; before he was conscious of his actual existence. laws, as necessary as those which gave him birth, will make him return into the bosom of nature, from whence he was drawn, in order to reproduce him afterwards under some new form, which it would be useless for him to know: without consulting him, nature places him for a season in the order of organized beings; without his consent, she will oblige him to quit it, to occupy some other order. let him not complain then, that nature is callous; she only makes him undergo a law from which she does not exempt any one being she contains. man complains of the short duration of life--of the rapidity with which time flies away; yet the greater number of men do not know how to employ either time or life. if all are born and perish--if every thing is changed and destroyed--if the birth of a being is never more than the first step towards its end; how is it possible to expect that man, whose machine is so frail, of which the parts are so complicated, the whole of which possesses such extreme mobility, should be exempted from the common law; which decrees, that even the solid earth he inhabits shall experience change--shall undergo alteration--perhaps be destroyed! feeble, frail mortal! thou pretendest to exist for ever; whit thou, then, that for thee alone eternal nature shall change her undeviating course? dost thou not behold in those eccentric comets with which thine eyes are sometimes astonished, that the planets themselves are subject to death? live then in peace for the season that nature permits thee; if thy mind be enlightened by reason thou wilt die without terror! notwithstanding the simplicity of these reflections; nothing is more rare than the sight of men truly fortified against the fears of death: the wise man himself turns pale at its approach; he has occasion to collect the whole force of his mind, to expect it with serenity. it cannot then, furnish matter for surprise, if the idea of death is so revolting to the generality of mortals; it terrifies the young--it redoubles the chagrin of the middle-aged--it even augments the sorrow of the old, who are worn down with infirmity: indeed the aged, although enfeebled by time, dread it much more than the young, who are in the full vigour of life; the man of many lustres is more accustomed to live years as they roll over his head, confirm his attachment to existence; nevertheless, long unwearied exertions weaken the powers of his mind; labour, sickness, and pain, waste his animal strength; he has less energy; his volition becomes faint, superstitious terrors easily appal him; at length disease consumes him; sometimes with excruciating tortures: the unhappy wretch, thus plunged into misfortune, has, notwithstanding, scarcely ever dared to contemplate death; which he ought to consider as the period to all his anguish. if the source of this pusillanimity be sought, it will be found in his nature, which attaches him to life; in that deficiency of energy in his soul, which hardly any thing tends to corroborate, but which every thing strives to enfeeble: which superstition, instead of strengthening, contributes to bruise. almost all human institutions, nearly all the opinions of man, conspire to augment his fears; to render his ideas of death more terrible; to make them more revolting to his feelings. indeed, superstition pleases itself with exhibiting death under the most frightful traits: it represents it to man under the most disgusting colours; as a dreadful moment, which not only puts an end to his pleasures, but gives him up without defence to the strange rigour of a pitiless decree, which nothing can soften. according to this superstition, the most virtuous man has reason to tremble for the severity of his fate; is never certain of being happy; the most dreadful torments, endless punishments, await the victim to involuntary weakness; to the necessary faults of a short-lived existence; his infirmities, his momentary offences, the propensities that have been planted in his heart, the errors of his mind, the opinions he has imbibed, even in the society in which he was born without his own consent, the ideas he has formed, the passions he has indulged above all, his not being able to comprehend all the extravagant dogmas offered to his acceptance, are to be implacably avenged with the most severe and never-ending penalties. ixion is for ever fastened to his wheel; sisyphus must to all eternity roll his stone without ever being able to reach the apex of his mountain; the vulture must perpetually prey on the liver of the unfortunate prometheus: those who dare to think for themselves--those who have refused to listen to their enthusiastic guides--those who have not reverenced the oracles--those who have had the audacity to consult their reason--those who have boldly ventured to detect impostors--those who have doubted the divine mission of the phythonissa--those who believe that jupiter violated decency in his visit to danae--those who look upon apollo as no better than a strolling musician--those who think that mahomet was an arch knave--are to smart everlastingly in flaming oceans of burning sulpher; are to float to all eternity in the most excruciating agonies on seas of liquid brimstone, wailing and gnashing their teeth: what wonder, then, if man dreads to be cast into these hideous gulfs; if his mind loathes the horrific picture; if he wishes to defer for a season these dreadful punishments; if he clings to an existence, painful as it may be, rather than encounter such revolting cruelties. such, then, are the afflicting objects with which superstition occupies its unhappy, its credulous disciples; such are the fears which the tyrant of human thoughts points out to them as salutary. in defiance of the exility of the effect which these notions produce oil the greater number, even of those who say they are, or who believe themselves persuaded, they are held forth as the most powerful rampart that can be opposed to the irregularities of man. nevertheless, as will be seen presently, it will be found that these systems, or rather these chimeras, so terrible to behold, operate little or nothing on the larger portion of mankind, who dream of them but seldom, never in the moment that passion, interest, pleasure, or example, hurries them along. if these fears act, it is commonly on those, who have but little occasion to abstain from evil; they make honest hearts tremble, but fail of effect on the perverse. they torment sensible souls, but leave those that are hardened in repose; they disturb tractable, gentle minds, but cause no trouble to rebellious spirits: thus they alarm none but those who are already sufficiently alarmed; they coerce only those who are already restrained. these notions, then, impress nothing on the wicked; when by accident they do act on them, it is only to redouble the wickedness of their natural character--to justify them in their own eyes--to furnish them with pretexts to exercise it without fear--to follow it without scruple. indeed, the experience of a great number of ages has shewn to what excess of wickedness, to what lengths, the passions of man have carried him, when they have been authorized by the priesthood--when they have been unchained by superstition--or, at least, when he has been enabled to cover himself with its mantle. man has never been more ambitious, never more covetous, never more crafty, never more cruel, never more seditious, than when he has persuaded himself that superstition permitted or commanded him to be so: thus, superstition did nothing more than lend an invincible force to his natural passions, which under its sacred auspices he could exercise with impunity, indulge without remorse; still more, the greatest villains, in giving free vent to the detestable propensities of their natural wickedness, have under its influence believed, that, by displaying an over-heated zeal, they merited well of heaven; that they exempted themselves by new crimes, from that chastisement which they thought their anterior conduct had richly merited. these, then, are the effects which what are called the _salutary_ notions of superstition, produce on mortals. these reflections will furnish an answer to those who say that, "if heaven was promised equally to the wicked as to the righteous, there would be found none incredulous of another life." we reply, that, in point of fact, superstition does accord heaven to the wicked, since it frequently places in this happy abode the most useless, the most depraved of men. is not mahomet himself enthroned in the empyrean by this superstition? if the calendar of the romish saints was examined, would it be found to contain none but righteous, none but good men? does not mahometanism cut off from all chance of future existence, consequently from all hope of reaching heaven, the female part of mankind? have the jews exalted no one to the celestial regions, save the virtuous? when the jew is condemned to the devouring flames, do not the men who thus torture an unhappy wretch, whose only crime is adherence to the religion of his forefathers, expect to be rewarded for the deed with everlasting happiness? are they not promised eternal salvation for their orthodoxy? was constantine, was st. cyril, was st. athanasius, was st. dominic, worthy beatification? were jupiter, thor, mercury, woden, and a thousand others, deserving of celestial diadems? is erring, feeble man, with all his imbecilities, competent to form a judgment of the heavenly deserts of his fellows? can be, with his dim optics, with his limited vision, fathom the human heart? can he sound its depths, trace its meanderings, dive into its recesses, with sufficient precision, to determine who amongst his race is or is not possessed of the requisite merit to enjoy a blessed eternity? thus wicked men are held up as models by superstition, which as we shall see, sharpens the passions of evil-disposed men, by legitimating those crimes, at which, without this sanction, they would shudder; which they would fear to commit; or for which, at least, they would feel shame; for which they would experience remorse. in short, the ministers of superstition furnish to the most profligate men the power of indulging their inflamed passions, and then hold forth to them means of diverting from their own heads the thunderbolt that should strike their crimes, by spreading before them fresh incentives to intolerant persecution, with the promise of a never-fading happiness. with respect to the incredulous, without doubt, there may be amongst them wicked men, as well as amongst the most credulous; but incredulity no more supposes wickedness, than credulity supposes righteousness. on the contrary, the man who thinks, who meditates, knows far better the true motives to goodness, than he who suffers himself to be blindly guided by uncertain motives, or by the interest of others. sensible men have the greatest advantage in examining opinions, which it is pretended must have an influence over their eternal happiness: if these are found false, if they appear injurious to their present life, they will not therefore conclude, that they have not another life either to fear or to hope; that they are permitted to deliver themselves up with impunity to vice, which would do an injury to themselves, that would draw upon them the contempt of their neighbour, which would subject them to the anger of society: the man who does not expect another life, is only more interested in prolonging his existence in this; in rendering himself dear to his fellows, by cultivating virtue; by performing all his duties with more strictness, in the only life of which he has any knowledge: he has made a great stride towards felicity, in disengaging himself from those terrors which afflict others, which frequently prevent their acting. such a man has nothing to fear, but every thing to hope; if, contrary to what he is able to judge, there should be an hereafter existence, will not his actions have been so regulated by virtue, will he not have so comported himself in his present existence, as to stand a fair chance of enjoying in their fullest extent those felicities prepared for his species? _superstition_, in fact, takes a pride in rendering man slothful, in moulding him to credulity, in making him pusillanimous. it is its principle to afflict him without intermission; to redouble in him the horrors of death: ever ingenious in tormenting him, it has extended his inquietudes beyond even his own existence; its ministers, the more securely to dispose of him in this world, invented, in future regions, a variety of rewards and punishments, reserving to themselves the privilege of awarding these heavenly recompences to those who yielded most implicitly to their arbitrary laws; of decreeing punishment to those refractory beings who rebelled against their power: thus, according to them, tantalus for divulging their secrets, must eternally fear, engulphed in burning sulphur, the stone ready to fall on his devoted head; whilst romulus was beatified and worshipped as a god under the name of quirinus. the same system of superstition caused the philosopher callisthenes to be put to death, for opposing the worship of alexander; and elevated the monk athanasius to be a saint in heaven. far from holding forth consolation to mortals, far from cultivating man's reason, far from teaching him to yield under the hands of necessity, superstition, in a great many countries, strives to render death still more bitter to him; to make its yoke sit heavy; to fill up its retinue with a multitude of hideous phantoms; to paint it in the most frightful colours; to render its approach terrible: by this means it has crowded the world with enthusiasts, whom it seduces by vague promises; with contemptible slaves, whom it coerces with the fear of imaginary evils: it has at length persuaded man, that his actual existence is only a journey, by which he will arrive at a more important life: this doctrine, whether it be rational or irrational, prevents him from occupying himself with his true happiness; from even dreaming of ameliorating his institutions, of improving his laws, of advancing the progress of science, of perfectioning his morals. vain and gloomy ideas have absorbed his attention: he consents to groan under fanatical tyranny--to writhe under political inflictions--to live in error--to languish in misfortune--in the hope, when he shall be no more, of being one day happier; in the firm confidence, that after he has disappeared, his calamities, his patience, will conduct him to a never-ending felicity: he has believed himself submitted to cruel priests, who are willing to make him purchase his future welfare at the expence of every thing most dear to his peace, most valuable to his existence here below: they have pictured heaven as irritated against him, as disposed to appease itself by punishing him eternally, for any efforts he should make to withdraw himself from, their power. it is thus the doctrine of a future life has been made fatal to the human species: it plunged whole nations into sloth, made them languid, filled them with indifference to their present welfare, or else precipitated them, into the most furious enthusiasm, which hurried them on to such lengths that they tore each other in pieces in order to merit the promised heaven. it will be asked, perhaps, by what road has man been conducted to form to himself these gratuitous ideas of another world? i reply, that it is a truth man has no idea of a future life, they are the ideas of the past and the present that furnish his imagination with the materials of which he constructs the edifice of the regions of futurity. hobbes says, "we believe that, that which is will always be, and that the same causes will have the same effects." man in his actual state, has two modes of feeling, one that he approves, another that he disapproves: thus, persuaded that these two modes of feeling must accompany him, even beyond his present existence, he placed in the regions of eternity two distinguished abodes, one destined to felicity, the other to misery: the one must contain those who obey the calls of superstition, who believe in its dogmas; the other is a prison, destined to avenge the cause of heaven, on all those who shall not faithfully believe the doctrines promulgated by the ministers of a vast variety of superstitions. has sufficient attention been paid to the fact that results as a necessary consequence from this reasoning; which on examination will be found to have rendered the first place entirely useless, seeing, that by the number and contradiction of these various systems, let man believe which ever he may, let him follow it in the most faithful manner, still he must be ranked as an infidel, as a rebel to the divinity, because he cannot believe in all; and those from which he dissents, by a consequence of their own creed, condemn him to the prison-house? such is the origin of the ideas upon a future life, so diffused among mankind. every where may be seen an elysium and a tartarus; a paradise and a hell; in a word, two distinguished abodes, constructed according to the imagination of the enthusiasts who have invented them, who have accommodated them to their own peculiar prejudices, to the hopes, to the fears, of the people who believe in them. the indian figures the first of these abodes as one of in-action, of permanent repose, because, being the inhabitant of a hot climate, he has learned to contemplate rest as the extreme of felicity: the mussulman promises himself corporeal pleasures, similar to those that actually constitute the object of his research in this life: each figures to himself, that on which he has learned to set the greatest value. of whatever nature these pleasures may be, man apprehended that a body was needful, in order that his soul might be enabled to enjoy the pleasures, or to experience the pains in reserve for him: from hence the doctrine of the _resurrection_; but as he beheld this body putrify, as he saw it dissolve, as he witnessed its decomposition, after death, he was at a loss how to form anew what he conceived so necessary to his system he therefore had recourse to the divine omnipotence, by whose interposition he now believes it will be effected. this opinion, so incomprehensible, is said to have originated in persia, among the magi, and finds a great number of adherents, who have never given it a serious examination: but the doctrine of the resurrection appears perfectly useless to all those, who believe in the existence of a soul that feels, thinks, suffers, and enjoys, after a separation from the body: indeed, there are already sects who begin to maintain, that the body is not necessary; that therefore it will not be resurrected. like berkeley, they conceive that "the soul has need neither of body nor any exterior being, either to experience sensations, or to have ideas:" the malebranchists, in particular, must suppose that the rejected souls will see every thing in the divinity; will feel themselves burn, without having occasion for bodies for that purpose. others, incapable of elevating themselves to these sublime notions, believed, that under divers forms, man animated successively different animals of various species; that he never ceased to be an inhabitant of the earth; such was the opinion of those who adopted the doctrine of metempsychosis. as for the miserable abode of souls, the imagination of fanatics, who were desirous of governing the people, strove to assemble the most frightful images, to render it still more terrible: fire is of all beings that which produces in man the most pungent sensation; not finding any thing more cruel, the enemies to the several dogmas were to be everlastingly punished with this torturing element: fire, therefore, was the point at which their imagination was obliged to stop. the ministers of the various systems agreed pretty generally, that fire would one day avenge their offended divinities: thus they painted the victims to the anger of the gods, or rather those who questioned their own creeds, as confined in fiery dungeons, as perpetually rolling in a vortex of bituminous flames, as plunged in unfathomable gulphs of liquid sulphur, making the infernal caverns resound with their useless groanings, with their unavailing gnashing of teeth. but it will, perhaps, be enquired, how could man reconcile himself to the belief of an existence accompanied with eternal torments; above all, as many according to their own superstitions had reason to fear it for themselves? many causes have concurred to make him adopt so revolting an opinion: in the first place, very few thinking men have ever believed such an absurdity, when they have deigned to make use of their reason; or, when they have accredited it, this notion was always counterbalanced by the idea of the goodness, by a reliance on the mercy, which they attributed to their respective divinities: in the second place, those who were blinded by their fears, never rendered to themselves any account of these strange doctrines, which they either received with awe from their legislators, or which were transmitted to them by their fathers: in the third place, each sees the object of his terrors only at a favourable distance: moreover, superstition promises him the means of escaping the tortures he believes he has merited. at length, like those sick people whom we see cling with fondness, even to the most painful life, man preferred the idea of an unhappy, though unknown existence, to that of non-existence, which he looked upon as the most frightful evil that could befal him; either because he could form no idea of it, or because his imagination painted to him this non-existence this nothing, as the confused assemblage of all evils. a known evil, of whatever magnitude, alarmed him less (above all, when there remained the hope of being able to avoid it), than an evil of which he knew nothing, upon which, consequently, his imagination was painfully employed, but to which he knew not how to oppose a remedy. it will be seen, then, that _superstition_, far from consoling man upon the necessity of death, only redoubles his terrors, by the evils with which it pretends his decease will be followed; these terrors are so strong, that the miserable wretches who believe strictly in these formidable doctrines, pass their days in affliction, bathed in the most bitter tears. what shall be said of an opinion so destructive to society, yet adopted by so many nations, which announces to them, that a severe fate may at each instant take them unprovided; that at each moment they are liable to pass under the most rigorous judgment? what idea can be better suited to terrify man--what more likely to discourage him--what more calculated to damp the desire of ameliorating his condition--than the afflicting prospect of a world always on the brink of dissolution; of a divinity seated upon the ruins of nature, ready to pass judgment on the human species? such are, nevertheless, the fatal opinions with which the mind of nations has been fed for thousands of years: they are so dangerous, that if by a happy want of just inference, he did not derogate in his conduct from these afflicting ideas, he would fall into the most abject stupidity. how could man occupy himself with a perishable world, ready every moment to crumble into atoms? how dream of rendering himself happy on earth, when it is only the porch to an eternal kingdom? is it then, surprising, that the superstitions to which similar doctrines serve for a basis, have prescribed to their disciples a total detachment from things below--an entire renunciation of the most innocent pleasures; have given birth to a sluggishness, to a pusillanimity, to an abjection of soul, to an insociability, that renders him useless to himself, dangerous to others? if necessity did not oblige man to depart in his practice from these irrational systems--if his wants did not bring him back to reason, in despite of these superstitious doctrines--the whole world would presently become a vast desert, inhabited by some few isolated savages, who would not even have courage to multiply themselves. what are these, but notions which he must necessarily put aside, in order that human association may subsist? nevertheless, the doctrine of a future life, accompanied with rewards and punishments, has been regarded for a great number of ages as the most powerful, or even as the only motive capable of coercing the passions of man; as the sole means that can oblige him to be virtuous: by degrees, this doctrine has become the basis of almost all religions and political systems, so much so, that at this day it is said, this prejudice cannot be attacked without absolutely rending asunder the bonds of society. the founders of superstition have made use of it to attach their credulous disciples; legislators have looked upon it as the curb best calculated to keep mankind under discipline; religion considers it necessary to his happiness; many philosophers themselves have believed with sincerity, that this doctrine was requisite to terrify man, was the only means to divert him from crime: notwithstanding, when the doctrine of the immortality of the soul first came out of the school of plato; when it first diffused itself among the greeks, it caused the greatest ravages; it determined a multitude of men, who were discontented with their condition, to terminate their existence: ptolemy philadelphus, king of egypt, seeing the effect this doctrine, which at the present day is looked upon as so salutary, produced on the brains of his subjects, prohibited the teaching of it under the penalty of death. it must, indeed, be allowed that this doctrine has been of the greatest utility to those who have given superstitions to nations, who at the same time made themselves its ministers; it was the foundation of their power, the source of their wealth, the permanent cause of that blindness, the solid basis of those terrors, which it was their interest to nourish in the human race. it was by this doctrine the priest became first the rival, then the master of kings: it is by this dogma that nations are filled with enthusiasts inebriated with superstition, always more disposed to listen to its menaces, than to the counsels of reasons, to the orders of the sovereign, to the cries of nature, or to the laws of society. politics itself was enslaved to the caprice of the priest; the temporal monarch was obliged to bend under the yoke of the monarch of superstition; the one only disposed of this perishable world, the other extended his power into the world to come; much more important for man than the earth, on which he is only a pilgrim, a mere passenger. thus the doctrine of another life placed the government itself in a state of dependance upon the priest; the monarch was nothing more than his first subject; he was never obeyed, but when the two were in accord. nature in vain cried out to man, to be careful of his present happiness; the priest ordered him to be unhappy, in the expectation of future felicity; reason in vain exhorted him to be peaceable; the priest breathed forth fanaticism, fulminated fury, obliged him to disturb the public tranquillity, every time there was a question of the supposed interests of the invisible monarch of another life, and the real interests of his ministers in this. such is the fruit that politics has gathered from the doctrine of a future life; the regions of the world to come have enabled the priesthood to conquer the present world. the expectation of celestial happiness, and the dread of future tortures, only served to prevent man from seeking after the means to render himself happy here below. thus error, under whatever aspect it is considered, will never be more than a source of evil for mankind. the doctrine of another life, in presenting to mortals an ideal happiness, will render them enthusiasts; in overwhelming them with fears, it will make useless beings; generate cowards; form atrabilarious or furious men; who will lose sight of their present abode, to occupy themselves with the pictured regions of a world to come, with those dreadful evils which they must fear after their death. if it be insisted that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments is the most powerful curb to restrain the passions of man, we shall reply by calling in daily experience. if we only cast our eyes around, if for a moment we examine what passes in review before us, we shall see this assertion contradicted; we shall find that these marvellous speculations do not in any manner diminish the number of the wicked, because they are incapable of changing the temperament of man, of annihilating those passions which the vices of society engender in his heart. in those nations who appear the most thoroughly convinced of this future punishment, may be seen assassins, thieves, crafty knaves, oppressors, adulterers, voluptuaries; all these pretend they are firmly persuaded of the reality of an hereafter; yet in the whirlwind of dissipation, in the vortex of pleasure, in the fury of their passions, they no longer behold this formidable future existence, which in those moments has no kind of influence over their earthly conduct. in short, in many of those countries where the doctrine of another life is so firmly established, that each individual irritates himself against whoever may have the temerity to combat the opinion, or even to doubt it, we see that it is utterly incapable of impressing any thing on rulers who are unjust, who are negligent of the welfare of their people, who are, debauched, on courtezans who are lewd in their habits, on covetous misers, on flinty extortioners who fatten on the substance of a nation, on women without modesty, on a vast multitude of drunken, intemperate, vicious men, on great numbers even amongst those priests, whose function it is to preach this future state, who are paid to announce the vengeance of heaven, against vices which they themselves encourage by their example. if it be enquired of them, how they dare to give themselves up to such scandalous actions, which they ought to know are certain to draw upon them eternal punishment? they will reply, that the madness of their passions, the force of their habits, the contagion of example, or even the power of circumstances, have hurried them along; have made them forget the dreadful consequences in which their conduct is likely to involve them; besides, they will say, that the treasures of the divine mercy are infinite; that repentance suffices to efface the foulest transgressions; to cleanse the blackest guilt; to blot out the most enormous crimes: in this multitude of wretched beings, who each after his own manner desolates society with his criminal pursuits, you will find only a small number who are sufficiently intimidated by the fears of the miserable hereafter, to resist their evil propensities. what did i say? these propensities are in themselves too weak to carry them forward without the aid of the doctrine of another life; without this, the law and the fear of censure would have been motives sufficient to prevent them from rendering themselves criminal. it is indeed, fearful, timorous souls, upon whom the terrors of another life make a profound impression; human beings of this sort come into the world with moderate passions, are of a weakly organization, possess a cool imagination; it is not therefore surprising, that in such men, who are already restrained by their nature, the fear of future punishment counterbalances the weak efforts of their feeble passions; but it is by no means the same with those determined sinners, with those hardened criminals, with those men who are habitually vicious, whose unseemly excesses nothing can arrest, who in their violence shut their eyes to the fear of the laws of this world, despising still more those of the other. nevertheless, how many persons say they are, and even believe themselves, restrained by the fears of the life to come? but, either they deceive us, or they impose upon themselves, by attributing to these fears, that which is only the effect of motives much nearer at hand; such as the feebleness of their machine, the mildness of their temperament, the slender energy of their souls, their natural timidity, the ideas imbibed in their education, the fear of consequences immediately resulting from criminal actions, the physical evils attendant on unbridled irregularities: these are the true motives that restrain them; not the notions of a future life: which men, who say they are most firmly persuaded of its existence, forget whenever a powerful interest solicits them to sin. if for a time man would pay attention to what passes before his eyes, he would perceive that he ascribes to the fear of the gods that which is in reality only the effect of peculiar weakness, of pusillanimity, of the small interest found to commit evil: these men would not act otherwise than they do, if they had not this fear before them; if, therefore he reflected, he would feel that it is always necessity that makes men act as they do. man cannot be restrained, when he does not find within himself motives sufficiently powerful to conduct him back to reason. there is nothing, either in this world or in the other, that can render him virtuous, when an untoward organization--a mind badly cultivated--a violent imagination--inveterate habits--fatal examples--powerful interests--invite him from every quarter to the commission of crime. no speculations are capable of restraining the man who braves public opinion, who despises the law, who is careless of its censure, who turns a deaf ear to the cries of conscience, whose power in this world places him out of the reach of punishment; in the violence of his transports, he will fear still less a distant futurity, of which the idea always recedes before that which he believes necessary to his immediate interests, consistent with his present happiness. all lively passions blind man to every thing that is not its immediate object; the terrors of a future life, of which his passions always possess the secret to diminish to him the probability, can effect nothing upon the wicked man, who does not fear even the much nearer punishment of the law; who sets at nought the assured hatred of those by whom he is surrounded. man, when he delivers himself up to crime, sees nothing certain except the supposed advantage which attends it; the rest always appear to him either false or problematical. if man would but open his eyes, even for a moment, he would clearly perceive, that to effect any thing upon hearts hardened by crime, he must not reckon upon the chastisement of an avenging divinity, which the self-love natural to man always shews him as pacified in the long run. he who has arrived at persuading himself he cannot be happy without crime, will always readily deliver himself up to it, notwithstanding the menaces of religion. whoever is sufficiently blind not to read his infamy in his own heart, to see his own vileness in the countenances of his associates, his own condemnation in the anger of his fellow-men, his own unworthiness in the indignation of the judges established to punish the offences he may commit: such a man, i say, will never feel the impression his crimes shall make on the features of a judge, that is either hidden from his view, or that he only contemplates at a distance. the tyrant who with dry eyes can hear the cries of the distressed, who with callous heart can behold the tears of a whole people, of whose misery he is the cause, will not see the angry countenance of a more powerful master: like another menippus, he may indeed destroy himself from desperation, to avoid reiterated reproach; which only proves, that when a haughty, arrogant despot pretends to be accountable for his actions to the divinity alone, it is because he fears his nation more than he does his god. on the other hand, does not superstition itself, does not even religion, annihilate the effects of those fears which it announces as salutary? does it not furnish its disciples with the means of extricating themselves from the punishments with which it has so frequently menaced them? does it not tell them, that a steril repentance will, even at the moment of death, disarm the celestial wrath; that it will purify the filthy souls of sinners? do not even the priests, in some superstitions, arrogate to themselves the right of remitting to the dying the punishment due to the crimes committed during the course of a disorderly life? in short, do not the most perverse men, encouraged in iniquity, countenanced in debauchery, upheld in crime, reckon, even to the last moment, either upon the assistance of superstition, or upon the aid of religion, that promises them the infallible means of reconciling themselves to the divinity, whom they have irritated; of avoiding the rigorous punishments pronounced against their enormities? in consequence of these notions, so favourable to the wicked, so suitable to tranquillize their fears, we see that the hope of an easy expiation, far from correcting man, engages him to persist, until death, in the most crying disorders. indeed, in despite of the numberless advantages which he is assured flows from the doctrine of a life to come, in defiance of its pretended efficacy to repress the passions of men, do not the priests themselves, although so interested in the maintenance of this system, every day complain of its insufficiency? they acknowledge, that mortals, who from their infancy they have imbued with these ideas, are not less hurried forward by their evil propensities--less sunk in the vortex of dissipation--less the slaves to their pleasures--less captivated by bad habits--less driven along by the torrent of the world--less seduced by their present interest--which make them forget equally the recompense and the chastisement of a future existence. in a word, the interpreters of superstition, the ministers of religion themselves, allow that their disciples, for the greater part, conduct themselves in this world as if they had nothing either to hope or fear in another. in short, let it be supposed for a moment, that the doctrine of eternal punishments was of some utility; that it really restrained a small number of individuals; what are these feeble advantages compared to the numberless evils that flow from it? against one timid man whom this idea restrains, there are thousands upon whom it operates nothing; there are thousands whom it makes irrational; whom it renders savage persecutors; whom it converts into fanatics; there are thousands whose mind it disturbs; whom it diverts from their duties towards society; there are an infinity whom it grievously afflicts, whom it troubles without producing any real good for their associates. notwithstanding so many are inclined to consider those who do not fall in with this doctrine as the enemies of society; it will be found on examination that the wisest the most enlightened men of antiquity, as well as many of the moderns, have believed not only that the soul is material and perishes with the body, but also that they have attacked without subterfuge the opinion of future everlasting punishments; it will also be found that many of the systems, set up to establish the immortality of the soul, are in themselves the best evidence that can be adduced of the futility of this doctrine; if for a moment we only follow up the natural the just inferences that are to be drawn from them. this sentiment was far from being, as some have supposed, peculiar to the epicureans, it has been adopted by philosophers of all sects, by pythagoreans, by stoics, by peripatetics, by academics; in short by the most godly the most virtuous men of greece and of rome. pythagoras, according to ovid, speaks strongly to the fact. timaeus of locris, who was a pythagorean, admits that the doctrine of future punishments was fabulous, solely destined for the imbecility of the uninformed; but little calculated for those who cultivate their reason. aristotle expressly says, that "man has neither good to hope nor evil to fear after death." zeno, according to cicero, supposed the soul to be an igneous substance, from whence he concluded it destroyed itself. cicero, the philosophical orator, who was of the sect of academics, although he is not on all occasions, in accord with himself, treats openly as fables the torments of hell; and looks upon death as the end of every thing for man. seneca, the philosopher, is filled with passages which contemplate death as a state of total annihilation, particularly in speaking of it to his brother: and nothing can be more decisive of his holding this opinion, than what he writes to marcia, to console him. seneca, the tragedian, explains himself in the same manner as the philosopher. the platonists, who made the soul immortal, could not have an idea of future punishments, because the soul according to them was a portion of the divinity which after the dissolution of the body it returned to rejoin. epictetus has the same idea. in a passage reported by arrian, he says, "but where are you going? it cannot be to a place of suffering: you will only return to the place from whence you came; you are about to be again peaceably associated with the elements from which you are derived. that which in your composition, is of the nature of fire, will return to the element of fire; that which is of the nature of earth, will rejoin itself to the earth; that which is air, will re-unite itself with air; that which is water, will resolve itself into water; there is no hell, no acheron, no cocytus, no phlegethon." in another place he says, "the hour of death approaches; but do not aggravate your evil, nor render things worse than they are: represent them to yourself under their true point of view. the time is come when the materials of which you are composed, go to resolve themselves into the elements from whence they were originally borrowed. what is there that is terrible or grievous in that? is there any thing in the world that perishes totally?" the sage and pious antoninus says, "he who fears death, either fears to be deprived of all feeling, or dreads to experience different sensations. if you lose all feeling, you will no longer be subject either to pain or to misery. if you are provided with other senses of a different nature, you will become a creature of a different species." this great emperor further says, "that we must expect death with tranquillity, seeing, that it is only a dissolution of the elements of which each animal is composed." to the evidence of so many great men of _pagan antiquity_, may be joined, that of the author of ecclesiastes, who speaks of death, and of the condition of the human soul, like an _epicurean_; he says, "for that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath: so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. all go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." and further, "wherefore i perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him." in short, how can the utility or the necessity of this doctrine be reconciled with the fact, that the great _legislator of the jews_; who is supposed to have been inspired by the divinity, should have remained silent on a subject, that is said to be of so much importance? in the third chapter of genesis it, is said, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." chap. xiv. _education, morals, and the laws suffice to restrain man.--of the desire of immortality.--of suicide._ it is not then in an ideal world, existing no where perhaps, but in the imagination of man, that he must seek to collect motives calculated to make him act properly in this; it is in the visible world that will be found incitements to divert him from crime; to rouse him to virtue. it is in nature,--in experience,--in truth, that he must search out remedies for the evils of his species; for motives suitable to infuse into the human heart, propensities truely useful to society; calculated to promote its advantage; to conduce to the end for which it was designed. if attention has been paid to what has been said in the course of this work, it will be seen that above all it is _education_ that will best furnish the true means of rectifying the errors, of recalling the wanderings of mankind. it is this that should scatter the seeds in his heart; cultivate the tender shoots; make a profitable use of his dispositions; turn to account those faculties, which depend on his organization: which should cherish the fire of his imagination, kindle it for useful objects; damp it, or extinguish it for others; in short, it is this which should make sensible souls contract habits which are advantageous for society and beneficial to the individual. brought up in this manner, man would not have occasion for celestial punishments, to teach him the value of virtue; he would not need to behold burning gulphs of brimstone under his feet, to induce him to feel horror for crime; nature without these fables, would teach much better what he owes to himself; the law would point out what he owes to the body politic, of which he is a member. it is thus, that education grounded upon utility, would form valuable citizens to the state; the depositaries of power would distinguish those whom education should have thus formed, by reason of the advantages which they would procure for their country; they would punish those who should be found injurious to it; it would make the citizens see, that the promises of reward which education held forth, the punishments denounced by morals, are by no means vain; that in a state well constituted, _virtue_ is the true, the only road to happiness; _talents_ the way to gain respect; that _inutility_ conducts to misfortune: that _crime_ leads to contempt. a just, enlightened, virtuous, and vigilant government, who should honestly propose the public good, would have no occasion either for fables or for falsehoods, to govern reasonable subjects; it would blush to make use of imposture, to deceive its citizens; who, instructed in their duties, would find their interest in submitting to equitable laws; who would be capable of feeling the benefit these have the power of conferring on them; it would feel, that habit is sufficient to inspire them with horror, even for those concealed crimes that escape the eyes of society; it would understand that the visible punishments of this world impose much more on the generality of men, than those of an uncertain and distant futurity: in short, it would ascertain that the sensible benefits within the compass of the sovereign power to distribute, touch the imagination of mortals more keenly, than those vague recompences which are held forth to them in a future existence: above all, it would discover that those on whom these distant advantages do operate, would be still more attached to virtue by receiving their reward both here and hereafter. man is almost every where so wicked, so corrupt, so rebellious to reason, only because he is not governed according to his nature, nor properly instructed in her necessary laws: he is almost in every climate fed with superstitious chimeras; submitted to masters who neglect his instruction or who seek to deceive him. on the face of this globe, may be frequently witnessed unjust sovereigns, who, enervated by luxury, corrupted by flattery, depraved by licentiousness, made wicked by impunity, devoid of talents, without morals, destitute of virtue, are incapable of exerting any energy for the benefit of the states they govern; they are consequently but little occupied with the welfare of their people; indifferent to their duties; of which indeed they are often ignorant. such governors suffer their whole attention to be absorbed by frivolous amusement; stimulated by the desire of continually finding means to feed their insatiable ambition they engage in useless depopulating wars; and never occupy their mind with those objects which are the most important to the happiness of their nation: yet these weak men feel interested in maintaining the received prejudices, and visit with severity those who consider the means of curing them: in short themselves deprived of that understanding, which teaches man that it is his interest to be kind, just, and virtuous; they ordinarily reward only those crimes which their imbecility makes them imagine as useful to them; they generally punish those virtues which are opposed to their own imprudent passions, but which reason would point out as truly beneficial to their interests. under such masters is it surprising that society should be ravaged; that weak beings should be willing to imitate them; that perverse men should emulate each other in oppressing its members; in sacrificing its dearest interests; in despoiling its happiness? the state of society in such countries, is a state of hostility of the sovereign against the whole, of each of its members the one against the other. man is wicked, not because he is born so, but because he is rendered so; the great, the powerful, crush with impunity the indigent and the unhappy; these, at the risk of their lives seek to retaliate, to render back the evil they have received: they attack either openly or in secret a country, who to them is a step-mother, who gives all to some of her children, and deprives the others of every thing: they punish it for its partiality, and clearly shew that the motives borrowed from a life hereafter are impotent against the fury of those passions to which a corrupt administration has given birth; that the terror of the punishments in this world are too feeble against necessity; against criminal habits; against dangerous organization uncorrected by education. in many countries the morals of the people are neglected; the government is occupied only with rendering them timid; with making them miserable. man is almost every where a slave; it must then follow of necessity, that he is base, interested, dissimulating, without honour, in a word that he has the vices of the state of which he is a citizen. almost every where he is deceived; encouraged in ignorance; prevented from cultivating his reason; of course he must be stupid, irrational, and wicked almost every where he sees vice applauded, and crime honoured; thence he concludes vice to be a good; virtue, only a useless sacrifice of himself: almost every where he is miserable, therefore he injures his fellow-men in a fruitless attempt to relieve his own anguish: it is in vain to shew him heaven in order to restrain him; his views presently descend again to earth; he is willing to be happy at any price; therefore, the laws which have neither provided for his instruction, for his morals, nor his happiness, menace him uselessly; he plunges on in his pursuits, and these ultimately punish him, for the unjust negligence of his legislators. if politics more enlightened, did seriously occupy itself with the instruction, with the welfare of the people; if laws were more equitable; if each society, less partial, bestowed on its members the care, the education, and the assistance which they have a right to expect; if governments less covetous, and more vigilant, were sedulous to render their subjects more happy, there would not be seen such numbers of malefactors, of robbers, of murderers, who every where infest society; they would not be obliged to destroy life, in order to punish wickedness; which is commonly ascribable to the vices of their own institutions: it would be unnecessary to seek in another life for fanciful chimeras, which always prove abortive against the infuriate passions; against the real wants of man. in short, if the people were instructed, they would be more happy; politics would no longer be reduced to the exigency of deceiving them, in order to restrain them; nor to destroy so many unfortunates, for having procured necessaries, at the expence of their hard-hearted fellow-citizens. when it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those punishments that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced--let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labour--let not his substance be ravished from him by cruel imposts--let him not be discouraged from work, by finding all his labour inadequate to support his existence; let him not be driven into that idleness, that will surely lead him on to crime: let him consider his present existence, without carrying his views to that which may attend him after his death; let his industry be excited--let his talents be rewarded--let him be rendered active, laborious, beneficent, and virtuous, in the world he inhabits; let it be shewn to him, that his actions are capable of having an influence over his fellow-men. let him not be menaced with the tortures of a future existence when he shall be no more; let him behold society armed against those who disturb its repose; let him see the consequence of the hatred of his associates; let him learn to feel the value of their affection; let him be taught to esteem himself; let him understand, that to obtain it, he must have virtue; above all, that the virtuous man in society has nothing to fear, but every thing to hope. if it be desired to form honest, courageous, industrious citizens, who may be useful to their country, let them beware of inspiring man from his infancy with an ill-founded dread of death; of amusing his imagination with marvellous fables; of occupying his mind with his destiny in a future life, quite useless to be known, which has nothing in common with his real felicity. let them speak of immortality to intrepid, noble souls; let them shew it as the price of their labours to energetic minds, who are solely occupied with virtue; who springing forward beyond the boundaries of their actual existence--who, little satisfied with eliciting the admiration, with gaining the love of their contemporaries, are will also to wrest the homage, to secure the affection of future races. indeed, this is an immortality to which genius, talents, above all virtue, has a just right to pretend; do not therefore let them censure--do not let them endeavour to stifle so noble a passion in man; which is founded upon his nature; which is so calculated to render him happy; from which society gather the most advantageous fruits. the idea of being buried in total oblivion, of having nothing in common after his death with the beings of his species; of losing all possibility of again having any influence over them, is a thought extremely painful to man; it is above all afflicting to those who possess an ardent imagination. the _desire of immortality_, or of living in the memory of his fellow men, was always the passion of great souls; it was the motive to the actions of all those who have played a great part on the earth. _heroes_ whether virtuous or criminal, _philosophers_ as well as _conquerors, men of genius_ and _men of talents_, those sublime personages who have done honor to their species, as well as those illustrious villains who have debased and ravaged it, have had an eye to posterity in all their enterprises; have flattered themselves with the hope of acting upon the souls of men, even when they themselves should no longer exist. if man in general does not carry his views so far, he is at least sensible to the idea of seeing himself regenerated in his children; whom he knows are destined to survive him; to transmit his name; to preserve his memory; to represent him in society; it is for them that he rebuilds his cottage; it is for them that he plants the tree which his eyes will never behold in its vigour; it is that they may be happy that he labours. the sorrow which embitters the life of those rich men, frequently so useless to the world, when they have lost the hope of continuing their race, has its source in the fear of being entirely forgotten: they feel that the useless man dies entirely. the idea that his name will be in the mouths of men, the thought that it will be pronounced with tenderness, that it will be recollected with kindness, that it will excite in their hearts favourable sentiments, is an illusion that is useful; is a vision suitable to flatter even those who know that nothing will result from it. man pleases himself with dreaming that he shall have power, that he shall pass for something in the universe, even after the term of his human existence; he partakes by imagination in the projects, in the actions, in the discussions of future ages, and would be extremely unhappy if he believed himself entirely excluded from their society. the laws in all countries have entered into these views; they have so far been willing to console their citizens for the necessity of dying, by giving them the means of exercising their will, even for a long time after their death: this condescension goes to that length, that the dead frequently regulate the condition of the living during a long series of years. every thing serves to prove the desire in man of surviving himself. _pyramids, mausoleums, monuments, epitaphs,_ all shew that he is willing to prolong his existence even beyond his decease. he, is not insensible to the judgment of posterity; it is for him the philosopher writes; it is to astonish him that the monarch erects sumptuous edifices, gorgeous palaces; it is his praises, it is his commendations, that the great man already hears echo in his ears; it is to him that the virtuous citizen appeals from unjust laws; from prejudiced contemporaries--happy chimera! generous illusion! mild vision! its power is so consoling, so bland, that it realizes itself to ardent imaginations; it is calculated to give birth, to sustain, to nurture, to mature enthusiasm of genius, constancy of courage, grandeur of soul, transcendency of talent; its force is so gentle, its influence so pleasing, that it is sometimes able to repress the vices, to restrain the excesses of the most powerful men; who are, as experience has shewn, frequently very much disquieted for the judgment of their posterity; from a conviction that this will sooner or later avenge the living of the foul injustice which they may be inclined to make them suffer. no man, therefore, can consent to be entirely effaced from the remembrance of his fellows; some men have not the temerity to place themselves above the judgment of the future human species, to degrade themselves in his eyes. where is the being who is insensible to the pleasure of exciting the tears of those who shall survive him; of again acting upon their souls; of once more occupying their thoughts; of exercising upon them his power even from the bottom of his grave? let then eternal silence be imposed upon those superstitious beings, upon those melancholy men, upon those furious bigots, who censure a sentiment from which society derives so many real advantages; let not mankind listen to those passionless philosophers who are willing to smother this great, this noble spring of his soul; let him not be seduced by the sarcasms of those voluptuaries, who pretend to despise an immortality, towards which they lack the power to set forward; the desire of pleasing posterity, of rendering his name agreeable to generations yet to come, is a respectable, a laudable motive, when it causes him to undertake those things, of which the utility may be felt, of which the advantages may have an influence not only over his contemporaries, but also over nations who have not yet an existence. let him not treat as irrational, the enthusiasm of those beneficent beings, of those mighty geniuses, of those stupendous talents, whose keen, whose penetrating regards, have foreseen him even in their day; who have occupied themselves for him; for his welfare; for his happiness; who have desired his suffrage; who have written for him; who have enriched him by their discoveries; who have cured him of some of his errors. let him render them the homage which they have expected at his hands; let him, at least, reverence their memory for the benefits he has derived from them; let him treat their mouldering remains with respect, for the pleasure he receives from their labours; let him pay to their ashes a tribute of grateful recollection, for the happiness they have been sedulous to procure for him. let him sprinkle with his tears, let him hallow with his remembrance, let him consecrate with his finest sensibilities, the urns of socrates, of phocion; of archimedes; of anaxarchus; let him wash out the stain that their punishment has made on the human species; let him expiate by his regret the athenian ingratitude, the savage barbarity of nicocreon; let him learn by their example to dread superstitious fanaticism; to hold political intolerance in abhorrence; let him fear to harrass merit; let him be cautious how he insults virtue, in persecuting those who may happen to differ from him in his prejudices. let him strew flowers over the tombs of an homer--of a tasso--of a shakespeare--of a milton--of a goldsmith; let him revere the immortal shades of those happy geniuses, whose songs yet vibrate on his ears; whose harmonious lays excite in his soul the most tender sentiments; let him bless the memory of all those benefactors to the people, who were the delight of the human race; let him adore the virtues of a titus--of a trajan--of an antoninus--of a julian: let him merit in his sphere, the eulogies of future ages; let him always remember, that to carry with him to the grave the regret of his fellow man, he must display talents; evince integrity; practice virtue. the funeral ceremonies of the most powerful monarchs, have rarely been wetted with the tears of the people, they have commonly drained them while living. the names of tyrants excite the horror of those who bear them pronounced. tremble then cruel kings! ye who plunge your subjects into misery; who bathe them with bitter tears--who ravage nations--who deluge the land with the vital stream--who change the fruitful earth into a barren cemetery; tremble for the sanguinary traits under which the future historian will paint you, to generations yet unborn: neither your splendid monuments--your imposing victories--your innumerable armies, nor your sycophant courtiers, can prevent posterity from avenging their grandfathers; from insulting your odious manes; from treating your execrable memories with scorn; from showering their contempt on your transcendant crimes. not only man sees his dissolution with pain, but again, he wishes his death may be an interesting event for others. but, as we have already said, he must have talents--he must have beneficence--he must have virtue, in order, that those who surround him, may interest themselves in his condition; that those who survive him, may give regret to his ashes. is it, then, surprising if the greater number of men, occupied entirely with themselves, completely absorbed by their own vanity, devoted to their own puerile objects, for ever busied with the care of gratifying their vile passions, at the expence, perhaps, of their family happiness, unheedful of the wants of a wife, unmindful of the necessity of their children, careless of the calls of friendship, regardless of their duty to society, do not by their death excite the sensibilities of their survivors; or that they should be presently forgotten? there is an infinity of monarchs of which history does not tell us any thing, save that they have lived. in despite of the inutility in which men for the most part pass their existence, maugre the little care they bestow, to render themselves dear to the beings who environ them; notwithstanding the numerous actions they commit to displease their associates; the self love of each individual, persuades him, that his death must be an interesting occurrence: few men but think themselves an euryalus in friendship, all expect to find a nisus, thus man's over-weening philauty shews him to say thus the order of things are overturned at his decease. o mortal! feeble and vain! dost thou not know the sesostris's, the alexanders, the caesars are dead? yet the course of the universe is not arrested; the demise of those famous conquerors, afflicting to some few favoured slaves, was a subject of delight for the whole human race. dost thou then foolishly believe that thy talents ought to interest thy species, that they are of sufficient extent to put it into mourning at thy decease? alas! the corneilles, the lockes, the newtons, the boyles, the harveys, the montesquieus, the sheridans are no more! regretted by a small number of friends, who have presently consoled themselves by their necessary avocations, their death was indifferent to the greater number of their fellow citizens. darest thou then flatter thyself, that thy reputation, thy titles, thy riches, thy sumptuous repasts, thy diversified pleasures, will make thy funeral a melancholy event! it will be spoken of by some few for two days, and do not be at all surprised: learn that there have died in former ages, in babylon, in sardis, in carthage, in athens, in rome, millions of citizens more illustrious, more powerful, more opulent, more voluptuous, than thou art; of whom, however, no one has taken care to transmit to thee even the names. be then virtuous, o man! in whatever station thy destiny assigns thee, and thou shalt be happy in thy life time; do thou good and thou shalt be cherished; acquire talents and thou shalt be respected; posterity shall admire thee, if those talents, by becoming beneficial to their interests, shall bring them acquainted with the name under which they formerly designated thy annihilated being. but the universe will not be disturbed by thy loss; and when thou comest to die, whilst thy wife, thy children, thy friends, fondly leaning over thy sickly couch, shall be occupied with the melancholy task of closing thine eyes, thy nearest neighbour shall perhaps be exulting with joy! let not then man occupy himself with his condition that may be to come, but let him sedulously endeavour to make himself useful, to those with whom he lives; let him for his own peculiar happiness render himself dutiful to his parents--faithful to his wife--attentive to his children--kind to his relations---true to his friends--lenient to his servants; let him strive to become estimable in the eyes of his fellow citizens; let him faithfully serve a country which assures to him his welfare; let the desire of pleasing posterity, of meriting its applause, excite him to those labours that shall elicit their eulogies: let a legitimate self-love, when he shall be worthy of it, make him taste in advance those commendations which he is willing to deserve; let him learn to love himself--to esteem himself; but never let him consent that concealed vices, that sacred crimes, shall degrade him in his own eyes; shall oblige him to be ashamed of his own conduct. thus disposed, let him contemplate his own decease with the same indifference, that it will be looked upon by the greater number of his fellows; let him expect death with constancy; wait for it with calm resignation; let him learn to shake off those vain terrors with which superstition, would overwhelm him; let him leave to the enthusiast his vague hopes; to the fanatic his mad-brained speculations; to the bigot those fears with which he ministers to his own melancholy; but let his heart, fortified by reason, corroborated by a love of virtue, no longer dread a dissolution that will destroy all feeling. whatever may be the attachment man has to life, whatever may be his fear of death, it is every day witnessed, that habit, that opinion, that prejudice, are motives sufficiently powerful to annihilate these passions in his breast; to make him brave danger; to cause him to hazard his existence. ambition, pride, jealousy, love, vanity, avarice, the desire of glory, that deference of opinion which is decorated with the sounding title of _a point of honour_, have the efficacy to make him shut his eyes to danger; to laugh at peril; to push him on to death: vexation, anxiety of mind, disgrace, want of success, softens to him its hard features; makes him regard it as a door that will afford him shelter from the injustice of mankind: indigence, trouble, adversity, familiarizes him with this death, so terrible to the happy. the poor man, condemned to labour, inured to privations, deprived of the comforts of life, views its approach with indifference: the unfortunate, when he is unhappy, when he is without resource, embraces it in despair; the wretched accelerates its march as soon as he sees that happiness is no longer within his grasp. man in different ages, in different countries, has formed opinions extremely various upon the conduct of those, who have had the temerity to put an end to their own existence. his ideas upon this subject, as upon all others, have taken their tone from his religion, have been governed by his superstitious systems, have been modified by his political institutions. the greeks, the romans, and other nations, which every thing conspired to make intrepid, to render courageous, to lead to magnanimity, regarded as heroes, contemplated as gods, those who voluntarily cut the thread of life. in hindoostan, the brahmin yet knows how to inspire even women with sufficient fortitude to burn themselves upon the dead bodies of their husbands. the japanese, upon the most trifling occasion, takes no kind of difficulty in plunging a dagger into his bosom. among the people of our own country, religion renders man less prodigal of life; it teaches that it is offensive to the deity that he should destroy himself. some moralists, abstracting the height of religious ideas, have held that it is never permitted to man to break the conditions of the covenant that he has made with society. others have looked upon suicide as cowardice; they have thought that it was weakness, that it displayed pusillanimity, to suffer, himself to be overwhelmed with the shafts of his destiny; and have held that there would be much more courage, more elevation of soul, in supporting his afflictions, in resisting the blows of fate. if nature be consulted upon this point, it will be found that all the actions of man, that feeble plaything in the hands of necessity, are indispensable; that they depend on causes which move him in despite of himself--that without his knowledge, make him accomplish at each moment of his existence some one of its decrees. if the same power that obliges all intelligent beings to cherish their existence, renders that of man so painful, so cruel, that he finds it insupportable he quits his species; order is destroyed for him, he accomplishes a decree of nature, that wills he shall no longer exist. this nature has laboured during thousands of years, to form in the bowels of the earth the iron that must number his days. if the relation of man with nature be examined, it will be found that his engagement was neither voluntary on his part, nor reciprocal on the part of nature. the volition of his will had no share in his birth; it is commonly against his will that he is obliged to finish life; his actions are, as we have proved, only the necessary effects of unknown causes which determine his will. he is, in the hands of nature, that which a sword is in his own hands; he can fall upon it without its being able to accuse him with breaking his engagements; or of stamping with ingratitude the hand that holds it: man can only love his existence on condition of being happy; as soon as the entire of nature refuses him this happiness; as soon as all that surrounds him becomes incommodious to him, as soon as his melancholy ideas offer nothing but afflicting pictures to his imagination; he already exists no longer; he is suspended in the void; he quits a rank which no longer suits him; in which he finds no one interest; which offers him no protection; which overwhelms him with calamity; in which he can no more be useful either to himself or to others. if the covenant which unites man to society be considered, it will be obvious that every contract is conditional, must be reciprocal; that is to say, supposes mutual advantages between the contracting parties. the citizen cannot be bound to his country, to his associates, but by the bonds of happiness. are these bonds cut asunder? he is restored to liberty. society, or those who represent it, do they use him with harshness, do they treat him with injustice, do they render his existence painful? does disgrace hold him out to the finger of scorn; does indigence menace him in an obdurate world? perfidious friends, do they forsake him in adversity? an unfaithful wife, does she outrage his heart? rebellious, ungrateful children, do they afflict his old age? has he placed his happiness exclusively on some object which it is impossible for him to procure? chagrin, remorse, melancholy, and despair, have they disfigured to him the spectacle of the universe? in short, for whatever cause it may be: if he is not able to support his evils, he quits a world, which from henceforth, is for him only a frightful desert he removes himself for ever from a country he thinks no longer willing to reckon him amongst the number of her children--he quits a house that to his mind is ready to bury him under its ruins--he renounces a society, to the happiness of which he can no longer contribute; which his own peculiar felicity alone can render dear to him: and could the man be blamed, who, finding himself useless; who being without resources, in the town where destiny gave him birth, should quit it in chagrin, to plunge himself in solitude? death appears to the wretched the only remedy for despair; it is then the sword seems the only friend, the only comfort that is left to the unhappy: as long as hope remains the tenant of his bosom--as long as his evils appear to him at all supportable--as long as he flatters himself with seeing them brought to a termination--as long as he finds some comfort in existence, however slender, he will not consent to deprive himself of life: but when nothing any longer sustains in him the love of this existence, then to live, is to him the greatest of evils; to die, the only mode by which he can avoid the excess of despair. this has been the opinion of many great men: seneca, the moralist, whom lactantius calls the divine pagan, who has been praised equally by st. austin and st. augustine, endeavours by every kind of argument to make death a matter of indifference to man. cato has always been commended, because he would not survive the cause of liberty; for that he would not live a slave. curtius, who rode voluntarily into the gap, to save his country, has always been held forth as a model of heroic virtue. is it not evident, that those martyrs who have delivered themselves up to punishment, have preferred quitting the world to living in it contrary to their own ideals of happiness? when samson wished to be revenged on the philistines, did he not consent to die with them as the only means? if our country is attacked, do we not voluntarily sacrifice our lives in its defence? that society who has not the ability, or who is not willing to procure man any one benefit, loses all its rights over him; nature, when it has rendered his existence completely miserable, has in fact, ordered him to quit it: in dying he does no more than fulfil one of her decrees, as he did when he first drew his breath. to him who is fearless of death, there is no evil without a remedy; for him who refuses to die, there yet exists benefits which attach him to the world; in this case let him rally his powers--let him oppose courage to a destiny that oppresses him--let him call forth those resources with which nature yet furnishes him; she cannot have totally abandoned him, while she yet leaves him the sensation of pleasure; the hopes of seeing a period to his pains. man regulates his judgment on his fellows, only by his own peculiar mode of feeling; he deems as folly, he calls delirium all those violent actions which he believes but little commensurate with their causes; or which appear to him calculated to deprive him of that happiness, towards which he supposes a being in the enjoyment of his senses, cannot cease to have a tendency: he treats his associate as a weak creature, when he sees him affected with that which touches him but lightly; or when he is incapable of supporting those evils, which his self-love flatters him, he would himself be able to endure with more fortitude. he accuses with madness whoever deprives himself of life, for objects that he thinks unworthy so dear a sacrifice; he taxes him with phrenzy, because he has himself learned to regard this life as the greatest blessing. it is thus that he always erects himself into a judge of the happiness of others--of their mode of seeing--of their manner of feeling: a miser who destroys himself after the loss of his treasure, appears a fool in the eyes of him who is less attached to riches; he does not feel, that without money, life to this miser is only a continued torture; that nothing in the world is capable of diverting him from his painful sensations: he will proudly tell you, that in his place he had not done so much; but to be exactly in the place of another man, it is needful to have his organization--his temperament--his passions--his ideas; it is in fact needful to be that other; to be placed exactly in the same circumstances; to be moved by the same causes; and in this case all men, like the miser, would sacrifice their life, after being deprived of the only source of their happiness. he who deprives himself of his existence, does not adopt this extremity, so repugnant to his natural tendency; but when nothing in this world has the faculty of rejoicing him; when no means are left of diverting his affliction; when reason no longer acts; his misfortune whatever it may be, for him is real; his organization, be it strong, or be it weak, is his own, not that of another: a man who is sick only in imagination, really suffers considerably; even troublesome dreams place him in a very uncomfortable situation. thus when a man kills himself, it ought to be concluded, that life, in the room of being a benefit, had become a very great evil to him; that existence had lost all its charms in his eyes; that the entire of nature was to him destitute of attraction; that it no longer contained any thing that could seduce him; that after the comparison which his disturbed imagination had made of existence with non-existence, the latter appeared to him preferable to the first. many will consider these maxims as dangerous; they certainly account why the unhappy cut the thread of life, in a manner not corresponding with the received prejudices; but, nevertheless, it is a temperament soured by chagrin, a bilious constitution, a melancholy habit, a defect in the organization, a derangement in the mind; it is in fact necessity and not reasonable speculations, that breed in man the design of destroying himself. nothing invites him to this step so long as reason remains with him; or whilst he yet possesses hope, that sovereign balm for every evil: as for the unfortunate, who cannot lose sight of his sorrows--who cannot forget his pains--who has his evils always present to his mind; he is obliged to take counsel from these alone: besides, what assistance, what advantage can society promise to himself, from a miserable wretch reduced to despair; from a misanthrope overwhelmed with grief; from a wretch tormented with remorse, who has no longer any motive to render himself useful to others--who has abandoned himself--who finds no more interest in preserving his life? frequently, those who destroy themselves are such, that had they lived, the offended laws must have ultimately been obliged to remove them from a society which they disgraced; from a country which they had injured. as life is commonly the greatest blessing for man, it is to be presumed that he who deprives himself of it, is compelled to it by an invincible force. it is the excess of misery, the height of despair, the derangement of his brain, caused by melancholy, that urges man on to destroy himself. agitated by contrary impulsions, he is, as we have before said, obliged to follow a middle course that conducts him to his death; if man be not a free-agent, in any one instant of his life, he is again much less so in the act by which it is terminated. it will be seen then, that he who kills himself, does not, as it is pretended, commit an outrage on nature. he follows an impulse which has deprived him of reason; adopts the only means left him to quit his anguish; he goes out of a door which she leaves open to him; he cannot offend in accomplishing a law of necessity: the iron hand of this having broken the spring that renders life desirable to him; which urged him to self-conservation, shews him he ought to quit a rank or system where he finds himself too miserable to have the desire of remaining. his country or his family have no right to complain of a member, whom it has no means of rendering happy; from whom consequently they have nothing more to hope: to be useful to either, it is necessary he should cherish his own peculiar existence; that he should have an interest in conserving himself--that he should love the bonds by which he is united to others--that he should be capable of occupying himself with their felicity--that he should have a sound mind. that the suicide should repent of his precipitancy, he should outlive himself, he should carry with him into his future residence, his organs, his senses, his memory, his ideas, his actual mode of existing, his determinate manner of thinking. in short, nothing is more useful for society, than to inspire man with a contempt for death; to banish from his mind the false ideas he has of its consequences. the fear of death can never do more than make cowards; the fear of its consequences will make nothing but fanatics or melancholy beings, who are useless to themselves, unprofitable to others. death is a resource that ought not by any means to be taken away from oppressed virtue; which the injustice of man frequently reduces to despair. if man feared death less, he would neither be a slave nor superstitious; truth would find defenders more zealous; the rights of mankind would be more hardily sustained; virtue would be intrepidly upheld: error would be more powerfully opposed; tyranny would be banished from nations: cowardice nourishes it, fear perpetuates it. in fact, _man can neither be contented nor happy whilst his opinions shall oblige him to tremble_. chap. xv. _of man's true interest, or of the ideas he forms to himself of happiness.--man cannot be happy without virtue._ utility, as has been before observed, ought to be the only standard of the judgment of man. to be useful, is to contribute to the happiness of his fellow creatures; to be prejudicial, is to further their misery. this granted, let us examine if the principles we have hitherto established be prejudicial or advantageous, useful or useless, to the human race. if man unceasingly seeks after his happiness, he can only approve of that which procures for him his object, or furnishes him the means by which it is to be obtained. what has been already said will serve in fixing our ideas upon what constitutes this happiness: it has been already shewn that it is only continued pleasure: but in order that an object may please, it is necessary that the impressions it makes, the perceptions it gives, the ideas which it leaves, in short, that the motion it excites in man should be analogous to his organization; conformable to his temperament; assimilated to his individual nature:--modified as it is by habit, determined as it is by an infinity of circumstances, it is necessary that the action of the object by which he is moved, or of which the idea remains with him, far from enfeebling him, far from annihilating his feelings, should tend to strengthen him; it is necessary, that without fatiguing his mind, exhausting his faculties, or deranging his organs, this object should impart to his machine that degree of activity for which it continually has occasion. what is the object that unites all these qualities? where is the man whose organs are susceptible of continual agitation without being fatigued; without experiencing a painful sensation; without sinking? man is always willing to be warned of his existence in the most lively manner, as long as he can be so without pain. what do i say? he consents frequently to suffer, rather than not feel. he accustoms himself to a thousand things which at first must have affected him in a disagreeable manner; but which frequently end either by converting themselves into wants, or by no longer affecting him any way: of this truth tobacco, coffee, and above all brandy furnish examples: this is the reason he runs to see tragedies; that he witnesses the execution of criminals. in short, the desire of feeling, of being powerfully moved, appears to be the principle of curiosity; of that avidity with which man seizes on the marvellous; of that earnestness with which he clings to the supernatural; of the disposition he evinces for the incomprehensible. where, indeed, can he always find objects in nature capable of continually supplying the stimulus requisite to keep him in activity, that shall be ever proportioned to the state of his own organization; which his extreme mobility renders subject to perpetual variation? the most lively pleasures are always the least durable, seeing they are those which exhaust him most. that man should be uninterruptedly happy, it would be requisite that his powers were infinite; it would require that to his mobility he joined a vigor, attached a solidity, which nothing could change; or else it is necessary that the objects from which he receives impulse, should either acquire or lose properties, according to the different states through which his machine is successively obliged to pass; it would need that the essences of beings should be changed in the same proportion as his dispositions; should be submitted to the continual influence of a thousand causes, which modify him without his knowledge, and in despite of himself. if, at each moment, his machine undergoes changes more or less marked, which are ascribable to the different degrees of elasticity, of density, of serenity of the atmosphere; to the portion of igneous fluid circulating through his blood; to the harmony of his organs; to the order that exists between the various parts of his body; if, at every period of his existence, his nerves have not the same tensions, his fibres the same elasticity, his mind the same activity, his imagination the same ardour, &c. it is evident that the same causes in preserving to him only the same qualities, cannot always affect him in the same manner. here is the reason why those objects that please him in one season displease him in another: these objects have not themselves sensibly changed; but his organs, his dispositions, his ideas, his mode of seeing, his manner of feeling, have changed:--such is the source of man's inconstancy. if the same objects are not constantly in that state competent to form the happiness of the same individual, it is easy to perceive that they are yet less in a capacity to please all men; or that the same happiness cannot be suitable to all. beings already various by their temperament, unlike in their faculties, diversified in their organization, different in their imagination, dissimilar in their ideas, of distinct opinions, of contrary habits, which an infinity of circumstances, whether physical or moral, have variously modified, must necessarily form very different notions of happiness. those of a miser cannot be the same as those of a prodigal; those of a voluptuary, the same as those of one who is phlegmatic; those of an intemperate, the same as those of a rational man, who husbands his health. the happiness of each, is in consequence composed of his natural organization, and of those circumstances, of those habits, of those ideas, whether true or false, that have modified him: this organization and these circumstances, never being the same in any two men, it follows, that what is the object of one man's views, must be indifferent, or even displeasing to another; thus, as we have before said, no one can be capable of judging of that which may contribute to the felicity of his fellow man. _interest_ is the object to which each individual according to his temperament and his own peculiar ideas, attaches his welfare; from which it will be perceived that this interest is never more than that which each contemplates as necessary to his happiness. it must, therefore, be concluded, that no man is totally without interest. that of the miser to amass wealth; that of the prodigal to dissipate it: the interest of the ambitious is to obtain power; that of the modest philosopher to enjoy tranquillity; the interest of the debauchee is to give himself up, without reserve, to all sorts of pleasure; that of the prudent man, to abstain from those which may injure him: the interest of the wicked is to gratify his passions at any price: that of the virtuous to merit by his conduct the love, to elicit by his actions the approbation of others; to do nothing that can degrade himself in his own eyes. thus, when it is said that _interest is the only motive of human actions;_ it is meant to indicate that each man labours after his own manner, to his own peculiar happiness; that he places it in some object either visible or concealed; either real or imaginary; that the whole system of his conduct is directed to its attainment. this granted, no man can be called disinterested; this appellation is only applied to those of whose motives we are ignorant; or whose interest we approve. thus the man who finds a greater pleasure in assisting his friends in misfortune than preserving in his coffers useless treasure, is called generous, faithful, and disinterested; in like manner all men are denominated disinterested, who feel their glory far more precious than their fortune. in short, all men are designated disinterested who place their happiness in making sacrifices which man considers costly, because he does not attach the same value to the object for which the sacrifice is made. man frequently judges very erroneously of the interest of others, either because the motives that animate them are too complicated for him to unravel; or because to be enabled to judge of them fairly, it is needful to have the same eyes, the same organs the same passions, the same opinions: nevertheless, obliged to form his judgment of the actions of mankind, by their effect on himself, he approves the interest that actuates them whenever the result is advantageous for his species: thus, he admires valour, generosity, the love of liberty, great talents, virtue, &c. he then only approves of the objects in which the beings he applauds have placed their happiness; he approves these dispositions even when he is not in a capacity to feel their effects; but in this judgment he is not himself disinterested; experience, reflection, habit, reason, have given him a taste for morals, and he finds as much pleasure in being witness to a great and generous action, as the man of _virtu_ finds in the sight of a fine picture of which he is not the proprietor. he who has formed to himself a habit of practising virtue, is a man who has unceasingly before his eyes the interest that he has in meriting the affection, in deserving the esteem, in securing the assistance of others, as well as to love and esteem himself: impressed with these ideas which have become habitual to him, he abstains even from concealed crimes, since these would degrade him in his own eyes: he resembles a man who having from his infancy contracted the habit of cleanliness, would be painfully affected at seeing himself dirty, even when no one should witness it. the honest man is he to whom truth has shewn his interest or his happiness in a mode of acting that others are obliged to love, are under the necessity to approve for their own peculiar interest. these principles, duly developed, are the true basis of morals; nothing is more chimerical than those which are founded upon imaginary motives placed out of nature; or upon innate sentiments; which some speculators have regarded as anterior to man's experience; as wholly independant of those advantages which result to him from its use: it is the essence of man to love himself; to tend to his own conservation; to seek to render his existence happy: thus interest, or the desire of happiness, is the only real motive of all his actions; this interest depends upon his natural organization, rests itself upon his wants, is bottomed upon his acquired ideas, springs from the habits he has contracted: he is without doubt in error, when either a vitiated organization or false opinions shew him his welfare in objects either useless or injurious to himself, as well as to others; he marches steadily in the paths of virtue when true ideas have made him rest his happiness on a conduct useful to his species; in that which is approved by others; which renders him an interesting object to his associates. _morals_ would be a vain science if it did not incontestibly prove to man that _his interest consists in being virtuous._ obligation of whatever kind, can only be founded upon the probability or the certitude of either obtaining a good or avoiding an evil. indeed, in no one instant of his duration, can a sensible, an intelligent being, either lose sight of his own preservation or forget his own welfare; he owes happiness to himself; but experience quickly proves to him, that bereaved of assistance, quite alone, left entirely to himself, he cannot procure all those objects which are requisite to his felicity: he lives with sensible, with intelligent beings, occupied like himself with their own peculiar happiness; but capable of assisting him, in obtaining those objects he most desires; he discovers that these beings will not be favorable to his views, but when they find their interest involved; from which he concludes, that his own happiness demands, that his own wants render it necessary he should conduct himself at all times in a manner suitable to conciliate the attachment, to obtain the approbation, to elicit the esteem, to secure the assistance of those beings who are most capacitated to further his designs. he perceives, that it is man who is most necessary to the welfare of man: that to induce him to join in his interests, he ought to make him find real advantages in recording his projects: but to procure real advantages to the beings of the human species, is to have virtue; the reasonable man, therefore, is obliged to feel that it is his interest to be virtuous. _virtue is only the art of rendering himself happy, by the felicity of others_. the virtuous man is he who communicates happiness to those beings who are capable of rendering his own condition happy; who are necessary to his conservation; who have the ability to procure him a felicitous existence. such, then, is the true foundation of all morals; merit and virtue are founded upon the nature of man; have their dependance upon his wants. it is virtue alone that can render him truly happy: without virtue society can neither be useful nor indeed subsist; it can only have real utility when it assembles beings animated with the desire of pleasing each other, and disposed to labour to their reciprocal advantage: there exists no comfort in those families whose members are not in the happy disposition to lend each other mutual succours; who have not a reciprocity of feeling that stimulates them to assist one another; that induces them to cling to each other, to support the sorrows of life; to unite their efforts, to put away those evils to which nature has subjected them; the conjugal bonds, are sweet only in proportion as they identify the interest of two beings, united by the want of legitimate pleasure; from whence results the maintenance of political society, and the means of furnishing it with citizens. friendship has charms only when it more particularly associates two virtuous beings; that is to say, animated with the sincere desire of conspiring to their reciprocal happiness. in short, it is only by displaying virtue, that man can merit the benevolence, can win the confidence, can gain the esteem, of all those with whom he has relation; in a word, no man can be independently happy. indeed, the happiness of each human individual depends on those sentiments to which he gives birth, on those feelings which he nourishes in the beings amongst whom his destiny has placed him; grandeur may dazzle them; power may wrest from them an involuntary homage; force may compel an unwilling obedience; opulence may seduce mean, may attract venal souls; but it is humanity, it is benevolence, it is compassion, it is equity, that unassisted by these, can without efforts obtain for him, from those by whom he is surrounded, those delicious sentiments of attachments, those soothing feelings of tenderness, those sweet ideas of esteem, of which all reasonable men feel the necessity. to be virtuous then, is to place his interest in that which accords with the interest of others; it is to enjoy those benefits, to partake of that pleasure which he himself diffuses over his fellows. he whom, his nature, his education, his reflections, his habits, have rendered susceptible of these dispositions, and to whom his circumstances have given him the faculty of gratifying them, becomes an interesting object to all those who approach him: he enjoys every instant, he reads with satisfaction the contentment, he contemplates with pleasure the joy which he has diffused over all countenances: his wife, his children, his friends, his servants greet him with gay, serene faces, indicative of that content, harbingers of that peace, which he recognizes for his own work: every thing that environs him is ready to partake his pleasures; to share his pains; cherished, respected, looked up to by others, every thing conducts him to agreeable reflections; he knows the rights he has acquired over their hearts; he applauds himself for being the source of a felicity that captivates all the world; his own condition, his sentiments of self-love, become an hundred times more delicious when he sees them participated by all those with whom his destiny has connected him. the habit of virtue creates for him no wants but those which virtue itself suffices to satisfy; it is thus that _virtue is always its own peculiar reward_, that it remunerates itself with all the advantages which it incessantly procures for others. it will be said, and perhaps even proved, that under the present constitution of things, virtue far from procuring the welfare of those who practice it frequently plunges man into misfortune; often places continual obstacles to his felicity; that almost every where it is without recompence. what do i say? a thousand examples could be adduced as evidence, that in almost every country it is hated, persecuted, obliged to lament the ingratitude of human nature. i reply with avowing, that by a necessary consequence of the errors of his race, virtue rarely conducts man to those objects in which the uninformed make their happiness consist. the greater number of societies, too frequently ruled by those whose ignorance makes them abuse their power,--whose prejudices render them enemies of virtue,--who flattered by sycophants, secure in the impunity their actions enjoy, commonly lavish their esteem, bestow their kindness, on none but the most unworthy objects; reward only the most frivolous, recompence none but the most prejudicial qualities; and hardly ever accord that justice to merit which is unquestionably its due. but the truly honest man, is neither ambitious of renumeration, nor sedulous of the suffrages of a society thus badly constituted: contented with domestic happiness, he seeks not to augment relations, which would do no more than increase his danger; he knows that a vitiated community is a whirlwind, with which an honest man cannot co-order himself: he therefore steps aside; quits the beaten path, by continuing in which he would infallibly be crushed. he does all the good of which he is capable in his sphere; he leaves the road free to the wicked, who are willing to wade through its mire; he laments the heavy strokes they inflict on themselves; he applauds mediocrity that affords him security: he pities those nations made miserable by their errors,--rendered unhappy by those passions which are the fatal but necessary consequence; he sees they contain nothing but wretched citizens, who far from cultivating their true interest, far from labouring to their mutual felicity, far from feeling the real value of virtue, unconscious how dear it ought to be to them, do nothing but either openly attack, or secretly injure it; in short, who detests a quality which would restrain their disorderly propensities. in saying that virtue is its own peculiar reward, it is simply meant to announce, that in a society whose views were guided by truth, trained by experience, conducted by reason, each individual would be acquainted with his real interests; would understand the true end of association; would have sound motives to perform his duties; find real advantages in fulfilling them; in fact, it would be convinced, that to render himself solidly happy, he should occupy his actions with the welfare of his fellows; by their utility merit their esteem, elicit their kindness, and secure their assistance. in a well-constituted society, the government, the laws, education, example, would all conspire to prove to the citizen, that the nation of which he forms a part, is a whole that cannot be happy, that cannot subsist without virtue; experience would, at each step, convince him that the welfare of its parts can only result from that of the whole body corporate; justice would make him feel, that no society, can be advantageous to its members, where the volition of wills in those who act, is not so conformable to the interests of the whole, as to produce an advantageous re-action. but, alas! by the confusion which the errors of man have carried into his ideas: virtue disgraced, banished, and persecuted, finds not one of those advantages it has a right to expect: man is indeed shewn those rewards for it in a future life, of which he is almost always deprived in his actual existence. it is thought necessary to deceive, considered proper to seduce, right to intimidate him, in order to induce him to follow that virtue which every thing renders incommodious to him; he is fed with distant hopes, in order to solicit him to practice virtue, while contemplation of the world makes it hateful to him; he is alarmed by remote terrors, to deter him from committing evil, which his associates paint as amiable; which all conspires to render necessary. it is thus that politics, thus that superstition, by the formation of chimeras, by the creation of fictitious interests pretend to supply those true, those real motives which nature furnishes,--which experience would point out,--which an enlightened government should hold forth,--which the law ought to enforce,--which instruction should sanction,--which example should encourage,-which rational opinions would render pleasant. man, blinded by his passions, not less dangerous than necessary, led away by precedent, authorised by custom, enslaved by habit, pays no attention to these uncertain promises, is regardless of the menaces held out; the actual interests of his immediate pleasures, the force of his passions, the inveteracy of his habits, always rise superior to the distant interests pointed out in his future welfare, or the remote evils with which he is threatened; which always appear doubtful, whenever he compares them with present advantages. thus _superstition, far from making man virtuous by principle, does nothing more than impose upon him a yoke as severe as it is useless_; it is borne by none but enthusiasts, or by the pusillanimous; who, without becoming better, tremblingly champ the feeble bit put into their mouth; who are either rendered unhappy by their opinions, or dangerous by their tenets; indeed, experience, that faithful monitor, incontestibly proves, that superstition is a dyke inadequate to resist the torrent of corruption, to which so many accumulated causes give an irresistible force: nay more, does not this superstition itself augment the public disorder, by the dangerous passions which it lets loose, by the conduct which it sanctions, by the actions which it consecrates? virtue, in almost every climate, is confined to some few rational souls, who have sufficient strength of mind to resist the stream of prejudice; who are contented by remunerating themselves with the benefits they difuse over society: whose temperate dispositions are gratified with the suffrages of a small number of virtuous approvers; in short, who are detached from those frivolous advantages which the injustice of society but too commonly accords only to baseness, which it rarely bestows, except to intrigue, with which in general it rewards nothing but crime. in despite of the injustice that reigns in the world, there are, however, some virtuous men in the bosom even of the most degenerate nations; notwithstanding the general depravity, there are some benevolent beings, still enamoured of virtue; who are fully acquainted with its true value; who are sufficiently enlightened to know that it exacts homage even from its enemies; who to use the language of ecclesiastes, "_rejoice in their own works_;" who are, at least, happy in possessing contented minds, who are satisfied with concealed pleasures, those internal recompences of which no earthly power is competent to deprive them. the honest man acquires a right to the esteem, has a just claim to the veneration, wins the confidence, gains the love, even of those whose conduct is exposed by a contrast with his own. in short, vice is obliged to cede to virtue; of which it blushingly, though unwillingly, acknowledges the superiority. independent of this ascendancy so gentle, of this superiority so grand, of this pre-eminence so infallible, when even the whole universe should be unjust to him, when even every tongue should cover him with venom, when even every arm should menace him with hostility, there yet remains to the honest man the sublime advantage of loving his own conduct; the ineffable pleasure of esteeming himself; the unalloyed gratification of diving with satisfaction into the recesses of his own heart; the tranquil delight of contemplating his own actions with that delicious complacency that others ought to do, if they were not hood-winked, no power is adequate to ravish from him the merited esteem of himself; no authority is sufficiently potent to give it to him when he deserves it not; the mightiest monarch cannot lend stability to this esteem, when it is not well founded; it is then a ridiculous sentiment: it ought to be considered, it really is "_vanity and vexation of spirit_," it is not wisdom, but folly in the extreme; it ought to be censured when it displays itself in a mode that is mortifying to its neighbour, in a manner that is troublesome to others; it is then called arrogance; it is called vanity; but when it cannot be condemned, when it is known for legitimate when it is discovered to have a solid foundation, when it bottoms itself upon talents, when it rises upon great actions that are useful to the community, when it erects its edifice upon virtue; even though society should not set these merits at their just price, it is noble pride, elevation of mind, and grandeur of soul. of what consequence then, is it to listen to those superstitious beings, those enemies to man's happiness, who have been desirous of destroying it, even in the inmost recesses of his heart; who have prescribed to him hatred of his follower; who have filled him with contempt for himself; who pretend to wrest from the honest man that self-respect which is frequently the only reward that remains to virtue, in a perverse world. to annihilate in him this sentiment, so full in justice, this love of himself, is to break the most powerful spring, to weaken the most efficacious stimulus, that urges him to act right; that spurs him on to do good to his fellow mortals. what motive, indeed, except it be this, remains for him in the greater part of human societies? is not virtue discouraged? is not honesty contemned? is not audacious crime encouraged? is not subtle intrigue eulogized? is not cunning vice rewarded? is not love of the public weal taxed as folly; exactitude in fulfilling duties looked upon as a bubble? is not compassion laughed to scorn? are not traitors distinguished by public honors? is not negligence of morals applauded,--sensibility derided,--tenderness scoffed,--conjugal fidelity jeered,--sincerity despised,--enviolable friendship treated with ridicule: while seduction, adultery, hard-heartedness, punic faith, avarice, and fraud, stalk forth unabashed, decked in gorgeous array, lauded by the world? man must have motives for action: he neither acts well nor ill, but with a view to his own happiness: that which he judges will conduce to this "_consummation so devoutly to be wished_," he thinks his interest; he does nothing gratuitously; when reward for useful actions is withheld from him, he is reduced either to become as abandoned as others, or else to remunerate himself with his own applause. this granted; the honest man can never be completely unhappy; he can never be entirely deprived of the recompence which is his due; virtue is competent to repay him for all the benefits he may bestow on others; can amply make up to him all the happiness denied him by public opinion; _but nothing can compensate to him the want of virtue_. it does not follow that the honest man will be exempted from afflictions: like, the wicked, he is subject to physical evils; he may pine in indigence; he may be deprived of friendship; he may be worn down with disease; he may frequently be the subject of calumny; he may be the victim to injustice; he may be treated with ingratitude; he may be exposed to hatred; but in the midst of all his misfortunes, in the very bosom of his sorrows, in the extremity of his vexation, he finds support in himself; he is contented with his own conduct; he respects himself; he feels his own dignity; he knows the equity of his rights; he consoles himself with the confidence inspired by the justness of his cause; he cheers himself amidst the most sullen circumstances. these supports are not calculated for the wicked; they avail him nothing: equally liable with the honest man to infirmities, equally submitted to the caprices of his destiny, equally the sport of a fluctuating world, he finds the recesses of his own heart filled with dreadful alarms; diseased with care; cankered with solitude; corroded with regret; gnawed by remorse; he dies within himself; his conscience sustains him not but loads him with reproach; his mind, overwhelmed, sinks beneath its own turpitude; his reflection is the bitter dregs of hemlock; maddening anguish holds him to the mirror that shews him his own deformity; that recalls unhallowed deeds; gloomy thoughts rush on his too faithful memory; despondence benumbs him; his body, simultaneously assailed on all sides, bends under the storm of--his own unruly passions; at last despair grapples him to her filthy bosom, he flies from himself. the honest man is not an insensible stoic; virtue does not procure impassibility; honesty gives no exemption from misfortune, but it enables him to bear cheerly up against it; to cast off despair, to keep his own company: if he is infirm, if he is worn with disease, he has less to complain of than the vicious being who is oppressed with sickness, who is enfeebled by years; if he is indigent, he is less unhappy in his poverty; if he is in disgrace, he can endure it with fortitude, he is not overwhelmed by its pressure, like the wretched slave to crime. thus the happiness of each individual depends on the cultivation of his temperament; nature makes both the happy and the unhappy; it is culture that gives value to the soil nature has formed; it is instruction that makes the fruit it produces palatable; it is reflection that makes it useful. for man to be happily born, is to have received from nature a sound body, organs that act with precision--a just mind, a heart whose passions are analogous, whose desires are conformable to the circumstances in which his destiny has placed him: nature, then, has done every thing for him, when she has joined to these faculties the quantum of vigour, the portion of energy, sufficient to enable him to obtain those proper things, which his station, his mode of thinking, his temperament, have rendered desirable. nature has made him a fatal present, when she has filled his sanguinary vessels with an over-heated fluid; when she has given him an imagination too active; when she has infused into him desires too impetuous; when he has a hankering after objects either impossible or improper to be obtained under his circumstances; or which at least he cannot procure without those incredible efforts, that either place his own welfare in danger or disturb the repose of society. the most happy man, is commonly he who possesses a peaceful soul; who only desires those things which he can procure by labour, suitable to maintain his activity; which he can obtain without causing those shocks, that are either too violent for society, or troublesome to his associates. a philosopher whose wants are easily satisfied, who is a stranger, to ambition, who is contented with the limited circle of a small number of friends, is, without doubt a being much more happily constituted than an ambitious conqueror, whose greedy imagination is reduced to despair by having only one world to ravage. he who is happily born, or whom nature has rendered susceptible of being conveniently modified, is not a being injurious to society: it is generally disturbed by men who are unhappily born, whose organization renders them turbulent; who are discontented with their destiny; who are inebriated with their own licentious passions; who are infatuated with their own vile schemes; who are smitten with difficult enterprises; who set the world in combustion, to gather imaginary benefits in order to attain which they must inflict he heaviest curses on mankind, but in which they make their own happiness consist. an alexander requires the destruction of empires, nations to be deluged with blood, cities to be laid in ashes, its inhabitants to be exterminated, to content that passion for glory, of which he has formed to himself a false idea; but which his too ardent imagination, his too vehement mind anxiously thirsts after: for a diogenes there needs only a tub with the liberty of appearing whimsical; a socrates wants nothing but the pleasure of forming disciples to virtue. man by his organization is a being to whom motion is always necessary; he must therefore always desire it: this is the reason why too much facility in procuring the objects of his search, renders them quickly insipid. to feel happiness, it is necessary to make efforts to obtain it; to find charms in its enjoyment, it is necessary that the desire should be whetted by obstacles; he is presently disgusted with those benefits which have cost him but little pains. the expectation of happiness, the labour requisite to procure it, the varied prospects it holds forth, the multiplied pictures which his imagination forms to him, supply his brain with that motion for which it has occasion; this gives impulse to his organs, puts his whole machine into activity, exercises his faculties, sets all his springs in play, in a word, puts him into that agreeable activity, for the want of which the enjoyment of happiness itself cannot compensate him. action is the true element of the human mind; as soon as it ceases to act, it falls into disgust, sinks into lassitude. his soul has the same occasion for ideas, his stomach has for aliment. thus the impulse given him by desire, is itself a great benefit; it is to the mind what exercise is to the body; without it he would not derive any pleasure in the aliments presented to him; it is thirst that renders the pleasure of drinking so agreeable; life is a perpetual circle of regenerated desires and wants satisfied: repose is only a pleasure to him who labours; it is a source of weariness, the cause of sorrow, the spring of vice to him who has nothing to do. to enjoy without interruption is not to enjoy any thing: the man who has nothing to desire is certainly more unhappy than he who suffers. these reflections, grounded upon experience, drawn from the fountain of truth, ought to prove to man, that good as well as evil depends on the essence of things. happiness to be felt cannot be continued. labour is necessary, to make intervals between his pleasures; his body has occasion for exercise, to co-order him with the beings who surround him; his heart must have desires; trouble alone can give him the right relish of his welfare; it is this which puts in the shadows, this which furnishes the true perspective to the picture of human life. by an irrevocable law of his destiny, man is obliged to be discontented with his present condition; to make efforts to change it; to reciprocally envy that felicity which no individual enjoys perfectly. thus the poor man envies the opulence of his richer neighbour, although this is frequently more unhappy than his needy maligner; thus the rich man views with pain the advantages of a poverty, which he sees active, healthy, and frequently jocund, even in the bosom of penury. if man was perfectly contented, there would no longer be any activity in the world; it is necessary that he should desire; it is requisite that he should act; it is incumbent he should labour, in order that he may be happy: such is the course of nature of which the life consists in action. human societies can only subsist, by the continual exchange of those things in which man places his happiness. the poor man is obliged to desire, he is necessitated to labour, that he may procure what he knows is requisite to the preservation of his existence; the primary wants given to him by nature, are to nourish himself, clothe himself, lodge himself, and propagate his species; has he satisfied these? he is quickly obliged to create others entirely new; or rather, his imagination only refines upon the first; he seeks to diversify them; he is willing to give them fresh zest; arrived at opulence, when he has run over the whole circle of wants, when he has completely exhausted their combinations, he falls into disgust. dispensed from labour, his body amasses humours; destitute of desires, his heart feels a languor; deprived of activity, he is obliged to participate his riches, with beings more active, more laborious than himself: these, following their own peculiar interests, take upon themselves the task of labouring for his advantage; of procuring for him means to satisfy his want; of ministering to his caprices, in order to remove the languor that oppresses him. it is thus the great, the rich excite the energies, give play to the activity, rouse the faculties, spur on the industry of the indigent; these labour to their own peculiar welfare by working for others: thus the desire of ameliorating his condition, renders man necessary to his fellow man; thus wants, always regenerating, never satisfied, are the principles of life,--the soul of activity,--the source of health,--the basis of society. if each individual was competent to the supply of his own exigencies, there would be no occasion for him to congregate in society; but it is his wants, his desires, his whims, that place him in a state of dependence on others: these are the causes that each individual, in order to further his own peculiar interest, is obliged to be useful to those, who have the capability of procuring for him the objects which he himself has not. a nation is nothing more than the union of a great number of individuals, connected with each other by the reciprocity of their wants; by their mutual desire of pleasure. the most happy man is he who has the fewest wants, and who has the most numerous means of satisfying them. the man who would be truly rich, has no need to increase his fortune, it suffices he should diminish his wants. in the individuals of the human species, as well as in political society, the progression of wants, is a thing absolutely necessary; it is founded upon the essence of man, it is requisite that the natural wants once satisfied, should be replaced by those which he calls _imaginary, or wants of the fancy:_ these become as necessary to his happiness as the first. custom, which permits the native american to go quite naked, obliges the more civilized inhabitant of europe to clothe himself; the poor man contents himself with very simple attire, which equally serve him for winter and for summer, for autumn and for spring; the rich man desires to have garments suitable to each mutation of these seasons; he would experience pain if he had not the convenience of changing his raiment with every variation of his climate; he would be wretched if he was obliged to wear the same habiliments in the heat of summer, which he uses in the winter; in short, he would be unhappy if the expence and variety of his costume did not display to the surrounding multitude his opulence, mark his rank, announce his superiority. it is thus habit multiplies, the wants of the wealthy; it is thus that vanity itself becomes a want which sets a thousand hands in, motion, a thousand heads to work, who are all eager to gratify its cravings; in short, this very vanity procures for the necessitous man, the means of subsisting at the expense of his opulent neighbours he who is accustomed to pomp, who is used to ostentatious splendour, whose habits are luxurious, whenever he is deprived of these insignia of opulence, to which he has attached the idea of happiness, finds himself just as unhappy as the needy wretch who has not wherewith to cover his nakedness. the civilized nations of the present day were in their origin savages composed of erratic tribes,--mere wanderers who were occupied with war; employed in, the chace; painfully obliged to seek precarious subsistence by hunting in those woods which the industry of their successors has cleared; which their labour has covered with yellow waving ears of nutritious corn; in time they have become stationary: they first applied themselves to agriculture, afterwards to commerce: by degrees they have refined on their primitive wants, extended their sphere of action, given birth to a thousand new wants, imagined a thousand new means to satisfy them; this is the natural course, the necessary progression, the regular march of active beings, who cannot live without feeling; who to be happy, must of necessity diversify their sensations. in proportion as man's wants multiply the means to satisfy them becomes more difficult, he is obliged to depend on a greater number of his fellow creatures; his interest obliges him to rouse their activity; to engage them to concur with his views; consequently he is obliged to procure for them those objects by which they can be excited; he is under the necessity of contenting their desires, which increase like his own, by the very food that satisfies them. the savage needs only put forth his hand to gather the fruit that offers itself spontaneously to his reach: this he finds sufficient for his nourishment. the opulent citizen of a flourishing society is obliged to set innumerable hands to work to produce the sumptuous repast; the four quarters of the globe are ransacked to procure the far-fetched viands become necessary to revive his languid appetite; the merchant, the sailor, the mechanic, leave nothing unattempted to flatter his inordinate vanity. from this it will appear, that in the same proportion the wants of man are multiplied, he is obliged to augment the means to satisfy them. riches are nothing more than the measure of a convention, by the assistance of which man is enabled to make a great number of his fellows concur in the gratification of his desires; by which he is capacitated to invite them, for their own peculiar interests, to contribute to his pleasures. what, in fact, does the rich man do, except announce to the needy, that he can furnish him with the means of subsistence if he consents to lend himself to his will? what does the man in power, except shew to others, that he is in a state to supply the requisites to render them happy? sovereigns, nobles, men of wealth, appear to be happy, only because they possess the ability, are masters of the motives sufficient to determine a great number of individuals to occupy themselves with their respective felicity. the more things are considered the more man will be convinced that his false opinion are the true source of his misery; the clearer it will appear to him that happiness is so rare, only because he attaches it to objects either indifferent or useless to his welfare; which, when enjoyed, convert themselves into real evils; which afflict him; which become the cause of his misfortune. _riches_ are indifferent in themselves, it is only by their application, by the purposes they compass, that they either become objects of utility to man, or are rendered prejudicial to his welfare. _money_, useless to the savage who understands not its value, is amassed by the miser, for fear it should be employed uselessly; lest it should be squandered by the prodigal; or dissipated by the voluptuary; who make no other use of it than to purchase infirmities; to buy regret. pleasures are nothing for the man who is incapable of feeling them; they become real evils when they are too freely indulged, when they are destructive to his health,--when they derange the economy of his machine,--when they entail diseases on himself and on his posterity,--when they make him neglect his duties,--when they render him despicable in the eyes of others. power is nothing in itself, it is useless to man if he does not avail himself of it to promote his own peculiar felicity, by augmenting the happiness of his species; it becomes fatal to him as soon as he abuses it; it becomes odious whenever he employs it to render others miserable; it is always the cause of his own misery whenever he stretches it beyond the due bounds prescribed by nature. for want of being enlightened on his true interest, the man who enjoys all the means of rendering himself completely happy, scarcely ever discovers the secret of making those means truly subservient to his own peculiar felicity: the art of enjoying, is that which of all others is least understood; man should learn this art before he begins to desire; the earth is covered with individuals who only occupy themselves with the care of procuring the means without ever being acquainted with the end. all the world desire fortune, solicit power, seek after pleasure, yet very few, indeed, are those whom objects render truly happy. it is quite natural in man, it is extremely reasonable, it is absolutely necessary, to desire those things which can contribute to augment the sum of his felicity. _pleasure, riches, power,_ are objects worthy his ambition, deserving his most strenuous efforts, when he has learned how to employ them; when he has acquired the faculty of making them render his existence really more agreeable. it is impossible to censure him who desires them, to despise him who commands them, but when to obtain them he employs odious means; or when after he has obtained them he makes a pernicious use of them, injurious to himself, prejudicial to others; let him wish for power, let him seek after grandeur, let him be ambitious of reputation, when he can shew just pretensions to them; when he can obtain them, without making the purchase at the expence of his own repose, or that of the beings with whom he lives: let him desire riches, when he knows how to make a use of them that is truly advantageous for himself, really beneficial for others; but never let him employ those means to procure them of which he may be ashamed; with which he may be obliged to reproach himself; which may draw upon him the hatred of his associates; or which may render him obnoxious to the castigation of society: let him always recollect, that his solid happiness should rest its foundations upon its own esteem,--upon the advantages he procures for others; above all, never let him for a moment forget, that of all the objects to which his ambition may point, the most impracticable for a being who lives in society, is that of _attempting to render himself exclusively happy_. chap. xvi _the errors of man,--upon what constitutes happiness.--the true source of his evil.--remedies that may be applied._ reason by no means forbids man from forming capacious desires; ambition is a passion useful to his species when it has for, its object the happiness of his race. great minds, elevated souls, are desirous of acting on an extended sphere; geniuses who are powerful, beings who are enlightened, men who are beneficent, distribute very widely their benign influence; they must necessarily, in order to promote their own peculiar felicity, render great numbers happy. so many princes fail to enjoy true happiness only, because their feeble, narrow souls, are obliged to act in a sphere too extensive for their energies: it is thus that by the supineness, the indolence, the incapacity of their chiefs, nations frequently pine in misery; are often submitted to masters, whose exility of mind is as little calculated to promote their own immediate happiness, as it is to further that of their miserable subjects. on the other hand, souls too vehement, too much inflamed, too active, are themselves tormented by the narrow sphere that confines them; their ardour misplaced, becomes the scourge of the human race. alexander was a monarch who was equally injurious to the earth, equally discontented with his condition, as the indolent despot whom he dethroned. the souls of neither were by any means commensurate with their sphere of action. the happiness of man will never be more than the result of the harmony that subsists between his desires and his circumstances. the sovereign power to him who knows not how to apply it to the advantage of his citizens, is as nothing; it cannot even conduce to his own peculiar happiness. if it renders him miserable, it is a real evil; if it produces the misfortune of a portion of the human race, it is a detestable abuse. the most powerful princes are ordinarily such strangers to happiness, their subjects are commonly so unfortunate, only because the first possess all the means of rendering themselves happy without ever giving them activity; or because the only knowledge they have of them, is their abuse. a wise man seated on a throne, would be the most happy of mortals. a monarch is a man for whom his power, let it be of whatever extent, cannot procure other organs, other modes of feeling, than the meanest of his subjects; if he has an advantage over them, it is by the grandeur, the variety, the multiplicity of the objects with which he can occupy himself; which by giving perpetual activity to his mind, can prevent it from decay; from falling into sloth. if his soul is virtuous, if his mind is expansive, his ambition finds continual food in the contemplation of the power he possesses, to unite by gentleness, to consolidate by kindness, the will of his subjects with his own; to interest them in his own conservation, to merit their affections,--to draw forth the respect of strangers,--to render luminous the page of history--to elicit the eulogies of all nations--to clothe the orphan,--to dry the widow's tears. such are the conquests that reason proposes to all those whose destiny it is to govern the fate of empires; they are sufficiently grand to satisfy the most ardent imagination, of a sublimity to gratify the most capacious ambition: for a monarch they are paramount duties.--kings are the most happy of men, only because they have the power of making others happy; because they possess the means of multiplying the causes of legitimate content with themselves. the advantages of the sovereign power are participated by all those who contribute to the government of states. thus grandeur, rank, reputation, are desirable, are legitimate objects for all who are acquainted with the means of rendering them subservient to their own peculiar felicity; they are useless, they are illegitimate to those ordinary men who have neither the energy nor the capacity to employ them in a mode advantageous to themselves; they are detestable whenever to obtain them man compromises his own happiness, when he implicates the welfare of society: this society itself is in an error every time it respects men who only employ to its destruction, a power, the exercise of which it ought never to approve but when it reaps from it substantial benefits. riches, useless to the miser, who is no more than their miserable gaoler; prejudicial to the debauchee, for whom they only procure infirmities; injurious to the voluptuary, to whom they only bring disgust--whom they oppress with satiety; can in the hands of the honest man produce unnumbered means of augmenting the sum of his happiness; but before man covets wealth it is proper he should know how to employ it; money is only a token, a representative of happiness; to enjoy it is so to use it as to make others happy: this is the great secret, this is the talisman, this is the reality. money, according to the compact of man, procures for him all those benefits he can desire; there is only one, which it will not procure, that is, _the knowledge how to apply it properly_. for man to have money, without the true secret how to enjoy it, is to possess the key of a commodious palace to which he is interdicted entrance; to lavish it, prodigally, is to throw the key into the river; to make a bad use of it, is only to make it the means of wounding himself. give the most ample treasures to the enlightened man, he will not be overwhelmed with them; if he has a capacious mind, if he has a noble soul, he will only extend more widely his benevolence; he will deserve the affection of a greater number of his fellow men; he will attract the love, he will secure the homage, of all those who surround him; he will restrain himself in his pleasures, in order that he may be enabled truly to enjoy them; he will know that money cannot re-establish a soul worn out with enjoyment; cannot give fresh elasticity to organs enfeebled by excess; cannot give fresh tension to nerves grown flaccid by abuse; cannot invigorate a body enervated by debauchery; cannot corroborate a machine, from thenceforth become incapable of sustaining him, except by the necessity of privations; he will know that the licentiousness of the voluptuary stifles pleasure in its source; that all the treasure in the world cannot renew his senses. from this, it will be obvious, that nothing is more frivolous than the declamations of a gloomy philosophy against the desire of power; nothing more absurd than the rant of superstition against the pursuit of grandeur; nothing more inconsistent than homilies against the acquisition of riches; nothing more unreasonable than dogmas that forbid the enjoyment of pleasure. these objects are desirable for man, whenever his situation allows him to make pretensions to them; they are useful to society, conducive to public happiness, whenever he has acquired the knowledge of making them turn to his own real advantage; reason cannot censure him, virtue cannot despise him, when in order to obtain them, he never travels out of the road of truth; when in their acquisition, he wounds no one's interest; when he pursues only legitimate means: his associates will applaud him; his contemporaries will esteem him: he will respect himself, when he only employs their agency to secure his own happiness, and that of his fellows. pleasure is a benefit, it is of the essence of man to love, it is even rational when it renders his existence really valuable to himself--when it does not injure him in his own esteem; when its consequences are not grievous to others. _riches_ are the symbols of the great majority of the benefits of this life; they become a reality in the hands of the man who has the clew to their just application. _power_ is the most sterling of all benefits, when he who is its depositary has received from nature a soul sufficiently noble, a mind sufficiently elevated, a heart sufficiently benevolent, faculties sufficiently energetic, above all, when he has derived from education a true regard for virtue, that sacred love for truth which enables him to extend his happy influence over whole nations; which by this means he places in, a state of legitimate dependence on his will; _man only acquires the right of commanding men, when he renders them happy._ the right of man over his fellow man can only be founded either upon the actual happiness he secures to him, or that which he gives him reason to hope he will procure for him; without this, the power he exercises would be violence, usurpation, manifest tyranny; it is only upon the faculty of rendering him happy, that legitimate authority builds its structure; without this it is the "_baseless fabric of a vision." no man derives from nature the right of commanding another_; but it is voluntarily accorded to those, from whom he expects his welfare. _government_ is the right of commanding, conferred on the sovereign only for the advantage of those who are governed. sovereigns are the defenders of the persons, the guardians of the property, the protectors of the liberty of their subjects: this is the price of their obedience; it is only on this condition these consent to obey; government would not be better than a robbery whenever it availed itself of the powers confided to it, to render society unhappy. _the empire of religion_ is founded on the opinion man entertains of its having power to render nations happy; government and religion are reasonable institutions; but only so, inasmuch as they equally contribute to the felicity of man: it would be folly in him to submit himself to a yoke from which there resulted nothing but evil. it would be folly to expect that man should bind himself to misery; it would be rank injustice to oblige him to renounce his rights without some corresponding advantage! the authority which a father exercises over his family is only founded on the advantages which he is supposed to procure for it. rank, in political society, has only for its basis the real or imaginary utility of some citizens for which the others are willing to distinguish them--agree to respect them--consent to obey them. the rich acquire rights over the indigent, the wealthy claim the homage of the needy, only by virtue of the welfare they are conditioned to procure them. genius, talents, science, arts, have rights over man, only in consequence of their utility; of the delight they confer; of the advantages they procure for society. in a word, it is happiness, it is the expectation of happiness, it is its image that man cherishes--that he esteems--that he unceasingly adores. monarchs, the rich, the great, may easily impose on him, may dazzle him, may intimidate him, but they will never be able to obtain the voluntary submission of his heart, which alone can confer upon them legitimate rights, without they make him experience real benefits--without they display virtue. utility is nothing more than true happiness; to be useful is to be virtuous; to be virtuous is to make others happy. the happiness which man derives from them is the invariable, the necessary standard of his sentiments, for the beings of his species; for the objects he desires; for the opinions he embrases; for those actions on which he decides. he is the dupe of his prejudices every time he ceases to avail himself of this standard to regulate his judgment. he will never run the risk of deceiving himself, when he shall examine strictly what is the real utility resulting to his species from the religion, from the superstition, from the laws, from the institutions, from the inventions, from the various actions of all mankind. a superficial view may sometimes seduce him; but experience, aided by reflection, will reconduct him to reason, which is incapable of deceiving him. this teaches him that pleasure is a momentary happiness, which frequently becomes an evil; that evil is a fleeting trouble that frequently becomes a good: it makes him understand the true nature of objects, enables him to foresee the effects he may expect; it makes him distinguish those desires to which his welfare permits him to lend himself, from those to whose seduction he ought to make resistance. in short, it will always convince him that the true interest of intelligent beings, who love happiness, who desire to render their own existence felicitous, demands that they should root out all those phantoms, abolish all those chimerical ideas, destroy all those prejudices, which by traducing virtue, obstruct their felicity in this world. if he consults experience, he will perceive that it is in illusions, in false opinions, rendered sacred by time, that he ought to search out the source of that multitude of evils which almost every where overwhelms mankind. from ignorance of natural causes, man has created imaginary causes; not knowing to what cause to attribute thunder, he ascribed it to an imaginary being whom he called jupiter; imposture availing itself of this disposition, rendered these causes terrible to him; these fatal ideas haunted him without rendering him better; made him tremble without either benefit to himself or to others; filled his mind with chimeras that opposed themselves to the progress of his reason; that prevented him from really seeking after his happiness. his vain fears rendered him the slave of those who deceived him, under pretence of consulting his welfare; he committed evil, because they persuaded him his gods demanded sacrifices; he lived in misfortune, because they made him believe these gods condemned him to be miserable; the slave of beings, to which his own imagination had given birth, he never dared to disentangle himself from his chains; the artful ministers of these divinities gave him to understand that stupidity, the renunciation of reason, sloth of mind, abjection of soul, were the sure means of obtaining eternal felicity. prejudices, not less dangerous, have blinded man upon the true nature of government. nations in general are ignorant of the true foundations of authority; they dare not demand happiness from those kings who are charged with the care of procuring it for them: some have believed their sovereigns were gods disguised, who received with their birth the right of commanding the rest of mankind; that they could at their pleasure dispose of the felicity of the people; that they were not accountable for the misery they engendered. by a necessary consequence of these erroneous opinions, politics have almost every where degenerated into the fatal art of sacrificing the interests of the many, either to the caprice of an individual, or to some few privileged irrational beings. in despite of the evils which assailed them, nations fell down in adoration before the idols they themselves had made: foolishly respected the instruments of their misery; had a stupid veneration for those who possessed the sovereign power of injuring them; obeyed their unjust will; lavished their blood; exhausted their treasure; sacrificed their lives, to glut the ambition, to feed the cupidity to minister to the regenerated phantasms, to gratify the never-ending caprices of these men; they bend the knee to established opinion, bowed to rank, yielded to title, to opulence, to pageantry, to ostentation: at length victims to their prejudices, they in vain expected their welfare at the hands of men who were themselves unhappy from their own vices; whose neglect of virtue, had rendered them incapable of enjoying true felicity; who are but little disposed to occupy themselves with their prosperity: under such chiefs their physical and moral happiness were equally neglected or even annihilated. the same blindness may be perceived in the science of morals. superstition, which never had any thing but ignorance for its basis, which never had more than a disordered imagination for its guide, did not found ethics upon man's nature; upon his relations with his fellows; upon those duties which necessarily flow from these relations; it preferred, as more in unison with itself, founding them upon imaginary relations which it pretended subsisted between him and those invisible powers it had so gratuitously imagined; that were delivered by oracles which their priests had the address to make him believe spoke the will of the divinity: thus, trophonius, from his cave made affrightened mortals tremble; shook the stoutest nerves; made them turn pale with fear; his miserable, deluded supplicants, who were obliged to sacrifice to him, anointed their bodies with oil, bathed in certain rivers, and after they had offered their cake of honey and received their destiny, became so dejected, so wretchedly forlorn, that to this day their descendants, when they behold a malencholy man, exclaim, "_he has consulted the oracle of trophonius_." it was these invisible gods, which superstition always paints as furious tyrants, who were declared the arbiters of man's destiny; the models of his conduct: when he was willing to imitate them, when he was willing to conform himself to the lessons of their interpreters, he became wicked, was an unsociable creature, an useless being or else a turbulent maniac--a zealous fanatic. it was these alone who profited by superstition, who advantaged themselves by the darkness in which they contrived to involve the human mind; nations were ignorant of nature; they knew nothing of reason; they understood not truth; they had only a gloomy superstition, without one certain idea of either morals or virtue. when man committed evil against his fellow creature, he believed he had offended these gods; but he also believed himself forgiven, as soon as he had prostrated himself before them; as soon as he had by costly presents gained over the priest to his interest. thus superstition, far from giving a sure, far from affording a natural, far from introducing a known basis to morals, only rested it on an unsteady foundation; made it consist in ideal duties impossible to be accurately understood. what did i say? it first corrupted him, and his expiations finished by ruining him. thus when superstition was desirous to combat the unruly passions of man it attempted it in vain; always enthusiastic, ever deprived of experience, it knew nothing of the true remedies: those which it applied were disgusting, only suitable to make the sick revolt against them; it made them pass for divine, because they were not made of man; they were inefficacious, because chimeras could effectuate nothing against those substantive passions to which motives more real, impulsions more powerful, concurred to give birth, which every thing conspired, to flourish in his heart. the voice of superstition or of the gods, could not make itself heard amidst the tumult of society--where all was in confusion--where the priest cried out to man, that he could not render himself happy without injuring his fellow creatures, who happened to differ from him in opinion: these vain clamours only made virtue hateful to him, because they always represented it as the enemy to his happiness; as the bane of human pleasures: he consequently failed in the observation of his duties, because real motives were never held forth to induce him to make the requisite sacrifice; the present prevailed over the future; the visible over the invisible; the known over the unknown: man became wicked because every thing informed him he must be so, in order to obtain the happiness after which he sighed. thus the sum of human misery was never diminished; on the contrary, it was accumulating either by his superstition, by his government, by his education, by his opinions or by the institutions he adopted under the idea of rendering his condition more pleasant: it not unfrequently happened that the whole of these acted upon him simultaneously; he was then completely wretched. it cannot be too often repeated, _it is in error that man will find the true spring of those evils with which the human race is afflicted;_ it is not nature that renders him miserable; it is not nature that makes him unhappy; it is not an irritated divinity who is desirous he should live in tears; it is not hereditary depravation that has caused him to be wicked; it is to error, to long cherished, consecrated error, to error identified with his very existence, that these deplorable effects are to be ascribed. the sovereign good, so much sought after by some philosophers, announced with so much emphasis by others, may be considered as a chimera, like unto that marvellous panacea which some adepts have been willing to pass upon mankind for an universal remedy. all men are diseased; the moment of their birth delivers them over to the contagion of error; but individuals are variously affected by it by a consequence of their natural organization; of their peculiar circumstances. if there is a sovereign remedy, which can be indiscriminately applied to the diseases of man, there is without doubt only one, this catholic balsam is truth, which he must draw from nature. at the afflicting sight of those errors which blind the greater number of mortals--of those delusions which man is doomed to suck in with his mother's milk; viewing with painful sensations those irregular desires, those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated; seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those minds which every thing unites to poison, would be a vain enterprize; that it was an augean stable, requiring the strength of another hercules. when he considers those numerous superstitions by which man is kept in a continual state of alarm--that divide him from his fellow--that render him vindictive, persecuting, and irrational; when he beholds the many despotic governments that oppress him; when he examines those multitudinous, unintelligible, contradictory laws that torture him; the manifold injustice under which he groans; when he turns his mind to the barbarous ignorance in which he is steeped, almost over the whole surface of the earth; when he witnesses those enormous crimes that debase society; when he unmasks those rooted vices that render it so hateful to almost every individual; he has great difficulty to prevent his mind from embracing the idea that misfortune is the only appendage of the human species; that this world is made solely to assemble the unhappy; that human felicity is a chimera, or at least a point so fugitive, that it is impossible it can be fixed. thus superstitious mortals, atrabilious men, beings nourished in melancholy, unceasingly see either nature or its author exasperated against the human race; they suppose that man is the constant object of heaven's wrath; that he irritates it even by his desires: that he renders himself criminal by seeking a felicity which is not made for him: struck with beholding that those objects which he covets in the most lively manner, are never competent to content his heart, they have decried them as abominations, as things prejudicial to his interest, as odious to his gods; they prescribe him abstinence from all search after them; that he should entirely shun them; they have endeavoured to put to the rout all his passions, without any distinction even of those which are the most useful to himself, the most beneficial to those beings with whom he lives: they have been willing that man should render himself insensible; should become his own enemy; that he should separate himself from his fellow creatures; that he should renounce all pleasure; that he should refuse happiness; in short, _that he should cease to be a man, that he should become unnatural_. "mortals!" have they said, "ye were born to be unhappy; the author of your existence has destined ye for misfortune; enter then into his views, and render yourselves miserable. combat those rebellious desires which have felicity for their object; renounce those pleasures which it is your essence to love; attach yourselves to nothing in this world; by a society that only serves to inflame your imagination, to make you sigh after benefits you ought not to enjoy; break up the spring of your souls; repress that activity that seeks to put a period to your sufferings; suffer, afflict yourselves, groan, be wretched; such is for you the true road to happiness." blind physicians! who have mistaken for a disease the natural state of man! they have not seen that his desires were necessary; that his passions were essential to him; that to defend him from loving legitimate pleasures; to interdict him from desiring them, is to deprive him of that activity which is the vital principle of society; that to tell him to hate, to desire him to despise himself, is to take from him the most substantive motive, that can conduct him to virtue. it is thus, by its supernatural remedies, by its wretched panacea, superstition, far from curing those evils which render man decrepid, which bend him almost to the earth, has only increased them; made them more desperate; in the room of calming his passions, it gives them inveteracy; makes them more dangerous; renders them more venomous; turns that into a curse which nature has given him for his preservation; to be the means of his own happiness. it is not by extinguishing the passions of man that he is to be rendered happier; it is by turning them into proper channels, by directing them towards useful objects, which by being truly advantageous to himself, must of necessity be beneficial to others. in despite of the errors which blind the human race, in despite of the extravagance of man's superstition, maugre the imbecility of his political institutions, notwithstanding the complaints, in defiance of the murmurs he is continually breathing forth against his destiny, there are yet happy individuals on the earth. man has sometimes the felicity to behold sovereigns animated by the noble passion to render nations flourishing; full of the laudable ambition to make their people happy; now and then he encounters an antoninus, a trajan, a julian, an alfred, a washington; he meets with elevated minds who place their glory in encouraging merit--who rest their happiness in succouring indigence--who think it honourable to lend a helping hand to oppressed virtue: he sees genius occupied with the desire of meriting the eulogies of posterity; of eliciting the admiration of his fellow-citizens by serving them usefully, satisfied with enjoying that happiness he procures for others. let it not be believed that the man of poverty himself is excluded from happiness: mediocrity and indigence frequently procure for him advantages that opulence and grandeur are obliged to acknowledge; which title and wealth are constrained to envy: the soul of the needy man, always in action, never ceases to form desires which his activity places within his reach; whilst the rich, the powerful, are frequently in the afflicting embarrassment, of either not knowing what to wish for, or else of desiring those objects which their listlessness renders it impossible for them to obtain. the poor man's body, habituated to labour, knows the sweets of repose; this repose of the body, is the most troublesome fatigue to him who is wearied with his idleness; exercise, and frugality, procure for the one vigour, health, and contentment; the intemperance and sloth of the other, furnish him only with disgust--load him with infirmities. indigence sets all the springs of the soul to work; it is the mother of industry; from its bosom arises genius; it is the parent of talents, the hot-bed of that merit to which opulence is obliged to pay tribute; to which grandeur bows its homage. in short the blows of fate find in the poor man a flexible reed, who bends without breaking, whilst the storms of adversity tear the rich man like the sturdy oak in the forest, up by the very roots. thus nature is not a step-mother to the greater number of her children. he whom fortune has placed in an obscure station is ignorant of that ambition which devours the courtier; knows nothing of the inquietude which deprives the intriguer of his rest; is a stranger to the remorse, an alien to the disgust, is unconscious of the weariness of the man, who, enriched with the spoils of a nation, does not know how to turn them to his profit. the more the body labours, the more the imagination reposes itself; it is the diversity of the objects man runs over that kindles it; it is the satiety of those objects that causes him disgust; the imagination of the indigent is circumscribed by necessity: he receives but few ideas: he is acquainted with but few objects: in consequence, he has but little to desire; he contents himself with that little: whilst the entire of nature with difficulty suffices to satisfy the insatiable desires, to gratify the imaginary wants of the man, plunged in luxury, who has run over and exhausted all common objects. those, whom prejudice contemplates; as the most unhappy of men, frequently enjoy advantages more real, happiness much greater, than those who oppress them--who despise them--but who are nevertheless often reduced to the misery of envying them. limited desires are a real benefit: the man of meaner condition, in his humble fortune, desires only bread: he obtains it by the sweat of his brow; he would eat it with pleasure if injustice did not sometimes render it bitter to him. by the delirium of some governments, those who roll in abundance, without for that reason being more happy, dispute with the cultivator even the fruits which the earth yields to the labour of his hands. _princes_ sometimes sacrifice their true happiness, as well as that of their states, to these passions--to those caprices which discourage the people; which plunge their provinces in misery: which make millions unhappy, without any advantage to themselves. _tyrants_ oblige the subjects to curse their existence; to abandon labour; take from them the courage of propagating a progeny who would be as unhappy as their fathers: the excess of oppression sometimes obliges them to revolt; makes them avenge themselves by wicked outrages of the injustice it has heaped on their devoted heads: injustice, by reducing indigence to despair, obliges it to seek in crime, resources, against its misery. an unjust government, produces discouragement in the soul: its vexations depopulate a country; under its influence, the earth remains without culture; from thence is bred frightful famine, which gives birth to contagion and plague. the misery of a people produce revolutions; soured by misfortunes, their minds get into a state of fermentation; the overthrow of an empire, is the necessary effect. it is thus that _physics_ and _morals_ are always connected, or rather are the _same thing_. if the bad morals of chiefs do not always produce such marked effects, at least they generate slothfulness, of which their effect is to fill society with mendicants; to crowd it with malefactors; whose vicious course neither superstition nor the terror of the laws can arrest; which nothing can induce to remain the unhappy spectators of a welfare they are not permitted to participate. they seek a fleeting happiness at the expence even of their lives, when injustice has shut up to them the road of labour, those paths of industry which would have rendered them both useful and honest. let it not then be said that no government can render all its subjects happy; without doubt it cannot flatter itself with contenting the capricious humours of some idle citizens who are obliged to rack their imagination, to appease the disgust arising from lassitude: but it can, and it ought to occupy itself with ministering to the real wants of the multitude, with giving a useful activity to the whole body politic. a society enjoys all the happiness of which it is susceptible whenever the greater number of its members are wholesomely fed, decently cloathed, comfortably lodged--in short when they can without an excess of toil beyond their strength, procure wherewith to satisfy those wants which nature has made necessary to their existence. their mind rests contented as soon as they are convinced no power can ravish from them the fruits of their industry; that they labour for themselves; that the sweat of their brow is for the immediate comfort of their own families. by a consequence of human folly in some regions, whole nations are obliged to toil incessantly, to waste their strength, to sweat under their burdens to undulate the air with their sighs, to drench the earth with their tears, in order to maintain the luxury, to gratify the whims, to support the corruption of a small number of irrational beings; of some few useless men to whom happiness has become impossible, because their bewildered imaginations no longer know any bounds. it is thus that superstitious, thus that political errors have changed the fair face of nature into a valley of tears. for want of consulting reason, for want of knowing the value of virtue, for want of being instructed in their true interest, for want of being acquainted with what constitutes solid happiness, in what consists real felicity, the prince and the people, the rich and the poor, the great and the little, are unquestionably, frequently very far removed from content; nevertheless if an impartial eye be glanced over the human race, it will be found to comprise a greater number of benefits than of evils. no man is entirely happy, but he is so in detail; those who make the most bitter complaints of the rigour of their fate, are however, held in existence by threads frequently imperceptible; are prevented from the desire of quitting it by circumstances of which they are not aware. in short, habit lightens to man the burden of his troubles; grief suspended becomes true enjoyment; every want is a pleasure in the moment when it is satisfied; freedom from chagrin, the absence of disease, is a happy state which he enjoys secretly, without even perceiving it; hope, which rarely abandons him entirely, helps him to support the most cruel disasters. the prisoner laughs in his irons. the wearied villager returns singing to his cottage. in short, the man who calls himself the most unfortunate, never sees death approach without dismay, at least, if despair has not totally disfigured nature in his eyes. as long as man desires the continuation of his being, he has no right to call himself completely unhappy; whilst hope sustains him, he still enjoys a great benefit. if man was more just, in rendering to himself an account of his pleasures, in estimating his pains, he would acknowledge that the sum of the first exceeds by much the amount of the last; he would perceive that he keeps a very exact ledger of the evil, but a very unfaithful journal of the good: indeed he would avow, that there are but few days entirely unhappy during the whole course of his existence. his periodical wants procure for him the pleasure of satisfying them; his soul is perpetually moved by a thousand objects, of which, the variety, the multiplicity, the novelty, rejoices him, suspends his sorrows, diverts his chagrin. his physical evils, are they violent? they are not of long duration; they conduct him quickly to his end: the sorrows of his mind, when too powerful, conduct him to it equally. at the same time nature refuses him every happiness, she opens to him a door by which he quits life; does he refuse to enter it? it is that he yet finds pleasure in existence. are nations reduced to despair? are they completely miserable? they have recourse to arms; at the risque of perishing, they make the most violent efforts to terminate there sufferings. thus because he sees so many of his fellows cling to life, man ought to conclude they are not so unhappy as he thinks. then let him not exaggerate the evils of the human race, but let him impose silence on that gloomy humour that persuades him these evils are without remedy; let him only diminish by degrees the number of his errors, his calamities will vanish in the same proportion; he is not to conclude himself infelicitous because his heart never ceases to form new desires, which he finds it difficult, sometimes impossible to gratify. since his body daily requires nourishment, let him infer that it is sound, that it fulfils its functions. as long as he has desires, the proper deduction ought to be, that his mind is kept in the necessary activity; he should gather from all this that passions are essential to him, that they constitute the happiness of a being who feels; are indispensable to a man who thinks; are requisite to furnish him with ideas; that they are a vital principle with a creature who must necessarily love that which procures him comfort, who must equally desire that which promises him a mode of existence analogous to his natural energies. as long as he exists, as long as the spring of his soul maintains its elasticity, this soul desires; as long as it desires, he experiences the activity which is necessary to him; as long as he acts, so long he lives. human life may be compared to a river, of which the waters succeed each other, drive each other forward, and flow on without interruption; these waters, obliged to roll over an unequal bed, encounter at intervals those obstacles which prevent their stagnation; they never cease to undulate; sometimes they recoil, then again rush forward, thus continuing to run with more or less velocity, until they are restored to _the ocean of nature_. chap. xvii. _those ideas which are true, or founded upon nature, are the only remedies for the evils of man.--recapitulation.--conclusion of the first part._ whenever man ceases to take experience for his guide, he falls into error. his errors become yet more dangerous, assume a more determined inveteracy, when they are clothed with the sanction of superstition; it is then that he hardly ever consents to return into the paths of truth; he believes himself deeply interested in no longer seeing clearly that which lies before him; he fancies he has an essential advantage in no longer understanding himself; he supposes his happiness exacts that he should shut his eyes to truth. if the majority of moral philosophers have mistaken the human heart--if they have deceived themselves upon its diseases--if they have miscalculated the remedies that are suitable--if the remedies they have administered have been inefficacious or even dangerous--it is because they have abandoned nature--because they have resisted experience--because they have not had sufficient steadiness to consult their reason--because they have renounced the evidence of their senses--because they have only followed the caprices of an imagination either dazzled by enthusiasm or disturbed by fear; because they have preferred the illusions it has held forth to the realities of nature, _who never deceives_. it is for want of having felt that an intelligent being cannot for an instant lose sight of his own peculiar conservation--of his particular interests, either real or fictitious--of his own welfare, whether permanent or transitory; in short, of his happiness, either true or false. it is for want of having considered that desires are natural, that passions are essential, that both the one and the other are motions necessary to the soul of man,--that the physicians of the, human mind have supposed supernatural causes for his wanderings; have only applied to his evils topical remedies, either useless or dangerous. indeed, in desiring him to stifle his desires, to combat his propensities, to annihilate his passions, they have done no more than give him sterile precepts, at once vague and impracticable; these vain lessons have influenced no one; they have at most restrained some few mortals whom a quiet imagination but feebly solicited to evil; the terrors with which they have accompanied them have disturbed the tranquillity of those persons who were moderate by their nature, without ever arresting the ungovernable temperament of those who were inebriated by their passions, or hurried along; by the torrent of habit. in short, the promises of superstition, as well as the menaces it holds forth, have only formed fanatics, given birth to enthusiasts, who are either dangerous or useless to society, without ever making man truly virtuous; that is to say, useful to his fellow creatures. these, empirics guided by a blind routine have, not seen that man as long as he exists, is obliged to feel, to desire, to have passions, to satisfy them in proportion to the energy which his organization has given him; they have not perceived that education planted these desires in his heart--that habit rooted them--that his government, frequently vicious, corroborated their growth--that public opinion stamped them with its approbation--that--experience render them necessary--that to tell men thus constituted to destroy their passions, was either to plunge them into despair or else to order them remedies too revolting for their temperament. in the actual state of opulent societies, to say to a man who knows by experience that riches procure every pleasure, that he must not desire them; that he must not make any efforts to obtain them; that he ought to detach himself from them: is to persuade him to render himself miserable. to tell an ambitious man not to desire grandeur, not to covet power, which every thing conspires to point out to him as the height of felicity, is to order him to overturn at one blow the habitual system of his ideas; it is to speak, to a deaf man. to tell a lover of an impetuous temperament to stifle his passions for the object that enchants him, is to make him understand, that he ought to renounce his happiness. to oppose superstition to such substantive, such puissant interests is to combat realities by chimerical speculations. indeed, if things were examined without prepossession, it would be found that the greater part of the precepts inculcated by superstition, which fanatical dogmas hold forth, which, supernatural mortals give to man, are as ridiculous as they are impossible to be put into practice. to interdict passion to man, is to desire of him not to be a human creature; to counsel an individual of a violent imagination to moderate his desires, is to advise him to change his temperament--is to request his blood to flow more sluggishly. to tell a man to renounce his habits, is to be willing that a citizen, accustomed to clothe himself, should consent to walk quite naked; it would avail as much, to desire him to change the lineament of his face, to destroy his configuration, to extinguish his imagination, to alter the course of his fluids, as to command him not to have passions which excite an activity analogous with his natural energy; or to lay aside those which confirmed habit has made him contract; which his circumstances, by a long succession of causes and effects, have converted into wants. such are, however, the so much boasted remedies which the greater number of moral philosophers apply to human depravity. is it, then surprising they do not produce the desired effect, or that they only reduce man to a state of despair by the effervescence that results from the continual conflict which they excite between the passions of his heart and these fanciful doctrines; between his vices and his virtues; between his habits and those chimerical fears with which superstition is at all times ready to overwhelm him? the vices of society, aided by the objects of which it avails itself to what the desires of man, the pleasures, the riches, the grandeur which his government holds forth to him as so many seductive magnets, the advantage which education, the benefits which example, the interests which public opinion render dear to him, attract him on one side; whilst a gloomy morality, founded upon superstitious illusions, vainly solicit him on the other; thus, superstition plunges him into misery; holds a violent struggle with his heart, without scarcely ever gaining the victory; when by accident it does prevail against so many united forces, it renders him unhappy; it completely destroys the spring of his soul. passions are the true counterpoise to passions; then let him not seek to destroy them; but let him endeavour to direct them; let him balance those which are prejudicial, by those which are useful to society. _reason_, the fruit of experience, is only the art of choosing those passions to which for his own peculiar happiness he ought to listen. _education_ is the true art of disseminating the proper method of cultivating advantageous passions in the heart of man. _legislation_ is the art of restraining dangerous passions; of exciting those which may be conducive to the public welfare. _superstition_ is only the miserable art of planting the unproductive labour--of nourishing in the soul of man those chimeras, those illusions, those impostures, those incertitudes from whence spring passions fatal to himself as well as to others: it is only by bearing up with fortitude against these that he can securely place himself on the road to happiness. _true religion_ is the art of advocating truth--of renouncing error--of contemplating reality--of drawing wisdom from experience--of cultivating man's nature to his own felicity, by teaching him to contribute to that of his associates; in short it is _reason, education_, and _legislation_, united to further the great end of human existence, by causing the passions of man to flow in a current genial to his own happiness. _reason_ and _morals_ cannot effect any thing on mankind if they do not point out to each individual that his true interest is attached to a conduct that is either useful to others or beneficial to himself; this conduct to be useful must conciliate for him the benevolence, gain for him the favor of these beings who are necessary to his happiness: it is then for the interest of mankind, for the happiness of the human race, it is for the esteem of himself, for the love of his fellows, for the advantages which ensue, that education in early life should kindle the imagination of the citizen; this is the true means of obtaining those happy results with which habit should familiarize him; which public opinion should render dear to his heart; for which example ought continually to rouse his faculties; after which he should be taught to search with unceasing attention. _government_ by the aid of recompences, ought to encourage him to follow this plan; by visiting crime with punishment it ought to deter those who are willing to interrupt it. thus the hope of a true welfare, the fear of real evil, will be passions suitable to countervail those which by their impetuosity would injure society; these last will at least become very rare, if instead of feeding man's mind with unintelligible speculations, in lieu of vibrating on his ears words void of sense, he is only spoken to of realities, only shewn those interests which are in unison with truth. man is frequently so wicked, only, because he almost always feels himself interested in being so; let him be more enlightened, more familiarized with truth, more accustomed to virtue, he will be made more happy; he will necessarily become better. an equitable government, a vigilant administration, will presently fill the state with honest citizens; it will hold forth to them present reasons for benevolence; real advantages in truth; palpable motives to be virtuous; it will instruct them in their duties; it will foster them with its cares; it will allure them by the assurance of their own peculiar happiness; its promises faithfully fulfilled--its menaces regularly executed, will unquestionably have much more weight than those of a gloomy superstition, which never exhibits to their view other than illusory benefits, fallacious punishments, which the man hardened in wickedness will doubt every time he finds an interest in questioning them: present motives will tell more home to his heart than those which are distant and at best uncertain. the vicious and the wicked are so common upon the earth, so pertinacious in their evil courses, so attached to their irregularities, only because there are but few governments that make man feel the advantage of being just, the pleasure of being honest, the happiness of being benevolent on the contrary, there is hardly any place where the most powerful interests do not solicit him to crime, by favouring the propensities of a vicious organization; by countenancing those appetencies which nothing has attempted to rectify or lead towards virtue. a savage, who in his horde knows not the value of money, certainly would not commit a crime, if when transplanted into civilized society, he should presently learn to desire it, should make efforts to obtain it, and if he could without danger finish by stealing it; above all, if he had not been taught to respect the property of the beings who environ him. the savages and the child are precisely in the same state; it is the negligence of society, of those entrusted with their education, that renders both the one and the other wicked. the son of a noble, from his infancy learns to desire power, at a riper age he becomes ambitious; if he has the address to insinuate himself into favor, he perhaps becomes wicked, because in some societies he has been taught to know he may be so with impunity when he can command the ear of his sovereign. it is not therefore nature that makes man wicked, they are his institutions which determine him to vice. the infant brought up amongst robbers, can generally become nothing but a malefactor; if he had been reared with honest people, the chance is he would have been a virtuous man. if the source be traced of that profound ignorance in which man is with respect to his morals, to the motives that can give volition to his will, it will be found in those false ideas which the greater number of speculators have formed to themselves, of human nature. the science of morals has become an enigma which it is impossible to unrevel; because man has made himself double; has distinguished his soul from his body; supposed it of a nature different from all known beings, with modes of action, with properties distinct from all other bodies, because he has emancipated this soul from physical laws, in order to submit it to capricious laws emanating from men who have pretended they are derived from imaginary regions, placed at very remote distances: metaphysicians seized upon these gratuitous suppositions, and by dint of subtilizing them, have rendered them completely unintelligible. these moralists have not perceived that motion is essential to the soul as well as to the living body; that both the one and the other are never moved but by material, by physical objects; that the want of each regenerate themselves unceasingly; that the wants of the soul, as well as those of the body are purely physical; that the most intimate, the most constant connection subsists between the soul and the body; or rather they have been unwilling to allow that they ate only the same thing considered under different points of view. obstinate in their supernatural, unintelligible opinions, they have refused to open their eyes, which would have convinced them that the body in suffering rendered the soul miserable; that the soul afflicted undermined the body and brought it to decay; that both the pleasures and agonies of the mind have an influence over the body, either plunge it into sloth or give it activity: they have rather chosen to believe, that the soul draws its thoughts, whether pleasant or gloomy, from its own peculiar sources, while the fact is, that it derives its ideas only from material objects that strike on the physical organs; that it is neither determined to gaiety nor led on to sorrow, but by the actual state, whether permanent or transitory, in which the fluids and solids of the body are found. in short, they have been loath to acknowledge that the soul, purely passive, undergoes the same changes which the body experiences; is only moved by its intervention; acts only by its assistance, receives its sensations, its perceptions, forms its ideas, derives either its happiness or its misery from physical objects, through the medium of the organs of which the body is composed; frequently without its own cognizance, often in despite of itself. by a consequence of these opinions, connected with marvellous systems, or systems invented to justify them, they have supposed the human soul to be a free agent; that is to say, that it has the faculty of moving itself; that it enjoys the privilege of acting independent of the impulse received from exterior objects, through the organs of the body; that regardless of these impulsions it can even resist them, and follow its own directions by its own energies; that it is not only different in its nature from all other beings, but has a separate mode of action; in other words, that it is an insolated point which is, not submitted to that uninterrupted chain of motion which bodies communicate to each other in a nature, whose parts are always in action. smitten with their sublime notions, these speculators were not aware that in thus distinguishing the soul from the body and from all known beings, they rendered it an impossibility to form any true ideas of it, either to themselves or to others: they were unwilling to perceive the perfect analogy which is found between the manner of the soul's action and that by which the body is afflicted; they shut their eyes to the necessary and continual correspondence which is found between the soul and the body; they perhaps did not perceive that like the body it is subjected to the motion of attraction and repulsion; has an aptitude to be attracted, a disposition to repel, which is ascribable to qualities inherent in those physical subsistances, which give play to the organs of the body; that the volition of its will, the activity of its passions, the continual regeneration of its desires, are never more than consequences of that activity which is produced in the body by material objects which are not under its controul; that these objects render it either happy or miserable, active or languishing, contented or discontented, in despite of itself,--in defiance of all the efforts it is capable of making to render it otherwise; they have rather chosen to seek in the heavens for unknown powers to set it in motion; they have held forth to man distant, imaginary interests: under the pretext of procuring for him future happiness, he has been prevented from labouring to his present felicity, which has been studiously withheld from his knowledge: his regards have been fixed upon the heavens, that he might lose sight of the earth: truth has been concealed from him; and it has been pretended he would be rendered happy by dint of terrors, always at an immense distance; by means of shadows, with whose substances he could never come in contact; of chimeras formed by his own bewildered imagination, which changed nearly as often as the governments to which he was submitted. in short, hoodwinked by his fears, blinded by his own credulity, _he was only guided through the flexuous paths of life, by men blind as himself, where both the one and the other were frequently lost in the maze_. conclusion. from every thing which has been hitherto said, it evidently results that all the errors of mankind, of whatever nature they may be, arise from man's having renounced reason, quitted experience, and refused the evidence of his senses that he might be guided by imagination, frequently deceitful; by authority, always suspicious. man will ever mistake his true happiness as long as he neglects to study nature, to investigate her laws, to seek in her alone the remedies for those evils which are the consequence of his errors: he will be an enigma to himself, as long as he shall believe himself double; that he is moved by an inconceivable spiritual power, of the laws and nature of which he is ignorant; his intellectual, as well as his moral faculties, will remain unintelligible to him if he does not contemplate them with the same eyes as he does his corporeal qualities; if he does not view them as submitted in every thing to the same impulse, as governed by the same regulations. the system of his pretended free agency is without support; experience contradicts it every instant, and proves that he never ceases to be under the influence of necessity in all his actions; this truth, far from being dangerous to man, far from being destructive of his morals, furnishes him with their true basis by making him feel the necessity of those relations which subsists between sensible beings united in society: who have congregated with a view of uniting their common efforts for their reciprocal felicity. from the necessity of these relations, spring the necessity of his duties; these point out to him the sentiments of love, which he should accord to virtuous conduct; that aversion he should have for what is vicious; the horror he should feel for every thing criminal. from hence the true foundation of _moral obligation_ will be obvious, which is only the necessity of talking means to obtain the end man proposes to himself by uniting in society; in which each individual for his own peculiar interest, his own particular happiness, his own personal security, is obliged to display dispositions requisite to conciliate the affections of his associates; to hold a conduct suitable to the preservation of the community; to contribute by his actions to the happiness of the whole. in a word, it is upon the necessary action and re-action of the human will upon the necessary attraction and repulsion of man's soul, that all his morals are bottomed: it is the unison of his will, the concert of his actions, that maintains society; it is rendered miserable by his discordance; it is dissolved by his want of union. from what has been said, it may be concluded that the names under which man has designated the concealed causes acting in nature, and their various effects, are never more than _necessity_ considered under different points of view, with the original cause of which--the great _cause of causes_--he must ever remain ignorant. it will be found that what he calls _order_, is a necessary consequence of causes and effects, of which he sees, or believes he sees, the entire connection, the complete routine, which pleases him as a whole, when he finds it conformable to his existence. in like manner it will be seen that what he calls _confusion_, is a consequence of like necessary causes and effects, of which he loses the concatenation, which he therefore thinks unfavourable to himself, or but little suitable to his being. that he has designated by the names of-- _intelligence_, those necessary causes that necessarily operate the chain of events which he comprises under the term _order_: _divinity_, those necessary but invisible causes which give play to nature, in which every thing acts according to immutable and necessary laws: _destiny_ or _fatality_, the necessary connection of those unknown causes and, effects which he beholds in the world: _chance_, those effects which he is not able to foresee, or of which he is ignorant of the necessary connection, with their causes: _intellectual_ and _moral faculties_, those effects and those modifications necessary to an organized being, whom he has supposed to be moved by an inconceivable agent; who he has believed distinguished from his body, of a nature totally different from it, and which he has designated by the word soul. in consequence, he has believed this agent immortal; not dissoluble like the body. it has been shewn that the marvellous doctrine of another life, is founded upon gratuitous suppositions, contradicted by reflections, unsupported by experience, that may or may not be, without man's knowing any thing on the subject. it has been proved, that the hypothesis is not only useless to man's morals, but again, that it is calculated to palsy his exertions; to divert him from actively pursuing the true road to his own happiness; to fill him with romantic caprices; to inebriate him with opinions prejudicial to his tranquillity; in short, to lull to slumber the vigilance of legislators; by dispensing them from giving to education, to the institutions, to the laws of society, all that attention, which it is the duty and for his interest they should bestow. it must have been felt, that _politics_ has unaccountably rested itself upon wrong opinions; upon ideas little capable of satisfying those passions, which every thing conspires to kindle in the heart of man; who ceases to view the future, while the present seduces and hurries him along. it has been shewn, that contempt of death is an advantageous sentiment, calculated to inspire man's mind with courage; to render him intrepid; to induce him to undertake that which may be truly useful to society; in short, from what has preceded, it will be obvious, what is competent to conduct man to happiness, and also what are the obstacles that error opposes to his felicity. let us not then, be accused of demolishing prejudice, without edifying the mind; with combating error without substituting truth; with underrating the power of the great _cause of causes_; with sapping at one and the same time the foundations of superstition and of sound morals. the last is necessary to man; it is founded upon his nature; its duties are certain, they must last as long as the human race remains; it imposes obligations on him, because, without it, neither individuals nor society could be able to subsist, either obtain or enjoy those advantages which nature obliges them to desire. listen then, o man! to those morals which are established upon, experience; which are grounded upon the necessity of things; do not lend thine ear to those superstitions founded upon reveries; rested upon imposture; built upon the capricious whims of a disordered imagination. follow the lessons of those humane, those gentle morals, which conduct man to virtue, by the voice of happiness: turn a deaf ear to the inefficacious cries of superstition, which renders man really unhappy; which can never make him reverence virtue; which renders truth hateful; which paints veracity in hideous colours; in short, let him see if reason, without the assistance of a rival, who prohibits its use, will not more surely conduct him towards that great end, which is the object of his research, which is the natural tendency of all his views. indeed, what benefit has the human race hitherto drawn from those sublime, those supernatural notions with which superstition has fed mortals during so many ages? all those phantoms conjured--up by ignorance--brooded by imagination; all those hypothesis, subtile as they are irrational; from which experience is banished, all those words devoid of meaning with which languages are crowded; all those fantastical hopes; those panic terrors which have been brought to operate on the will of man; what have they done? has any or the whole of them rendered him better, more enlightened to his duties, more faithful in their performance? have those marvellous systems, or those sophistical inventions, by which they have been supported, carried conviction to his mind, reason into his conduct, virtue into his heart? have they led him to the least acquaintance with the great _cause of causes?_ alas! it is a lamentable fact, that cannot be too often exposed, that all these things have done nothing more than plunge the human understanding into that darkness from which it is difficult to be withdrawn; sown in man's heart the most dangerous errors; of which it is scarcely possible to divest him; given birth to those fatal passions, in which may be found the true source of those evils, with which his species is afflicted: but have never enlightened his mind with truth, nor led him to that right healthy worship, which man best pays by a rational enjoyment of the faculties with which he is gifted. cease then, o mortal! to let thyself he disturbed with chimeras, to let thy mind be troubled with phantoms which thine own imagination has created, or to which arch imposture has given birth. renounce thy vague hopes, disengage thyself from thine overwhelming fears, follow without inquietude the necessary routine which nature has marked out for thee; strew the road with flowers if thy destiny permits; remove, if thou art able, the thorns scattered over it. do not attempt to plunge thy views into an impenetrable futurity; its obscurity ought to be sufficient to prove to thee, that it is either useless or dangerous to fathom. think of making thyself happy in that existence which is known to thee: if thou wouldst preserve thyself, be temperate, be moderate, be reasonable: if thou seekest to render thy existence durable, be not prodigal of pleasure; abstain from every thing that can be hurtful to thyself, injurious to others: be truly intelligent; that is to say, learn to esteem thyself, to preserve thy being, to fulfil that end which at each moment thou proposest to thyself. be virtuous, to the end that thou mayest render thyself solidly happy, that thou mayest enjoy the affections, secure the esteem, partake of the assistance of those by whom thou art surrounded; of those beings whom nature has made necessary to thine own peculiar felicity. even when they should be unjust, render thyself worthy of their applause, of thine own love, and thou shalt live content, thy serenity shall not be disturbed, the end of thy career shall not slander thy life; which will be exempted from remorse: death will be to thee the door to a new existence, a new order, in which thou wilt be submitted, as thou art at present, to the eternal laws of nature, which ordains, that to live happy here below, thou must make others happy. suffer thyself then, to be drawn gently along thy journey, until thou shalt sleep peaceable on that bosom which has given thee birth: if contrary to thine expectation, there should be another life of eternal felicity, thou canst not fail being a partaker. for thou, wicked unfortunate! who art found in continual contradiction with thyself; thou whose disorderly machine can neither accord with thine own peculiar nature, nor with that of thine associates, whatever may be thy crimes, whatever may be thy fears of punishment in another life, thou art at least already cruelly punished in this? do not thy follies, thy shameful habits, thy debaucheries, damage thine health? dost thou not linger out life in disgust, fatigued with thine own excesses? does not listlessness punish thee for thy satiated passions? has not thy vigour, thy gaiety, thy content, already yielded to feebleness, crouched under infirmities, given place to regret? do not thy vices every day dig thy grave? every time thou hast stained thyself with crime, hast thou dared without horror to return into thyself, to examine thine own conscience? hast thou not found remorse, error, shame, established in thine heart? hast thou not dreaded the scrutiny of thy fellow man? hast thou not trembled when alone; unceasingly feared, that truth, so terrible for thee, should unveil thy dark transgressions, throw into light thine enormous iniquities? do not then any longer fear to part with thine existence, it will at least put an end to those richly merited torments thou hast inflicted on thyself; _death, in delivering the earth from an incommodious burthen, will also deliver thee from thy most cruel enemy, thyself_. end of part i. proofreading team. boethius the theological tractates with an english translation by h.f. stewart, d.d. fellow of trinity college, cambridge and e.k. rand, ph.d. professor of latin in harvard university the consolation of philosophy with the english translation of "i.t." ( ) revised by h.f. stewart [transcriber's note: the paper edition of this book has latin and english pages facing each other. this version of the text uses alternating latin and english sections, with the english text slightly indented.] contents note on the text introduction bibliography the theological tractates the consolation of philosophy symmachi versus index note on the text in preparing the text of the _consolatio_ i have used the apparatus in peiper's edition (teubner, ), since his reports, as i know in the case of the tegernseensis, are generally accurate and complete; i have depended also on my own collations or excerpts from various of the important manuscripts, nearly all of which i have at least examined, and i have also followed, not always but usually, the opinions of engelbrecht in his admirable article, _die consolatio philosophiae des boethius_ in the _sitzungsberichte_ of the vienna academy, cxliv. ( ) - . the present text, then, has been constructed from only part of the material with which an editor should reckon, though the reader may at least assume that every reading in the text has, unless otherwise stated, the authority of some manuscript of the ninth or tenth century; in certain orthographical details, evidence from the text of the _opuscula sacra_ has been used without special mention of this fact. we look to august engelbrecht for the first critical edition of the _consolatio_ at, we hope, no distant date. the text of the _opuscula sacra_ is based on my own collations of all the important manuscripts of these works. an edition with complete _apparatus criticus_ will be ready before long for the vienna _corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_. the history of the text of the _opuscula sacra_, as i shall attempt to show elsewhere, is intimately connected with that of the _consolatio_. e.k.r. introduction anicius manlius severinus boethius, of the famous praenestine family of the anicii, was born about a.d. in rome. his father was an ex-consul; he himself was consul under theodoric the ostrogoth in , and his two sons, children of a great grand-daughter of the renowned q. aurelius symmachus, were joint consuls in . his public career was splendid and honourable, as befitted a man of his race, attainments, and character. but he fell under the displeasure of theodoric, and was charged with conspiring to deliver rome from his rule, and with corresponding treasonably to this end with justin, emperor of the east. he was thrown into prison at pavia, where he wrote the _consolation of philosophy_, and he was brutally put to death in . his brief and busy life was marked by great literary achievement. his learning was vast, his industry untiring, his object unattainable-- nothing less than the transmission to his countrymen of all the works of plato and aristotle, and the reconciliation of their apparently divergent views. to form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but boethius accomplished much. he translated the [greek: eisagogae] of porphyry, and the whole of aristotle's _organon_. he wrote a double commentary on the [greek: eisagogae] and commentaries on the _categories_ and the _de interpretatione_ of aristotle, and on the _topica_ of cicero. he also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on division and on topical differences. he adapted the arithmetic of nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various greek authorities, was in use at oxford and cambridge until modern times. his five theological _tractates_ are here, together with the _consolation of philosophy_, to speak for themselves. boethius was the last of the roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastic theologians. the present volume serves to prove the truth of both these assertions. the _consolation of philosophy_ is indeed, as gibbon called it, "a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of plato or of tully." to belittle its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to saving the christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and his method. the _consolatio_ is not, as has been maintained, a mere patchwork of translations from aristotle and the neoplatonists. rather it is the supreme essay of one who throughout his life had found his highest solace in the dry light of reason. his chief source of refreshment, in the dungeon to which his beloved library had not accompanied him, was a memory well stocked with the poetry and thought of former days. the development of the argument is anything but neoplatonic; it is all his own. and if the _consolation of philosophy_ admits boethius to the company of cicero or even of plato, the theological _tractates_ mark him as the forerunner of st. thomas. it was the habit of a former generation to regard boethius as an eclectic, the transmitter of a distorted aristotelianism, a pagan, or at best a luke-warm christian, who at the end cast off the faith which he had worn in times of peace, and wrapped himself in the philosophic cloak which properly belonged to him. the authenticity of the _tractates_ was freely denied. we know better now. the discovery by alfred holder, and the illuminating discussion by hermann usener,[ ] of a fragment of cassiodorus are sufficient confirmation of the manuscript tradition, apart from the work of scholars who have sought to justify that tradition from internal evidence. in that fragment cassiodorus definitely ascribes to his friend boethius "a book on the trinity, some dogmatic chapters, and a book against nestorius."[ ] boethius was without doubt a christian, a doctor and perhaps a martyr. nor is it necessary to think that, when in prison, he put away his faith. if it is asked why the _consolation of philosophy_ contains no conscious or direct reference to the doctrines which are traced in the _tractates_ with so sure a hand, and is, at most, not out of harmony with christianity, the answer is simple. in the _consolation_ he is writing philosophy; in the _tractates_ he is writing theology. he observes what pascal calls the orders of things. philosophy belongs to one order, theology to another. they have different objects. the object of philosophy is to understand and explain the nature of the world around us; the object of theology is to understand and explain doctrines delivered by divine revelation. the scholastics recognized the distinction,[ ] and the corresponding difference in the function of faith and reason. their final aim was to co-ordinate the two, but this was not possible before the thirteenth century. meanwhile boethius helps to prepare the way. in the _consolation_ he gives reason her range, and suffers her, unaided, to vindicate the ways of providence. in the _tractates_ reason is called in to give to the claims of faith the support which it does not really lack.[ ] reason, however, has still a right to be heard. the distinction between _fides_ and _ratio_ is proclaimed in the first two _tractates_. in the second especially it is drawn with a clearness worthy of st. thomas himself; and there is, of course, the implication that the higher authority resides with _fides_. but the treatment is philosophical and extremely bold. boethius comes back to the question of the substantiality of the divine persons which he has discussed in tr. i. from a fresh point of view. once more he decides that the persons are predicated relatively; even trinity, he concludes, is not predicated substantially of deity. does this square with catholic doctrine? it is possible to hear a note of challenge in his words to john the deacon, _fidem si poterit rationemque coniunge_. philosophy states the problem in unequivocal terms. theology is required to say whether they commend themselves. one object of the scholastics, anterior to the final co-ordination of the two sciences, was to harmonize and codify all the answers to all the questions that philosophy raises. the ambition of boethius was not so soaring, but it was sufficiently bold. he set out, first to translate, and then to reconcile, plato and aristotle; to go behind all the other systems, even the latest and the most in vogue, back to the two great masters, and to show that they have the truth, and are in substantial accord. so st. thomas himself, if he cannot reconcile the teaching of plato and aristotle, at least desires to correct the one by the other, to discover what truth is common to both, and to show its correspondence with christian doctrine. it is reasonable to conjecture that boethius, if he had lived, might have attempted something of the kind. were he alive to-day, he might feel more in tune with the best of the pagans than with most contemporary philosophic thought. in yet one more respect boethius belongs to the company of the schoolmen. he not only put into circulation many precious philosophical notions, served as channel through which various works of aristotle passed into the schools, and handed down to them a definite aristotelian method for approaching the problem of faith; he also supplied material for that classification of the various sciences which is an essential accompaniment of every philosophical movement, and of which the middle ages felt the value.[ ] the uniform distribution into natural sciences, mathematics and theology which he recommends may be traced in the work of various teachers up to the thirteenth century, when it is finally accepted and defended by st. thomas in his commentary on the _de trinitate_. a seventeenth-century translation of the _consolatio philosophiae_ is here presented with such alterations as are demanded by a better text, and the requirements of modern scholarship. there was, indeed, not much to do, for the rendering is most exact. this in a translation of that date is not a little remarkable. we look for fine english and poetry in an elizabethan; but we do not often get from him such loyalty to the original as is here displayed. of the author "i.t." nothing is known. he may have been john thorie, a fleming born in london in , and a b.a. of christ church, . thorie "was a person well skilled in certain tongues, and a noted poet of his times" (wood, _athenae oxon._ ed. bliss, i. ), but his known translations are apparently all from the spanish.[ ] our translator dedicates his "five books of philosophical comfort" to the dowager countess of dorset, widow of thomas sackville, who was part author of _a mirror for magistrates_ and _gorboduc_, and who, we learn from i.t.'s preface, meditated a similar work. i.t. does not unduly flatter his patroness, and he tells her plainly that she will not understand the philosophy of the book, though the theological and practical parts may be within her scope. the _opuscula sacra_ have never before, to our knowledge, been translated. in reading and rendering them we have been greatly helped by two mediaeval commentaries: one by john the scot (edited by e.k. rand in traube's _quellen und untersuchungen_, vol. i. pt. , munich, ); the other by gilbert de la porrée (printed in migne, _p.l._ lxiv.). we also desire to record our indebtedness in many points of scholarship and philosophy to mr. e.j. thomas of emmanuel college. finally, thanks are due to mr. dolson for the suggestion in the footnote on the preceding page, and also to professor lane cooper of cornell university for many valuable corrections as this reprint was passing through the press. h.f.s. e.k.r. _october, ._ [ ] _anecdoton holderi_, leipzig, . [ ] _scripsit librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra nestorium._ on the question of the genuineness of tr. iv. _de fide catholica_ see note _ad loc_. [ ] cp. h. de wulf, _histoire de la philosophie médiévale_ (louvain and paris ), p. . [ ] see below, _de trin_. vi. _ad fin_. [ ] cp. l. baur, _gundissalinus: de divisione_, münster, . [ ] mr. g. bayley dolson suggests with greater probability that i.t. was john thorpe (fl. - ), architect to thomas sackville, earl of dorset. cf. _american journal of philology_, vol. xlii. ( ), p. . bibliography _editio princeps_: collected works (except _de fide catholica_). joh. et greg. de gregoriis. venice, - . _de consolatione philosophiae_. coburger. nürnberg, . _de fide catholica_. ed. ren. vallinus. leyden, . _latest critical edition_: _de consolatione philosophiae_ and theological tractates. r. peiper. teubner, . _translations_: _de consolatione philosophiae_. alfred the great. ed. w.j. sedgefield. oxford, and . chaucer. ed. w.w. skeat in chaucer's complete works. vol. ii. oxford, . h.r. james. _the consolation of philosophy of boethius_. london, ; reprinted . judicis de mirandol. _la consolation philosophique de boëce_. paris, . _illustrative works_: a. engelbrecht. _die consolatio phil. der b._ sitzungsberichte der kön. akad. vienna, . bardenhewer, _patrologie_ (boethius und cassiodor, pp. sqq.). freiburg im breslau, . hauréan. _hist. de la philosophie scolastique._ vol. i. paris, . hildebrand. _boethius und seine stellung zum christentum._ regensburg, . hodgkin. _italy and her invaders._ vols. iii. and iv. oxford, . ch. jourdain. ( ) _de l'origine des traditions sur le christianisme de boëce_; ( ) _des commentaires inédits sur la consolation de la philosophie_. (excursions historiques et philosophiques à travers le moyen àge.) paris, . fritz klingner. _de boethii consolatione_, philol. unters. xxvii. berlin, . f.d. maurice. _moral and metaphysical philosophy._ vol. i. london, . f. nitzsch. _das system des b._ berlin, . e.k. rand. _der dem b. zugeschriebene traktat de fide catholica_ (jahrbuch für kl. phil. xxvi.). . semeria. _il cristianesimo di sev. boezio rivendicato_, rome, . m. schanz. _gesch. der röm. litteratur._ teil iv. boethius. berlin, . h.f. stewart. _boethius: an essay._ edinburgh, . usener. _anecdoton holderi._ leipsic, . boethius the theological tractates and the consolation of philosophy anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii incipit liber qvomodo trinitas vnvs devs ac non tres dii ad q. avrelivm memmivm symmachvm v.c. et inl. excons. ord. atqve patricivm socervm investigatam diutissime quaestionem, quantum nostrae mentis igniculum lux diuina dignata est, formatam rationibus litterisque mandatam offerendam uobis communicandamque curaui tam uestri cupidus iudicii quam nostri studiosus inuenti. qua in re quid mihi sit animi quotiens stilo cogitata commendo, tum ex ipsa materiae difficultate tum ex eo quod raris id est uobis tantum conloquor, intellegi potest. neque enim famae iactatione et inanibus uulgi clamoribus excitamur; sed si quis est fructus exterior, hic non potest aliam nisi materiae similem sperare sententiam. quocumque igitur a uobis deieci oculos, partim ignaua segnities partim callidus liuor occurrit, ut contumeliam uideatur diuinis tractatibus inrogare qui talibus hominum monstris non agnoscenda haec potius quam proculcanda proiecerit. idcirco stilum breuitate contraho et ex intimis sumpta philosophiae disciplinis nouorum uerborum significationibus uelo, ut haec mihi tantum uobisque, si quando ad ea conuertitis oculos, conloquantur; ceteros uero ita submouimus, ut qui capere intellectu nequiuerint ad ea etiam legenda uideantur indigni. sane[ ] tantum a nobis quaeri oportet quantum humanae rationis intuitus ad diuinitatis ualet celsa conscendere. nam ceteris quoque artibus idem quasi quidam finis est constitutus, quousque potest uia rationis accedere. neque enim medicina aegris semper affert salutem; sed nulla erit culpa medentis, si nihil eorum quae fieri oportebat omiserit. idemque in ceteris. at quantum haec difficilior quaestio est, tam facilior esse debet ad ueniam. vobis tamen etiam illud inspiciendum est, an ex beati augustini scriptis semina rationum aliquos in nos uenientia fructus extulerint. ac de proposita quaestione hinc sumamus initium. [ ] sed ne _codices optimi_. the trinity is one god not three gods a treatise by anicius manlius severinus boethius most honourable, of the illustrious order of ex-consuls, patrician to his father-in-law, quintus aurelius memmius symmachus most honourable, of the illustrious order of ex-consuls, patrician i have long pondered this problem with such mind as i have and all the light that god has lent me. now, having set it forth in logical order and cast it into literary form, i venture to submit it to your judgment, for which i care as much as for the results of my own research. you will readily understand what i feel whenever i try to write down what i think if you consider the difficulty of the topic and the fact that i discuss it only with the few--i may say with no one but yourself. it is indeed no desire for fame or empty popular applause that prompts my pen; if there be any external reward, we may not look for more warmth in the verdict than the subject itself arouses. for, apart from yourself, wherever i turn my eyes, they fall on either the apathy of the dullard or the jealousy of the shrewd, and a man who casts his thoughts before the common herd--i will not say to consider but to trample under foot, would seem to bring discredit on the study of divinity. so i purposely use brevity and wrap up the ideas i draw from the deep questionings of philosophy in new and unaccustomed words which speak only to you and to myself, that is, if you deign to look at them. the rest of the world i simply disregard: they cannot understand, and therefore do not deserve to read. we should not of course press our inquiry further than man's wit and reason are allowed to climb the height of heavenly knowledge.[ ] in all the liberal arts we see the same limit set beyond which reason may not reach. medicine, for instance, does not always bring health to the sick, though the doctor will not be to blame if he has left nothing undone which he ought to do. so with the other arts. in the present case the very difficulty of the quest claims a lenient judgment. you must however examine whether the seeds sown in my mind by st. augustine's writings[ ] have borne fruit. and now let us begin our inquiry. [ ] cf. the discussion of human _ratio_ and divine _intellegentia_ in _cons. v._ pr. and . [ ] e.g. aug. _de trin._ i. christianae religionis reuerentiam plures usurpant, sed ea fides pollet maxime ac solitarie quae cum propter uniuersalium praecepta regularum, quibus eiusdem religionis intellegatur auctoritas, tum propterea, quod eius cultus per omnes paene mundi terminos emanauit, catholica uel uniuersalis uocatur. cuius haec de trinitatis unitate sententia est: "pater," inquiunt, "deus filius deus spiritus sanctus deus." igitur pater filius spiritus sanctus unus non tres dii. cuius coniunctionis ratio est indifferentia. eos enim differentia comitatur qui uel augent uel minuunt, ut arriani qui gradibus meritorum trinitatem uariantes distrahunt atque in pluralitatem diducunt. principium enim pluralitatis alteritas est; praeter alteritatem enim nec pluralitas quid sit intellegi potest. trium namque rerum uel quotlibet tum genere tum specie tum numero diuersitas constat; quotiens enim idem dicitur, totiens diuersum etiam praedicatur. idem uero dicitur tribus modis: aut genere ut idem homo quod equus, quia his idem genus ut animal; uel specie ut idem cato quod cicero, quia eadem species ut homo; uel numero ut tullius et cicero, quia unus est numero. quare diuersum etiam uel genere uel specie uel numero dicitur. sed numero differentiam accidentium uarietas facit. nam tres homines neque genere neque specie sed suis accidentibus distant; nam uel si animo cuncta ab his accidentia separemus, tamen locus cunctis diuersus est quem unum fingere nullo modo possumus; duo enim corpora unum locum non obtinebunt, qui est accidens. atque ideo sunt numero plures, quoniam accidentibus plures fiunt. i. there are many who claim as theirs the dignity of the christian religion; but that form of faith is valid and only valid which, both on account of the universal character of the rules and doctrines affirming its authority, and because the worship in which they are expressed has spread throughout the world, is called catholic or universal. the belief of this religion concerning the unity of the trinity is as follows: the father is god, the son is god, the holy spirit is god. therefore father, son, and holy spirit are one god, not three gods. the principle of this union is absence of difference[ ]: difference cannot be avoided by those who add to or take from the unity, as for instance the arians, who, by graduating the trinity according to merit, break it up and convert it to plurality. for the essence of plurality is otherness; apart from otherness plurality is unintelligible. in fact, the difference between three or more things lies in genus or species or number. difference is the necessary correlative of sameness. sameness is predicated in three ways: by genus; e.g. a man and a horse, because of their common genus, animal. by species; e.g. cato and cicero, because of their common species, man. by number; e.g. tully and cicero, because they are numerically one. similarly difference is expressed by genus, species, and number. now numerical difference is caused by variety of accidents; three men differ neither by genus nor species but by their accidents, for if we mentally remove from them all other accidents,[ ] still each one occupies a different place which cannot possibly be regarded as the same for each, since two bodies cannot occupy the same place, and place is an accident. wherefore it is because men are plural by their accidents that they are plural in number. [ ] the terms _differentia, numerus, species,_ are used expertly, as would be expected of the author of the _in isag. porph. commenta._ see s. brandt's edition of that work (in the vienna _corpus_, ), s.v. _differentia,_ etc. [ ] this method of mental abstraction is employed more elaborately in _tr._ iii. (_vide infra_, p. ) and in _cons._ v. pr. , where the notion of divine foreknowledge is abstracted in imagination. ii. age igitur ingrediamur et unumquodque ut intellegi atque capi potest dispiciamus; nam, sicut optime dictum uidetur, eruditi est hominis unum quodque ut ipsum est ita de eo fidem capere temptare. nam cum tres sint speculatiuae partes, _naturalis_, in motu inabstracta [greek: anupexairetos] (considerat enim corporum formas cum materia, quae a corporibus actu separari non possunt, quae corpora in motu sunt ut cum terra deorsum ignis sursum fertur, habetque motum forma materiae coniuncta), _mathematica_, sine motu inabstracta (haec enim formas corporum speculatur sine materia ac per hoc sine motu, quae formae cum in materia sint, ab his separari non possunt), _theologica_, sine motu abstracta atque separabilis (nam dei substantia et materia et motu caret), in naturalibus igitur rationabiliter, in mathematicis disciplinaliter, in diuinis intellectualiter uersari oportebit neque diduci ad imaginationes, sed potius ipsam inspicere formam quae uere forma neque imago est et quae esse ipsum est et ex qua esse est. omne namque esse ex forma est. statua enim non secundum aes quod est materia, sed secundum formam qua in eo insignita est effigies animalis dicitur, ipsumque aes non secundum terram quod est eius materia, sed dicitur secundum aeris figuram. terra quoque ipsa non secundum [greek: apoion hulaen] dicitur, sed secundum siccitatem grauitatemque quae sunt formae. nihil igitur secundum materiam esse dicitur sed secundum propriam formam. sed diuina substantia sine materia forma est atque ideo unum et est id quod est. reliqua enim non sunt id quod sunt. vnum quodque enim habet esse suum ex his ex quibus est, id est ex partibus suis, et est hoc atque hoc, id est partes suae coniunctae, sed non hoc uel hoc singulariter, ut cum homo terrenus constet ex anima corporeque, corpus et anima est, non uel corpus uel anima in partem; igitur non est id quod est. quod uero non est ex hoc atque hoc, sed tantum est hoc, illud uere est id quod est; et est pulcherrimum fortissimumque quia nullo nititur. quocirca hoc uere unum in quo nullus numerus, nullum in eo aliud praeterquam id quod est. neque enim subiectum fieri potest; forma enim est, formae uero subiectae esse non possunt. nam quod ceterae formae subiectae accidentibus sunt ut humanitas, non ita accidentia suscipit eo quod ipsa est, sed eo quod materia ei subiecta est; dum enim materia subiecta humanitati suscipit quodlibet accidens, ipsa hoc suscipere uidetur humanitas. forma uero quae est sine materia non poterit esse subiectum nec uero inesse materiae, neque enim esset forma sed imago. ex his enim formis quae praeter materiam sunt, istae formae uenerunt quae sunt in materia et corpus efficiunt. nam ceteras quae in corporibus sunt abutimur formas uocantes, dum imagines sint. adsimulantur enim formis his quae non sunt in materia constitutae. nulla igitur in eo diuersitas, nulla ex diuersitate pluralitas, nulla ex accidentibus multitudo atque idcirco nec numerus. ii. we will now begin a careful consideration of each several point, as far as they can be grasped and understood; for it has been wisely said,[ ] in my opinion, that it is a scholar's duty to formulate his belief about anything according to its real nature. speculative science may be divided into three kinds[ ]: physics, mathematics, and theology. physics deals with motion and is not abstract or separable (i.e. [greek: anupexairetos]); for it is concerned with the forms of bodies together with their constituent matter, which forms cannot be separated in reality from their bodies.[ ] as the bodies are in motion--the earth, for instance, tending downwards, and fire tending upwards, form takes on the movement of the particular thing to which it is annexed. mathematics does not deal with motion and is not abstract, for it investigates forms of bodies apart from matter, and therefore apart from movement, which forms, however, being connected with matter cannot be really separated from bodies. theology does not deal with motion and is abstract and separable, for the divine substance is without either matter or motion. in physics, then, we are bound to use scientific, in mathematics, systematical, in theology, intellectual concepts; and in theology we will not let ourselves be diverted to play with imaginations, but will simply apprehend that form which is pure form and no image, which is very being and the source of being. for everything owes its being to form. thus a statue is not a statue on account of the brass which is its matter, but on account of the form whereby the likeness of a living thing is impressed upon it: the brass itself is not brass because of the earth which is its matter, but because of its form. likewise earth is not earth by reason of unqualified matter,[ ] but by reason of dryness and weight, which are forms. so nothing is said to be because it has matter, but because it has a distinctive form. but the divine substance is form without matter, and is therefore one, and is its own essence. but other things are not simply their own essences, for each thing has its being from the things of which it is composed, that is, from its parts. it is this _and_ that, i.e. it is the totality of its parts in conjunction; it is not this _or_ that taken apart. earthly man, for instance, since he consists of soul and body, is soul _and_ body, not soul _or_ body, separately; therefore he is not his own essence. that on the other hand which does not consist of this and that, but is only this, is really its own essence, and is altogether beautiful and stable because it is not grounded in anything. wherefore that is truly one in which is no number, in which nothing is present except its own essence. nor can it become the substrate of anything, for it is pure form, and pure forms cannot be substrates.[ ] for if humanity, like other forms, is a substrate for accidents, it does not receive accidents through the fact that it exists, but through the fact that matter is subjected to it. humanity appears indeed to appropriate the accident which in reality belongs to the matter underlying the conception humanity. but form which is without matter cannot be a substrate, and cannot have its essence in matter, else it would not be form but a reflexion. for from those forms which are outside matter come the forms which are in matter and produce bodies. we misname the entities that reside in bodies when we call them forms; they are mere images; they only resemble those forms which are not incorporate in matter. in him, then, is no difference, no plurality arising out of difference, no multiplicity arising out of accidents, and accordingly no number. [ ] by cicero (_tusc_. v. . ). [ ] cf. the similar division of philosophy in _isag. porph_. ed. brandt, pp. ff. [ ] _sb_. though they may be separated in thought. [ ] [greek: apoios hulae] = [greek: to amorphon, to aeides] of aristotle. cf. [greek: oute gar hulae to eidos (hae men apoios, to de poiotaes tis) oute ex hulaes] (alexander aphrod. _de anima_, . ); [greek: ei de touto, apoios de hae hulae, apoion an eiae soma] (id. _de anima libri mantissa_, . ). [ ] this is realism. cf. "sed si rerum ueritatem atque integritatem perpendas, non est dubium quin uerae sint. nam cum res omnes quae uerae sunt sine his quinque (i.e. genus species differentia propria accidentia) esse non possint, has ipsas quinque res uere intellectas esse non dubites." _isag., porph. ed, pr._ i. (m. _p.l._ lxiv. col. , brandt, pp. ff.). the two passages show that boethius is definitely committed to the realistic position, although in his _comment. in porphyr. a se translatum_ he holds the scales between plato and aristotle, "quorum diiudicare sententias aptum esse non duxi" (cp. hauréau, _hist. de la philosophie scolastique_, i. ). as a fact in the _comment. in porph._ he merely postpones the question, which in the _de trin._ he settles. boethius was ridiculed in the middle ages for his caution. iii. deus uero a deo nullo differt, ne uel accidentibus uel substantialibus differentiis in subiecto positis distent. vbi uero nulla est differentia, nulla est omnino pluralitas, quare nec numerus; igitur unitas tantum. nam quod tertio repetitur deus, cum pater ac filius et spiritus sanctus nuncupatur, tres unitates non faciunt pluralitatem numeri in eo quod ipsae sunt, si aduertamus ad res numerabiles ac non ad ipsum numerum. illic enim unitatum repetitio numerum facit. in eo autem numero qui in rebus numerabilibus constat, repetitio unitatum atque pluralitas minime facit numerabilium rerum numerosam diuersitatem. numerus enim duplex est, unus quidem quo numeramus, alter uero qui in rebus numerabilibus constat. etenim unum res est; unitas, quo unum dicimus. duo rursus in rebus sunt ut homines uel lapides; dualitas nihil, sed tantum dualitas qua duo homines uel duo lapides fiunt. et in ceteris eodem modo. ergo in numero quo numeramus repetitio unitatum facit pluralitatem; in rerum uero numero non facit pluralitatem unitatum repetitio, uel si de eodem dicam "gladius unus mucro unus ensis unus." potest enim unus tot uocabulis gladius agnosci; haec enim unitatum iteratio potius est non numeratio, uelut si ita dicamus "ensis mucro gladius," repetitio quaedam est eiusdem non numeratio diuersorum, uelut si dicam "sol sol sol," non tres soles effecerim, sed de uno totiens praedicauerim. non igitur si de patre ac filio et spiritu sancto tertio praedicatur deus, idcirco trina praedicatio numerum facit. hoc enim illis ut dictum est imminet qui inter eos distantiam faciunt meritorum. catholicis uero nihil in differentia constituentibus ipsamque formam ut est esse ponentibus neque aliud esse quam est ipsum quod est opinantibus recte repetitio de eodem quam enumeratio diuersi uidetur esse cum dicitur "deus pater deus filius deus spiritus sanctus atque haec trinitas unus deus," uelut "ensis atque mucro unus gladius," uelut "sol sol sol unus sol." sed hoc interim ad eam dictum sit significationem demonstrationemque qua ostenditur non omnem unitatum repetitionem numerum pluralitatemque perficere. non uero ita dicitur "pater ac filius et spiritus sanctus" quasi multiuocum quiddam; nam mucro et ensis et ipse est et idem, pater uero ac filius et spiritus sanctus idem equidem est, non uero ipse. in qua re paulisper considerandum est. requirentibus enim: "ipse est pater qui filius?" "minime," inquiunt. rursus: "idem alter qui alter?" negatur. non est igitur inter eos in re omni indifferentia; quare subintrat numerus quem ex subiectorum diuersitate confici superius explanatum est. de qua re breuite*r considerabimus, si prius illud, quem ad modum de deo unum quodque praedicatur, praemiserimus. iii. now god differs from god in no respect, for there cannot be divine essences distinguished either by accidents or by substantial differences belonging to a substrate. but where there is no difference, there is no sort of plurality and accordingly no number; here, therefore, is unity alone. for whereas we say god thrice when we name the father, son, and holy spirit, these three unities do not produce a plurality of number in their own essences, if we think of what we count instead of what we count with. for in the case of abstract number a repetition of single items does produce plurality; but in the case of concrete number the repetition and plural use of single items does not by any means produce numerical difference in the objects counted. there are as a fact two kinds of number. there is the number with which we count (abstract) and the number inherent in the things counted (concrete). "one" is a thing-- the thing counted. unity is that by which oneness is denoted. again "two" belongs to the class of things as men or stones; but not so duality; duality is merely that whereby two men or two stones are denoted; and so on. therefore a repetition of unities[ ] produces plurality when it is a question of abstract, but not when it is a question of concrete things, as, for example, if i say of one and the same thing, "one sword, one brand, one blade."[ ] it is easy to see that each of these names denotes a sword; i am not numbering unities but simply repeating one thing, and in saying "sword, brand, blade," i reiterate the one thing and do not enumerate several different things any more than i produce three suns instead of merely mentioning one thing thrice when i say "sun, sun, sun." so then if god be predicated thrice of father, son, and holy spirit, the threefold predication does not result in plural number. the risk of that, as has been said, attends only on those who distinguish them according to merit. but catholic christians, allowing no difference of merit in god, assuming him to be pure form and believing him to be nothing else than his own essence, rightly regard the statement "the father is god, the son is god, the holy spirit is god, and this trinity is one god," not as an enumeration of different things but as a reiteration of one and the same thing, like the statement, "blade and brand are one sword" or "sun, sun, and sun are one sun." let this be enough for the present to establish my meaning and to show that not every repetition of units produces number and plurality. still in saying "father, son, and holy spirit," we are not using synonymous terms. "brand and blade" are the same and identical, but "father, son, and holy spirit," though the same, are not identical. this point deserves a moment's consideration. when they ask "is the father the same as the son?" catholics answer "no." "is the one the same as the other?" the answer is in the negative. there is not, therefore, complete indifference between them; and so number does come in--number which we explained was the result of diversity of substrates. we will briefly debate this point when we have done examining how particular predicates can be applied to god. [ ] e.g. if i say "one, one, one," i enounce three unities. [ ] the same words are used to illustrate the same matter in the _comment. in arist._ [greek: peri hermaeneias], nd ed. (meiser) . . iv. decem omnino praedicamenta traduntur quae de rebus omnibus uniuersaliter praedicantur, id est substantia, qualitas, quantitas, ad aliquid, ubi, quando, habere, situm esse, facere, pati. haec igitur talis sunt qualia subiecta permiserint; nam pars eorum in reliquarum rerum praedicatione substantia est, pa*rs in accidentium numero est. at haec cum quis i*n diuinam uerterit praedicationem, cuncta mutantu*r quae praedicari possunt. ad aliquid uero omnino non potest praedicari, nam substantia in illo non est uere substantia sed ultra substantiam; item qualitas et cetera quae uenire queunt. quorum ut amplior fiat intellectus exempla subdenda sunt. nam cum dicimus "deus," substantiam quidem significare uidemur, sed eam quae sit ultra substantiam; cum uero "iustus," qualitatem quidem sed non accidentem, sed eam quae sit substantia sed ultra substantiam. neque enim aliud est quod est, aliud est quod iustus est, sed idem est esse deo quod iusto. item cum dicitur "magnus uel maximus," quantitatem quidem significare uidemur, sed eam quae sit ipsa substantia, talis qualem esse diximus ultra substantiam; idem est enim esse deo quod magno. de forma enim eius superius monstratum est quoniam is sit forma et unum uere nec ulla pluralitas. sed haec praedicamenta talia sunt, ut in quo sint ipsum esse faciant quod dicitur, diuise quidem in ceteris, in deo uero coniuncte atque copulate hoc modo: nam cum dicimus "substantia" (ut homo uel deus), ita dicitur quasi illud de quo praedicatur ipsum sit substantia, ut substantia homo uel deus. sed distat, quoniam homo non integre ipsum homo est ac per hoc nec substantia; quod enim est, aliis debet quae non sunt homo. deus uero hoc ipsum deus est; nihil enim aliud est nisi quod est, ac per hoc ipsum deus est. rursus "iustus," quod est qualitas, ita dicitur quasi ipse hoc sit de quo praedicatur, id est si dicamus "homo iustus uel deus iustus," ipsum hominem uel deum iustos esse proponimus; sed differt, quod homo alter alter iustus, deus uero idem ipsum est quod est iustum. "magnus" etiam homo uel deus dicitur atque ita quasi ipse sit homo magnus uel deus magnus; sed homo tantum magnus, deus uero ipsum magnus exsistit. reliqua uero neque de deo neque de ceteris praedicantur. nam ubi uel de homine uel de deo praedicari potest, de homine ut in foro, de deo ut ubique, sed ita ut non quasi ipsa sit res id quod praedicatur de qua dicitur. non enim ita homo dicitur esse in foro quem ad modum esse albus uel longus nec quasi circumfusus et determinatus proprietate aliqua qua designari secundum se possit, sed tantum quo sit illud aliis informatum rebus per hanc praedicationem ostenditur. de deo uero non ita, nam quod ubique est ita dici uidetur non quod in omni sit loco (omnino enim in loco esse non potest) sed quod omnis ei locus adsit ad eum capiendum, cum ipse non suscipiatur in loco; atque ideo nusquam in loco esse dicitur, quoniam ubique est sed non in loco. "quando" uero eodem praedicatur modo, ut de homine heri uenit, de deo semper est. hic quoque non quasi esse aliquid dicitur illud ipsum de quo hesternus dicitur aduentus, sed quid ei secundum tempus accesserit praedicatur. quod uero de deo dicitur "semper est," unum quidem significat, quasi omni praeterito fuerit, omni quoquo modo sit praesenti est, omni futuro erit. quod de caelo et de ceteris inmortalibus corporibus secundum philosophos dici potest, at de deo non ita. semper enim est, quoniam "semper" praesentis est in eo temporis tantumque inter nostrarum rerum praesens, quod est nunc, interest ac diuinarum, quod nostrum "nunc" quasi currens tempus facit et sempiternitatem, diuinum uero "nunc" permanens neque mouens sese atque consistens aeternitatem facit; cui nomini si adicias "semper," facies eius quod est nunc iugem indefessumque ac per hoc perpetuum cursum quod est sempiternitas. rursus habere uel facere eodem modo; dicimus enim "uestitus currit" de homine, de deo "cuncta possidens regit." rursus de eo nihil quod est esse de utrisque dictum est, sed haec omnis praedicatio exterioribus datur omniaque haec quodam modo referuntur ad aliud. cuius praedicationis differentiam sic facilius internoscimus: qui homo est uel deus refertur ad substantiam qua est aliquid, id est homo uel deus; qui iustus est refertur ad qualitatem qua scilicet est aliquid, id est iustus, qui magnus ad quantitatem qua est aliquid, id est magnus. nam in ceteris praedicationibus nihil tale est. qui enim dicit esse aliquem in foro uel ubique, refert quidem ad praedicamentum quod est ubi, sed non quo aliquid est uelut iustitia iustus. item cum dico "currit" uel "regit" uel "nunc est" uel "semper est," refertur quidem uel ad facere uel ad tempus--si tamen interim diuinum illud semper tempus dici potest--sed non quo aliquo aliquid est uelut magnitudine magnum. nam situm passionemque requiri in deo non oportet, neque enim sunt. iamne patet quae sit differentia praedicationum? quod aliae quidem quasi rem monstrant aliae uero quasi circumstantias rei quodque illa quidem[ ] ita praedicantur, ut esse aliquid rem ostendant, illa uero ut non esse, sed potius extrinsecus aliquid quodam modo affigant. illa igitur, quae aliquid esse designant, secundum rem praedicationes uocentur. quae cum de rebus subiectis dicuntur, uocantur accidentia secundum rem; cum uero de deo qui subiectus non est, secundum substantiam rei praedicatio nuncupatur. [ ] quidem _vulg._; quae _codd. opt._ iv. there are in all ten categories which can be universally predicated of things, namely, substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, condition, situation, activity, passivity. their meaning is determined by the contingent subject; for some of them denote substance in making predication of other things, others belong to the class of accidents. but when these categories are applied to god they change their meaning entirely. relation, for instance, cannot be predicated at all of god; for substance in him is not really substantial but supersubstantial. so with quality and the other possible attributes, of which we must add examples for the sake of clearness. when we say god, we seem to denote a substance; but it is a substance that is supersubstantial. when we say of him, "he is just," we mention a quality, not an accidental quality--rather a substantial and, in fact, a supersubstantial quality.[ ] for god is not one thing because he is, and another thing because he is just; with him to be just and to be god are one and the same. so when we say, "he is great or the greatest," we seem to predicate quantity, but it is a quantity similar to this substance which we have declared to be supersubstantial; for with him to be great and to be god are all one. again, concerning his form, we have already shown that he is form, and truly one without plurality. the categories we have mentioned are such that they give to the thing to which they are applied the character which they express; in created things they express divided being, in god, conjoined and united being-- in the following manner. when we name a substance, as man or god, it seems as though that of which the predication is made were substance itself, as man or god is substance. but there is a difference: since a man is not simply and entirely man, and in virtue of this he is not substance. for what man is he owes to other things which are not man. but god is simply and entirely god, for he is nothing else than what he is, and therefore is, through simple existence, god. again we apply just, a quality, as though it were that of which it is predicated; that is, if we say "a just man or just god," we assert that man or god is just. but there is a difference, for man is one thing, and a just man is another thing. but god is justice itself. so a man or god is said to be great, and it would appear that man is substantially great or that god is substantially great. but man is merely great; god is greatness. the remaining categories are not predicable of god nor yet of created things.[ ] for place is predicated of man or of god--a man is in the market-place; god is everywhere--but in neither case is the predicate identical with the object of predication. to say "a man is in the market" is quite a different thing from saying "he is white or long," or, so to speak, encompassed and determined by some property which enables him to be described in terms of his substance; this predicate of place simply declares how far his substance is given a particular setting amid other things. it is otherwise, of course, with god. "he is everywhere" does not mean that he is in every place, for he cannot be in any place at all--but that every place is present to him for him to occupy, although he himself can be received by no place, and therefore he cannot anywhere be in a place, since he is everywhere but in no place. it is the same with the category of time, as, "a man came yesterday; god is ever." here again the predicate of "coming yesterday" denotes not something substantial, but something happening in terms of time. but the expression "god is ever" denotes a single present, summing up his continual presence in all the past, in all the present--however that term be used--and in all the future. philosophers say that "ever" may be applied to the life of the heavens and other immortal bodies. but as applied to god it has a different meaning. he is ever, because "ever" is with him a term of present time, and there is this great difference between "now," which is our present, and the divine present. our present connotes changing time and sempiternity; god's present, abiding, unmoved, and immoveable, connotes eternity. add _semper_ to _eternity_ and you get the constant, incessant and thereby perpetual course of our present time, that is to say, sempiternity.[ ] it is just the same with the categories of condition and activity. for example, we say "a man runs, clothed," "god rules, possessing all things." here again nothing substantial is asserted of either subject; in fact all the categories we have hitherto named arise from what lies outside substance, and all of them, so to speak, refer to something other than substance. the difference between the categories is easily seen by an example. thus, the terms "man" and "god" refer to the substance in virtue of which the subject is--man or god. the term "just" refers to the quality in virtue of which the subject is something, viz. just; the term "great" to the quantity in virtue of which he is something, viz. great. no other category save substance, quality, and quantity refer to the substance of the subject. if i say of one "he is in the market" or "everywhere," i am applying the category of place, which is not a category of the substance, like "just" in virtue of justice. so if i say, "he runs, he rules, he is now, he is ever," i make reference to activity or time--if indeed god's "ever" can be described as time--but not to a category of substance, like "great" in virtue of greatness. finally, we must not look for the categories of situation and passivity in god, for they simply are not to be found in him. have i now made clear the difference between the categories? some denote the reality of a thing; others its accidental circumstances; the former declare that a thing is something; the latter say nothing about its being anything, but simply attach to it, so to speak, something external. those categories which describe a thing in terms of its substance may be called substantial categories; when they apply to things as subjects they are called accidents. in reference to god, who is not a subject at all, it is only possible to employ the category of substance. [ ] gilbert de la porrée in his commentary on the _de trin._ makes boethius's meaning clear. "quod igitur in illo substantiam nominamus, non est subiectionis ratione quod dicitur, sed ultra omnem quae accidentibus est subiecta substantiam est essentia, absque omnibus quae possunt accidere solitaria omnino." (migne, _p.l._ lxiv. ). cf. aug. _de trin._ vii. . [ ] i.e. according to their substance. [ ] the doctrine is augustine's, cf. _de ciu. dei_, xi. , xii. ; but boethius's use of _sempiternitas_, as well as his word-building, seem to be peculiar to himself. claudianus mamertus, speaking of applying the categories to god, uses _sempiternitas_ as boethius uses _aeternitas_. cf. _de statu animae_ i. . apuleius seems to use both terms interchangeably, e.g. _asclep._ - . on boethius's distinction between time and eternity see _cons._ v. pr. , and rand, _i er dem b. zugeschr. trakt. de fide_, pp. ff, and brandt in _theol. littzg._, , p. . v. age nunc de relatiuis speculemur pro quibus omne quod dictum est sumpsimus ad disputationem; maxime enim haec non uidentur secundum se facere praedicationem quae perspicue ex alieno aduentu constare perspiciuntur. age enim, quoniam dominus ac seruus relatiua sunt, uideamus utrumne ita sit ut secundum se sit praedicatio an minime. atqui si auferas seruum, abstuleris et dominum; at non etiam si auferas albedinem, abstuleris quoque album, sed interest, quod albedo accidit albo, qua sublata perit nimirum album. at in domino, si seruum auferas, perit uocabulum quo dominus uocabatur; sed non accidit seruus domino ut albedo albo, sed potestas quaedam qua seruus coercetur. quae quoniam sublato deperit seruo, constat non eam per se domino accidere sed per seruorum quodam modo extrinsecus accessum. non igitur dici potest praedicationem relatiuam quidquam rei de qua dicitur secundum se uel addere uel minuere uel mutare. quae tota non in eo quod est esse consistit, sed in eo quod est in comparatione aliquo modo se habere, nec semper ad aliud sed aliquotiens ad idem. age enim stet quisquam. ei igitur si accedam dexter, erit ille sinister ad me comparatus, non quod ille ipse sinister sit, sed quod ego dexter accesserim. rursus ego sinister accedo, item ille fit dexter, non quod ita sit per se dexter uelut albus ac longus, sed quod me accedente fit dexter atque id quod est a me et ex me est minime uero ex sese. quare quae secundum rei alicuius in eo quod ipsa est proprietatem non faciunt praedicationem, nihil alternare uel mutare queunt nullamque omnino uariare essentiam. quocirca si pater ac filius ad aliquid dicuntur nihilque aliud ut dictum est differunt nisi sola relatione, relatio uero non praedicatur ad id de quo praedicatur quasi ipsa sit et secundum rem de qua dicitur, non faciet alteritatem rerum de qua dicitur, sed, si dici potest, quo quidem modo id quod uix intellegi potuit interpretatum est, personarum. omnino enim magna regulae est ueritas in rebus incorporalibus distantias effici differentiis non locis. neque accessisse dici potest aliquid deo, ut pater fieret; non enim coepit esse umquam pater eo quod substantialis quidem ei est productio filii, relatiua uero praedicatio patris. ac si meminimus omnium in prioribus de deo sententiarum, ita cogitemus processisse quidem ex deo patre filium deum et ex utrisque spiritum sanctum; hos, quoniam incorporales sint, minime locis distare. quoniam uero pater deus et filius deus et spiritus sanctus deus, deus uero nullas habet differentias quibus differat ab deo, a nullo eorum differt. differentiae uero ubi absunt, abest pluralitas; ubi abest pluralitas, adest unitas. nihil autem aliud gigni potuit ex deo nisi deus; et in rebus numerabilibus repetitio unitatum non facit modis omnibus pluralitatem. trium igitur idonee constituta est unitas. v. let us now consider the category of relation, to which all the foregoing remarks have been preliminary; for qualities which obviously arise from the association of another term do not appear to predicate anything concerning the substance of a subject. for instance, master and slave[ ] are relative terms; let us see whether either of them are predicates of substance. if you suppress the term slave,[ ] you simultaneously suppress the term master. on the other hand, though you suppress the term whiteness, you do not suppress some white thing,[ ] though, of course, if the particular whiteness inhere as an accident in the thing, the thing disappears as soon as you suppress the accidental quality whiteness. but in the case of master, if you suppress the term slave, the term master disappears. but slave is not an accidental quality of master, as whiteness is of a white thing; it denotes the power which the master has over the slave. now since the power goes when the slave is removed, it is plain that power is no accident to the substance of master, but is an adventitious augmentation arising from the possession of slaves. it cannot therefore be affirmed that a category of relation increases, decreases, or alters in any way the substance of the thing to which it is applied. the category of relation, then, has nothing to do with the essence of the subject; it simply denotes a condition of relativity, and that not necessarily to something else, but sometimes to the subject itself. for suppose a man standing. if i go up to him on my right and stand beside him, he will be left, in relation to me, not because he is left in himself, but because i have come up to him on my right. again, if i come up to him on my left, he becomes right in relation to me, not because he is right in himself, as he may be white or long, but because he is right in virtue of my approach. what he is depends entirely on me, and not in the least on the essence of his being. accordingly those predicates which do not denote the essential nature of a thing cannot alter, change, or disturb its nature in any way. wherefore if father and son are predicates of relation, and, as we have said, have no other difference but that of relation, and if relation is not asserted of its subject as though it were the subject itself and its substantial quality, it will effect no real difference in its subject, but, in a phrase which aims at interpreting what we can hardly understand, a difference of persons. for it is a canon of absolute truth that distinctions in incorporeal things are established by differences and not by spatial separation. it cannot be said that god became father by the addition to his substance of some accident; for he never began to be father, since the begetting of the son belongs to his very substance; however, the predicate father, as such, is relative. and if we bear in mind all the propositions made concerning god in the previous discussion, we shall admit that god the son proceeded from god the father, and the holy ghost from both, and that they cannot possibly be spatially different, since they are incorporeal. but since the father is god, the son is god, and the holy spirit is god, and since there are in god no points of difference distinguishing him from god, he differs from none of the others. but where there are no differences there is no plurality; where is no plurality there is unity. again, nothing but god can be begotten of god, and lastly, in concrete enumerations the repetition of units does not produce plurality. thus the unity of the three is suitably established. [ ] _dominus_ and _seruus_ are similarly used as illustration, _in cat._ (migne, _p.l._ lxiv. ). [ ] i.e. which is external to the master. [ ] i.e. which is external to the whitened thing. vi. sed quoniam nulla relatio ad se ipsum referri potest, idcirco quod ea secundum se ipsum est praedicatio quae relatione caret, facta quidem est trinitatis numerositas in eo quod est praedicatio relationis, seruata uero unitas in eo quod est indifferentia uel substantiae uel operationis uel omnino eius quae secundum se dicitur praedicationis. ita igitur substantia continet unitatem, relatio multiplicat trinitatem; atque ideo sola singillatim proferuntur atque separatim quae relationis sunt. nam idem pater qui filius non est nec idem uterque qui spiritus sanctus. idem tamen deus est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus, idem iustus idem bonus idem magnus idem omnia quae secundum se poterunt praedicari. sane sciendum est non semper talem esse relatiuam praedicationem, ut semper ad differens praedicetur, ut est seruus ad dominum; differunt enim. nam omne aequale aequali aequale est et simile simili simile est et idem ei quod est idem idem est; et similis est relatio in trinitate patris ad filium et utriusque ad spiritum sanctum ut eius quod est idem ad id quod est idem. quod si id in cunctis aliis rebus non potest inueniri, facit hoc cognata caducis rebus alteritas. nos uero nulla imaginatione diduci sed simplici intellectu erigi et ut quidque intellegi potest ita aggredi etiam intellectu oportet. sed de proposita quaestione satis dictum est. nunc uestri normam iudicii exspectat subtilitas quaestionis; quae utrum recte decursa sit an minime, uestrae statuet pronuntiationis auctoritas. quod si sententiae fidei fundamentis sponte firmissimae opitulante gratia diuina idonea argumentorum adiumenta praestitimus, illuc perfecti operis laetitia remeabit unde uenit effectus. quod si ultra se humanitas nequiuit ascendere, quantum inbecillitas subtrahit uota supplebunt. vi. but since no relation can be affirmed of one subject alone, since a predication referring to one substance is a predication without relation, the manifoldness of the trinity is secured through the category of relation, and the unity is maintained through the fact that there is no difference of substance, or operation, or generally of any substantial predicate. so then, the category of substance preserves the unity, that of relation brings about the trinity. hence only terms belonging to relation may be applied singly to each. for the father is not the same as the son, nor is either of them the same as the holy spirit. yet father, son, and holy spirit are each the same god, the same in justice, in goodness, in greatness, and in everything that can be predicated of substance. one must not forget that predicates of relativity do not always involve relation to something other than the subject, as slave involves master, where the two terms are different. for equals are equal, like are like, identicals are identical, each with other, and the relation of father to son, and of both to holy spirit is a relation of identicals. a relation of this kind is not to be found in created things, but that is because of the difference which we know attaches to transient objects. we must not in speaking of god let imagination lead us astray; we must let the faculty of pure knowledge lift us up and teach us to know all things as far as they may be known.[ ] i have now finished the investigation which i proposed. the exactness of my reasoning awaits the standard of your judgment; your authority will pronounce whether i have seen a straight path to the goal. if, god helping me, i have furnished some support in argument to an article which stands by itself on the firm foundation of faith, i shall render joyous praise for the finished work to him from whom the invitation comes. but if human nature has failed to reach beyond its limits, whatever is lost through my infirmity must be made good by my intention. [ ] cf. _cons._ v. pr. and , especially in pr. the passage "quare in illius summae intellegentiae acumen si possumus erigamur." anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii ad iohannem diaconvm vtrvm pater et filivs et spiritvs sanctvs de divinitate svbstantialiter praedicentvr quaero an pater et filius ac spiritus sanctus de diuinitate substantialiter praedicentur an alio quolibet modo; uiamque indaginis hinc arbitror esse sumendam, unde rerum omnium manifestum constat exordium, id est ab ipsis catholicae fidei fundamentis. si igitur interrogem, an qui dicitur pater substantia sit, respondetur esse substantia. quod si quaeram, an filius substantia sit, idem dicitur. spiritum quoque sanctum substantiam esse nemo dubitauerit. sed cum rursus colligo patrem filium spiritum sanctum, non plures sed una occurrit esse substantia. vna igitur substantia trium nec separari ullo modo aut disiungi potest nec uelut partibus in unum coniuncta est, sed est una simpliciter. quaecumque igitur de diuina substantia praedicantur, ea tribus oportet esse communia; idque signi erit quae sint quae de diuinitatis substantia praedicentur, quod quaecumque hoc modo dicuntur, de singulis in unum collectis tribus singulariter praedicabuntur. hoc modo si dicimus: "pater deus est, filius deus est, spiritus sanctus deus est," pater filius ac spiritus sanctus unus deus. si igitur eorum una deitas una substantia est, licet dei nomen de diuinitate substantialiter praedicari. ita pater ueritas est, filius ueritas est, spiritus sanctus ueritas est; pater filius et spiritus sanctus non tres ueritates sed una ueritas est. si igitur una in his substantia una est ueritas, necesse est ueritatem substantialiter praedicari. de bonitate de incommutabilitate de iustitia de omnipotentia ac de ceteris omnibus quae tam de singulis quam de omnibus singulariter praedicamus manifestum est substantialiter dici. vnde apparet ea quae cum in singulis separatim dici conuenit nec tamen in omnibus dici queunt, non substantialiter praedicari sed alio modo; qui uero iste sit, posterius quaeram. nam qui pater est, hoc uocabulum non transmittit ad filium neque ad spiritum sanctum. quo fit ut non sit substantiale nomen hoc inditum; nam si substantiale esset, ut deus ut ueritas ut iustitia ut ipsa quoque substantia, de ceteris diceretur. item filius solus hoc recipit nomen neque cum aliis iungit sicut in deo, sicut in ueritate, sicut in ceteris quae superius dixi. spiritus quoque non est idem qui pater ac filius. ex his igitur intellegimus patrem ac filium ac spiritum sanctum non de ipsa diuinitate substantialiter dici sed alio quodam modo; si enim substantialiter praedicaretur, et de singulis et de omnibus singulariter diceretur. haec uero ad aliquid dici manifestum est; nam et pater alicuius pater est et filius alicuius filius est, spiritus alicuius spiritus. quo fit, ut ne trinitas quidem substantialiter de deo praedicetur; non enim pater trinitas (qui enim pater est, filius ac spiritus sanctus non est) nec trinitas filius nec trinitas spiritus sanctus secundum eundem modum, sed trinitas quidem in personarum pluralitate consistit, unitas uero in substantiae simplicitate. quod si personae diuisae sunt, substantia uero indiuisa sit, necesse est quod uocabulum ex personis originem capit id ad substantiam non pertinere; at trinitatem personarum diuersitas fecit, trinitas igitur non pertinet ad substantiam. quo fit ut neque pater neque filius neque spiritus sanctus neque trinitas de deo substantialiter praedicetur, sed ut dictum est ad aliquid. deus uero ueritas iustitia bonitas omnipotentia substantia inmutabilitas uirtus sapientia et quicquid huiusmodi excogitari potest substantialiter de diuinitate dicuntur. haec si se recte et ex fide habent, ut me instruas peto; aut si aliqua re forte diuersus es, diligentius intuere quae dicta sunt et fidem si poterit rationemque coniunge. anicius manlius severinus boethius most honourable, of the illustrious order of ex-consuls, patrician to john the deacon whether father, son, and holy spirit may be substantially predicated of the divinity the question before us is whether father, son, and holy spirit may be predicated of the divinity substantially or otherwise. and i think that the method of our inquiry must be borrowed from what is admittedly the surest source of all truth, namely, the fundamental doctrines of the catholic faith. if, then, i ask whether he who is called father is a substance, the answer will be yes. if i ask whether the son is a substance, the reply will be the same. so, too, no one will hesitate to affirm that the holy spirit is also a substance. but when, on the other hand, i take together all three, father, son, and holy spirit, the result is not three substances but one substance. the one substance of the three, then, cannot be separated or divided, nor is it made up of various parts, combined into one: it is simply one. everything, therefore, that is affirmed of the divine substance must be common to the three, and we can recognize what predicates may be affirmed of the substance of the godhead by this sign, that all those which are affirmed of it may also be affirmed severally of each of the three combined into one. for instance if we say "the father is god, the son is god, and the holy spirit is god," then father, son, and holy spirit are one god. if then their one godhead is one substance, the name of god may with right be predicated substantially of the divinity. similarly the father is truth, the son is truth, and the holy spirit is truth; father, son, and holy spirit are not three truths, but one truth. if, then, they are one substance and one truth, truth must of necessity be a substantial predicate. so goodness, immutability, justice, omnipotence and all the other predicates which we apply to the persons singly and collectively are plainly substantial predicates. hence it appears that what may be predicated of each single one but not of all three is not a substantial predicate, but of another kind--of what kind i will examine presently. for he who is father does not transmit this name to the son nor to the holy spirit. hence it follows that this name is not attached to him as something substantial; for if it were a substantial predicate, as god, truth, justice, or substance itself, it would be affirmed of the other persons. similarly the son alone receives this name; nor does he associate it with the other persons, as in the case of the titles god, truth, and the other predicates which i have already mentioned. the spirit too is not the same as the father and the son. hence we gather that father, son, and holy spirit are not predicated of the divinity in a substantial manner, but otherwise.[ ] for if each term were predicated substantially it would be affirmed of the three persons both separately and collectively. it is evident that these terms are relative, for the father is some one's father, the son is some one's son, the spirit is some one's spirit. hence not even trinity may be substantially[ ] predicated of god; for the father is not trinity--since he who is father is not son and holy spirit--nor yet, by parity of reasoning, is the son trinity nor the holy spirit trinity, but the trinity consists in diversity of persons, the unity in simplicity of substance. now if the persons are separate, while the substance is undivided, it must needs be that that term which is derived from persons does not belong to substance. but the trinity is effected by diversity of persons, wherefore trinity does not belong to substance. hence neither father, nor son, nor holy spirit, nor trinity can be substantially predicated of god, but only relatively, as we have said. but god, truth, justice, goodness, omnipotence, substance, immutability, virtue, wisdom and all other conceivable predicates of the kind are applicable substantially to divinity. if i am right and speak in accordance with the faith, i pray you confirm me. but if you are in any point of another opinion, examine carefully what i have said, and if possible, reconcile faith and reason.[ ] [ ] i.e. _personaliter_ (ioh. scottus _ad loc._). [ ] i.e. _sed personaliter_ (ioh. scottus _ad loc._). [ ] _vide supra_, introduction, p. xii. item eivsdem ad evndem qvomodo svbstantiae in eo qvod sint bonae sint cvm non sint svbstantialia bona postulas, ut ex hebdomadibus nostris eius quaestionis obscuritatem quae continet modum quo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae sint, cum non sint substantialia bona, digeram et paulo euidentius monstrem; idque eo dicis esse faciendum, quod non sit omnibus notum iter huiusmodi scriptionum. tuus uero testis ipse sum quam haec uiuaciter fueris ante complexus. hebdomadas uero ego mihi ipse commentor potiusque ad memoriam meam speculata conseruo quam cuiquam participo quorum lasciuia ac petulantia nihil a ioco risuque patitur esse seiunctum.[ ] prohinc tu ne sis obscuritatibus breuitatis aduersus, quae cum sint arcani fida custodia tum id habent commodi, quod cum his solis qui digni sunt conloquuntur. vt igitur in mathematica fieri solet ceterisque etiam disciplinis, praeposui terminos regulasque quibus cuncta quae sequuntur efficiam. i. communis animi conceptio est enuntiatio quam quisque probat auditam. harum duplex modus est. nam una ita communis est, ut omnium sit hominum, ueluti si hanc proponas: "si duobus aequalibus aequalia auferas, quae relinquantur aequalia esse," nullus id intellegens neget. alia uero est doctorum tantum, quae tamen ex talibus communis animi conceptionibus uenit, ut est: "quae incorporalia sunt, in loco non esse," et cetera; quae non uulgus sed docti comprobant. ii. diuersum est esse et id quod est; ipsum enim esse nondum est, at uero quod est accepta essendi forma est atque consistit. iii. quod est participare aliquo potest, sed ipsum esse nullo modo aliquo participat. fit enim participatio cum aliquid iam est; est autem aliquid, cum esse susceperit. iv. id quod est habere aliquid praeterquam quod ipsum est potest; ipsum uero esse nihil aliud praeter se habet admixtum. v. diuersum est tantum esse aliquid et esse aliquid in eo quod est; illic enim accidens hic substantia significatur. vi. omne quod est[ ] participat eo quod est esse ut sit; alio uero participat ut aliquid sit. ac per hoc id quod est participat eo quod est esse ut sit; est uero ut participet alio quolibet. vii. omne simplex esse suum et id quod est unum habet. viii. omni composito aliud est esse, aliud ipsum est. ix. omnis diuersitas discors, similitudo uero appetenda est; et quod appetit aliud, tale ipsum esse naturaliter ostenditur quale est illud hoc ipsum quod appetit. sufficiunt igitur quae praemisimus; a prudente uero rationis interprete suis unumquodque aptabitur argumentis. quaestio uero huiusmodi est. ea quae sunt bona sunt; tenet enim communis sententia doctorum omne quod est ad bonum tendere, omne autem tendit ad simile. quae igitur ad bonum tendunt bona ipsa sunt. sed quemadmodum bona sint, inquirendum est, utrumne participatione an substantia? si participatione, per se ipsa nullo modo bona sunt; nam quod participatione album est, per se in eo quod ipsum est album non est. et de ceteris qualitatibus eodem modo. si igitur participatione sunt bona, ipsa per se nullo modo bona sunt: non igitur ad bonum tendunt. sed concessum est. non igitur participatione sunt bona sed substantia. quorum uero substantia bona est, id quod sunt bona sunt; id quod sunt autem habent ex eo quod est esse. esse igitur ipsorum bonum est; omnium igitur rerum ipsum esse bonum est. sed si esse bonum est, ea quae sunt in eo quod sunt bona sunt idemque illis est esse quod boni esse; substantialia igitur bona sunt, quoniam non participant bonitatem. quod si ipsum esse in eis bonum est, non est dubium quin substantialia cum sint bona, primo sint bono similia ac per hoc hoc ipsum bonum erunt; nihil enim illi praeter se ipsum simile est. ex quo fit ut omnia quae sunt deus sint, quod dictu nefas est. non sunt igitur substantialia bona ac per hoc non in his est esse bonum; non sunt igitur in eo quod sunt bona. sed nec participant bonitatem; nullo enim modo ad bonum tenderent. nullo modo igitur sunt bona. huic quaestioni talis poterit adhiberi solutio. multa sunt quae cum separari actu non possunt, animo tamen et cogitatione separantur; ut cum triangulum uel cetera a subiecta materia nullus actu separat, mente tamen segregans ipsum triangulum proprietatemque eius praeter materiam speculatur. amoueamus igitur primi boni praesentiam paulisper ex animo, quod esse quidem constat idque ex omnium doctorum indoctorumque sententia barbararumque gentium religionibus cognosci potest. hoc igitur paulisper amoto ponamus omnia esse quae sunt bona atque ea consideremus quemadmodum bona esse possent, si a primo bono minime defluxissent. hinc intueor aliud in eis esse quod bona sunt, aliud quod sunt. ponatur enim una eademque substantia bona esse alba, grauis, rotunda. tunc aliud esset ipsa illa substantia, aliud eius rotunditas, aliud color, aliud bonitas; nam si haec singula idem essent quod ipsa substantia, idem esset grauitas quod color, quod bonum et bonum quod grauitas--quod fieri natura non sinit. aliud igitur tunc in eis esset esse, aliud aliquid esse, ac tunc bona quidem essent, esse tamen ipsum minime haberent bonum. igitur si ullo modo essent, non a bono ac bona essent ac non idem essent quod bona, sed eis aliud esset esse aliud bonis esse. quod si nihil omnino aliud essent nisi bona neque grauia neque colorata neque spatii dimensione distenta nec ulla in eis qualitas esset, nisi tantum bona essent, tunc non res sed rerum uideretur esse principium nec potius uiderentur, sed uideretur; unum enim solumque est huiusmodi, quod tantum bonum aliudque nihil sit. quae quoniam non sunt simplicia, nec esse omnino poterant, nisi ea id quod solum bonum est esse uoluisset. idcirco quoniam esse eorum a boni uoluntate defluxit, bona esse dicuntur. primum enim bonum, quoniam est, in eo quod est bonum est; secundum uero bonum, quoniam ex eo fluxit cuius ipsum esse bonum est, ipsum quoque bonum est. sed ipsum esse omnium rerum ex eo fluxit quod est primum bonum et quod bonum tale est ut recte dicatur in eo quod est esse bonum. ipsum igitur eorum esse bonum est; tunc enim in eo. qua in re soluta quaestio est. idcirco enim licet in eo quod sint bona sint, non sunt tamen similia primo bono, quoniam non quoquo modo sint res ipsum esse earum bonum est, sed quoniam non potest esse ipsum esse rerum, nisi a primo esse defluxerit, id est bono; idcirco ipsum esse bonum est nec est simile ei a quo est. illud enim quoquo modo sit bonum est in eo quod est; non enim aliud est praeterquam bonum. hoc autem nisi ab illo esset, bonum fortasse esse posset, sed bonum in eo quod est esse non posset. tunc enim participaret forsitan bono; ipsum uero esse quod non haberent a bono, bonum habere non possent. igitur sublato ab his bono primo mente et cogitatione, ista licet essent bona, tamen in eo quod essent bona esse non possent, et quoniam actu non potuere exsistere, nisi illud ea quod uere bonum est produxisset, idcirco et esse eorum bonum est et non est simile substantiali bono id quod ab eo fluxit; et nisi ab eo fluxissent, licet essent bona, tamen in eo quod sunt bona esse non possent, quoniam et praeter bonum et non ex bono essent, cum illud ipsum bonum primum est et ipsum esse sit et ipsum bonum et ipsum esse bonum. at non etiam alba in eo quod sunt alba esse oportebit ea quae alba sunt, quoniam ex uoluntate dei fluxerunt ut essent, alba minime. aliud est enim esse, aliud albis esse; hoc ideo, quoniam qui ea ut essent effecit bonus quidem est, minime uero albus. voluntatem igitur boni comitatum est ut essent bona in eo quod sunt; uoluntatem uero non albi non est comitata talis eius quod est proprietas ut esset album in eo quod est; neque enim ex albi uoluntate defluxerunt. itaque quia uoluit esse ea alba qui erat non albus, sunt alba tantum; quia uero uoluit ea esse bona qui erat bonus, sunt bona in eo quod sunt. secundum hanc igitur rationem cuncta oportet esse iusta, quoniam ipse iustus est qui ea esse uoluit? ne hoc quidem. nam bonum esse essentiam, iustum uero esse actum respicit. idem autem est in eo esse quod agere; idem igitur bonum esse quod iustum. nobis uero non est idem esse quod agere; non enim simplices sumus. non est igitur nobis idem bonis esse quod iustis, sed idem nobis est esse omnibus in eo quod sumus. bona igitur omnia sunt, non etiam iusta. amplius bonum quidem generale est, iustum uero speciale nec species descendit in omnia. idcirco alia quidem iusta alia aliud omnia bona. [ ] seiunct. _rand_; coniunct. _codd. opt._; disiunct. _vulg. vallinus_. [ ] est _codd. inferiores; om. codd. opt._ from the same to the same how substances can be good in virtue of their existence without being absolute goods you ask me to state and explain somewhat more clearly that obscure question in my _hebdomads_[ ] concerning the manner in which substances can be good in virtue of existence without being absolute goods.[ ] you urge that this demonstration is necessary because the method of this kind of treatise is not clear to all. i can bear witness with what eagerness you have already attacked the subject. but i confess i like to expound my _hebdomads_ to myself, and would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing. wherefore do not you take objection to the obscurity that waits on brevity; for obscurity is the sure treasure-house of secret doctrine and has the further advantage that it speaks a language understood only of those who deserve to understand. i have therefore followed the example of the mathematical[ ] and cognate sciences and laid down bounds and rules according to which i shall develop all that follows. i. a common conception is a statement generally accepted as soon as it is made. of these there are two kinds. one is universally intelligible; as, for instance, "if equals be taken from equals the remainders are equal." nobody who grasps that proposition will deny it. the other kind is intelligible only to the learned, but it is derived from the same class of common conceptions; as "incorporeals cannot occupy space," and the like. this is obvious to the learned but not to the common herd. ii. being and a concrete thing[ ] are different. simple being awaits manifestation, but a thing is and exists[ ] as soon as it has received the form which gives it being. iii. a concrete thing can participate in something else; but absolute being can in no wise participate in anything. for participation is effected when a thing already is; but it is something after it has acquired being. iv. that which exists can possess something besides itself. but absolute being has no admixture of aught besides itself. v. merely to be something and to be something absolutely are different; the former implies accidents, the latter connotes a substance. vi. everything that is participates in absolute being[ ] through the fact that it exists. in order to be something it participates in something else. hence that which exists participates in absolute being through the fact that it exists, but it exists in order to participate in something else. vii. every simple thing possesses as a unity its absolute and its particular being. viii. in every composite thing absolute and individual being are not one and the same. ix. diversity repels; likeness attracts. that which seeks something outside itself is demonstrably of the same nature as that which it seeks. these preliminaries are enough then for our purpose. the intelligent interpreter of the discussion will supply the arguments appropriate to each point. now the problem is this. things which are, are good. for all the learned are agreed that every existing thing tends to good and everything tends to its like. therefore things which tend to good are good. we must, however, inquire how they are good--by participation or by substance. if by participation, they are in no wise good in themselves; for a thing which is white by participation in whiteness is not white in itself by virtue of absolute being. so with all other qualities. if then they are good by participation, they are not good in themselves; therefore they do not tend to good. but we have agreed that they do. therefore they are good not by participation but by substance. but those things whose substance is good are substantially good. but they owe their actual being to absolute being. their absolute being therefore is good; therefore the absolute being of all things is good. but if their being is good, things which exist are good through the fact that they exist and their absolute being is the same as that of the good. therefore they are substantial goods, since they do not merely participate in goodness. but if their absolute being is good, there is no doubt but that, since they are substantial goods, they are like the first good and therefore they will have to be that good. for nothing is like it save itself. hence all things that are, are god--an impious assertion. wherefore things are not substantial goods, and so the essence of the good does not reside in them. therefore they are not good through the fact that they exist. but neither do they receive good by participation, for they would in no wise tend to good. therefore they are in no wise good.[ ] this problem admits of the following solution.[ ] there are many things which can be separated by a mental process, though they cannot be separated in fact. no one, for instance, can actually separate a triangle or other mathematical figure from the underlying matter; but mentally one can consider a triangle and its properties apart from matter. let us, therefore, remove from our minds for a moment the presence of the prime good, whose being is admitted by the universal consensus of learned and unlearned opinion and can be deduced from the religious beliefs of savage races. the prime good having been thus for a moment put aside, let us postulate as good all things that are, and let us consider how they could possibly be good if they did not derive from the prime good. this process leads me to perceive that their goodness and their existence are two different things. for let me suppose that one and the same substance is good, white, heavy, and round. then it must be admitted that its substance, roundness, colour, and goodness are all different things. for if each of these qualities were the same as its substance, weight would be the same thing as colour or goodness, and goodness would be the same as colour; which is contrary to nature. their being then in that case would be one thing, their quality another, and they would be good, but they would not have their absolute being good. therefore if they really existed at all, they would not be from good nor good, they would not be the same as good, but being and goodness would be for them two different things. but if they were nothing else but good substances, and were neither heavy, nor coloured, and possessed neither spatial dimension nor quality, beyond that of goodness, they (or rather it) would seem to be not things but the principle of things. for there is one thing alone that is by nature good to the exclusion of every other quality. but since they are not simple, they could not even exist at all unless that which is the one sole good willed them to be. they are called good simply because their being is derived from the will of the good. for the prime good is essentially good in virtue of being; the secondary good is in its turn good because it derives from the good whose absolute being is good. but the absolute being of all things derives from the prime good which is such that of it being and goodness are rightly predicated as identical. their absolute being therefore is good; for thereby it resides in him. thereby the problem is solved. for though things be good through the fact that they exist, they are not like the prime good, for the simple reason that their absolute being is not good under all circumstances, but that things can have no absolute being unless it derive from the prime being, that is, the prime good; their substance, therefore, is good, and yet it is not like that from which it comes. for the prime good is good through the fact that it exists, irrespective of all conditions, for it is nothing else than good; but the second good if it derived from any other source might be good, but could not be good through the fact that it exists. for in that case it might possibly participate in good, but their substantial being, not deriving from the prime good, could not have the element of good. therefore when we have put out of mind the prime good, these things, though they might be good, would not be good through the fact that they exist, and since they could not actually exist unless the true good had produced them, therefore their being is good, and yet that which springs from the substantial good is not like its source which produces it. and unless they had derived from it, though they were good yet they could not be good through the fact that they exist because they were apart from good and not derived from good, since that very good is the prime good and is substantial being and substantial good and essential goodness. but we need not say that white things are white through the fact that they exist; for they drew their existence from the will of god, but not their whiteness. for to be is one thing; to be white is another; and that because he who gave them being is good, but not white. it is therefore in accordance with the will of the good that they should be good through the fact that they exist; but it is not in accordance with the will of one who is not white that a thing have a certain property making it white in virtue of its being; for it was not the will of one who is white that gave them being. and so they are white simply because one who was not white willed them to be white; but they are good through the fact that they exist because one who was good willed them to be good. ought, then, by parity of reason, all things to be just because he is just who willed them to be? that is not so either. for to be good involves being, to be just involves an act. for him being and action are identical; to be good and to be just are one and the same for him. but being and action are not identical for us, for we are not simple. for us, then, goodness is not the same thing as justice, but we all have the same sort of being in virtue of our existence. therefore all things are good, but all things are not just. finally, good is a general, but just is a species, and this species does not apply to all. wherefore some things are just, others are something else, but all things are good. [ ] similarly porphyry divided the works of plotinus into six _enneades_ or groups of nine. [ ] cf. discussion on the nature of good in _cons._ iii. m. and pr. (_infra_, pp. ff.). [ ] on this mathematical method of exposition cf. _cons._ iii. pr. (_infra_, p. ). [ ] _esse_ = aristotle's [greek: to ti esti]; _id quod est_ = [greek: tode ti]. [ ] _consistere_ = [greek: hypostaenai]. [ ] _id quod est esse_ = [greek: to ti aen einai]. [ ] cf. the similar _reductio ad absurdum_ in _tr._ (_infra_, p. ) and in _cons._ v. pr. (_infra_, p. ). [ ] _vide supra_, p. , n. _b_. de fide catholica christianam fidem noui ac ueteris testamenti pandit auctoritas; et quamuis nomen ipsum christi uetus intra semet continuerit instrumentum eumque semper signauerit affuturum quem credimus per partum uirginis iam uenisse, tamen in orbem terrarum ab ipsius nostri saluatoris mirabili manasse probatur aduentu. haec autem religio nostra, quae uocatur christiana atque catholica, his fundamentis principaliter nititur asserens: ex aeterno, id est ante mundi constitutionem, ante omne uidelicet quod temporis potest retinere uocabulum, diuinam patris et filii ac spiritus sancti exstitisse substantiam, ita ut deum dicat patrem, deum filium, deum spiritum sanctum, nec tamen tres deos sed unum: patrem itaque habere filium ex sua substantia genitum et sibi nota ratione coaeternum, quem filium eatenus confitetur, ut non sit idem qui pater est: neque patrem aliquando fuisse filium, ne rursus in infinitum humanus animus diuinam progeniem cogitaret, neque filium in eadem natura qua patri coaeternus est aliquando fieri patrem, ne rursus in infinitum diuina progenies tenderetur: sanctum uero spiritum neque patrem esse neque filium atque ideo in illa natura nec genitum nec generantem sed a patre quoque procedentem uel filio; qui sit tamen processionis istius modus ita non possumus euidenter dicere, quemadmodum generationem filii ex paterna substantia non potest humanus animus aestimare. haec autem ut credantur uetus ac noua informat instructio. de qua uelut arce religionis nostrae multi diuersa et humaniter atque ut ita dicam carnaliter sentientes aduersa locuti sunt, ut arrius qui licet deum dicat filium, minorem tamen patre multipliciter et extra patris substantiam confitetur. sabelliani quoque non tres exsistentes personas sed unam ausi sunt affirmare, eundem dicentes patrem esse qui filius est eundemque filium qui pater est atque spiritum sanctum eundem esse qui pater et filius est; ac per hoc unam dicunt esse personam sub uocabulorum diuersitate signatam. manichaei quoque qui duo principia sibi coaeterna et aduersa profitentur, unigenitum dei esse non credunt. indignum enim iudicant, si deus habere filium uideatur, nihil aliud cogitantes nisi carnaliter, ut quia haec generatio duorum corporum commixtione procedit, illic quoque indignum esse intellectum huiusmodi applicare; quae res eos nec uetus facit recipere testamentum neque in integro nouum. nam sicut illud omnino error eorum non recipit ita ex uirgine generationem filii non uult admittere, ne humano corpore polluta uideatur dei fuisse natura. sed de his hactenus; suo enim loco ponentur sicut ordo necessarius postularit. ergo diuina ex aeterno natura et in aeternum sine aliqua mutabilitate perdurans sibi tantum conscia uoluntate sponte mundum uoluit fabricare eumque cum omnino non esset fecit ut esset, nec ex sua substantia protulit, ne diuinus natura crederetur, neque aliunde molitus est, ne iam exstitisse aliquid quod eius uoluntatem exsistentia propriae naturae iuuaret atque esset quod neque ab ipso factum esset et tamen esset; sed uerbo produxit caelos, terram creauit, ita ut caelesti habitatione dignas caelo naturas efficeret ac terrae terrena componeret. de caelestibus autem naturis, quae uniuersaliter uocatur angelica, quamuis illic distinctis ordinibus pulchra sint omnia, pars tamen quaedam plus appetens quam ei natura atque ipsius auctor naturae tribuerat de caelesti sede proiecta est; et quoniam angelorum numerum, id est supernae illius ciuitatis cuius ciues angeli sunt, imminutum noluit conditor permanere, formauit ex terra hominem atque spiritu uitae animauit, ratione composuit, arbitrii libertate decorauit eumque praefixa lege paradisi deliciis constituit, ut, si sine peccato manere uellet, tam ipsum quam eius progeniem angelicis coetibus sociaret, ut quia superior natura per superbiae malum ima petierat, inferior substantia per humilitatis bonum ad superna conscenderet. sed ille auctor inuidiae non ferens hominem illuc ascendere ubi ipse non meruit permanere, temptatione adhibita fecit etiam ipsum eiusque comparem, quam de eius latere generandi causa formator produxerat, inoboedientiae suppliciis subiacere, ei quoque diuinitatem affuturam promittens, quam sibi dum arroganter usurpat elisus est. haec autem reuelante deo moysi famulo suo comperta sunt, cui etiam humani generis conditionem atque originem uoluit innotescere, sicut ab eo libri prolati testantur. omnis enim diuina auctoritas his modis constare uidetur, ut aut historialis modus sit, qui nihil aliud nisi res gestas enuntiet, aut allegoricus, ut non illic possit historiae ordo consistere, aut certe ex utrisque compositus, ut et secundum historiam et secundum allegoriam manere uideatur. haec autem pie intelligentibus et ueraci corde tenentibus satis abundeque relucent. sed ad ordinem redeamus. primus itaque homo ante peccatum cum sua coniuge incola paradisi fuit. at ubi aurem praebuit suasori et conditoris praeceptum neglexit attendere, exul effectus, terram iussus excolere atque a paradisi sinu seclusus in ignotis partibus sui generis posteritatem transposuit atque poenam quam ipse primus homo praeuaricationis reus exceperat generando transmisit in posteros. hinc factum est ut et corporum atque animarum corruptio et mortis proueniret interitus primusque mortem in abel filio suo meruit experiri, ut quanta esset poena quam ipse exceperit probaret in subole. quod si ipse primus moreretur, nesciret quodam modo ac, si dici fas est, nec sentiret poenam suam, sed ideo expertus in altero est, ut quid sibi iure deberetur contemptor agnosceret et dum poenam mortis sustinet, ipsa exspectatione fortius torqueretur. hoc autem praeuaricationis malum, quod in posteros naturaliter primus homo transfuderat, quidam pelagius non admittens proprii nominis haeresim dedicauit, quam catholica fides a consortio sui mox reppulisse probatur. ab ipso itaque primo homine procedens humanum genus ac multiplici numerositate succrescens erupit in lites, commouit bella, occupauit terrenam miseriam quia[ ] felicitatem paradisi in primo patre perdiderat. nec tamen ex his defuerunt quos sibi conditor gratiae sequestraret eiusque placitis inseruirent; quos licet meritum naturae damnaret, futuri tamen sacramenti et longe postmodum proferendi faciendo participes perditam uoluit reparare naturam. impletus est ergo mundus humano genere atque ingressus est homo uias suas qui malitia propriae contumaciae despexerat conditorem. hinc uolens deus per iustum potius hominem reparare genus humanum quam manere proteruum, poenalem multitudinem effusa diluuii inundatione excepto noe iusto homine cum suis liberis atque his quae secum in arcam introduxerat interire permisit. cur autem per arcae lignum uoluerit iustos eripere, notum est diuinarum scripturarum mentibus eruditis. et quasi prima quaedam mundi aetas diluuio ultore transacta est. reparatur itaque humanum genus atque propriae naturae uitium, quod praeuaricationis primus auctor infuderat, amplecti non destitit. creuitque contumacia quam dudum diluuii unda puniuerat et qui numerosam annorum seriem permissus fuerat uiuere, in breuitate annorum humana aetas addicta est. maluitque deus non iam diluuio punire genus humanum, sed eodem permanente eligere uiros per quorum seriem aliqua generatio commearet, ex qua nobis filium proprium uestitum humano corpore mundi in fine concederet. quorum primus est abraham, qui cum esset aetate confectus eiusque uxor decrepita, in senectute sua repromissionis largitione habere filium meruerunt. hic uocatus est isaac atque ipse genuit iacob. idem quoque duodecim patriarchas non reputante deo in eorum numero quos more suo natura produxerat. hic ergo iacob cum filiis ac domo sua transigendi causa aegyptum uoluit habitare atque illic per annorum seriem multitudo concrescens coeperunt suspicioni esse[ ] aegyptiacis imperiis eosque pharao magna ponderum mole premi decreuerat et grauibus oneribus affligebat. tandem deus aegyptii regis dominationem despiciens diuiso mari rubro, quod numquam antea natura ulla cognouerat, suum transduxit exercitum auctore moyse et aaron. postea igitur pro eorum egressione altis aegyptus plagis uastata est, cum nollet dimittere populum. transmisso itaque ut dictum est mari rubro uenit per deserta eremi ad montem qui uocatur sinai, ibique uniuersorum conditor deus uolens sacramenti futuri gratia populos erudire per moysen data lege constituit, quemadmodum et sacrificiorum ritus et populorum mores instruerentur. et cum multis annis multas quoque gentes per uiam debellassent, uenerunt tandem ad fluuium qui uocatur iordanis duce iam iesu naue filio atque ad eorum transitum quemadmodum aquae maris rubri ita quoque iordanis fluenta siccata sunt; peruentumque est ad eam ciuitatem quae nunc hierosolyma uocatur. atque dum ibi dei populus moraretur, post iudices et prophetas reges instituti leguntur, quorum post saulem primatum dauid de tribu iuda legitur adeptus fuisse. descendit itaque ab eo per singulas successiones regium stemma perductumque est usque ad herodis tempora, qui primus ex gentilibus memoratis populis legitur imperasse. sub quo exstitit beata uirgo maria quae de dauidica stirpe prouenerat, quae humani generis genuit conditorem. hoc autem ideo quia multis infectus criminibus mundus iacebat in morte, electa est una gens in qua dei mandata clarescerent, ibique missi prophetae sunt et alii sancti uiri per quorum admonitionem ipse certe populus a tumore peruicaciae reuocaretur. illi uero eosdem occidentes in suae nequitiae peruersitate manere uoluerunt. atque iam in ultimis temporibus non prophetas neque alios sibi placitos sed ipsum unigenitum suum deus per uirginem nasci constituit, ut humana salus quae per primi hominis inoboedientiam deperierat per hominem deum rursus repararetur et quia exstiterat mulier quae causam mortis prima uiro suaserat, esset haec secunda mulier quae uitae causam humanis uisceribus apportaret. nec uile uideatur quod dei filius ex uirgine natus est, quoniam praeter naturae modum conceptus et editus est. virgo itaque de spiritu sancto incarnatum dei filium concepit, uirgo peperit, post eius editionem uirgo permansit; atque hominis factus est idemque dei filius, ita ut in eo et diuinae naturae radiaret splendor et humanae fragilitatis appareret assumptio. sed huic tam sanae atque ueracissimae fidei exstiterant multi qui diuersa garrirent et praeter alios nestorius et eutyches repertores haereseos exstiterunt, quorum unus hominem solum, alter deum solum putauit asserere nec humanum corpus quod christus induerat de humanae substantiae participatione uenisse. sed haec hactenus. creuit itaque secundum carnem christus, baptizatus est, ut qui baptizandi formam erat ceteris tributurus, ipse primus quod docebat exciperet. post baptismum uero elegit duodecim discipulos, quorum unus traditor eius fuit. et quia sanam doctrinam iudaeorum populus non ferebat, eum inlata manu crucis supplicio peremerunt. occiditur ergo christus, iacet tribus diebus ac noctibus in sepulcro, resurgit a mortuis, sicut ante constitutionem mundi ipse cum patre decreuerat, ascendit in caelos ubi, in eo quod dei filius est, numquam defuisse cognoscitur, ut assumptum hominem, quem diabolus non permiserat ad superna conscendere, secum dei filius caelesti habitationi sustolleret. dat ergo formam discipulis suis baptizandi, docendi salutaria, efficientiam quoque miraculorum atque in uniuersum mundum ad uitam praecipit introire, ut praedicatio salutaris non iam in una tantum gente sed orbi terrarum praedicaretur. et quoniam humanum genus naturae merito, quam ex primo praeuaricatore contraxerat, aeternae poenae iaculis fuerat uulneratum nec salutis suae erat idoneum, quod eam in parente perdiderat, medicinalia quaedam tribuit sacramenta, ut agnosceret aliud sibi deberi per naturae meritum, aliud per gratiae donum, ut natura nihil aliud nisi poenae summitteret, gratia uero, quae nullis meritis attributa est, quia nec gratia diceretur si meritis tribueretur, totum quod est salutis afferret. diffunditur ergo per mundum caelestis illa doctrina, adunantur populi, instituuntur ecclesiae, fit unum corpus quod mundi latitudinem occuparet, cuius caput christus ascendit in caelos, ut necessario caput suum membra sequerentur. haec itaque doctrina et praesentem uitam bonis informat operibus et post consummationem saeculi resurrectura corpora nostra praeter corruptionem ad regna caelestia pollicetur, ita ut qui hic bene ipso donante uixerit, esset in illa resurrectione beatissimus, qui uero male, miser post munus resurrectionis adesset. et hoc est principale religionis nostrae, ut credat non solum animas non perire, sed ipsa quoque corpora, quae mortis aduentus resoluerat, in statum pristinum futura de beatitudine reparari. haec ergo ecclesia catholica per orbem diffusa tribus modis probatur exsistere: quidquid in ea tenetur, aut auctoritas est scripturarum aut traditio uniuersalis aut certe propria et particularis instructio. sed auctoritate tota constringitur, uniuersali traditione maiorum nihilominus tota, priuatis uero constitutionibus et propriis informationibus unaquaeque uel pro locorum uarietate uel prout cuique bene uisum est subsistit et regitur. sola ergo nunc est fidelium exspectatio qua credimus affuturum finem mundi, omnia corruptibilia transitura, resurrecturos homines ad examen futuri iudicii, recepturos pro meritis singulos et in perpetuum atque in aeternum debitis finibus permansuros; solumque est[ ] praemium beatitudinis contemplatio conditoris--tanta dumtaxat, quanta a creatura ad creatorem fieri potest,--ut ex eis reparato angelico numero superna illa ciuitas impleatur, ubi rex est uirginis filius eritque gaudium sempiternum, delectatio, cibus, opus, laus perpetua creatoris. [ ] qui _uel_ quod _codd._ [ ] suspiciones _uel_ suspicione _uel_ suspicio _uel_ subici _codd. meliores._ [ ] esse _codd_. on the catholic faith[ ] the christian faith is proclaimed by the authority of the new testament and of the old; but although the old scripture[ ] contains within its pages the name of christ and constantly gives token that he will come who we believe has already come by the birth of the virgin, yet the diffusion of that faith throughout the world dates from the actual miraculous coming of our saviour. now this our religion which is called christian and catholic is founded chiefly on the following assertions. from all eternity, that is, before the world was established, and so before all that is meant by time began, there has existed one divine substance of father, son, and holy spirit in such wise that we confess the father god, the son god, and the holy spirit god, and yet not three gods but one god. thus the father hath the son, begotten of his substance and coeternal with himself after a manner that he alone knoweth. him we confess to be son in the sense that he is not the same as the father. nor has the father ever been son, for the human mind must not imagine a divine lineage stretching back into infinity; nor can the son, being of the same nature in virtue of which he is coeternal with the father, ever become father, for the divine lineage must not stretch forward into infinity. but the holy spirit is neither father nor son, and therefore, albeit of the same divine nature, neither begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding as well from the father as the son.[ ] yet what the manner of that procession is we are no more able to state clearly than is the human mind able to understand the generation of the son from the substance of the father. but these articles are laid down for our belief by old and new testament. concerning which fortress and citadel[ ] of our religion many men have spoken otherwise and have even impugned it, being moved by human, nay rather by carnal feeling. arius, for instance, who, while calling the son god, declares him to be vastly inferior to the father and of another substance. the sabellians also have dared to affirm that there are not three separate persons but only one, saying that the father is the same as the son and the son the same as the father and the holy spirit the same as the father and the son; and so declaring that there is but one divine person expressed by different names. the manichaeans, too, who allow two coeternal and contrary principles, do not believe in the only-begotten son of god. for they consider it a thought unworthy of god that he should have a son, since they entertain the very carnal reflection that inasmuch as[ ] human generation arises from the mingling of two bodies, it is unworthy to hold a notion of this sort in respect of the divine nature; whereas such a view finds no sanction in the old testament and absolutely[ ] none in the new. yea, their error which refuses this notion also refuses the virgin birth of the son, because they would not have the god's nature defiled by the man's body. but enough of this for the present; the points will be presented in the proper place as the proper arrangement demands. the divine nature then, abiding from all eternity and unto all eternity without any change, by the exercise of a will known only to himself, determined of himself to form the world, and brought it into being when it was absolutely naught, nor did he produce it from his own substance, lest it should be thought divine by nature, nor did he form it after any model, lest it should be thought that anything had already come into being which helped his will by the existence of an independent nature, and that there should exist something that had not been made by him and yet existed; but by his word he brought forth the heavens, and created the earth[ ] that so he might make natures worthy of a place in heaven, and also fit earthly things to earth. but although in heaven all things are beautiful and arranged in due order, yet one part of the heavenly creation which is universally termed angelic,[ ] seeking more than nature and the author of nature had granted them, was cast forth from its heavenly habitation; and because the creator did not wish the roll of the angels, that is of the heavenly city whose citizens the angels are, to be diminished, he formed man out of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life; he endowed him with reason, he adorned him with freedom of choice and established him in the joys of paradise, making covenant aforehand that if he would remain without sin he would add him and his offspring to the angelic hosts; so that as the higher nature had fallen low through the curse of pride, the lower substance might ascend on high through the blessing of humility. but the father of envy, loath that man should climb to the place where he himself deserved not to remain, put temptation before him and the consort whom the creator had brought forth out of his side for the continuance of the race, and laid them open to punishment for disobedience, promising man also the gift of godhead, the arrogant attempt to seize which had caused his own fall. all this was revealed by god to his servant moses, whom he vouchsafed to teach the creation and origin of man, as the books written by him declare. for the divine authority is always conveyed in one of the following ways--the historical, which simply announces facts; the allegorical, whence historical matter is excluded; or else the two combined, history and allegory conspiring to establish it. all this is abundantly evident to pious hearers and steadfast believers. but to return to the order of our discourse; the first man, before sin came, dwelt with his consort in the garden. but when he hearkened to the voice of his wife and failed to keep the commandment of his creator, he was banished, bidden to till the ground, and being shut out from the sheltering garden he carried abroad into unknown regions the children of his loins; by begetting whom he transmitted to those that came after, the punishment which he, the first man, had incurred by the sin of disobedience. hence it came to pass that corruption both of body and soul ensued, and death; and this he was to taste first in his own son abel, in order that he might learn through his child the greatness of the punishment that was laid upon him. for if he had died first he would in some sense not have known, and if one may so say not have felt, his punishment; but he tasted it in another in order that he might perceive the due reward of his contempt, and, doomed to death himself, might be the more sensibly touched by the apprehension of it. but this curse that came of transgression which the first man had by natural propagation transmitted to posterity, was denied by one pelagius who so set up the heresy which goes by his name and which the catholic faith, as is known, at once banished from its bosom. so the human race that sprang from the first man and mightily increased and multiplied, broke into strife, stirred up wars, and became the heir of earthly misery, because it had lost the joys of paradise in its first parent. yet were there not a few of mankind whom the giver of grace set apart for himself and who were obedient to his will; and though by desert of nature they were condemned, yet god by making them partakers in the hidden mystery, long afterwards to be revealed, vouchsafed to recover fallen nature. so the earth was filled by the human race and man who by his own wanton wilfulness had despised his creator began to walk in his own ways. hence god willing rather to recover mankind through one just man than that it should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty multitude to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only noah, the just one, with his children and all that he had brought with him into the ark. the reason why he wished to save the just by an ark of wood is known to all hearts learned in the holy scriptures. thus what we may call the first age of the world was ended by the avenging flood. thus the human race was restored, and yet it hastened to make its own the vice of nature with which the first author of transgression had infected it. and the wickedness increased which had once been punished by the waters of the flood, and man who had been suffered to live for a long series of years was reduced to the brief span of ordinary human life. yet would not god again visit the race by a flood, but rather, letting it continue, he chose from it men of whose line a generation should arise out of which he might in the last days grant us his own son to come to us, clothed in human form. of these men abraham is the first, and although he was stricken in years and his wife past bearing, they had in their old age the reward of a son in fulfilment of promise unconditional. this son was named isaac and he begat jacob, who in his turn begat the twelve patriarchs, god not reckoning in their number those whom nature in its ordinary course produced.[ ] this jacob, then, together with his sons and his household determined to dwell in egypt for the purpose of trafficking; and the multitude of them increasing there in the course of many years began to be a cause of suspicion to the egyptian rulers, and pharaoh ordered them to be oppressed by exceeding heavy tasks[ ] and afflicted them with grievous burdens. at length god, minded to set at naught the tyranny of the king of egypt, divided the red sea--a marvel such as nature had never known before--and brought forth his host by the hands of moses and aaron. thereafter on account of their departure egypt was vexed with sore plagues, because they would not let the people go. so, after crossing the red sea, as i have told, they passed through the desert of the wilderness and came to the mount which is called sinai, where god the creator of all, wishing to prepare the nations for the knowledge of the sacrament to come, laid down by a law given through moses how both the rites of sacrifices and the national customs should be ordered. and after fighting down many tribes in many years amidst their journeyings they came at last to the river called jordan, with joshua the son of nun now as their captain, and, for their crossing, the streams of jordan were dried up as the waters of the red sea had been; so they finished their course to that city which is now called jerusalem. and while the people of god abode there we read that there were set up first judges and prophets and then kings, of whom we read that after saul, david of the tribe of judah ascended the throne. so from him the royal race descended from father to son and lasted till the days of herod who, we read, was the first taken out of the peoples called gentile to bear sway. in whose days rose up the blessed virgin mary, sprung from the stock of david, she who bore the maker of the human race. but it was just because the whole world lay dead, stained with its many sins, that god chose out one race in which his commands might shine clear; sending it prophets and other holy men, to the end that by their warnings that people at least might be cured of their swollen pride. but they slew these holy men and chose rather to abide in their wanton wickedness. and now at the last days of time, in place of prophets and other men well-pleasing to him, god willed that his only-begotten son should be born of a virgin that so the salvation of mankind which had been lost through the disobedience of the first man might be recovered by the god- man, and that inasmuch as it was a woman who had first persuaded man to that which wrought death there should be this second woman who should bring forth from a human womb him who gives life. nor let it be deemed a thing unworthy that the son of god was born of a virgin, for it was out of the course of nature that he was conceived and brought to birth. virgin then she conceived, by the holy spirit, the son of god made flesh, virgin she bore him, virgin she continued after his birth; and he became the son of man and likewise the son of god that in him the glory of the divine nature might shine forth and at the same time the human weakness be declared which he took upon him. yet against this article of faith so wholesome and altogether true there rose up many who babbled other doctrine, and especially nestorius and eutyches, inventors of heresy, of whom the one thought fit to say that he was man alone, the other that he was god alone and that the human body put on by christ had not come by participation in human substance. but enough on this point. so christ grew after the flesh, and was baptized in order that he who was to give the form of baptism to others should first himself receive what he taught. but after his baptism he chose twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed him. and because the people of the jews would not bear sound doctrine they laid hands upon him and slew and crucified him. christ, then, was slain; he lay three days and three nights in the tomb; he rose again from the dead as he had predetermined with his father before the foundation of the world; he ascended into heaven whence we know that he was never absent, because he is son of god, in order that as son of god he might raise together with him to the heavenly habitation man whose flesh he had assumed, whom the devil had hindered from ascending to the places on high. therefore he bestowed on his disciples the form of baptizing, the saving truth of the teaching, and the mighty power of miracles, and bade them go throughout the whole world to give it life, in order that the message of salvation might be preached no longer in one nation only but among all the dwellers upon earth. and because the human race was wounded by the weapon of eternal punishment by reason of the nature which they had inherited from the first transgressor and could not win a full meed of salvation because they had lost it in its first parent, god instituted certain health- giving sacraments to teach the difference between what grace bestowed and human nature deserved, nature simply subjecting to punishment, but grace, which is won by no merit, since it would not be grace if it were due to merit, conferring all that belongs to salvation. therefore is that heavenly instruction spread throughout the world, the peoples are knit together, churches are founded, and, filling the broad earth, one body formed, whose head, even christ, ascended into heaven in order that the members might of necessity follow where the head was gone. thus this teaching both inspires this present life unto good works, and promises that in the end of the age our bodies shall rise incorruptible to the kingdom of heaven, to the end that he who has lived well on earth by god's gift should be altogether blessed in that resurrection, but he who has lived amiss should, with the gift of resurrection, enter upon misery. and this is a firm principle of our religion, to believe not only that men's souls do not perish, but that their very bodies, which the coming of death had destroyed, recover their first state by the bliss that is to be. this catholic church, then, spread throughout the world, is known by three particular marks: whatever is believed and taught in it has the authority of the scriptures, or of universal tradition, or at least of its own and proper usage. and this authority is binding on the whole church as is also the universal tradition of the fathers, while each separate church exists and is governed by its private constitution and its proper rites according to difference of locality and the good judgment of each. all, therefore, that the faithful now expect is that the end of the world will come, that all corruptible things shall pass away, that men shall rise for future judgement, that each shall receive reward according to his deserts and abide in the lot assigned to him for ever and for aye; and the sole reward of bliss will be the contemplation of the almighty, so far, that is, as the creature may look on the creator, to the end that the number of the angels may be made up from these and the heavenly city filled where the virgin's son is king and where will be everlasting joy, delight, food, labour, and unending praise of the creator. [ ] the conclusions adverse to the genuineness of this tractate, reached in the dissertation _der dem boethius zugeschriebene traktat de fide catholica (jahrbücher für kl. phil._ xxvi. ( ) supplementband) by one of the editors, now seem to both unsound. the writer of that dissertation intends to return to the subject elsewhere. this fourth tractate, though lacking, in the best mss., either an ascription to boethius or a title, is firmly imbedded in two distinct recensions of boethius's theological works. there is no reason to disturb it. indeed the _capita dogmatica_ mentioned by cassiodorus can hardly refer to any of the tractates except the fourth. [ ] for _instrumentum_=holy scripture cf. tertull. _apol._ , , _adv. hermog._ , etc.; for _instrumentum_=any historical writing cf. tert. _de spect._ . [ ] boethius is no heretic. by the sixth century _uel_ had lost its strong separative force. cp. "noe cum sua uel trium natorum coniugibus," greg. tur. _h.f._ i. . other examples in bonnet, _la latinité de grég. de tours_, p. , and in brandt's edition of the _isag._ index, s.v. _uel_. [ ] _vide cons._ i. pr. (_infra_, p. ), and cf. dante, _de mon._ iii. , . [ ] _ut quia_. a very rare use. cf. baehrens, _beiträge zur lat. syntaxis_ (_philologus_, supplementband xii. ). it perhaps=aristotle's [greek: oion epei]. cf. mckinlay, _harvard studies in cl. philol._ xviii. . [ ] _in integro_=_prorsus_; cf. brandt, _op. cit._ index, s.v. _integer_. [ ] the doctrine is orthodox, but note that boethius does not say _ex nihilo creauit_. _vide infra_, p. ll. ff. [ ] _vide infra, cons._ iv. pr. , p. l. . [ ] e.g. ishmael also [greek: kata sarka gegennaetai] gal. iv. . [ ] cf. "populus dei mirabiliter crescens ... quia ... erant suspecta... laboribus premebatur," aug. _de ciu. dei_, . . for other coincidences see rand, _op. cit._ pp. ff. anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii incipit liber contra evtychen et nestorivm domino sancto ac venerabili patri iohanni diacono boethivs filivs anxie te quidem diuque sustinui, ut de ea quae in conuentu mota est quaestione loqueremur. sed quoniam et tu quominus uenires occupatione distractus es et ego in crastinum constitutis negotiis implicabor, mando litteris quae coram loquenda seruaueram. meministi enim, cum in concilio legeretur epistola, recitatum eutychianos ex duabus naturis christum consistere confiteri, in duabus negare: catholicos uero utrique dicto fidem praebere, nam et ex duabus eum naturis consistere et in duabus apud uerae fidei sectatores aequaliter credi. cuius dicti nouitate percussus harum coniunctionum quae ex duabus naturis uel in duabus consisterent differentias inquirebam, multum scilicet referre ratus nec inerti neglegentia praetereundum, quod episcopus scriptor epistolae tamquam ualde necessarium praeterire noluisset. hic omnes apertam esse differentiam nec quicquam in eo esse caliginis inconditum confusumque strepere nec ullus in tanto tumultu qui leuiter attingeret quaestionem, nedum qui expediret inuentus est. adsederam ego ab eo quem maxime intueri cupiebam longius atque adeo, si situm sedentium recorderis, auersus pluribusque oppositis, ne si aegerrime quidem cuperem, uultum nutumque eius aspicere poteram ex quo mihi aliqua eius darentur signa iudicii. atqui ego quidem nihil ceteris amplius afferebam, immo uero aliquid etiam minus. nam de re proposita aeque nihil ceteris sentiebam; minus uero quam ceteri ipse afferebam, falsae scilicet scientiae praesumptionem. tuli aegerrime, fateor, compressusque indoctorum grege conticui metuens ne iure uiderer insanus, si sanus inter furiosos haberi contenderem. meditabar igitur dehinc omnes animo quaestiones nec deglutiebam quod acceperam, sed frequentis consilii iteratione ruminabam. tandem igitur patuere pulsanti animo fores et ueritas inuenta quaerenti omnes nebulas eutychiani reclusit erroris. vnde mihi maxime subiit admirari, quaenam haec indoctorum hominum esset audacia qui inscientiae uitium praesumptionis atque inpudentiae nube conentur obducere, cum non modo saepe id quod proponatur ignorent, uerum in huiusmodi contentionibus ne id quidem quod ipsi loquantur intellegant, quasi non deterior fiat inscientiae causa, dum tegitur. sed ab illis ad te transeo, cui hoc quantulumcumque est examinandum prius perpendendumque transmitto. quod si recte se habere pronuntiaueris, peto ut mei nominis hoc quoque inseras chartis; sin uero uel minuendum aliquid uel addendum uel aliqua mutatione uariandum est, id quoque postulo remitti, meis exemplaribus ita ut a te reuertitur transcribendum. quae ubi ad calcem ducta constiterint, tum demum eius cuius soleo iudicio censenda transmittam. sed quoniam semel res a conlocutione transfertur ad stilum, prius extremi sibique contrarii nestorii atque eutychis summoueantur errores; post uero adiuuante deo, christianae medietatem fidei temperabo. quoniam uero in tota quaestione contrariarum sibimet [greek: haireseon] de personis dubitatur atque naturis, haec primitus definienda sunt et propriis differentiis segreganda. a treatise against eutyches and nestorius by anicius manlius severinus boethius most honourable, of the illustrious order of ex-consuls, patrician to his saintly master and reverend father john the deacon his son boethius i have been long and anxiously waiting for you to discuss with me the problem which was raised at the meeting. but since your duties have prevented your coming and i shall be for some time involved in my business engagements, i am setting down in writing what i had been keeping to say by word of mouth. you no doubt remember how, when the letter[ ] was read in the assembly, it was asserted that the eutychians confess that christ is formed from two natures but does not consist of them--whereas catholics admit both propositions, for among followers of the true faith he is equally believed to be of two natures and in two natures. struck by the novelty of this assertion i began to inquire what difference there can be between unions formed from two natures and unions which consist in two natures, for the point which the bishop who wrote the letter refused to pass over because of its gravity, seemed to me of importance and not one to be idly and carelessly slurred over. on that occasion all loudly protested that the difference was evident, that there was no obscurity, confusion or perplexity, and in the general storm and tumult there was no one who really touched the edge of the problem, much less anyone who solved it. i was sitting a long way from the man whom i especially wished to watch,[ ] and if you recall the arrangement of the seats, i was turned away from him, with so many between us, that however much i desired it i could not see his face and expression and glean therefrom any sign of his opinion. personally, indeed, i had nothing more to contribute than the rest, in fact rather less than more. i, no more than the others, had any view about the question at issue, while my possible contribution was less by one thing, namely, the false assumption of a knowledge that i had not got. i was, i admit, much put out, and being overwhelmed by the mob of ignorant speakers, i held my peace, fearing lest i should be rightly set down as insane if i held out for being sane among those madmen.[ ] so i continued to ponder all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what i had heard, but rather chewing the cud of constant meditation. at last the door opened to my insistent knocking, and the truth which i found cleared out of my way all the clouds of the eutychian error. and with this discovery a great wonder came upon me at the vast temerity of unlearned men who use the cloak of impudent presumption to cover up the vice of ignorance, for not only do they often fail to grasp the point at issue, but in a debate of this kind they do not even understand their own statements, forgetting that the case of ignorance is all the worse if it is not honestly admitted.[ ] i turn from them to you, and to you i submit this little essay for your first judgment and consideration. if you pronounce it to be sound i beg you to place it among the other writings of mine which you possess; but if there is anything to be struck out or added or changed in any way, i would ask you to let me have your suggestions, in order that i may enter them in my copies just as they leave your hands. when this revision has been duly accomplished, then i will send the work on to be judged by the man to whom i always submit everything.[ ] but since the pen is now to take the place of the living voice, let me first clear away the extreme and self-contradictory errors of nestorius and eutyches; after that, by god's help, i will temperately set forth the middle way of the christian faith. but since in this whole question of self-contradictory heresies the matter of debate is persons and natures, these terms must first be defined and distinguished by their proper differences. [ ] evidently the letter addressed to pope symmachus by the oriental bishops (_vide_ mansi, _concil_. viii. ff.), in which they inquire concerning the safe middle way between the heresies of eutyches and nestorius. the date of the bishops' letter, and consequently, in all probability, of boethius's tractate was . [ ] obviously his father-in-law symmachus. _vide_ p. , _eius cuius soleo iudiclo_, etc. [ ] cf. hor. _serm_. i. . ; ii. . . [ ] cf. _infra, de cons._ i. pr. (p. ) _oportet uulnus detegas. [ ] _vide supra_, p. , and _de trin._ p. . i. natura igitur aut de solis corporibus dici potest aut de solis substantiis, id est corporeis atque incorporeis, aut de omnibus rebus quae quocumque modo esse dicuntur. cum igitur tribus modis natura dici possit, tribus modis sine dubio definienda est. nam si de omnibus rebus naturam dici placet, talis definitio dabitur quae res omnes quae sunt possit includere. erit ergo huiusmodi: "natura est earum rerum quae, cum sint, quoquo modo intellectu capi possunt." in hac igitur definitione et accidentia et substantiae definiuntur; haec enim omnia intellectu capi possunt. additum uero est "quoquo modo," quoniam deus et materia integro perfectoque intellectu intellegi non possunt, sed aliquo tamen modo ceterarum rerum priuatione capiuntur. idcirco uero adiunximus "quae cum sint," quoniam etiam ipsum nihil significat aliquid sed non naturam. neque enim quod sit aliquid sed potius non esse significat; omnis uero natura est. et si de omnibus quidem rebus naturam dici placet, haec sit naturae definitio quam superius proposuimus. sin uero de solis substantiis natura dicitur, quoniam substantiae omnes aut corporeae sunt aut incorporeae, dabimus definitionem naturae substantias significanti huiusmodi: "natura est uel quod facere uel quod pati possit." "pati" quidem ac "facere," ut omnia corporea atque corporeorum anima; haec enim in corpore et a corpore et facit et patitur. "facere" uero tantum ut deus ceteraque diuina. habes igitur definitionem eius quoque significationis naturae quae tantum substantiis applicatur. qua in re substantiae quoque est reddita definitio. nam si nomen naturae substantiam monstrat, cum naturam descripsimus substantiae quoque est assignata descriptio. quod si naturae nomen relictis incorporeis substantiis ad corporales usque contrahitur, ut corporeae tantum substantiae naturam habere uideantur, sicut aristoteles ceterique et eiusmodi et multimodae philosophiae sectatores putant, definiemus eam, ut hi etiam qui naturam non nisi in corporibus esse posuerunt. est autem eius definitio hoc modo: "natura est motus principium per se non per accidens." quod "motus principium" dixi hoc est, quoniam corpus omne habet proprium motum, ut ignis sursum, terra deorsum. item quod "per se principium motus" naturam esse proposui et non "per accidens," tale est, quoniam lectum quoque ligneum deorsum ferri necesse est, sed non deorsum per accidens fertur. idcirco enim quia lignum est, quod est terra, pondere et grauitate deducitur. non enim quia lectus est, deorsum cadit, sed quia terra est, id est quia terrae contigit, ut lectus esset; unde fit ut lignum naturaliter esse dicamus, lectum uero artificialiter. est etiam alia significatio naturae per quam dicimus diuersam esse naturam auri atque argenti in hoc proprietatem rerum monstrare cupientes, quae significatio naturae definietur hoc modo: "natura est unam quamque rem informans specifica differentia." cum igitur tot modis uel dicatur uel definiatur natura, tam catholici quam nestorius secundum ultimam definitionem duas in christo naturas esse constituunt; neque enim easdem in deum atque hominem differentias conuenire. i. nature, then, may be affirmed either of bodies alone or of substances alone, that is, of corporeals or incorporeals, or of everything that is in any way capable of affirmation. since, then, nature can be affirmed in three ways, it must obviously be defined in three ways. for if you choose to affirm nature of the totality of things, the definition will be of such a kind as to include all things that are. it will accordingly be something of this kind: "nature belongs to those things which, since they exist, can in some measure be apprehended by the mind." this definition, then, includes both accidents and substances, for they all can be apprehended by the mind. but i add "in some measure" because god and matter cannot be apprehended by mind, be it never so whole and perfect, but still they are apprehended in a measure through the removal of accidents. the reason for adding the words, "since they exist," is that the mere word "nothing" denotes something, though it does not denote nature. for it denotes, indeed, not that anything is, but rather non-existence; but every nature exists. and if we choose to affirm "nature" of the totality of things, the definition will be as we have given it above. but if "nature" is affirmed of substances alone, we shall, since all substances are either corporeal or incorporeal, give to nature denoting substances a definition of the following kind: "nature is either that which can act or that which can be acted upon." now the power to act and to suffer belongs to all corporeals and the soul of corporeals; for it both acts in the body and suffers by the body. but only to act belongs to god and other divine substances. here, then, you have a further definition of what nature is as applied to substances alone. this definition comprises also the definition of substance. for if the word nature signifies substance, when once we have defined nature we have also settled the definition of substance. but if we neglect incorporeal substances and confine the name nature to corporeal substances so that they alone appear to possess the nature of substance--which is the view of aristotle and the adherents both of his and various other schools--we shall define nature as those do who have only allowed the word to be applied to bodies. now, in accordance with this view, the definition is as follows: "nature is the principle of movement properly inherent in and not accidentally attached to bodies." i say "principle of movement" because every body has its proper movement, fire moving upwards, the earth moving downwards. and what i mean by "movement properly inherent and not accidentally attached" is seen by the example of a wooden bed which is necessarily borne downward and is not carried downward by accident. for it is drawn downward by weight and heaviness because it is of wood, i.e. an earthly material. for it falls down not because it is a bed, but because it is earth, that is, because it is an accident of earth that it is a bed; hence we call it wood in virtue of its nature, but bed in virtue of the art that shaped it. nature has, further, another meaning according to which we speak of the different nature of gold and silver, wishing thereby to point the special property of things; this meaning of nature will be defined as follows: "nature is the specific difference that gives form to anything." thus, although nature is described or defined in all these different ways, both catholics and nestorians firmly hold that there are in christ two natures of the kind laid down in our last definition, for the same specific differences cannot apply to god and man. ii. sed de persona maxime dubitari potest, quaenam ei definitio possit aptari. si enim omnis habet natura personam, indissolubilis nodus est, quaenam inter naturam personamque possit esse discretio; aut si non aequatur persona naturae, sed infra terminum spatiumque naturae persona subsistit, difficile dictu est ad quas usque naturas persona perueniat, id est quas naturas conueniat habere personam, quas a personae uocabulo segregari. nam illud quidem manifestum est personae subiectam esse naturam nec praeter naturam personam posse praedicari. vestiganda sunt igitur haec inquirentibus hoc modo. quoniam praeter naturam non potest esse persona quoniamque naturae aliae sunt substantiae, aliae accidentes et uidemus personam in accidentibus non posse constitui (quis enim dicat ullam albedinis uel nigredinis uel magnitudinis esse personam?), relinquitur ergo ut personam in substantiis dici conueniat. sed substantiarum aliae sunt corporeae, aliae incorporeae. corporearum uero aliae sunt uiuentes, aliae minime; uiuentium aliae sunt sensibiles, aliae minime; sensibilium aliae rationales, aliae inrationales. item incorporearum aliae sunt rationales, aliae minime, ut pecudum uitae; rationalium uero alia est inmutabilis atque inpassibilis per naturam ut deus, alia per creationem mutabilis atque passibilis, nisi inpassibilis gratia substantiae ad inpassibilitatis firmitudinem permutetur ut angelorum atque animae. ex quibus omnibus neque in non uiuentibus corporibus personam posse dici manifestum est (nullus enim lapidis ullam dicit esse personam), neque rursus eorum uiuentium quae sensu carent (neque enim ulla persona est arboris), nec uero eius quae intellectu ac ratione deseritur (nulla est enim persona equi uel bouis ceterorumque animalium quae muta ac sine ratione uitam solis sensibus degunt), at hominis dicimus esse personam, dicimus dei, dicimus angeli. rursus substantiarum aliae sunt uniuersales, aliae particulares. vniuersales sunt quae de singulis praedicantur ut homo, animal, lapis, lignum ceteraque huiusmodi quae uel genera uel species sunt; nam et homo de singulis hominibus et animal de singulis animalibus lapisque ac lignum de singulis lapidibus ac lignis dicuntur. particularia uero sunt quae de aliis minime praedicantur ut cicero, plato, lapis hic unde haec achillis statua facta est, lignum hoc unde haec mensa composita est. sed in his omnibus nusquam in uniuersalibus persona dici potest, sed in singularibus tantum atque in indiuiduis; animalis enim uel generalis hominis nulla persona est, sed uel ciceronis uel platonis uel singulorum indiuiduorum personae singulae nuncupantur. ii. but the proper definition of person is a matter of very great perplexity. for if every nature has person, the difference between nature and person is a hard knot to unravel; or if person is not taken as the equivalent of nature but is a term of less scope and range, it is difficult to say to what natures it may be extended, that is, to what natures the term person may be applied and what natures are dissociate from it. for one thing is clear, namely that nature is a substrate of person, and that person cannot be predicated apart from nature. we must, therefore, conduct our inquiry into these points as follows. since person cannot exist apart from a nature and since natures are either substances or accidents and we see that a person cannot come into being among accidents (for who can say there is any person of white or black or size?), it therefore remains that person is properly applied to substances. but of substances, some are corporeal and others incorporeal. and of corporeals, some are living and others the reverse; of living substances, some are sensitive and others insensitive; of sensitive substances, some are rational and others irrational.[ ] similarly of incorporeal substances, some are rational, others the reverse (for instance the animating spirits of beasts); but of rational substances there is one which is immutable and impassible by nature, namely god, another which in virtue of its creation is mutable and passible except in that case where the grace of the impassible substance has transformed it to the unshaken impassibility which belongs to angels and to the soul. now from all the definitions we have given it is clear that person cannot be affirmed of bodies which have no life (for no one ever said that a stone had a person), nor yet of living things which lack sense (for neither is there any person of a tree), nor finally of that which is bereft of mind and reason (for there is no person of a horse or ox or any other of the animals which dumb and unreasoning live a life of sense alone), but we say there is a person of a man, of god, of an angel. again, some substances are universal, others are particular. universal terms are those which are predicated of individuals, as man, animal, stone, stock and other things of this kind which are either genera or species; for the term man is applied to individual men just as animal is to individual animals, and stone and stock to individual stones and stocks. but particulars are terms which are never predicated of other things, as cicero, plato, this stone from which this statue of achilles was hewn, this piece of wood out of which this table was made. but in all these things person cannot in any case be applied to universals, but only to particulars and individuals; for there is no person of a man if animal or general; only the single persons of cicero, plato, or other single individuals are termed persons. [ ] for a similar example of the method of _diuisio_ cf. cic. _de off._ ii. . . cf. also _isag. porph. edit. prima_, i. (ed. brandt, p. ). iii. quocirca si persona in solis substantiis est atque in his rationabilibus substantiaque omnis natura est nec in uniuersalibus sed in indiuiduis constat, reperta personae est definitio: "naturae rationabilis indiuidua substantia." sed nos hac definitione eam quam graeci [greek: hupostasin] dicunt terminauimus. nomen enim personae uidetur aliunde traductum, ex his scilicet personis quae in comoediis tragoediisque eos quorum interest homines repraesentabant. persona uero dicta est a personando circumflexa paenultima. quod si acuatur antepaenultima, apertissime a sono dicta uidebitur; idcirco autem a sono, quia concauitate ipsa maior necesse est uoluatur sonus. graeci quoque has personas [greek: prosopa] uocant ab eo quod ponantur in facie atque ante oculos obtegant uultum: [greek: para tou pros tous opas tithesthai.] sed quoniam personis inductis histriones indiuiduos homines quorum intererat in tragoedia uel in comoedia ut dictum est repraesentabant, id est hecubam uel medeam uel simonem uel chremetem, idcirco ceteros quoque homines, quorum certa pro sui forma esset agnitio, et latini personam et graeci [greek: prosopa] nuncupauerunt. longe uero illi signatius naturae rationabilis indiuiduam subsistentiam [greek: hupostaseos] nomine uocauerunt, nos uero per inopiam significantium uocum translaticiam retinuimus nuncupationem, eam quam illi [greek: hupostasin] dicunt personam uocantes; sed peritior graecia sermonum [greek: hupostasin] uocat indiuiduam subsistentiam. atque, uti graeca utar oratione in rebus quae a graecis agitata latina interpretatione translata sunt: [greek: hai ousiai en men tois katholou einai dunantai. en de tois atomois kai kata meros monois huphistantai], id est: essentiae in uniuersalibus quidem esse possunt, in solis uero indiuiduis et particularibus substant. intellectus enim uniuersalium rerum ex particularibus sumptus est. quocirca cum ipsae subsistentiae in uniuersalibus quidem sint, in particularibus uero capiant substantiam, iure subsistentias particulariter substantes [greek: hupostaseis] appellauerunt. neque enim pensius subtiliusque intuenti idem uidebitur esse subsistentia quod substantia. nam quod graeci [greek: ousiosin] uel [greek: ousiosthai] dicunt, id nos subsistentiam uel subsistere appellamus; quod uero illi [greek: hupostasin] uel [greek: huphistasthai], id nos substantiam uel substare interpretamur. subsistit enim quod ipsum accidentibus, ut possit esse, non indiget. substat autem id quod aliis accidentibus subiectum quoddam, ut esse ualeant, subministrat; sub illis enim stat, dum subiectum est accidentibus. itaque genera uel species subsistunt tantum; neque enim accidentia generibus speciebus*ue contingunt. indiuidua uero non modo subsistunt uerum etiam substant, nam neque ipsa indigent accidentibus ut sint; informata enim sunt iam propriis et specificis differentiis et accidentibus ut esse possint ministrant, dum sunt scilicet subiecta. quocirca [greek: einai] atque [greek: ousiosthai] esse atque subsistere, [greek: huphistasthai] uero substare intellegitur. neque enim uerborum inops graecia est, ut marcus tullius alludit, sed essentiam, subsistentiam, substantiam, personam totidem nominibus reddit, essentiam quidem [greek: ousian], subsistentiam uero [greek: ousiosin], substantiam [greek: hupostasin], personam [greek: prosopon] appellans. ideo autem [greek: hupostaseis] graeci indiuiduas substantias uocauerunt, quoniam ceteris subsunt et quibusdam quasi accidentibus subpositae subiectaeque sunt; atque idcirco nos quoque eas substantias nuncupamus quasi subpositas, quas illi[ ] [greek: hupostaseis], cumque etiam [greek: prosopa] nuncupent easdem substantias, possumus nos quoque nuncupare personas. idem est igitur [greek: ousian] esse quod essentiam, idem [greek: ousiosin] quod subsistentiam, idem [greek: hupostasin] quod substantiam, idem [greek: prosopon] quod personam. quare autem de inrationabilibus animalibus graecus [greek: hupostasin] non dicat, sicut nos de eisdem nomen substantiae praedicamus, haec ratio est, quoniam nomen hoc melioribus applicatum est, ut aliqua id quod est excellentius, tametsi non descriptione naturae secundum id quod [greek: huphistasthai] atque substare est, at certe [greek: hupostaseos] uel substantiae uocabulis discerneretur. est igitur et hominis quidem essentia, id est [greek: ousia], et subsistentia, id est [greek: ousiosis], et [greek: hupostasis], id est substantia, et [greek: prosopon], id est persona; [greek: ousia], quidem atque essentia quoniam est, [greek: ousiosis] uero atque subsistentia quoniam in nullo subiecto est, [greek: hupostasis] uero atque substantia, quoniam subest ceteris quae subsistentiae non sunt, id est [greek: ousioseis]; est [greek: prosopon] atque persona, quoniam est rationabile indiuiduum. deus quoque et [greek: ousia] est et essentia, est enim et maxime ipse est a quo omnium esse proficiscitur. est [greek: ousiosis], id est subsistentia (subsistit enim nullo indigens), et [greek: huphistasthai]; substat enim. vnde etiam dicimus unam esse [greek: ousian] uel [greek: ousiosin], id est essentiam uel subsistentiam deitatis, sed tres [greek: hupostaseis], id est tres substantias. et quidem secundum hunc modum dixere unam trinitatis essentiam, tres substantias tresque personas. nisi enim tres in deo substantias ecclesiasticus loquendi usus excluderet, uideretur idcirco de deo dici substantia, non quod ipse ceteris rebus quasi subiectum supponeretur, sed quod idem omnibus uti praeesset ita etiam quasi principium subesset rebus, dum eis omnibus [greek: ousiosthai] uel subsistere subministrat. [ ] quas illi _vallinus_; quasi _uel_ quas _codd. meliores_. iii. wherefore if person belongs to substances alone, and these rational, and if every nature is a substance, existing not in universals but in individuals, we have found the definition of person, viz.: "the individual substance of a rational nature."[ ] now by this definition we latins have described what the greeks call [greek: hupostasis]. for the word person seems to be borrowed from a different source, namely from the masks which in comedies and tragedies used to signify the different subjects of representation. now _persona_ "mask" is derived from _personare_, with a circumflex on the penultimate. but if the accent is put on the antepenultimate[ ] the word will clearly be seen to come from _sonus_ "sound," and for this reason, that the hollow mask necessarily produces a larger sound. the greeks, too, call these masks [greek: prosopa] from the fact that they are placed over the face and conceal the countenance from the spectator: [greek: para tou pros tous opas tithesthai]. but since, as we have said, it was by the masks they put on that actors played the different characters represented in a tragedy or comedy--hecuba or medea or simon or chremes,--so also all other men who could be recognized by their several characteristics were designated by the latins with the term _persona_ and by the greeks with [greek: prosopa]. but the greeks far more clearly gave to the individual subsistence of a rational nature the name [greek: hupostasis] while we through want of appropriate words have kept a borrowed term, calling that _persona_ which they call [greek: hupostasis]; but greece with its richer vocabulary gives the name [greek: hupostasis] to the individual subsistence. and, if i may use greek in dealing with matters which were first mooted by greeks before they came to be interpreted in latin: [greek: hai ousiai en men tois katholou einai dunantai. en de tois atomois kai kata meros monois huphistantai], that is: essences indeed can have potential existence in universals, but they have particular substantial existence in particulars alone. for it is from particulars that all our comprehension of universals is taken. wherefore since subsistences are present in universals but acquire substance in particulars they rightly gave the name [greek: hupostasis] to subsistences which acquired substance through the medium of particulars. for to no one using his eyes with any care or penetration will subsistence and substance appear identical. for our equivalents of the greek terms [greek: ousiosis ousiosthai] are respectively _subsistentia_ and _subsistere_, while their [greek: hupostasis huphistasthai] are represented by our _substantia_ and _substare_. for a thing has subsistence when it does not require accidents in order to be, but that thing has substance which supplies to other things, accidents to wit, a substrate enabling them to be; for it "substands" those things so long as it is subjected to accidents. thus genera and species have only subsistence, for accidents do not attach to genera and species. but particulars have not only subsistence but substance, for they, no more than generals, depend on accidents for their being; for they are already provided with their proper and specific differences and they enable accidents to be by supplying them with a substrate. wherefore _esse_ and _subsistere_ represent [greek: einai] and [greek: ousiosthai], while _substare_ represents [greek: huphistasthai]. for greece is not, as marcus tullius[ ] playfully says, short of words, but provides exact equivalents for _essentia, subsistentia, substantia_ and _persona_--[greek: ousia] for _essentia_, [greek: ousiosis] for _subsistentia_, [greek: hupostasis] for _substantia_, [greek: prosopon] for _persona_. but the greeks called individual substances [greek: hupostaseis] because they underlie the rest and offer support and substrate to what are called accidents; and we in our term call them substances as being substrate--[greek: hupostaseis], and since they also term the same substances [greek: prosopa], we too may call them persons. so [greek: ousia] is identical with essence, [greek: ousiosis] with subsistence, [greek: hupostasis] with substance, [greek: prosopon] with person. but the reason why the greek does not use [greek: hupostasis] of irrational animals while we apply the term substance to them is this: this term was applied to things of higher value, in order that what is more excellent might be distinguished, if not by a definition of nature answering to the literal meaning of [greek: huphistasthai]=_substare_, at any rate by the words [greek: hupostasis]=_substantia_. to begin with, then, man is essence, i.e. [greek: ousia], subsistence, i.e. [greek: ousiosis, hupostasis], i.e. substance, [greek: prosopon], i.e. person: [greek: ousia] or _essentia_ because he is, [greek: ousiosis], or subsistence because he is not accidental to any subject, [greek: hupostusis] or substance because he is subject to all the things which are not subsistences or [greek: ousioseis], while he is [greek: prosopon] or person because he is a rational individual. next, god is [greek: ousia], or essence, for he is and is especially that from which proceeds the being of all things. to him belong [greek: ousiosis], i.e. subsistence, for he subsists in absolute independence, and [greek: huphistasthai], for he is substantial being. whence we go on to say that there is one [greek: ousia] or [greek: ousiosis], i.e. one essence or subsistence of the godhead, but three [greek: hupostaseis] or substances. and indeed, following this use, men have spoken of one essence, three substances and three persons of the godhead. for did not the language of the church forbid us to say three substances in speaking of god,[ ] substance might seem a right term to apply to him, not because he underlies all other things like a substrate, but because, just as he excels above all things, so he is the foundation and support of things, supplying them all with [greek: ousiosthai] or subsistence. [ ] boethius's definition of _persona_ was adopted by st. thomas (s. i. . ), was regarded as classical by the schoolmen, and has the approval of modern theologians. cf. dorner, _doctrine of christ_, iii. p. . [ ] implying a short penultimate. [ ] _tusc._ ii. . . [ ] for a similar submission of his own opinion to the usage of the church cf. the end of _tr._ i. and of _tr._ ii. iv. sed haec omnia idcirco sint dicta, ut differentiam naturae atque personae id est [greek: ousias] atque [greek: hupostaseos] monstraremus. quo uero nomine unumquodque oporteat appellari, ecclesiasticae sit locutionis arbitrium. hoc interim constet quod inter naturam personamque differre praediximus, quoniam natura est cuiuslibet substantiae specificata proprietas, persona uero rationabilis naturae indiuidua substantia. hanc in christo nestorius duplicem esse constituit eo scilicet traductus errore, quod putauerit in omnibus naturis dici posse personam. hoc enim praesumpto, quoniam in christo duplicem naturam esse censebat, duplicem quoque personam esse confessus est. qua in re eum falsum esse cum definitio superius dicta conuincat, tum haec argumentatio euidenter eius declarabit errorem. si enim non est christi una persona duasque naturas esse manifestum est, hominis scilicet atque dei (nec tam erit insipiens quisquam, utqui utramque earum a ratione seiungat), sequitur ut duae uideantur esse personae; est enim persona ut dictum est naturae rationabilis indiuidua substantia. quae est igitur facta hominis deique coniunctio? num ita quasi cum duo corpora sibimet apponuntur, ut tantum locis iuncta sint et nihil in alterum ex alterius qualitate perueniat? quem coniunctionis graeci modum [greek: kata parathesin] uocant. sed si ita humanitas diuinitati coniuncta est, nihil horum ex utrisque confectum est ac per hoc nihil est christus. nomen quippe ipsum unum quiddam significat singularitate uocabuli. at si duabus personis manentibus ea coniunctio qualem superius diximus facta est naturarum, unum ex duobus effici nihil potuit; omnino enim ex duabus personis nihil umquam fieri potest. nihil igitur unum secundum nestorium christus est ac per hoc omnino nihil. quod enim non est unum, nec esse omnino potest; esse enim atque unum conuertitur et quodcumque unum est est. etiam ea quae ex pluribus coniunguntur ut aceruus, chorus, unum tamen sunt. sed esse christum manifeste ac ueraciter confitemur; unum igitur esse dicimus christum. quod si ita est, unam quoque christi sine dubitatione personam esse necesse est. nam si duae personae essent, unus esse non posset; duos uero esse dicere christos nihil est aliud nisi praecipitatae mentis insania. cur enim omnino duos audeat christos uocare, unum hominem alium deum? vel cur eum qui deus est christum uocat, si eum quoque qui homo est christum est appellaturus, cum nihil simile, nihil habeant ex copulatione coniunctum? cur simili nomine diuersissimis abutatur naturis, cum, si christum definire cogitur, utrisque ut ipse dicit christis non possit unam definitionis adhibere substantiam? si enim dei atque hominis diuersa substantia est unumque in utrisque christi nomen nec diuersarum coniunctio substantiarum unam creditur fecisse personam, aequiuocum nomen est christi et nulla potest definitione concludi. quibus autem umquam scripturis nomen christi geminatur? quid uero noui per aduentum saluatoris effectum est? nam catholicis et fidei ueritas et raritas miraculi constat. quam enim magnum est quamque nouum, quam quod semel nec ullo alio saeculo possit euenire, ut eius qui solus est deus natura cum humana quae ab eo erat diuersissima conueniret atque ita ex distantibus naturis una fieret copulatione persona! secundum nestorii uero sententiam quid contingit noui? "seruant," inquit, "proprias humanitas diuinitasque personas." quando enim non fuit diuinitatis propria humanitatisque persona? quando uero non erit? vel quid amplius in iesu generatione contingit quam in cuiuslibet alterius, si discretis utrisque personis discretae etiam fuere naturae? ita enim personis manentibus illic nulla naturarum potuit esse coniunctio, ut in quolibet homine, cuius cum propria persona subsistat, nulla est ei excellentissimae substantiae coniuncta diuinitas. sed fortasse iesum, id est personam hominis, idcirco christum uocet, quoniam per eam mira quaedam sit operata diuinitas. esto. deum uero ipsum christi appellatione cur uocet? cur uero non elementa quoque ipsa simili audeat appellare uocabulo per quae deus mira quaedam cotidianis motibus operatur? an quia inrationabiles substantiae non possunt habere personam qua[ ] christi uocabulum excipere possint[ ]? nonne in sanctis hominibus ac pietate conspicuis apertus diuinitatis actus agnoscitur? nihil enim intererit, cur non sanctos quoque uiros eadem appellatione dignetur, si in adsumptione humanitatis non est una ex coniunctione persona. sed dicat forsitan, "illos quoque christos uocari fateor, sed ad imaginem ueri christi." quod si nulla ex homine atque deo una persona coniuncta est, omnes ita ueros christos arbitrabimur ut hunc qui ex uirgine genitus creditur. nulla quippe in hoc adunata persona est ex dei atque hominis copulatione sicut nec in eis, qui dei spiritu de uenturo christo praedicebant, propter quod etiam ipsi quoque appellati sunt christi. iam uero sequitur, ut personis manentibus nullo modo a diuinitate humanitas credatur adsumpta. omnino enim disiuncta sunt quae aeque personis naturisque separantur, prorsus inquam disiuncta sunt nec magis inter se homines bouesque disiuncti quam diuinitas in christo humanitasque discreta est, si mansere personae. homines quippe ac boues una animalis communitate iunguntur; est enim illis secundum genus communis substantia eademque in uniuersalitatis collectione natura. deo uero atque homini quid non erit diuersa ratione disiunctum, si sub diuersitate naturae personarum quoque credatur mansisse discretio? non est igitur saluatum genus humanum, nulla in nos salus christi generatione processit, tot prophetarum scripturae populum inlusere credentem, omnis ueteris testamenti spernatur auctoritas per quam salus mundo christi generatione promittitur. non autem prouenisse manifestum est, si eadem in persona est quae in natura diuersitas. eundem quippe saluum fecit quem creditur adsumpsisse; nulla uero intellegi adsumptio potest, si manet aeque naturae personaeque discretio. igitur qui adsumi manente persona non potuit, iure non uidebitur per christi generationem potuisse saluari. non est igitur per generationem christi hominum saluata natura,--quod credi nefas est. sed quamquam permulta sint quae hunc sensum inpugnare ualeant atque perfringere, de argumentorum copia tamen haec interim libasse sufficiat. [ ] quae _codd._ [ ] possit _vallinus_. iv. you must consider that all i have said so far has been for the purpose of marking the difference between nature and person, that is, [greek: ousia] and [greek: hupostasis]. the exact terms which should be applied in each case must be left to the decision of ecclesiastical usage. for the time being let that distinction between nature and person hold which i have affirmed, viz. that nature is the specific property of any substance, and person the individual substance of a rational nature. nestorius affirmed that in christ person was twofold, being led astray by the false notion that person may be applied to every nature. for on this assumption, understanding that there were in christ two natures, he declared that there were likewise two persons. and although the definition which we have already given is enough to prove nestorius wrong, his error shall be further declared by the following argument. if the person of christ is not single, and if it is clear that there are in him two natures, to wit, divine and human (and no one will be so foolish as to fail to include either in the definition), it follows that there must apparently be two persons; for person, as has been said, is the individual substance of a rational nature. what kind of union, then, between god and man has been effected? is it as when two bodies are laid the one against the other, so that they are only joined locally, and no touch of the quality of the one reaches the other--the kind of union which the greeks term [greek: kata parathesin] "by juxtaposition"? but if humanity has been united to divinity in this way no one thing has been formed out of the two, and hence christ is nothing. the very name of christ, indeed, denotes by its singular number a unity. but if the two persons continued and such a union of natures as we have above described took place, there could be no unity formed from two things, for nothing could ever possibly be formed out of two persons. therefore christ is, according to nestorius, in no respect one, and therefore he is absolutely nothing. for what is not one cannot exist either; because being and unity are convertible terms, and whatever is one is. even things which are made up of many items, such as a heap or chorus, are nevertheless a unity. now we openly and honestly confess that christ is; therefore we say that christ is a unity. and if this is so, then without controversy the person of christ is one also. for if the persons were two he could not be one; but to say that there are two christs is nothing else than the madness of a distraught brain. could nestorius, i ask, dare to call the one man and the one god in christ two christs? or why does he call him christ who is god, if he is also going to call him christ who is man, when his combination gives the two no common factor, no coherence? why does he wrongly use the same name for two utterly different natures, when, if he is compelled to define christ, he cannot, as he himself admits, apply the substance of one definition to both his christs? for if the substance of god is different from that of man, and the one name of christ applies to both, and the combination of different substances is not believed to have formed one person, the name of christ is equivocal[ ] and cannot be comprised in one definition. but in what scriptures is the name of christ ever made double? or what new thing has been wrought by the coming of the saviour? for the truth of the faith and the unwontedness of the miracle alike remain, for catholics, unshaken. for how great and unprecedented a thing it is--unique and incapable of repetition in any other age--that the nature of him who is god alone should come together with human nature which was entirely different from god to form from different natures by conjunction a single person! but now, if we follow nestorius, what happens that is new? "humanity and divinity," quoth he, "keep their proper persons." well, when had not divinity and humanity each its proper person? and when, we answer, will this not be so? or wherein is the birth of jesus more significant than that of any other child, if, the two persons remaining distinct, the natures also were distinct? for while the persons remained so there could no more be a union of natures in christ than there could be in any other man with whose substance, be it never so perfect, no divinity was ever united because of the subsistence of his proper person. but for the sake of argument let him call jesus, i.e. the human person, christ, because through that person god wrought certain wonders. agreed. but why should he call god himself by the name of christ? why should he not go on to call the very elements by that name? for through them in their daily movements god works certain wonders. is it because irrational substances cannot possess a person enabling them to receive the name of christ? is not the operation of god seen plainly in men of holy life and notable piety? there will surely be no reason not to call the saints also by that name, if christ taking humanity on him is not one person through conjunction. but perhaps he will say, "i allow that such men are called christs, but it is because they are in the image of the true christ." but if no one person has been formed of the union of god and man, we shall consider all of them just as true christs as him who, we believe, was born of a virgin. for no person has been made one by the union of god and man either in him or in them who by the spirit of god foretold the coming christ, for which cause they too were called christs. so now it follows that so long as the persons remain, we cannot in any wise believe that humanity has been assumed by divinity. for things which differ alike in persons and natures are certainly separate, nay absolutely separate; man and oxen are not further separate than are divinity and humanity in christ, if the persons have remained. men indeed and oxen are united in one animal nature, for by genus they have a common substance and the same nature in the collection which forms the universal.[ ] but god and man will be at all points fundamentally different if we are to believe that distinction of persons continues under difference of nature. then the human race has not been saved, the birth of christ has brought us no salvation, the writings of all the prophets have but beguiled the people that believed in them, contempt is poured upon the authority of the whole old testament which promised to the world salvation by the birth of christ. it is plain that salvation has not been brought us, if there is the same difference in person that there is in nature. no doubt he saved that humanity which we believe he assumed; but no assumption can be conceived, if the separation abides alike of nature and of person. hence that human nature which could not be assumed as long as the person continued, will certainly and rightly appear incapable of salvation by the birth of christ. wherefore man's nature has not been saved by the birth of christ--an impious conclusion.[ ] but although there are many weapons strong enough to wound and demolish the nestorian view, let us for the moment be content with this small selection from the store of arguments available. [ ] cf. the discussion of _aequiuoca_=[greek: homonumos] in _isag. porph. vide_ brandt's index. [ ] vniuersalitas=[greek: to katholou]. [ ] for a similar _reductio ad absurdum_ ending in _quod nefas est_ see _tr._ iii. (_supra_, p. ) and _cons._ v. (_infra_, p. ). v. transeundum quippe est ad eutychen qui cum a ueterum orbitis esset euagatus, in contrarium cucurrit errorem asserens tantum abesse, ut in christo gemina persona credatur, ut ne naturam quidem in eo duplicem oporteat confiteri; ita quippe esse adsumptum hominem, ut ea sit adunatio facta cum deo, ut natura humana non manserit. huius error ex eodem quo nestorii fonte prolabitur. nam sicut nestorius arbitratur non posse esse naturam duplicem quin persona fieret duplex, atque ideo, cum in christo naturam duplicem confiteretur, duplicem credidit esse personam, ita quoque eutyches non putauit naturam duplicem esse sine duplicatione personae et cum non confiteretur duplicem esse personam, arbitratus est consequens, ut una uideretur esse natura. itaque nestorius recte tenens duplicem in christo esse naturam sacrilege confitetur duas esse personas; eutyches uero recte credens unam esse personam impie credit unam quoque esse naturam. qui conuictus euidentia rerum, quandoquidem manifestum est aliam naturam esse hominis aliam dei, ait duas se confiteri in christo naturas ante adunationem, unam uero post adunationem. quae sententia non aperte quod uult eloquitur. vt tamen eius dementiam perscrutemur, adunatio haec aut tempore generationis facta est aut tempore resurrectionis. sed si tempore generationis facta est, uidetur putare et ante generationem fuisse humanam carnem non a maria sumptam sed aliquo modo alio praeparatam, mariam uero uirginem appositam ex qua caro nasceretur quae ab ea sumpta non esset, illam uero carnem quae antea fuerit esse et diuisam atque a diuinitatis substantia separatam; cum ex uirgine natus est, adunatum esse deo, ut una uideretur facta esse natura. vel si haec eius sententia non est, illa esse poterit dicentis duas ante adunationem, unam post adunationem, si adunatio generatione perfecta est, ut corpus quidem a maria sumpserit, sed, antequam sumeret, diuersam deitatis humanitatisque fuisse naturam; sumptam uero unam factam atque in diuinitatis cessisse substantiam. quod si hanc adunationem non putat generatione sed resurrectione factam, rursus id duobus fieri arbitrabitur modis; aut enim genito christo et non adsumente de maria corpus aut adsumente ab eadem carnem, usque dum resurgeret quidem, duas fuisse naturas, post resurrectionem unam factam. de quibus illud disiunctum nascitur, quod interrogabimus hoc modo: natus ex maria christus aut ab ea carnem humanam traxit aut minime. si non confitetur ex ea traxisse, dicat quo homine indutus aduenerit, utrumne eo qui deciderat praeuaricatione peccati an alio? si eo de cuius semine ductus est homo, quem uestita diuinitas est? nam si ex semine abrahae atque dauid et postremo mariae non fuit caro illa qua natus est, ostendat ex cuius hominis sit carne deriuatus, quoniam post primum hominem caro omnis humana ex humana carne deducitur. sed si quem dixerit hominem a quo generatio sumpta sit saluatoris praeter mariam uirginem, et ipse errore confundetur et adscribere mendacii notam summae diuinitati inlusus ipse uidebitur, quando quod abrahae atque dauid promittitur in sanctis diuinationibus, ut ex eorum semine toti mundo salus oriatur, aliis distribuit, cum praesertim, si humana caro sumpta est, non ab alio sumi potuerit nisi unde etiam procreabatur. si igitur a maria non est sumptum corpus humanum sed a quolibet alio, per mariam tamen est procreatum quod fuerat praeuaricatione corruptum, superius dicto repellitur argumento. quod si non eo homine christus indutus est qui pro peccati poena sustinuerat mortem, illud eueniet ex nullius hominis semine talem potuisse nasci qui fuerit sine originalis poena peccati. ex nullo igitur talis sumpta est caro; unde fit ut nouiter uideatur esse formata. sed haec aut ita hominum uisa est oculis, ut humanum putaretur corpus quod reuera non esset humanum, quippe quod nulli originali subiaceret poenae, aut noua quaedam uera nec poenae peccati subiacens originalis ad tempus hominis natura formata est? si uerum hominis corpus non fuit, aperte arguitur mentita diuinitas, quae ostenderet hominibus corpus, quod cum uerum non esset, tum fallerentur ii[ ] qui uerum esse arbitrarentur. at si noua ueraque non ex homine sumpta caro formata est, quo tanta tragoedia generationis? vbi ambitus passionis? ego quippe ne in homine quidem non stulte fieri puto quod inutiliter factum est. ad quam uero utilitatem facta probabitur tanta humilitas diuinitatis, si homo qui periit generatione ac passione christi saluatus non est, quoniam negatur adsumptus? rursus igitur sicut ab eodem nestorii fonte eutychis error principium sumpsit, ita ad eundem finem relabitur, ut secundum eutychen quoque non sit saluatum genus humanum, quoniam non is qui aeger esset et saluatione curaque egeret, adsumptus est. traxisse autem hanc sententiam uidetur, si tamen huius erroris fuit ut crederet non fuisse corpus christi uere ex homine sed extra atque adeo in caelo formatum, quoniam cum eo in caelum creditur ascendisse. quod exemplum continet tale: "non ascendit in caelum, nisi qui de caelo descendit." [ ] hii _uel_ hi _codd._ v. i must now pass to eutyches who, wandering from the path of primitive doctrine, has rushed into the opposite error[ ] and asserts that so far from our having to believe in a twofold person in christ, we must not even confess a double nature; humanity, he maintains, was so assumed that the union with godhead involved the disappearance of the human nature. his error springs from the same source as that of nestorius. for just as nestorius deems there could not be a double nature unless the person were doubled, and therefore, confessing the double nature in christ, has perforce believed the person to be double, so also eutyches deemed that the nature was not double unless the person was double, and since he did not confess a double person, he thought it a necessary consequence that the nature should be regarded as single. thus nestorius, rightly holding christ's nature to be double, sacrilegiously professes the persons to be two; whereas eutyches, rightly believing the person to be single, impiously believes that the nature also is single. and being confuted by the plain evidence of facts, since it is clear that the nature of god is different from that of man, he declares his belief to be: two natures in christ before the union and only one after the union. now this statement does not express clearly what he means. however, let us scrutinize his extravagance. it is plain that this union took place either at the moment of conception or at the moment of resurrection. but if it happened at the moment of conception, eutyches seems to think that even before conception he had human flesh, not taken from mary but prepared in some other way, while the virgin mary was brought in to give birth to flesh that was not taken from her; that this flesh, which already existed, was apart and separate from the substance of divinity, but that when he was born of the virgin it was united to god, so that the nature seemed to be made one. or if this be not his opinion, since he says that there were two natures before the union and one after, supposing the union to be established by conception, an alternative view may be that christ indeed took a body from mary but that before he took it the natures of godhead and manhood were different: but the nature assumed became one with that of godhead into which it passed. but if he thinks that this union was effected not by conception but by resurrection, we shall have to assume that this too happened in one of two ways; either christ was conceived and did _not_ assume a body from mary or he _did_ assume flesh from her, and there were (until indeed he rose) two natures which became one after the resurrection. from these alternatives a dilemma arises which we will examine as follows: christ who was born of mary either did or did not take human flesh from her. if eutyches does not admit that he took it from her, then let him say what manhood he put on to come among us--that which had fallen through sinful disobedience or another? if it was the manhood of that man from whom all men descend, what manhood did divinity invest? for if that flesh in which he was born came not of the seed of abraham and of david and finally of mary, let eutyches show from what man's flesh he descended, since, after the first man, all human flesh is derived from human flesh. but if he shall name any child of man beside mary the virgin as the cause of the conception of the saviour, he will both be confounded by his own error, and, himself a dupe, will stand accused of stamping with falsehood the very godhead for thus transferring to others the promise of the sacred oracles made to abraham and david[ ] that of their seed salvation should arise for all the world, especially since if human flesh was taken it could not be taken from any other but him of whom it was begotten. if, therefore, his human body was not taken from mary but from any other, yet that was engendered through mary which had been corrupted by disobedience, eutyches is confuted by the argument already stated. but if christ did not put on that manhood which had endured death in punishment for sin, it will result that of no man's seed could ever one have been born who should be, like him, without punishment for original sin. therefore flesh like his was taken from no man, whence it would appear to have been new- formed for the purpose. but did this flesh then either so appear to human eyes that the body was deemed human which was not really human, because it was not subject to any primal penalty, or was some new true human flesh formed as a makeshift, not subject to the penalty for original sin? if it was not a truly human body, the godhead is plainly convicted of falsehood for displaying to men a body which was not real and thus deceived those who thought it real. but if flesh had been formed new and real and not taken from man, to what purpose was the tremendous tragedy of the conception? where the value of his long passion? i cannot but consider foolish even a human action that is useless. and to what useful end shall we say this great humiliation of divinity was wrought if ruined man has not been saved by the conception and the passion of christ--for they denied that he was taken into godhead? once more then, just as the error of eutyches took its rise from the same source as that of nestorius, so it hastens to the same goal inasmuch as according to eutyches also the human race has not been saved,[ ] since man who was sick and needed health and salvation was not taken into godhead. yet this is the conclusion he seems to have drawn, if he erred so deeply as to believe that christ's body was not taken really from man but from a source outside him and prepared for the purpose in heaven, for he is believed to have ascended with it up into heaven. which is the meaning of the text: none hath ascended into heaven save him who came down from heaven. [ ] the ecclesiastical _uia media_, with the relegation of opposing theories to the extremes, which meet in a common fount of falsity, owes something to aristotle and to our author. _vide infra_, p. . [ ] the use of this kind of argument by boethius allays any suspicion as to the genuineness of _tr_. iv. which might be caused by the use of allegorical interpretation therein. note also that in the _consolatio_ the framework is allegory, which is also freely applied in the details. [ ] another _reductio ad absurdum_ or _ad impietatem_, cf. _supra_, p. , note b. vi. sed satis de ea parte dictum uidetur, si corpus quod christus excepit ex maria non credatur adsumptum. si uero adsumptum est ex maria neque permansit perfecta humana diuinaque natura, id tribus effici potuit modis: aut enim diuinitas in humanitatem translata est aut humanitas in diuinitatem aut utraeque in se ita temperatae sunt atque commixtae, ut neutra substantia propriam formam teneret. sed si diuinitas in humanitatem translata est, factum est, quod credi nefas est, ut humanitate inmutabili substantia permanente diuinitas uerteretur et quod passibile atque mutabile naturaliter exsisteret, id inmutabile permaneret, quod uero inmutabile atque inpassibile naturaliter creditur, id in rem mutabilem uerteretur. hoc igitur fieri nulla ratione contingit. sed humana forsitan natura in deitatem uideatur esse conuersa. hoc uero qui fieri potest, si diuinitas in generatione christi et humanam animam suscepit et corpus? non enim omnis res in rem omnem uerti ac transmutari potest. nam cum substantiarum aliae sint corporeae, aliae incorporeae, neque corporea in incorpoream neque incorporea in eam quae corpus est mutari potest, nec uero incorporea in se inuicem formas proprias mutant; sola enim mutari transformarique in se possunt quae habent unius materiae commune subiectum, nec haec omnia, sed ea quae in se et facere et pati possunt. id uero probatur hoc modo: neque enim potest aes in lapidem permutari nec uero idem aes in herbam nec quodlibet aliud corpus in quodlibet aliud transfigurari potest, nisi et eadem sit materia rerum in se transeuntium et a se et facere et pati possint, ut, cum uinum atque aqua miscentur, utraque sunt talia quae actum sibi passionemque communicent. potest enim aquae qualitas a uini qualitate aliquid pati; potest item uini ab aquae qualitate aliquid pati. atque idcirco si multum quidem fuerit aquae, uini uero paululum, non dicuntur inmixta, sed alterum alterius qualitate corrumpitur. si quis enim uinum fundat in mare, non mixtum est mari uinum sed in mare corruptum, idcirco quoniam qualitas aquae multitudine sui corporis nihil passa est a qualitate uini, sed potius in se ipsam uini qualitatem propria multitudine commutauit. si uero sint mediocres sibique aequales uel paulo inaequales naturae quae a se facere et pati possunt, illae miscentur et mediocribus inter se qualitatibus temperantur. atque haec quidem in corporibus neque his omnibus, sed tantum quae a se, ut dictum est, et facere et pati possunt communi atque eadem materia subiecta. omne enim corpus quod in generatione et corruptione subsistit communem uidetur habere materiam, sed non omne ab omni uel in omni uel facere aliquid uel pati potest. corpora uero in incorporea nulla ratione poterunt permutari, quoniam nulla communi materia subiecta participant quae susceptis qualitatibus in alterutram permutetur. omnis enim natura incorporeae substantiae nullo materiae nititur fundamento; nullum uero corpus est cui non sit materia subiecta. quod cum ita sit cumque ne ea quidem quae communem materiam naturaliter habent in se transeant, nisi illis adsit potestas in se et a se faciendi ac patiendi, multo magis in se non permutabuntur quibus non modo communis materia non est, sed cum alia res materiae fundamento nititur ut corpus, alia omnino materiae subiecto non egeat ut incorporeum. non igitur fieri potest, ut corpus in incorporalem speciem permutetur, nec uero fieri potest, ut incorporalia in sese commixtione aliqua permutentur. quorum enim communis nulla materia est, nec in se uerti ac permutari queunt. nulla autem est incorporalibus materia rebus; non poterunt igitur in se inuicem permutari. sed anima et deus incorporeae substantiae recte creduntur; non est igitur humana anima in diuinitatem a qua adsumpta est permutata. quod si neque corpus neque anima in diuinitatem potuit uerti, nullo modo fieri potuit, ut humanitas conuerteretur in deum. multo minus uero credi potest, ut utraque in sese confunderentur, quoniam neque incorporalitas transire ad corpus potest neque rursus e conuerso corpus ad incorporalitatem, quando quidem nulla his materia subiecta communis est quae alterutris substantiarum qualitatibus permutetur. at hi ita aiunt ex duabus quidem naturis christum consistere, in duabus uero minime, hoc scilicet intendentes, quoniam quod ex duabus consistit ita unum fieri potest, ut illa ex quibus dicitur constare non maneant; ueluti cum mel aquae confunditur neutrum manet, sed alterum alterius copulatione corruptum quiddam tertium fecit, ita illud quidem quod ex melle atque aqua tertium fit constare ex utrisque dicitur, in utrisque uero negatur. non enim poterit in utrisque constare, quando utrorumque natura non permanet. ex utrisque enim constare potest, licet ea ex quibus coniungitur alterutra qualitate corrupta sint; in utrisque uero huiusmodi constare non poterit, quoniam ea quae in se transfusa sunt non manent ac non sunt utraque in quibus constare uideatur, cum ex utrisque constet in se inuicem qualitatum mutatione transfusis. catholici uero utrumque rationabiliter confitentur, nam et ex utrisque naturis christum et in utrisque consistere. sed id qua ratione dicatur, paulo posterius explicabo. nunc illud est manifestum conuictam esse eutychis sententiam eo nomine, quod cum tribus modis fieri possit, ut ex duabus naturis una subsistat, ut aut diuinitas in humanitatem translata sit aut humanitas in diuinitatem aut utraque permixta sint, nullum horum modum fieri potuisse superius dicta argumentatione declaratur. vi. i think enough has been said on the supposition that we should believe that the body which christ received was not taken from mary. but if it was taken from mary and the human and divine natures did not continue, each in its perfection, this may have happened in one of three ways. either godhead was translated into manhood, or manhood into godhead, or both were so modified and mingled that neither substance kept its proper form. but if godhead was translated into manhood, that has happened which piety forbids us to believe, viz. while the manhood continued in unchangeable substance godhead was changed, and that which was by nature passible and mutable remained immutable, while that which we believe to be by nature immutable and impassible was changed into a mutable thing. this cannot happen on any show of reasoning. but perchance the human nature may seem to be changed into godhead. yet how can this be if godhead in the conception of christ received both human soul and body? things cannot be promiscuously changed and interchanged. for since some substances are corporeal and others incorporeal, neither can a corporeal substance be changed into an incorporeal, nor can an incorporeal be changed into that which is body, nor yet incorporeals interchange their proper forms; for only those things can be interchanged and transformed which possess the common substrate of the same matter, nor can all of these so behave, but only those which can act upon and be acted on by each other. now this is proved as follows: bronze can no more be converted into stone than it can be into grass, and generally no body can be transformed into any other body unless the things which pass into each other have a common matter and can act upon and be acted on by each other, as when wine and water are mingled both are of such a nature as to allow reciprocal action and influence. for the quality of water can be influenced in some degree by that of wine, similarly the quality of wine can be influenced by that of water. and therefore if there be a great deal of water but very little wine, they are not said to be mingled, but the one is ruined by the quality of the other. for if you pour wine into the sea the wine is not mingled with the sea but is lost in the sea, simply because the quality of the water owing to its bulk has been in no way affected by the quality of the wine, but rather by its own bulk has changed the quality of the wine into water. but if the natures which are capable of reciprocal action and influence are in moderate proportion and equal or only slightly unequal, they are really mingled and tempered by the qualities which are in moderate relation to each other. this indeed takes place in bodies but not in all bodies, but only in those, as has been said, which are capable of reciprocal action and influence and have the same matter subject to their qualities. for all bodies which subsist in conditions of birth and decay seem to possess a common matter, but all bodies are not capable of reciprocal action and influence. but corporeals cannot in any way be changed into incorporeals because they do not share in any common underlying matter which can be changed into this or that thing by taking on its qualities. for the nature of no incorporeal substance rests upon a material basis; but there is no body that has not matter as a substrate. since this is so, and since not even those things which naturally have a common matter can pass over into each other unless they have the power of acting on each other and being acted upon by each other, far more will those things not suffer interchange which not only have no common matter but are different in substance, since one of them, being body, rests on a basis of matter, while the other, being incorporeal, cannot possibly stand in need of a material substrate. it is therefore impossible for a body to be changed into an incorporeal species, nor will it ever be possible for incorporeals to be changed into each other by any process of mingling. for things which have no common matter cannot be changed and converted one into another. but incorporeal things have no matter; they can never, therefore, be changed about among themselves. but the soul and god are rightly believed to be incorporeal substances; therefore the human soul has not been converted into the godhead by which it was assumed. but if neither body nor soul can be turned into godhead, it could not possibly happen that manhood should be transformed into god. but it is much less credible that the two should be confounded together since neither can incorporality pass over to body, nor again, contrariwise, can body pass over into incorporality when these have no common matter underlying them which can be converted by the qualities of one of two substances. but the eutychians say that christ consists indeed of two natures, but not in two natures, meaning, no doubt, thereby, that a thing which consists of two elements can so far become one, that the elements of which it is said to be made up disappear; just as, for example, when honey is mixed with water neither remains, but the one thing being spoilt by conjunction with the other produces a certain third thing, so that third thing which is produced by the combination of honey and water is said to consist of both, but not in both. for it can never consist in both so long as the nature of both does not continue. for it can consist of both even though each element of which it is compounded has been spoiled by the quality of the other; but it can never consist in both natures of this kind since the elements which have been transmuted into each other do not continue, and both the elements in which it seems to consist cease to be, since it consists of two things translated into each other by change of qualities. but catholics in accordance with reason confess both, for they say that christ consists both of and in two natures. how this can be affirmed i will explain a little later. one thing is now clear; the opinion of eutyches has been confuted on the ground that, although there are three ways by which the one nature can subsist of the two, viz. either the translation of divinity into humanity or of humanity into divinity or the compounding of both together, the foregoing train of reasoning proves that no one of the three ways is a possibility. vii. restat ut, quemadmodum catholica fides dicat, et in utrisque naturis christum et ex utrisque consistere doceamus. ex utrisque naturis aliquid consistere duo significat: unum quidem, cum ita dicimus aliquid ex duabus naturis iungi sicut ex melle atque aqua, id autem est ut ex quolibet modo confusis, uel si una uertatur in alteram uel si utraeque in se inuicem misceantur, nullo modo tamen utraeque permaneant; secundum hunc modum eutyches ait ex utrisque naturis christum consistere. alter uero modus est ex utrisque consistendi quod ita ex duabus iunctum est, ut illa tamen ex quibus iunctum esse dicitur maneant nec in alterutra uertantur, ut cum dicimus coronam ex auro gemmisque compositam. hic neque aurum in gemmas translatum est neque in aurum gemma conuersa, sed utraque permanent nec formam propriam derelinquunt. talia ergo ex aliquibus constantia et in his constare dicimus ex quibus consistere praedicantur. tunc enim possumus dicere coronam gemmis auroque consistere; sunt enim gemmae atque aurum in quibus corona consistat. nam in priore modo non est mel atque aqua in quibus illud quod ex utrisque iungitur constet. cum igitur utrasque manere naturas in christo fides catholica confiteatur perfectasque easdem persistere nec alteram in alteram transmutari, iure dicit et in utrisque naturis christum et ex utrisque consistere: in utrisque quidem, quia manent utraeque, ex utrisque uero, quia utrarumque adunatione manentium una persona fit christi. non autem secundum eam significationem ex utrisque naturis christum iunctum esse fides catholica tenet, secundum quam eutyches pronuntiat. nam ille talem significationem coniunctionis ex utraque natura sumit, ut non confiteatur in utrisque consistere, neque enim utrasque manere; catholicus uero eam significationem ex utrisque consistendi sumit quae illi sit proxima eamque conseruet quae in utrisque consistere confitetur. aequiuocum igitur est "ex utrisque consistere" ac potius amphibolum et gemina significatione diuersa designans: una quidem significatione non manere substantias ex quibus illud quod copulatum est dicatur esse coniunctum, alio modo significans ita ex utrisque coniunctum, ut utraque permaneant. hoc igitur expedito aequiuocationis atque ambiguitatis nodo nihil est ultra quod possit opponi, quin id sit quod firma ueraque fides catholica continet; eundem christum hominem esse perfectum, eundem deum eundemque qui homo sit perfectus atque deus unum esse deum ac dei filium, nec quaternitatem trinitati adstrui, dum homo additur supra perfectum deum, sed unam eandemque personam numerum trinitatis explere, ut cum humanitas passa sit, deus tamen passus esse dicatur, non quo ipsa deitas humanitas facta sit, sed quod a deitate fuerit adsumpta. item qui homo est, dei filius appellatur non substantia diuinitatis sed humanitatis, quae tamen diuinitati naturali unitate coniuncta est. et cum haec ita intellegentia discernantur permisceanturque, tamen unus idemque et homo sit perfectus et deus: deus quidem, quod ipse sit ex patris substantia genitus, homo uero, quod ex maria sit uirgine procreatus. itemque qui homo, deus eo quod a deo fuerit adsumptus, et qui deus, homo, quoniam uestitus homine sit. cumque in eadem persona aliud sit diuinitas quae suscepit, aliud quam suscepit humanitas, idem tamen deus atque homo est. nam si hominem intellegas, idem homo est atque deus, quoniam homo ex natura, deus adsumptione. si uero deum intellegas, idem deus est atque homo, quoniam natura deus est, homo adsumptione. fitque in eo gemina natura geminaque substantia, quoniam homo- deus unaque persona, quoniam idem homo atque deus. mediaque est haec inter duas haereses uia sicut uirtutes quoque medium tenent. omnis enim uirtus in medio rerum decore locata consistit. siquid enim uel ultra uel infra quam oportuerit fiat, a uirtute disceditur. medietatem igitur uirtus tenet. quocirca si quattuor haec neque ultra neque infra esse possunt, ut in christo aut duae naturae sint duaeque personae ut nestorius ait, aut una persona unaque natura ut eutyches ait, aut duae naturae sed una persona ut catholica fides credit, aut una natura duaeque personae,[ ] cumque duas quidem naturas duasque personas in ea quae contra nestorium dicta est responsione conuicerimus (unam uero personam unamque naturam esse non posse eutyche proponente monstrauimus neque tamen tam amens quisquam huc usque exstitit, ut unam in eo naturam crederet sed geminas esse personas), restat ut ea sit uera quam fides catholica pronuntiat geminam substantiam sed unam esse personam. quia uero paulo ante diximus eutychen confiteri duas quidem in christo ante adunationem naturas, unam uero post adunationem, cumque hunc errorem duplicem interpretaremur celare sententiam, ut haec adunatio aut generatione fieret, cum ex maria corpus hominis minime sumeretur aut ad sumptum[ ] quidem ex maria per resurrectionem fieret adunatio, de utrisque quidem partibus idonee ut arbitror disputatum est. nunc quaerendum est quomodo fieri potuerit ut duae naturae in unam substantiam miscerentur. [ ] quod nullus haereticus adhuc attigit _addunt codices quidam_. [ ] sumptum _codd._; adsumptum _preli diabolus_, ad sumptum _nos_. vii. it remains for us to show how in accordance with the affirmation of catholic belief christ consists at once in and of both natures. the statement that a thing consists of two natures bears two meanings; one, when we say that anything is a union of two natures, as e.g. honey and water, where the union is such that in the combination, however the elements be confounded, whether by one nature changing into the other, or by both mingling with each other, the two entirely disappear. this is the way in which according to eutyches christ consists of two natures. the other way in which a thing can consist of two natures is when it is so combined of two that the elements of which it is said to be combined continue without changing into each other, as when we say that a crown is composed of gold and gems. here neither is the gold converted into gems nor is the gem turned into gold, but both continue without surrendering their proper form. things then like this, composed of various elements, we say consist also in the elements of which they are composed. for in this case we can say that a crown is composed of gems and gold, for gems and gold are that in which the crown consists. for in the former mode of composition honey and water is not that in which the resulting union of both consists. since then the catholic faith confesses that both natures continue in christ and that they both remain perfect, neither being transformed into the other, it says with right that christ consists both in and of the two natures; _in_ the two because both continue, _of_ the two because the one person of christ is formed by the union of the two continuing natures. but the catholic faith does not hold the union of christ out of two natures according to that sense which eutyches puts upon it. for the interpretation of the conjunction out of two natures which he adopts forbids him to confess consistence in two or the continuance of the two either; but the catholic adopts an interpretation of the consistence out of two which comes near to that of eutyches, yet keeps the interpretation which confesses consistence in two. "to consist of two natures" is therefore an equivocal or rather a doubtful term of double meaning denoting different things; according to one of its interpretations the substances out of which the union is said to have been composed do not continue, according to another the union effected of the two is such that both natures continue. when once this knot of doubt or ambiguity has been untied, nothing further can be advanced to shake the true and solid content of the catholic faith, which is that the same christ is perfect man and god, and that he who is perfect man and god is one god and son of man, that, however, quaternity is not added to the trinity by the addition of human nature to perfect godhead, but that one and the same person completes the number of the trinity, so that, although it was the manhood which suffered, yet god can be said to have suffered, not by manhood becoming godhead but by manhood being assumed by godhead. further, he who is man is called son of god not in virtue of divine but of human substance, which latter none the less was conjoined to godhead in a unity of natures. and although thought is able to distinguish and combine the manhood and the godhead, yet one and the same is perfect man and god, god because he was begotten of the substance of the father, but man because he was engendered of the virgin mary. and further he who is man is god in that manhood was assumed by god, and he who is god is man in that god was clothed with manhood. and although in the same person the godhead which took manhood is different from the manhood which it took, yet the same is god and man. for if you think of man, the same is man and god, being man by nature, god by assumption. but if you think of god, the same is god and man, being god by nature, man by assumption. and in him nature becomes double and substance double because he is god- man, and one person since the same is man and god. this is the middle way between two heresies, just as virtues also hold a middle place.[ ] for every virtue has a place of honour midway between extremes. for if it stands beyond or below where it should it ceases to be virtue. and so virtue holds a middle place. wherefore if the following four assertions can be said to be neither beyond or below reason, viz. that in christ are either two natures and two persons as nestorius says, or one person and one nature as eutyches says, or two natures but one person as the catholic faith believes, or one nature and two persons, and inasmuch as we have refuted the doctrine of two natures and two persons in our argument against nestorius and incidentally have shown that the one person and one nature suggested by eutyches is impossible--since there has never been anyone so mad as to believe that his nature was single but his person double--it remains that the article of belief must be true which the catholic faith affirms, viz. that the nature is double, but the person one. but as i have just now remarked that eutyches confesses two natures in christ before the union, but only one after the union, and since i proved that under this error lurked two opposite opinions, one, that the union was brought about by conception although the human body was certainly not taken from mary; the other, that the body taken from mary formed part of the union by means of the resurrection, i have, it seems to me, argued the twofold aspect of the case as completely as it deserves. what we have now to inquire is how it came to pass that two natures were combined into one substance. [ ] _vide supra_, p. note. viii. verumtamen est etiam nunc et alia quaestio quae ab his inferri potest qui corpus humanum ex maria sumptum esse non credunt, sed alias fuisse sequestratum praeparatumque quod in adunatione ex mariae utero gigni ac proferri uideretur. aiunt enim: si ex homine sumptum est corpus, homo uero omnis ex prima praeuaricatione non solum peccato et morte tenebatur, uerum etiam affectibus peccatorum erat implicitus, eaque illi fuit poena peccati, ut, cum morte teneretur obstrictus, tamen esset reus etiam uoluntate peccandi, cur in christo neque peccatum fuit neque uoluntas ulla peccandi? et omnino habet animaduertendam dubitationem talis quaestio. si enim ex carne humana christi corpus adsumptum est, dubitari potest, quaenam caro haec quae adsumpta sit esse uideatur. eum quippe saluauit quem etiam adsumpsit; sin uero talem hominem adsumpsit qualis adam fuit ante peccatum, integram quidem uidetur humanam adsumpsisse naturam, sed tamen quae medicina penitus non egebat. quomodo autem fieri potest, ut talem adsumpserit hominem qualis adam fuit, cum in adam potuerit esse peccandi uoluntas atque affectio, unde factum est ut etiam praetergressis diuinis praeceptis inoboedientiae delictis teneretur adstrictus? in christo uero ne uoluntas quidem ulla creditur fuisse peccandi, cum praesertim si tale corpus hominis adsumpsit quale adae ante peccatum fuit, non debuerit esse mortalis, quoniam adam, si non peccasset, mortem nulla ratione sensisset. cum igitur christus non peccauerit, quaerendum est cur senserit mortem, si adae corpus ante quam peccaret adsumpsit. quod si talem statum suscepit hominis qualis adae post peccatum fuit, uidetur etiam christo non defuisse necessitas, ut et delictis subiceretur et passionibus confunderetur obductisque iudicii regulis bonum a malo non sincera integritate discerneret, quoniam has omnes poenas adam delicti praeuaricatione suscepit. contra quos respondendum est tres intellegi hominum posse status: unum quidem adae ante delictum in quo, tametsi ab eo mors aberat nec adhuc ullo se delicto polluerat, poterat tamen in eo uoluntas esse peccandi: alter in quo mutari potuisset, si firmiter in dei praeceptis manere uoluisset, tunc enim id addendum foret ut non modo non peccaret aut peccare uellet sed ne posset quidem aut peccare aut uelle delinquere. tertius status est post delictum in quo mors illum necessario subsecuta est et peccatum ipsum uoluntasque peccati. quorum summitatum atque contrariorum haec loca sunt: is status qui praemium esset, si in praeceptis dei adam manere uoluisset et is qui poenae fuit, quoniam manere noluit; in illo enim nec mors esset nec peccatum nec uoluntas ulla peccati, in hoc uero et mors et peccatum et delinquendi omnis affectio omniaque in perniciem prona nec quicquam in se opis habentia, ut post lapsum posset adsurgere. ille uero medius status in quo praesentia quidem mortis uel peccati aberat, potestas uero utriusque constabat, inter utrumque statum est conlocatus. ex his igitur tribus statibus christus corporeae naturae singulas quodam modo indidit causas; nam quod mortale corpus adsumpsit ut mortem a genere humano fugaret, in eo statu ponendum est quod post adae praeuaricationem poenaliter inflictum est. quod uero non fuit in eo uoluntas ulla peccati, ex eo sumptum est statu qui esse potuisset, nisi uoluntatem insidiantis fraudibus applicasset. restat igitur tertius status id est medius, ille scilicet qui eo tempore fuit, cum nec mors aderat et adesse poterat delinquendi uoluntas. in hoc igitur adam talis fuit ut manducaret ac biberet, ut accepta digereret, ut laberetur in somnum et alia quae ei non defuerunt humana quidem sed concessa et quae nullam poenam mortis inferrent. quae omnia habuisse christum dubium non est; nam et manducauit et bibit et humani corporis officio functus est. neque enim tanta indigentia in adam fuisse credenda est ut nisi manducasset uiuere non potuisset, sed, si ex omni quidem ligno escam sumeret, semper uiuere potuisset hisque non mori; idcirco paradisi fructibus indigentiam explebat. quam indigentiam fuisse in christo nullus ignorat, sed potestate non necessitate; et ipsa indigentia ante resurrectionem in eo fuit, post resurrectionem uero talis exstitit ut ita illud corpus inmutaretur humanum, sicut adae praeter praeuaricationis uinculum mutari potuisset. quodque nos ipse dominus iesus christus uotis docuit optare, ut fiat uoluntas eius sicut in caelo et in terra et ut adueniat eius regnum et nos liberet a malo. haec enim omnia illa beatissima humani generis fideliter credentium inmutatio deprecatur. haec sunt quae ad te de fidei meae credulitate scripsi. qua in re si quid perperam dictum est, non ita sum amator mei, ut ea quae semel effuderim meliori sententiae anteferre contendam. si enim nihil est ex nobis boni, nihil est quod in nostris sententiis amare debeamus. quod si ex illo cuncta sunt bona qui solus est bonus, illud potius bonum esse credendum est quod illa incommutabilis bonitas atque omnium bonorum causa perscribit. viii. nevertheless there remains yet another question which can be advanced by those who do not believe that the human body was taken from mary, but that the body was in some other way set apart and prepared, which in the moment of union appeared to be conceived and born of mary's womb. for they say: if the body was taken from man while every man was, from the time of the first disobedience, not only enslaved by sin and death but also involved in sinful desires, and if his punishment for sin was that, although he was held in chains of death, yet at the same time he should be guilty because of the will to sin, why was there in christ neither sin nor any will to sin? and certainly such a question is attended by a difficulty which deserves attention. for if the body of christ was assumed from human flesh, it is open to doubt of what kind we must consider that flesh to be which was assumed. in truth, the manhood which he assumed he likewise saved; but if he assumed such manhood as adam had before sin, he appears to have assumed a human nature complete indeed, but one which was in no need of healing. but how can it be that he assumed such manhood as adam had when there could be in adam both the will and the desire to sin, whence it came to pass that even after the divine commands had been broken, he was still held captive to sins of disobedience? but we believe that in christ there was never any will to sin, because especially if he assumed such a human body as adam had before his sin, he could not be mortal, since adam, had he not sinned, would in no wise have suffered death. since, then, christ never sinned, it must be asked why he suffered death if he assumed the body of adam before sin. but if he accepted human conditions such as adam's were after sin, it seems that christ could not avoid being subject to sin, perplexed by passions, and, since the canons of judgment were obscured, prevented from distinguishing with unclouded reason between good and evil, since adam by his disobedience incurred all these penalties of crime. to whom we must reply[ ] that there are three states of man to envisage: one, that of adam before his sin, in which, though free from death and still unstained by any sin, he could yet have within him the will to sin; the second, that in which he might have suffered change had he chosen to abide steadfastly in the commands of god, for then it could have been further granted him not only not to sin or wish to sin, but to be incapable of sinning or of the will to transgress. the third state is the state after sin, into which man needs must be pursued by death and sin and the sinful will. now the points of extreme divergence between these states are the following: one state would have been for adam a reward if he had chosen to abide in god's laws; the other was his punishment because he would not abide in them; for in the former state there would have been no death nor sin nor sinful will, in the latter there was both death and sin and every desire to transgress, and a general tendency to ruin and a condition helpless to render possible a rise after the fall. but that middle state from which actual death or sin was absent, but the power for both remained, is situate between the other two. each one, then, of these three states somehow supplied to christ a cause for his corporeal nature; thus his assumption of a mortal body in order to drive death far from the human race belongs properly to that state which was laid on man by way of punishment after adam's sin, whereas the fact that there was in christ no sinful will is borrowed from that state which might have been if adam had not surrendered his will to the frauds of the tempter. there remains, then, the third or middle state, to wit, that which was before death had come and while the will to sin might yet be present. in this state, therefore, adam was able to eat and drink, digest the food he took, fall asleep, and perform all the other functions which always belonged to him as man, though they were allowed and brought with them no pain of death. there is no doubt that christ was in all points thus conditioned; for he ate and drank and discharged the bodily function of the human body. for we must not think that adam was at the first subject to such need that unless he ate he could not have lived, but rather that, if he had taken food from every tree, he could have lived for ever, and by that food have escaped death; and so by the fruits of the garden he satisfied a need.[ ] and all know that in christ the same need dwelt, but lying in his own power and not laid upon him. and this need was in him before the resurrection, but after the resurrection he became such that his human body was changed as adam's might have been but for the bands of disobedience. which state, moreover, our lord jesus christ himself taught us to desire in our prayers, asking that his will be done as in heaven so on earth, and that his kingdom come, and that he may deliver us from evil. for all these things are sought in prayer by those members of the human family who rightly believe and who are destined to undergo that most blessed change of all.[ ] so much have i written to you concerning what i believe should be believed. in which matter if i have said aught amiss, i am not so well pleased with myself as to try to press my effusions in the face of wiser judgment. for if there is no good thing in us there is nothing we should fancy in our opinions. but if all things are good as coming from him who alone is good, that rather must be thought good which the unchangeable good and cause of all good indites. [ ] this _respondendum_ has the true thomist ring. [ ] adam did not need to eat in order to live, but if he had not eaten he would have suffered hunger, etc. [ ] the whole of this passage might be set in _tr._ iv. without altering the tone. anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. ex mag. off. patricii philosophiae consolationis liber i. i. carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi, flebilis heu maestos cogor inire modos. ecce mihi lacerae dictant scribenda camenae et ueris elegi fletibus ora rigant. has saltem nullus potuit peruincere terror, ne nostrum comites prosequerentur iter. gloria felicis olim uiridisque iuuentae solantur maesti nunc mea fata senis. venit enim properata malis inopina senectus et dolor aetatem iussit inesse suam. intempestiui funduntur uertice cani et tremit effeto corpore laxa cutis. mors hominum felix quae se nec dulcibus annis inserit et maestis saepe uocata uenit. eheu quam surda miseros auertitur aure et flentes oculos claudere saeua negat. dum leuibus male fida bonis fortuna faueret, paene caput tristis merserat hora meum. nunc quia fallacem mutauit nubila uultum, protrahit ingratas impia uita moras. quid me felicem totiens iactastis amici? qui cecidit, stabili non erat ille gradu. the first book of boethius containing his complaint and miseries i. i that with youthful heat did verses write, must now my woes in doleful tunes indite. my work is framed by muses torn and rude, and my sad cheeks are with true tears bedewed: for these alone no terror could affray from being partners of my weary way. the art that was my young life's joy and glory becomes my solace now i'm old and sorry; sorrow has filched my youth from me, the thief! my days are numbered not by time but grief.[ ] untimely hoary hairs cover my head, and my loose skin quakes on my flesh half dead. o happy death, that spareth sweetest years, and comes in sorrow often called with tears. alas, how deaf is he to wretch's cries; and loath he is to close up weeping eyes; while trustless chance me with vain favours crowned, that saddest hour my life had almost drowned: now she hath clouded her deceitful face, my spiteful days prolong their weary race. my friends, why did you count me fortunate? he that is fallen, ne'er stood in settled state. [ ] literally "for old age, unlooked for, sped by evils, has come, and grief has bidden her years lie on me." i. haec dum mecum tacitus ipse reputarem querimoniamque lacrimabilem stili officio signarem, adstitisse mihi supra uerticem uisa est mulier reuerendi admodum uultus, oculis ardentibus et ultra communem hominum ualentiam perspicacibus colore uiuido atque inexhausti uigoris, quamuis ita aeui plena foret ut nullo modo nostrae crederetur aetatis, statura discretionis ambiguae. nam nunc quidem ad communem sese hominum mensuram cohibebat, nunc uero pulsare caelum summi uerticis cacumine uidebatur; quae cum altius caput extulisset, ipsum etiam caelum penetrabat respicientiumque hominum frustrabatur intuitum. vestes erant tenuissimis filis subtili artificio, indissolubili materia perfectae quas, uti post eadem prodente cognoui, suis manibus ipsa texuerat. quarum speciem, ueluti fumosas imagines solet, caligo quaedam neglectae uetustatis obduxerat. harum in extrema margine [greek: pi] graecum, in supremo uero [greek: theta], legebatur intextum. atque inter utrasque litteras in scalarum modum gradus quidam insigniti uidebantur quibus ab inferiore ad superius elementum esset ascensus. eandem tamen uestem uiolentorum quorundam sciderant manus et particulas quas quisque potuit abstulerant. et dextera quidem eius libellos, sceptrum uero sinistra gestabat. quae ubi poeticas musas uidit nostro adsistentes toro fletibusque meis uerba dictantes, commota paulisper ac toruis inflammata luminibus: "quis," inquit, "has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis? hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant. at si quem profanum, uti uulgo solitum uobis, blanditiae uestrae detraherent, minus moleste ferendum putarem; nihil quippe in eo nostrae operae laederentur. hunc uero eleaticis atque academicis studiis innutritum? sed abite potius sirenes usque in exitium dulces meisque eum musis curandum sanandumque relinquite." his ille chorus increpitus deiecit humi maestior uultum confessusque rubore uerecundiam limen tristis excessit. at ego cuius acies lacrimis mersa caligaret nec dinoscere possem, quaenam haec esset mulier tam imperiosae auctoritatis, obstipui uisuque in terram defixo quidnam deinceps esset actura, exspectare tacitus coepi. tum illa propius accedens in extrema lectuli mei parte consedit meumque intuens uultum luctu grauem atque in humum maerore deiectum his uersibus de nostrae mentis perturbatione conquesta est. i. while i ruminated these things with myself, and determined to set forth my woful complaint in writing, methought i saw a woman stand above my head, having a grave countenance, glistening clear eye, and of quicker sight than commonly nature doth afford; her colour fresh and bespeaking unabated vigour, and yet discovering so many years, that she could not at all be thought to belong to our times; her stature uncertain and doubtful, for sometime she exceeded not the common height of men, and sometime she seemed to touch the heavens with her head, and if she lifted it up to the highest, she pierced the very heavens, so that she could not be seen by the beholders; her garments were made of most fine threads with cunning workmanship into an ever-during stuff, which (as i knew afterward by her own report) she had woven with her own hands. a certain duskishness caused by negligence and time had darkened their colour, as it is wont to happen when pictures stand in a smoky room. in the lower part of them was placed the greek letter [greek: pi], and in the upper [greek: theta],[ ] and betwixt the two letters, in the manner of stairs, there were certain degrees made, by which there was a passage from the lower to the higher letter: this her garment had been cut by the violence of some, who had taken away such pieces as they could get. in her right hand she had certain books, and in her left hand she held a sceptre. this woman, seeing the poetical muses standing about my bed, and suggesting words to my tears, being moved for a little space, and inflamed with angry looks: "who," saith she, "hath permitted these tragical harlots to have access to this sick man, which will not only not comfort his grief with wholesome remedies, but also nourish them with sugared poison? for these be they which with the fruitless thorns of affections do kill the fruitful crop of reason, and do accustom men's minds to sickness, instead of curing them. but if your flattery did deprive us of some profane fellow,[ ] as commonly it happeneth, i should think that it were not so grievously to be taken, for in him our labours should receive no harm. but now have you laid hold of him who hath been brought up in eleatical and academical studies?[ ] rather get you gone, you sirens pleasant even to destruction, and leave him to my muses to be cured and healed." that company being thus checked, overcome with grief, casting their eyes upon the ground, and betraying their bashfulness with blushing, went sadly away. but i, whose sight was dimmed with tears, so that i could not discern what this woman might be, so imperious, and of such authority, was astonished, and, fixing my countenance upon the earth, began to expect with silence what she would do afterward. then she coming nigher, sat down at my bed's feet, and beholding my countenance sad with mourning, and cast upon the ground with grief, complained of the perturbation of my mind with these verses. [ ] cf. "est enim philosophia genus, species uero eius duae, una quae [greek: theoraetikae] dicitur, altera quae [greek: praktikae], id est speculatiua et actiua." boeth. _in porph. dial._ i. [ ] this scorn of the _profanum vulgus_ appears again and again in the theological tractates, e.g. _tr._ iii. (_supra_, p. ), _tr._ v. (_supra_, p. ). [ ] zeno of elea invented dialectic: plato was the first to lecture on philosophy in the gymnasium of the academia. ii. heu quam praecipiti mersa profundo mens hebet et propria luce relicta tendit in externas ire tenebras, terrenis quotiens flatibus aucta crescit in inmensum noxia cura. hic quondam caelo liber aperto suetus in aetherios ire meatus cernebat rosei lumina solis, visebat gelidae sidera lunae et quaecumque uagos stella recursus exercet uarios flexa per orbes, comprensam numeris uictor habebat. quin etiam causas unde sonora flamina sollicitent aequora ponti, quis uoluat stabilem spiritus orbem vel cur hesperias sidus in undas casurum rutilo surgat ab ortu, quid ueris placidas temperet horas, vt terram roseis floribus ornet, quis dedit ut pleno fertilis anno autumnus grauidis influat uuis rimari solitus atque latentis naturae uarias reddere causas, nunc iacet effeto lumine mentis et pressus grauibus colla catenis decliuemque gerens pondere uultum cogitur, heu, stolidam cernere terram. ii. alas, how thy dull mind is headlong cast in depths of woe, where, all her light once lost, she doth to walk in utter darkness haste, while cares grow great with earthly tempests tost. he that through the opened heavens did freely run, and used to travel the celestial ways, marking the rosy splendour of the sun, and noting cynthia's cold and watery rays; he that did bravely comprehend in verse the different spheres and wandering course of stars, he that was wont the causes to rehearse why sounding winds do with the seas make wars, what spirit moves the world's well-settled frame, and why the sun, whom forth the east doth bring, in western waves doth hide his falling flame, searching what power tempers the pleasing spring which makes the earth her rosy flowers to bear, whose gift it is that autumn's fruitful season should with full grapes flow in a plenteous year, telling of secret nature every reason, now having lost the beauty of his mind lies with his neck compassed in ponderous chains; his countenance with heavy weight declined, him to behold the sullen earth constrains. ii. "sed medicinae," inquit, "tempus est quam querelae." tum uero totis in me intenta luminibus: "tune ille es," ait, "qui nostro quondam lacte nutritus nostris educatus alimentis in uirilis animi robur euaseras? atqui talia contuleramus arma quae nisi prior abiecisses, inuicta te firmitate tuerentur. agnoscisne me? quid taces? pudore an stupore siluisti? mallem pudore, sed te, ut uideo, stupor oppressit." cumque me non modo tacitum sed elinguem prorsus mutumque uidisset, admouit pectori meo leniter manum et: "nihil," inquit, "pericli est; lethargum patitur communem inlusarum mentium morbum. sui paulisper oblitus est; recordabitur facile, si quidem nos ante cognouerit. quod ut possit, paulisper lumina eius mortalium rerum nube caligantia tergamus." haec dixit oculosque meos fletibus undantes contracta in rugam ueste siccauit. ii. "but it is rather time," saith she, "to apply remedies, than to make complaints." and then looking wistfully upon me: "art thou he," saith she, "which, being long since nursed with our milk, and brought up with our nourishments, wert come to man's estate? but we had given thee such weapons as, if thou hadst not cast them away, would have made thee invincible. dost thou not know me? why dost thou not speak? is it shamefastness or insensibleness that makes thee silent? i had rather it were shamefastness, but i perceive thou art become insensible." and seeing me not only silent but altogether mute and dumb, fair and easily she laid her hand upon my breast saying: "there is no danger; he is in a lethargy, the common disease of deceived minds; he hath a little forgot himself, but he will easily remember himself again, if he be brought to know us first. to which end, let us a little wipe his eyes, dimmed with the cloud of mortal things." and having thus said, with a corner of her garment she dried my eyes which were wet with tears. iii. tunc me discussa liquerunt nocte tenebrae luminibusque prior rediit uigor, vt, cum praecipiti glomerantur sidera coro nimbosisque polus stetit imbribus, sol latet ac nondum caelo uenientibus astris, desuper in terram nox funditur; hanc si threicio boreas emissus ab antro verberet et clausam reseret diem, emicat ac subito uibratus lumine phoebus mirantes oculos radiis ferit. iii. then fled the night and darkness did me leave. mine eyes their wonted strength receive, as when swift corus spreads the stars with clouds and the clear sky a veil of tempest shrouds the sun doth lurk, the earth receiveth night. lacking the boon of starry light; but if fierce boreas, sent from thrace, make way for the restoring of the day, phoebus with fresh and sudden beams doth rise, striking with light our wondering eyes. iii. haud aliter tristitiae nebulis dissolutis hausi caelum et ad cognoscendam medicantis faciem mentem recepi. itaque ubi in eam deduxi oculos intuitumque defixi, respicio nutricem meam cuius ab adulescentia laribus obuersatus fueram philosophiam. "et quid," inquam, "tu in has exilii nostri solitudines o omnium magistra uirtutum supero cardine delapsa uenisti? an ut tu quoque mecum rea falsis criminationibus agiteris? "an," inquit illa, "te alumne desererem nec sarcinam quam mei nominis inuidia sustulisti, communicato tecum labore partirer? atqui philosophiae fas non erat incomitatum relinquere iter innocentis; meam scilicet criminationem uererer et quasi nouum aliquid acciderit, perhorrescerem? nunc enim primum censes apud inprobos mores lacessitam periculis esse sapientiam? nonne apud ueteres quoque ante nostri platonis aetatem magnum saepe certamen cum stultitiae temeritate certauimus eodemque superstite praeceptor eius socrates iniustae uictoriam mortis me adstante promeruit? cuius hereditatem cum deinceps epicureum uulgus ac stoicum ceterique pro sua quisque parte raptum ire molirentur meque reclamantem renitentemque uelut in partem praedae traherent, uestem quam meis texueram manibus, disciderunt abreptisque ab ea panniculis totam me sibi cessisse credentes abiere. in quibus quoniam quaedam nostri habitus uestigia uidebantur, meos esse familiares inprudentia rata nonnullos eorum profanae multitudinis errore peruertit. quod si nec anaxagorae fugam nec socratis uenenum nec zenonis tormenta quoniam sunt peregrina nouisti, at canios, at senecas, at soranos quorum nec peruetusta nec incelebris memoria est, scire potuisti. quos nihil aliud in cladem detraxit nisi quod nostris moribus instituti studiis improborum dissimillimi uidebantur. itaque nihil est quod admirere, si in hoc uitae salo circumflantibus agitemur procellis, quibus hoc maxime propositum est pessimis displicere. quorum quidem tametsi est numerosus exercitus, spernendus tamen est, quoniam nullo duce regitur, sed errore tantum temere ac passim lymphante raptatur. qui si quando contra nos aciem struens ualentior incubuerit, nostra quidem dux copias suas in arcem contrahit, illi uero circa diripiendas inutiles sarcinulas occupantur. at nos desuper inridemus uilissima rerum quaeque rapientes securi totius furiosi tumultus eoque uallo muniti quo grassanti stultitiae adspirare fas non sit. iii. in like manner, the mists of sadness dissolved, i came to myself and recovered my judgment, so that i knew my physician's face; wherefore casting mine eyes upon her somewhat stedfastly, i beheld my nurse philosophy, in whose house i had remained from my youth, and i said: "o mistress of all virtues, for what cause art thou come from heaven into this our solitary banishment? art thou come to bear me company in being falsely accused?" "should i," saith she, "forsake thee, my disciple, and not divide the burden, which thou bearest through hatred of my name, by partaking of thy labour? but philosophy never thought it lawful to forsake the innocent in his trouble. should i fear any accusations, as though this were any new matter? for dost thou think that this is the first time that wisdom hath been exposed to danger by wicked men? have we not in ancient times before our plato's age had oftentimes great conflicts with the rashness of folly? and while he lived, had not his master socrates the victory of an unjust death in my presence, whose inheritance, when afterward the mob of epicures, stoics, and others (every one for his own sect) endeavoured to usurp, and as it were in part of their prey, sought to draw me to them, exclaiming and striving against them; they tore the garment which i had woven with my own hands, and having gotten some little pieces of it, thinking me to be wholly in their possession, departed. some of whom, because certain signs of my apparel appeared upon them, were rashly supposed to be my familiar friends, and condemned accordingly through the error of the profane multitude. but if thou hast not heard of the flight of anaxagoras, the poison of socrates, nor the torments of zeno, because they are foreign examples; yet thou mayst have heard of canius, of seneca, of soranus,[ ] whose memory is both fresh and famous, whom nothing else brought to their overthrow but that they had been instructed in our school and were altogether disliking to the humours of wicked men; wherefore thou hast no cause to marvel, if in the sea of this life we be tossed with boisterous storms, whose chiefest purpose is to displease the wicked; of which though there be an huge army, yet it is to be despised, because it is not governed by any captain, but is carried up and down by fantastical error without any order at all. and if at any time they assail us with great force, our captain retireth her band into a castle,[ ] leaving them occupied in sacking unprofitable baggage. and from above we laugh them to scorn for seeking so greedily after most vile things, being safe from all their furious assault, and fortified with that defence which aspiring folly cannot prevail against. [ ] on julius kanius or canius the stoic cf. seneca, _de tranq._ xiv. - ; on soranus cf. tac. _annal._ i. . [ ] cf. _arce religionis nostrae, tr._ iv. (_supra_, p. ). iv. quisquis composito serenus aeuo fatum sub pedibus egit[ ] superbum fortunamque tuens utramque rectus inuictum potuit tenere uultum, non illum rabies minaeque ponti versum funditus exagitantis aestum nec ruptis quotiens uagus caminis torquet fumificos vesaeuus ignes aut celsas soliti ferire turres ardentis uia fulminis mouebit. quid tantum miseri saeuos tyrannos mirantur sine uiribus furentes? nec speres aliquid nec extimescas, exarmaueris impotentis iram. at quisquis trepidus pauet uel optat, quod non sit stabilis suique iuris, abiecit clipeum locoque motus nectit qua ualeat trahi catenam. [ ] _fortasse_ iecit; cf. verg. _georg._ ii. _sq._ iv. who mildly can his age dispose, and at his feet proud destiny throws: who stoutly doth each chance behold, keeping his countenance uncontrolled: not him the ocean's rage and threat, stirring the waves with angry heat, nor hot vesuvius when he casts from broken hills enflaméd blasts, nor fiery thunder can dismay, which takes the tops of towers away. why do fierce tyrants us affright, whose rage is far beyond their might? for nothing hope, nor fear thou harm, so their weak wrath thou shalt disarm. but he whom hope or terror takes, being a slave, his shield forsakes, and leaves his place, and doth provide a chain wherewith his hands are tied. iv. "sentisne," inquit, "haec atque animo inlabuntur tuo, an [greek: onos luras]? quid fles, quid lacrimis manas? [greek: exauda, mae keuthe nooi.] si operam medicantis exspectas, oportet uulnus detegas." tum ego collecto in uires animo: "anne adhuc eget admonitione nec per se satis eminet fortunae in nos saeuientis asperitas? nihilne te ipsa loci facies mouet? haecine est bibliotheca, quam certissimam tibi sedem nostris in laribus ipsa delegeras? in qua mecum saepe residens de humanarum diuinarumque rerum scientia disserebas? talis habitus talisque uultus erat, *cum tecum naturae secreta rimarer, cum mihi siderum uias radio describeres, cum mores nostros totiusque uitae rationem ad caelestis ordinis exempla formares? haecine praemia referimus tibi obsequentes? atqui tu hanc sententiam platonis ore sanxisti: beatas fore res publicas, si eas uel studiosi sapientiae regerent uel earum rectores studere sapientiae contigisset. tu eiusdem uiri ore hanc sapientibus capessendae rei publicae necessariam causam esse monuisti, ne improbis flagitiosisque ciuibus urbium relicta gubernacula pestem bonis ac perniciem ferrent. hanc igitur auctoritatem secutus quod a te inter secreta otia didiceram transferre in actum publicae administrationis optaui. tu mihi et qui te sapientium mentibus inseruit deus conscii nullum me ad magistratum nisi commune bonorum omnium studium detulisse. inde cum inprobis graues inexorabilesque discordiae et quod conscientiae libertas habet, pro tuendo iure spreta potentiorum semper offensio. quotiens ego conigastum in inbecilli cuiusque fortunas impetum facientem obuius excepi, quotiens triguillam regiae praepositum domus ab incepta, perpetrata iam prorsus iniuria deieci, quotiens miseros quos infinitis calumniis inpunita barbarorum semper auaritia uexabat, obiecta periculis auctoritate protexi! numquam me ab iure ad iniuriam quisquam detraxit. prouincialium fortunas tum priuatis rapinis tum publicis uectigalibus pessumdari non aliter quam qui patiebantur indolui. cum acerbae famis tempore grauis atque inexplicabilis indicta coemptio profligatura inopia campaniam prouinciam uideretur, certamen aduersum praefectum praetorii communis commodi ratione suscepi, rege cognoscente contendi et ne coemptio exigeretur, euici. paulinum consularem uirum cuius opes palatinae canes iam spe atque ambitione deuorassent, ab ipsis hiantium faucibus traxi. ne albinum consularem uirum praeiudicatae accusationis poena corriperet, odiis me cypriani delatoris opposui. satisne in me magnas uideor exaceruasse discordias? sed esse apud ceteros tutior debui qui mihi amore iustitiae nihil apud aulicos quo magis essem tutior reseruaui. quibus autem deferentibus perculsi sumus? quorum basilius olim regio ministerio depulsus in delationem nostri nominis alieni aeris necessitate compulsus est. opilionem uero atque gaudentium cum ob innumeras multiplicesque fraudes ire in exilium regia censura decreuisset cumque illi parere nolentes sacrarum sese aedium defensione tuerentur compertumque id regi foret, edixit: uti ni intra praescriptum diem rauenna urbe decederent, notas insigniti frontibus pellerentur. quid huic seueritati posse astrui uidetur? atqui in eo die deferentibus eisdem nominis nostri delatio suscepta est. quid igitur? nostraene artes ita meruerunt? an illos accusatores iustos fecit praemissa damnatio? itane nihil fortunam puduit si minus accusatae innocentiae, at accusantium uilitatis?[ ] at cuius criminis arguimur summam quaeris? senatum dicimur saluum esse uoluisse. modum desideras? delatorem ne documenta deferret quibus senatum maiestatis reum faceret impedisse criminamur. quid igitur o magistra censes? infitiabimur crimen, ne tibi pudor simus? at uolui nec umquam uelle desistam. fatebimur? sed impediendi delatoris opera cessauit. an optasse illius ordinis salutem nefas uocabo? ille quidem suis de me decretis, uti hoc nefas esset, effecerat. sed sibi semper mentiens inprudentia rerum merita non potest inmutare nec mihi socratico decreto fas esse arbitror uel occuluisse ueritatem uel concessisse mendacium. verum id quoquo modo sit, tuo sapientiumque iudicio aestimandum relinquo. cuius rei seriem atque ueritatem, ne latere posteros queat, stilo etiam memoriaeque mandaui. nam de compositis falso litteris quibus libertatem arguor sperasse romanam quid attinet dicere? quarum fraus aperta patuisset, si nobis ipsorum confessione delatorum, quod in omnibus negotiis maximas uires habet, uti licuisset. nam quae sperari reliqua libertas potest? atque utinam posset ulla! respondissem canii uerbo, qui cum a gaio caesare germanici filio conscius contra se factae coniurationis fuisse diceretur: 'si ego,' inquit, 'scissem, tu nescisses.' qua in re non ita sensus nostros maeror hebetauit ut impios scelerata contra uirtutem querar molitos, sed quae sperauerint effecisse uehementer admiror. nam deteriora uelle nostri fuerit fortasse defectus, posse contra innocentiam, quae sceleratus quisque conceperit inspectante deo, monstri simile est. vnde haud iniuria tuorum quidam familiarium quaesiuit: 'si quidem deus,' inquit, 'est, unde mala? bona uero unde, si non est?' sed fas fuerit nefarios homines qui bonorum omnium totiusque senatus sanguinem petunt, nos etiam quos propugnare bonis senatuique uiderant, perditum ire uoluisse. sed num idem de patribus quoque merebamur? meministi, ut opinor, quoniam me dicturum quid facturumue praesens semper ipsa dirigebas, meministi, inquam, veronae cum rex auidus exitii communis maiestatis crimen in albinum delatae ad cunctum senatus ordinem transferre moliretur, uniuersi innocentiam senatus quanta mei periculi securitate defenderim. scis me haec et uera proferre et in nulla umquam mei laude iactasse. minuit enim quodam modo se probantis conscientiae secretum, quotiens ostentando quis factum recipit famae pretium. sed innocentiam nostram quis exceperit euentus uides; pro uerae uirtutis praemiis falsi sceleris poenas subimus. et cuius umquam facinoris manifesta confessio ita iudices habuit in seueritate concordes ut non aliquos uel ipse ingenii error humani uel fortunae condicio cunctis mortalibus incerta submitteret? si inflammare sacras aedes uoluisse, si sacerdotes impio iugulare gladio, si bonis omnibus necem struxisse diceremur, praesentem tamen sententia, confessum tamen conuictumue punisset. nunc quingentis fere passuum milibus procul muti atque indefensi ob studium propensius in senatum morti proscriptionique damnamur. o meritos de simili crimine neminem posse conuinci! cuius dignitatem reatus ipsi etiam qui detulere uiderunt, quam uti alicuius sceleris admixtione fuscarent, ob ambitum dignitatis sacrilegio me conscientiam polluisse mentiti sunt. atqui et tu insita nobis omnem rerum mortalium cupidinem de nostri animi sede pellebas et sub tuis oculis sacrilegio locum esse fas non erat. instillabas enim auribus cogitationibusque cotidie meis pythagoricum illud [greek: hepou theoi].[ ] nec conueniebat uilissimorum me spirituum praesidia captare quem tu in hanc excellentiam componebas ut consimilem deo faceres. praeterea penetral innocens domus, honestissimorum coetus amicorum, socer etiam sanctus et aeque ac tu ipsa[ ] reuerendus ab omni nos huius criminis suspitione defendunt. sed, o nefas, illi uero de te tanti criminis fidem capiunt atque hoc ipso uidebimur affines fuisse maleficio, quod tuis inbuti disciplinis, tuis instituti moribus sumus. ita non est satis nihil mihi tuam profuisse reuerentiam, nisi ultro tu mea potius offensione lacereris. at uero hic etiam nostris malis cumulus accedit, quod existimatio plurimorum non rerum merita sed fortunae spectat euentum eaque tantum iudicat esse prouisa quae felicitas commendauerit. quo fit ut existimatio bona prima omnium deserat infelices. qui nunc populi rumores, quam dissonae multiplicesque sententiae, piget reminisci. hoc tantum dixerim ultimam esse aduersae fortunae sarcinam, quod dum miseris aliquod crimen affingitur, quae perferunt meruisse creduntur. et ego quidem bonis omnibus pulsus, dignitatibus exutus, existimatione foedatus ob beneficium supplicium tuli. videre autem uideor nefarias sceleratorum officinas gaudio laetitiaque fluitantes, perditissimum quemque nouis delationum fraudibus imminentem, iacere bonos nostri discriminis terrore prostratos, flagitiosum quemque ad audendum quidem facinus impunitate, ad efficiendum uero praemiis incitari, insontes autem non modo securitate, uerum ipsa etiam defensione priuatos. itaque libet exclamare: [ ] uilitatis _glareanus_; uilitas _codd._ [ ] [greek: theon] _codd._ [ ] ipsa _sitzmannus_; ipso _codd._ iv. "understandest thou these things," saith she, "and do they make impression in thy mind? art thou 'like the ass, deaf to the lyre'? why weepest thou? why sheddest thou so many tears? speak out; hide not thy thoughts.[ ] if thou expectest to be cured, thou must discover thy wound.[ ]" then i, collecting the forces of my mind together, made her answer in these words: "doth the cruelty of fortune's rage need further declaration, or doth it not sufficiently appear of itself? doth not the very countenance of this place move thee? is this the library which thou thyself hadst chosen to sit in at my house, in which thou hast oftentimes discoursed with me of the knowledge of divine and human things? had i this attire or countenance when i searched the secrets of nature with thee, when thou describedst unto me the course of the stars with thy geometrical rod, when thou didst frame my conversation and the manner of my whole life according to the pattern of the celestial order? are these the rewards which thy obedient servants have? but thou didst decree that sentence by the mouth of plato: that commonwealths should be happy, if either the students of wisdom did govern them, or those which were appointed to govern them would give themselves to the study of wisdom.[ ] thou by the same philosopher didst admonish us that it is a sufficient cause for wise men to take upon themselves the government of the commonwealth, lest, if the rule of cities were left in the hands of lewd and wicked citizens, they should work the subversion and overthrow of the good. wherefore, following this authority, i desired to practise that by public administration which i had learnt of thee in private conference. thou and god himself who had inserted thee in the minds of the wise, are my witnesses that nothing but the common desire of all good men brought me to be a magistrate. this hath been the cause of my grievous and irreconcilable disagreements with wicked men, and that which freedom of conscience carrieth with it, of ever contemning the indignation of potentates for the defence of justice. how often have i encountered with conigastus, violently possessing himself with poor men's goods? how often have i put back triguilla, provost of the king's house, from injuries which he had begun, yea, and finished also? how often have i protected, by putting my authority in danger, such poor wretches as the unpunished covetousness of the barbarous did vex with infinite reproaches? never did any man draw me from right to wrong. it grieved me no less than them which suffered it, to see the wealth of our subjects wasted, partly by private pillage, and partly by public tributes. when in the time of a great dearth things were set at so excessive and unreasonable a rate that the province of campania was like to be altogether impoverished, for the common good i stuck not to contend with the chief praetor himself, and the matter was discussed before the king, and i prevailed so far that it went not forward. i drew paulinus, who had been consul, out of the very mouth of the gaping courtiers, who like ravenous curs had already in hope and ambition devoured his riches. that albinus who had likewise been consul might not be punished upon presumptuous[ ] and false accusation, i exposed myself to the hatred of cyprian his accuser. may i seem to have provoked enmity enough against myself? but others should so much the more have procured my safety, since that for the love i bear to justice i left myself no way by the means of courtiers to be safe. but by whose accusations did i receive this blow? by theirs who, long since having put basil out of the king's service, compelled him now to accuse me, by the necessity which he was driven to by debt. opilio likewise and gaudentius being banished by the king's decree, for the injuries and manifold deceits which they had committed, because they would not obey, defended themselves by taking sanctuary, of which the king hearing, gave sentence, that unless they departed out of the city of ravenna within certain days, they should be branded in the foreheads, and put out by force. what could be added to this severity? and yet that very day their accusations against me went for current. what might be the reason of this? did my dealing deserve it? or did the condemnation, which went before, make them just accusers? was not fortune ashamed, if not that innocency was accused, yet at least that it had so vile and base accusers? but what crime was laid to my charge? wilt thou have it in one word? i am said to have desired the senate's safety. wilt thou know the manner how? i am blamed for having hindered their accuser to bring forth evidence by which he should prove the senate guilty of treason. what thinkest thou, o mistress? shall i deny this charge, that i may not shame thee? but it is true, i desired it, neither will i ever cease from having that desire. shall i confess it? but i have already left hindering their accuser. shall i call it an offence to have wished the safety of that order? indeed the senate with their decrees concerning me had made it an offence. but folly, always deceiving herself, cannot change the deserts of things, nor, according to the decree of socrates,[ ] do i think it is lawful either to conceal the truth or grant a lie. but how this may be, i leave to thine and wisdom's censure. and that posterity may not be ignorant of the course and truth of the matter, i have put it down in writing. for why should i speak of those feigned letters, in which i am charged to have hoped for roman liberty? the deceit of which would manifestly have appeared, if it might have been lawful for me to have used the confession of my very accusers, which in all business is of greatest force. for what liberty remaineth there to be hoped for? i would to god there were any! i would have answered as canius did, who being charged by gaius caesar, son to germanicus, that he was privy to the conspiracy made against him, answered: 'if i had been made acquainted with it, thou shouldest never have known of it.'[ ] neither hath sorrow so dulled my wits in this matter that i complain of the wicked endeavours of sinful men against virtue, but i exceedingly marvel to see that they have brought to pass the things they hoped to do. for the desire of doing evil may be attributed to our weakness, but that in the sight of god the wicked should be able to compass whatsoever they contrive against the innocent, is altogether monstrous. whence not without cause one of thy familiar friends[ ] demanded: 'if,' saith he, 'there be a god, from whence proceed so many evils? and if there be no god, from whence cometh any good?' but let that pass that wicked men, which seek the blood of all good men, and of the whole senate, would also have overthrown me, whom they saw to stand in defence of good men and of the senate. but did i deserve the same of the senators themselves? i suppose thou rememberest how thou being present didst alway direct me when i went about to say or do anything. thou rememberest, i say, when at verona the king, being desirous of a common overthrow, endeavoured to lay the treason, whereof only albinus was accused, upon the whole order of the senate, with how great security of my own danger i defended the innocency of the whole senate. thou knowest that these things which i say are true, and that i was never delighted in my own praise, for the secret of a good conscience is in some sort diminished when by declaring what he hath done a man receiveth the reward of fame. but thou seest to what pass my innocency is come; instead of the rewards of true virtue, i undergo the punishment of wickedness, wherewith i am falsely charged. was it ever yet seen that the manifest confession of any crime made the judges so at one in severity, that either the error of man's judgment or the condition of fortune, which is certain to none, did not incline some of them to favour? if i had been accused that i would have burnt the churches, or wickedly have killed the priests, or have sought the death of all good men, yet sentence should have been pronounced against me present, having confessed, and being convicted. now being conveyed five hundred miles off, dumb and defenceless, i am condemned to death and proscription for bearing the senate too much good will. o senate, which deserves that never any may be convicted of the like crime! the dignity of which accusation even the very accusers themselves saw, which that they might obscure by adding some sort of fault, they belied me that i defiled my conscience with sacrilege, for an ambitious desire of preferment. but thou, which hadst seated thyself in me, didst repel from the seat of my mind all desire of mortal things, and within thy sight there was no place for sacrilege to harbour; for thou didst instil into my ears and thoughts daily that saying of pythagoras, 'follow god.'[ ] neither was it fitting for me to use the aid of most vile spirits when thou wast shaping me into that excellency to make me like to god. besides the innocency which appeared in the most retired rooms of my house, the assembly of my most honourable friends, my holy father- in-law symmachus, who is as worthy of reverence as thou thyself art, do clear me from all suspicion of this crime. but o detestable wickedness! they the rather credit thee with so great a crime, and think me the nigher to such mischievous dealing, because i am endued with thy knowledge, and adorned with thy virtues, so that it is not enough that i reap no commodity for thy respect, unless thou beest also dishonoured for the hatred conceived against me. and that my miseries may increase the more, the greatest part do not so much respect the value of things as the event of fortune, and they esteem only that to be providently done which the happy success commends. by which means it cometh to pass that the first loss which miserable men have is their estimation and the good opinion which was had of them. what rumours go now among the people, what dissonant and diverse opinions! i cannot abide to think of them; only this will i say, the last burden of adversity is that when they which are in misery are accused of any crime, they are thought to deserve whatsoever they suffer. and i, spoiled of all my goods, bereaved of my dignities, blemished in my good name, for benefits receive punishments. and methinks i see the cursed crews of the wicked abounding with joy and gladness, and every lost companion devising with himself how to accuse others falsely, good men lie prostrate with the terror of my danger, and every lewd fellow is provoked by impunity to attempt any wickedness, and by rewards to bring it to effect; but the innocent are not only deprived of all security, but also of any manner of defence. wherefore i may well exclaim: [ ] homer, _il._ i. . [ ] cf. _tr._ v. (_supra_, p. ), _quasi non deterior fiat inscientiae causa dum tegitur._ [ ] plato, _rep._ v. . [ ] presumptuous=founded on presumption. [ ] cp. plato, _rep._ vi. ; the [greek: philosophos] cannot be [greek: philopseudaes.] [ ] _vide supra_, p. . this seems to be the only record of canius's retort to caligula. [ ] i.e. epicurus, cp. lact. _de ira dei_ xiii. [ ] cf. [greek: ho bios apas suntetaktai pros to akolouthein toi theoi], iambl. _de vita pyth._ xviii., and seneca, _de vita beata_ xv. v. o stelliferi conditor orbis qui perpetuo nixus solio rapido caelum turbine uersas legemque pati sidera cogis, vt nunc pleno lucida cornu totis fratris obuia flammis condat stellas luna minores, nunc obscuro pallida cornu phoebo propior lumina perdat, et qui primae tempore noctis agit algentes hesperos ortus, solitas iterum mutet habenas phoebi pallens lucifer ortu. tu frondifluae frigore brumae stringis lucem breuiore mora: tu, cum feruida uenerit aestas, agiles nocti diuidis horas. tua uis uarium temperat annum vt quas boreae spiritus aufert reuehat mites zephyrus frondes quaeque arcturus semina uidit sirius altas urat segetes. nihil antiqua lege solutum linquit propriae stationis opus. omnia certo fine gubernans hominum solos respuis actus merito rector cohibere modo. nam cur tantas lubrica uersat fortuna uices? premit insontes debita sceleri noxia poena, at peruersi resident celso mores solio sanctaque calcant iniusta uice colla nocentes. latet obscuris condita uirtus clara tenebris iustusque tulit crimen iniqui. nil periuria, nil nocet ipsis fraus mendaci compta colore. sed cum libuit uiribus uti, quos innumeri metuunt populi summos gaudent subdere reges. o iam miseras respice terras quisquis rerum foedera nectis. operis tanti pars non uilis homines quatimur fortunae salo. rapidos rector comprime fluctus et quo caelum regis immensum firma stabiles foedere terras." v. creator of the sky, who sittest on thine eternal throne on high, who dost quick motions cause in all the heavens, and givest stars their laws, that the pale queen of night, sometimes receiving all her brother's light, should shine in her full pride, and with her beams the lesser stars should hide; sometimes she wants her grace, when the sun's rays are in less distant place; and hesperus that flies, driving the cold, before the night doth rise, and oft with sudden change before the sun as lucifer doth range.[ ] thou short the days dost make, when winter from the trees the leaves doth take; thou, when the fiery sun doth summer cause, makest the nights swiftly run. thy might doth rule the year, as northern winds the leaves away do bear, so zephyrus from west the plants in all their freshness doth revest; and syrius burns that corn with which arcturus did the earth adorn. none from thy laws are free, nor can forsake their place ordained by thee. thou to that certain end governest all things; deniest thou to intend the acts of men alone, directing them in measure from thy throne? for why should slippery chance rule all things with such doubtful governance? or why should punishments, due to the guilty, light on innocents? but now the highest place giveth to naughty manners greatest grace, and wicked people vex good men, and tread unjustly on their necks; virtue in darkness lurks, and righteous souls are charged with impious works, deceits nor perjuries disgrace not those who colour them with lies, for, when it doth them please to show their force, they to their will with ease the hearts of kings can steer, to whom so many crouch with trembling fear. o thou that joinest with love all worldly things, look from thy seat above on the earth's wretched state; we men, not the least work thou didst create, with fortune's blasts do shake; thou careful ruler, these fierce tempests slake, and for the earth provide those laws by which thou heaven in peace dost guide." [ ] literally, "and that he who as hesperus, in the early hours of the night, drives the cold stars before him, should change chariot (lit. his accustomed reins) and become lucifer, growing pale in the first rays of the sun." v. haec ubi continuato dolore delatraui, illa uultu placido nihilque meis questibus mota: "cum te," inquit, "maestum lacrimantemque uidissem, ilico miserum exsulemque cognoui. sed quam id longinquum esset exilium, nisi tua prodidisset oratio, nesciebam. sed tu quam procul a patria non quidem pulsus es sed aberrasti; ac si te pulsum existimari mauis, te potius ipse pepulisti. nam id quidem de te numquam cuiquam fas fuisset. si enim cuius oriundo sis patriae reminiscare, non uti atheniensium quondam multitudinis imperio regitur, sed [greek: heis koiranos estin, heis basileus] qui frequentia ciuium non depulsione laetetur; cuius agi frenis atque obtemperare iustitiae summa libertas est. an ignoras illam tuae ciuitatis antiquissimam legem, qua sanctum est ei ius exulare non esse quisquis in ea sedem fundare maluerit? nam qui uallo eius ac munimine continetur, nullus metus est ne exul esse mereatur. at quisquis eam inhabitare uelle desierit, pariter desinit etiam mereri. itaque non tam me loci huius quam tua facies mouet nec bibliothecae potius comptos ebore ac uitro parietes quam tuae mentis sedem requiro, in qua non libros sed id quod libris pretium facit, librorum quondam meorum sententias, collocaui. et tu quidem de tuis in commune bonum meritis uera quidem, sed pro multitudine gestorum tibi pauca dixisti. de obiectorum tibi uel honestate uel falsitate cunctis nota memorasti. de sceleribus fraudibusque delatorum recte tu quidem strictim attingendum putasti, quod ea melius uberiusque recognoscentis omnia uulgi ore celebrentur. increpuisti etiam uehementer iniusti factum senatus. de nostra etiam criminatione doluisti, laesae quoque opinionis damna fleuisti. postremus aduersum fortunam dolor incanduit conquestusque non aequa meritis praemia pensari. in extremo musae saeuientis, uti quae caelum terras quoque pax regeret, uota posuisti. sed quoniam plurimus tibi affectuum tumultus incubuit diuersumque te dolor, ira, maeror distrahunt, uti nunc mentis es, nondum te ualidiora remedia contingunt. itaque lenioribus paulisper utemur, ut quae in tumorem perturbationibus influentibus induruerunt, ad acrioris uim medicaminis recipiendum tactu blandiore mollescant. v. when i had uttered these speeches with continued grief, she, with an amiable countenance and nothing moved with my complaints, said: "when i first saw thee sad and weeping, i forthwith knew thee to be in misery and banishment. but i had not known how far off thou wert banished, if thy speech had not bewrayed it. o how far art thou gone from thy country, not being driven away, but wandering of thine own accord! or if thou hadst rather be thought to have been driven out, it hath been only by thyself; for never could any other but thyself have done it; for if thou rememberest of what country thou art, it is not governed as athens was wont to be, by the multitude, but 'one is its ruler, one its king,'[ ] who desires to have abundance of citizens, and not to have them driven away. to be governed by whose authority, and to be subject to her laws, is the greatest freedom that can be. art thou ignorant of that most ancient law of thy city, by which it is decreed that he may not be banished that hath made choice of it for his dwelling-place;[ ] for he that is within her fort or hold need not fear lest he deserve to be banished? but whosoever ceaseth to desire to dwell in it, ceaseth likewise to deserve so great a benefit. wherefore the countenance of this place moveth me not so much as thy countenance doth. neither do i much require thy library adorned with ivory adornments, and its crystal walls, as the seat of thy mind, in which i have not placed books, but that which makes books to be esteemed of, i mean the sentences of my books, which were written long since. and that which thou hast said of thy deserts to the common good, is true indeed, but little in respect of the many things which thou hast done. that which thou hast reported, either of the honesty or of the falseness of those things which are objected against thee, is known to all men. thou didst well to touch but briefly the wickedness and deceit of thy accusers, for that the common people to whose notice they are come do more fitly and largely speak of them. thou hast also sharply rebuked the unjust senate's deed. thou hast also grieved at our accusation, and hast bewailed the loss or diminishing of our good name; and lastly, thy sorrow raged against fortune, and thou complainedst that deserts were not equally rewarded. in the end of thy bitter verse, thou desiredst that the earth might be governed by that peace which heaven enjoyeth. but because thou art turmoiled with the multitude of affections, grief and anger drawing thee to divers parts, in the plight thou art now, the more forcible remedies cannot be applied unto thee; wherefore, for a while, we will use the more easy, that thy affections, which are, as it were, hardened and swollen with perturbations, may by gentle handling be mollified and disposed to receive the force of sharper medicines. [ ] hom. _il._ ii. . [ ] cf. cicero, _pro domo sua_. . . vi. cum phoebi radiis graue cancri sidus inaestuat, tum qui larga negantibus sulcis semina credidit, elusus cereris fide quernas pergat ad arbores. numquam purpureum nemus lecturus uiolas petas cum saeuis aquilonibus stridens campus inhorruit, nec quaeras auida manu vernos stringere palmites, vuis si libeat frui; autumno potius sua bacchus munera contulit. signat tempora propriis aptans officiis deus nec quas ipse coercuit misceri patitur uices. sic quod praecipiti uia certum deserit ordinem laetos non habet exitus. vi. when hot with phoebus' beams the crab casts fiery gleams, he that doth then with seed th'unwilling furrows feed, deceivéd of his bread must be with acorns fed. seek not the flowery woods for violets' sweet buds, when fields are overcast with the fierce northern blast, nor hope thou home to bring vine-clusters in the spring if thou in grapes delight: in autumn bacchus' might with them doth deck our clime. god every several time with proper grace hath crowned nor will those laws confound which he once settled hath. he that with headlong path this certain order leaves, an hapless end receives. vi. primum igitur paterisne me pauculis rogationibus statum tuae mentis attingere atque temptare, ut qui modus sit tuae curationis intellegam?" "tu uero arbitratu," inquam, "tuo quae uoles ut responsurum rogato." tum illa: "huncine," inquit, "mundum temerariis agi fortuitisque casibus putas, an ullum credis ei regimen inesse rationis?" "atqui," inquam, "nullo existimauerim modo ut fortuita temeritate tam certa moueantur, uerum operi suo conditorem praesidere deum scio nec umquam fuerit dies qui me ab hac sententiae ueritate depellat." "ita est," inquit. "nam id etiam paulo ante cecinisti, hominesque tantum diuinae exortes curae esse deplorasti. nam de ceteris quin ratione regerentur, nihil mouebare. papae autem! vehementer admiror cur in tam salubri sententia locatus aegrotes. verum altius perscrutemur; nescio quid abesse coniecto. "sed dic mihi, quoniam deo mundum regi non ambigis, quibus etiam gubernaculis regatur aduertis?" "vix," inquam, "rogationis tuae sententiam nosco, nedum ad inquisita respondere queam." "num me," inquit, "fefellit abesse aliquid, per quod, uelut hiante ualli robore, in animum tuum perturbationum morbus inrepserit? sed dic mihi, meministine, quis sit rerum finis, quoue totius naturae tendat intentio?" "audieram," inquam, "sed memoriam maeror hebetauit." "atqui scis unde cuncta processerint?" "noui," inquam, deumque esse respondi. "et qui fieri potest, ut principio cognito quis sit rerum finis ignores? verum hi perturbationum mores, ea ualentia est, ut mouere quidem loco hominem possint, conuellere autem sibique totum exstirpare non possint. sed hoc quoque respondeas uelim, hominemne te esse meministi?" "quidni," inquam, "meminerim?" "quid igitur homo sit, poterisne proferre?" "hocine interrogas an esse me sciam rationale animal atque mortale? scio et id me esse confiteor." et illa: "nihilne aliud te esse nouisti?" "nihil." "iam scio," inquit, "morbi tui aliam uel maximam causam; quid ipse sis, nosse desisti. quare plenissime uel aegritudinis tuae rationem uel aditum reconciliandae sospitatis inueni. nam quoniam tui obliuione confunderis, et exsulem te et exspoliatum propriis bonis esse doluisti. quoniam uero quis sit rerum finis ignoras, nequam homines atque nefarios potentes felicesque arbitraris. quoniam uero quibus gubernaculis mundus regatur oblitus es, has fortunarum uices aestimas sine rectore fluitare--magnae non ad morbum modo uerum ad interitum quoque causae. sed sospitatis auctori grates, quod te nondum totum natura destituit. habemus maximum tuae fomitem salutis ueram de mundi gubernatione sententiam, quod eam non casuum temeritati sed diuinae rationi subditam credis. nihil igitur pertimescas; iam tibi ex hac minima scintillula uitalis calor inluxerit. sed quoniam firmioribus remediis nondum tempus est et eam mentium constat esse naturam, ut quotiens abiecerint ueras falsis opinionibus induantur ex quibus orta perturbationum caligo uerum illum confundit intuitum, hanc paulisper lenibus mediocribusque fomentis attenuare temptabo, ut dimotis fallacium affectionum tenebris splendorem uerae lucis possis agnoscere. vi. first, therefore, wilt thou let me touch and try the state of thy mind by asking thee a few questions, that i may understand how thou art to be cured?" to which i answered: "ask me what questions thou wilt, and i will answer thee." and then she said: "thinkest thou that this world is governed by haphazard and chance? or rather dost thou believe that it is ruled by reason?" "i can," quoth i, "in no manner imagine that such certain motions are caused by rash chance. and i know that god the creator doth govern his work, nor shall the day ever come to draw me from the truth of that judgment." "it is so," saith she, "for so thou saidst in thy verse a little before, and bewailedst that only men were void of god's care; for as for the rest, thou didst not doubt but that they were governed by reason. and surely i cannot choose but exceedingly admire how thou canst be ill affected, holding so wholesome an opinion. but let us search further; i guess thou wantest something, but i know not what. tell me, since thou doubtest not that the world is governed by god, canst thou tell me also by what means it is governed?" "i do scarcely," quoth i, "understand what thou askest, and much less am i able to make thee a sufficient answer." "was i," quoth she, "deceived in thinking that thou wantedst something by which, as by the breach of a fortress, the sickness of perturbations hath entered into thy mind? but tell me, dost thou remember what is the end of things? or to what the whole intention of nature tendeth?" "i have heard it," quoth i, "but grief hath dulled my memory." "but knowest thou from whence all things had their beginning?" "i know," quoth i, and answered, that from god. "and how can it be that, knowing the beginning, thou canst be ignorant of the end? but this is the condition and force of perturbations, that they may alter a man, but wholly destroy, and as it were root him out of himself, they cannot. but i would have thee answer me to this also; dost thou remember that thou art a man?" "why should i not remember it?" quoth i. "well then, canst thou explicate what man is?" "dost thou ask me if i know that i am a reasonable and mortal living creature? i know and confess myself to be so." to which she replied: "dost thou not know thyself to be anything else?" "not anything." "now i know," quoth she, "another, and that perhaps the greatest, cause of thy sickness: thou hast forgotten what thou art. wherefore i have fully found out both the manner of thy disease and the means of thy recovery; for the confusion which thou art in, by the forgetfulness of thyself, is the cause why thou art so much grieved at thy exile and the loss of thy goods. and because thou art ignorant what is the end of things, thou thinkest that lewd and wicked men be powerful and happy; likewise, because thou hast forgotten by what means the world is governed, thou imaginest that these alternations of fortune do fall out without any guide, sufficient causes not only of sickness, but also of death itself. but thanks be to the author of thy health, that nature hath not altogether forsaken thee. we have the greatest nourisher of thy health, the true opinion of the government of the world, in that thou believest that it is not subject to the events of chance, but to divine reason. wherefore fear nothing; out of this little sparkle will be enkindled thy vital heat. but because it is not yet time to use more solid remedies, and it is manifest that the nature of minds is such that as often as they cast away true opinions they are possessed with false, out of which the darkness of perturbations arising doth make them that they cannot discern things aright, i will endeavour to dissolve this cloud with gentle and moderate fomentations; that having removed the obscurity of deceitful affections, thou mayest behold the splendour of true light. vii. nubibus atris condita nullum fundere possunt sidera lumen. si mare uoluens turbidus auster misceat aestum, vitrea dudum parque serenis vnda diebus mox resoluto sordida caeno visibus obstat. quique uagatur montibus altis defluus amnis, saepe resistit rupe soluti obice saxi. tu quoque si uis lumine claro cernere uerum, tramite recto carpere callem, gaudia pelle, pelle timorem spemque fugato nec dolor adsit. nubila mens est vinctaque frenis, haec ubi regnant." vii. when stars are shrouded with dusky night, they yield no light being so clouded. when the wind moveth and churneth the sea, the flood, clear as day, foul and dark proveth. and rivers creeping down a high hill stand often still, rocks them back keeping. if thou wouldst brightly see truth's clear rays, or walk those ways which lead most rightly, all joy forsaking fear must thou fly, and hopes defy, no sorrow taking. for where these terrors reign in the mind, they it do bind in cloudy errors." anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii philosophiae consolationis liber primvs explicit incipit liber ii i. post haec paulisper obticuit atque ubi attentionem meam modesta taciturnitate collegit, sic exorsa est: "si penitus aegritudinis tuae causas habitumque cognovi, fortunae prioris affectu desiderioque tabescis. ea tantum animi tui sicuti tu tibi fingis mutata peruertit. intellego multiformes illius prodigii fucos et eo usque cum his quos eludere nititur blandissimam familiaritatem, dum intolerabili dolore confundat quos insperata reliquerit. cuius si naturam mores ac meritum reminiscare, nec habuisse te in ea pulchrum aliquid nec amisisse cognosces, sed ut arbitror haud multum tibi haec in memoriam reuocare laborauerim. solebas enim praesentem quoque blandientemque uirilibus incessere uerbis eamque de nostro adyto prolatis insectabare sententiis. verum omnis subita mutatio rerum non sine quodam quasi fluctu contingit animorum; sic factum est ut tu quoque paulisper a tua tranquillitate descisceres. sed tempus est haurire te aliquid ac degustare molle atque iucundum quod ad interiora transmissum ualidioribus haustibus uiam fecerit. adsit igitur rhetoricae suadela dulcedinis quae tum tantum recto calle procedit, cum nostra instituta non deserit cumque hac musica laris nostri uernacula nunc leuiores nunc grauiores modos succinat. quid est igitur o homo quod te in maestitiam luctumque deiecit? nouum, credo, aliquid inusitatumque uidisti. tu fortunam putas erga te esse mutatam; erras. hi semper eius mores sunt ista natura. seruauit circa te propriam potius in ipsa sui mutabilitate constantiam. talis erat cum blandiebatur, cum tibi falsae inlecebris felicitatis alluderet. deprehendisti caeci numinis ambiguos uultus. quae sese adhuc uelat aliis, tota tibi prorsus innotuit. si probas, utere moribus; ne queraris. si perfidiam perhorrescis, sperne atque abice perniciosa ludentem. nam quae nunc tibi est tanti causa maeroris, haec eadem tranquillitatis esse debuisset, reliquit enim te quam non relicturam nemo umquam poterit esse securus. an uero tu pretiosam aestimas abituram felicitatem? et cara tibi est fortuna praesens nec manendi fida et cum discesserit adlatura maerorem. quod si nec ex arbitrio retineri potest et calamitosos fugiens facit, quid est aliud fugax quam futurae quoddam calamitatis indicium? neque enim quod ante oculos situm est, suffecerit intueri; rerum exitus prudentia metitur eademque in alterutro mutabilitas nec formidandas fortunae minas nec exoptandas facit esse blanditias. postremo aequo animo toleres oportet quidquid intra fortunae aream geritur, cum semel iugo eius colla submiseris. quod si manendi abeundique scribere legem uelis ei quam tu tibi dominam sponte legisti, nonne iniurius fueris et inpatientia sortem exacerbes quam permutare non possis? si uentis uela committeres, non quo uoluntas peteret sed quo flatus impellerent, promoueres; si aruis semina crederes, feraces inter se annos sterilesque pensares. fortunae te regendum dedisti; dominae moribus oportet obtemperes. tu uero uoluentis rotae impetum retinere conaris? at, omnium mortalium stolidissime, si manere incipit, fors esse desistit. the second book of boethius i. after this she remained silent for a while; and, having by that her modesty made me attentive, began in this wise: "if i be rightly informed of the causes and condition of thy disease, thou languishest with the affection of thy former fortune, and the change of that alone, as thou imaginest, hath overthrown so much of thy mind. i know the manifold illusions of that monster, exercising most alluring familiarity with them whom she meaneth to deceive, to the end she may confound them with intolerable grief, by forsaking them upon the sudden, whose nature, customs, and desert, if thou rememberest, thou shalt know that thou neither didst possess nor hast lost anything of estimation in it; and, as i hope, i shall not need to labour much to bring these things to thy remembrance, for thou wert wont, when she was present, and flattered thee most, to assail her with manful words, and pursue her with sentences taken forth of our most hidden knowledge. but every sudden change of things happeneth not without a certain wavering and disquietness of mind. and this is the cause that thou also for a while hast lost thy former tranquillity and peace. but it is time for thee to take and taste some gentle and pleasant thing which being received may prepare thee for stronger potions. wherefore let us use the sweetness of rhetoric's persuasions, which then only is well employed when it forsaketh not our ordinances; and with this, let music, a little slave belonging to our house, chant sometime lighter and sometime sadder notes. wherefore, o man, what is it that hath cast thee into sorrow and grief? thou hast, methinks, seen something new and unwonted. if thou thinkest that fortune hath altered her manner of proceeding toward thee, thou art in an error. this was alway her fashion; this is her nature. she hath kept that constancy in thy affairs which is proper to her, in being mutable; such was her condition when she fawned upon thee and allured thee with enticements of feigned happiness. thou hast discovered the doubtful looks of this blind goddess. she, which concealeth herself from others, is wholly known to thee. if thou likest her, frame thyself to her conditions, and make no complaint. if thou detestest her treachery, despise and cast her off, with her pernicious flattery. for that which hath caused thee so much sorrow should have brought thee to great tranquillity. for she hath forsaken thee, of whom no man can be secure. dost thou esteem that happiness precious which thou art to lose? and is the present fortune dear unto thee, of whose stay thou art not sure, and whose departure will breed thy grief? and if she can neither be kept at our will, and maketh them miserable whom she at last leaveth, what else is fickle fortune but a token of future calamity? for it is not sufficient to behold that which we have before our eyes; wisdom pondereth the event of things, and this mutability on both sides maketh the threats of fortune not to be feared, nor her flatterings to be desired. finally, thou must take in good part whatsoever happeneth unto thee within the reach of fortune, when once thou hast submitted thy neck to her yoke. and if to her whom, of thine own accord, thou hast chosen for thy mistress, thou wouldest prescribe a law how long she were to stay, and when to depart, shouldst thou not do her mighty wrong, and with thy impatience make thy estate more intolerable, which thou canst not better? if thou settest up thy sails to the wind, thou shalt be carried not whither thy will desirest, but whither the gale driveth. if thou sowest thy seed, thou considerest that there are as well barren as fertile years. thou hast yielded thyself to fortune's sway; thou must be content with the conditions of thy mistress. endeavourest thou to stay the force of the turning wheel? but thou foolishest man that ever was, if it beginneth to stay, it ceaseth to be fortune. i. haec cum superba uerterit uices dextra et aestuantis more fertur euripi, dudum tremendos saeua proterit reges humilemque uicti subleuat fallax uultum. non illa miseros audit aut curat fletus vltroque gemitus dura quos fecit ridet. sic illa ludit, sic suas probat uires magnumque suis demonstrat [ ] ostentum, si quis visatur una stratus ac felix hora. [ ] monstrat _codd_. i the pride of fickle fortune spareth none, and, like the floods of swift euripus borne, [ ] oft casteth mighty princes from their throne, and oft the abject captive doth adorn. she cares not for the wretch's tears and moan, and the sad groans, which she hath caused, doth scorn. thus doth she play, to make her power more known, showing her slaves a marvel, when man's state is in one hour both downcast and fortunate. [ ] literally, "when fortune with proud right hand plies her changes and ebbs and flows like foaming euripus." euripus was proverbial for irregular tides. ii. vellem autem pauca tecum fortunae ipsius uerbis agitare. tu igitur an ius postulet, animaduerte. 'quid tu homo ream me cotidianis agis querelis? quam tibi fecimus iniuriam? quae tua tibi detraximus bona? quouis iudice de opum dignitatumque mecum possessione contende. et si cuiusquam mortalium proprium quid horum esse monstraueris, ego iam tua fuisse quae repetis, sponte concedam. cum te matris utero natura produxit, nudum rebus omnibus inopemque suscepi, meis opibus foui et quod te nunc inpatientem nostri facit, fauore prona indulgentius educaui, omnium quae mei iuris sunt affluentia et splendore circumdedi. nunc mihi retrahere manum libet. habes gratiam uelut usus alienis, non habes ius querelae tamquam prorsus tua perdideris. quid igitur ingemiscis? nulla tibi a nobis est allata uiolentia. opes honores ceteraque talium mei sunt iuris. dominam famulae cognoscunt; mecum ueniunt, me abeunte discedunt. audacter adfirmem, si tua forent quae amissa conquereris nullo modo perdidisses. an ego sola meum ius exercere prohibebor? licet caelo proferre lucidos dies eosdemque tenebrosis noctibus condere. licet anno terrae uultum nunc floribus frugibusque redimire, nunc nimbis frigoribusque confundere. ius est mari nunc strato aequore blandiri, nunc procellis ac fluctibus inhorrescere. nos ad constantiam nostris moribus alienam inexpleta hominum cupiditas alligabit? haec nostra uis est, hunc continuum ludum ludimus; rotam uolubili orbe uersamus, infima summis summa infimis mutare gaudemus. ascende si placet, sed ea lege ne utique[ ] cum ludicri mei ratio poscet, descendere iniuriam putes. an tu mores ignorabas meos? nesciebas croesum regem lydorum cyro paulo ante formidabilem mox deinde miserandum rogi flammis traditum misso caelitus imbre defensum? num te praeterit paulum persi regis a se capti calamitatibus pias inpendisse lacrimas? quid tragoediarum clamor aliud deflet nisi indiscreto ictu fortunam felicia regna uertentem? nonne adulescentulus [greek: doious pithous ton men hena kakon ton d'heteron eaon] in iouis limine iacere didicisti? quid si uberius de bonorum parte sumpsisti? quid si a te non tota discessi? quid si haec ipsa mei mutabilitas iusta tibi causa est sperandi meliora? tamen ne animo contabescas et intra commune omnibus regnum locatus proprio uiuere iure desideres. [ ] utique _klussmann_; uti _codd._ ii but i would urge thee a little with fortune's own speeches. wherefore consider thou if she asketh not reason. 'for what cause, o man, chargest thou me with daily complaints? what injury have i done thee? what goods of thine have i taken from thee? contend with me before any judge about the possession of riches and dignities; and if thou canst show that the propriety of any of these things belong to any mortal wight, i will forthwith willingly grant that those things which thou demandest were thine. when nature produced thee out of thy mother's womb, i received thee naked and poor in all respects, cherished thee with my wealth, and (which maketh thee now to fall out with me) being forward to favour thee, i had most tender care for thy education, and adorned thee with the abundance and splendour of all things which are in my power. now it pleaseth me to withdraw my hand, yield thanks, as one that hath had the use of that which was not his own. thou hast no just cause to complain, as though thou hadst lost that which was fully thine own. wherefore lamentest thou? i have offered thee no violence. riches, honours, and the rest of that sort belong to me. they acknowledge me for their mistress, and themselves for my servants, they come with me, and when i go away they likewise depart. i may boldly affirm, if those things which thou complainest to be taken from thee had been thine own, thou shouldst never have lost them. must i only be forbidden to use my right? it is lawful for the heaven to bring forth fair days, and to hide them again in darksome nights. it is lawful for the year sometime to compass the face of the earth with flowers and fruits, and sometime to cover it with clouds and cold. the sea hath right sometime to fawn with calms, and sometime to frown with storms and waves. and shall the insatiable desire of men tie me to constancy, so contrary to my custom? this is my force, this is the sport which i continually use. i turn about my wheel with speed, and take a pleasure to turn things upside down. ascend, if thou wilt, but with this condition, that thou thinkest it not an injury to descend when the course of my sport so requireth. didst thou not know my fashion? wert thou ignorant how croesus, king of the lydians, not long before a terror to cyrus, within a while after came to such misery that he should have been burnt had he not been saved by a shower sent from heaven?[ ] hast thou forgotten how paul piously bewailed the calamities of king perses his prisoner?[ ] what other thing doth the outcry of tragedies lament, but that fortune, having no respect, overturneth happy states? didst thou not learn in thy youth that there lay two barrels, the one of good things and the other of bad,[ ] at jupiter's threshold? but what if thou hast tasted more abundantly of the good? what if i be not wholly gone from thee? what if this mutability of mine be a just cause for thee to hope for better? notwithstanding, lose not thy courage, and, living in a kingdom which is common to all men, desire not to be governed by peculiar laws proper only to thyself. [ ] cf. herod, i. . [ ] cf. livy xlv. . paul=aemilius paulus surnamed macedonius for his defeat of perses last king of macedonia in b.c. [ ] _il._ xxiv. . ii. si quantas rapidis flatibus incitus pontus uersat harenas aut quot stelliferis edita noctibus caelo sidera fulgent tantas fundat opes nec retrahat manum pleno copia cornu, humanum miseras haud ideo genus cesset flere querellas. quamuis uota libens excipiat deus multi prodigus auri et claris auidos ornet honoribus, nil iam parta uidentur, sed quaesita uorans saeua rapacitas altos[ ] pandit hiatus. quae iam praecipitem frena cupidinem certo fine retentent, largis cum potius muneribus fluens sitis ardescit habendi? numquam diues agit qui trepidus gemens sese credit egentem.' [ ] altos _vulg._; alios _codd. opt._ ii. if plenty as much wealth should give, ne'er holding back her hand, as the swift winds in troubled seas do toss up heaps of sand, or as the stars in lightsome nights shine forth on heaven's face, yet wretched men would still accuse their miserable case. should god, too liberal of his gold, their greedy wishes hear, and with bright honour them adorn; yet all that nothing were, since ravenous minds, devouring all, for more are ready still. what bridle can contain in bounds this their contentless will, when filled with riches they retain the thirst of having more? he is not rich that fears and grieves, and counts himself but poor.' iii. his igitur si pro se tecum fortuna loqueretur, quid profecto contra hisceres non haberes, aut si quid est quo querelam tuam iure tuearis, proferas oportet. dabimus dicendi locum." tum ego: "speciosa quidem ista sunt," inquam, "oblitaque rhetoricae ac musicae melle dulcedinis; tum tantum, cum audiuntur, oblectant. sed miseris malorum altior sensus est. itaque cum haec auribus insonare desierint, insitus animum maeror praegrauat." et illa: "ita est," inquit. "haec enim nondum morbi tui remedia sed adhuc contumacis aduersum curationem doloris fomenta quaedam sunt. nam quae in profundum sese penetrent, cum tempestiuum fuerit admouebo. verumtamen ne te existimari miserum uelis, an numerum modumque tuae felicitatis oblitus es? taceo quod desolatum parente summorum te uirorum cura suscepit delectusque in affinitatem principum ciuitatis, quod pretiosissimum propinquitatis genus est, prius carus quam proximus esse coepisti. quis non te felicissimum cum tanto splendore socerorum, cum coniugis pudore, cum masculae quoque prolis opportunitate praedicauit? praetereo, libet enim praeterire communia, sumptas in adulescentia negatas senibus dignitates; ad singularem felicitatis tuae cumulum uenire delectat. si quis rerum mortalium fructus ullum beatitudinis pondus habet, poteritne illius memoria lucis quantalibet ingruentium malorum mole deleri, cum duos pariter consules liberos tuos domo prouehi sub frequentia patrum, sub plebis alacritate uidisti, cum eisdem in curia curules insidentibus tu regiae laudis orator ingenii gloriam facundiaeque meruisti, cum in circo duorum medius consulum circumfusae multitudinis expectationem triumphali largitione satiasti? dedisti ut opinor uerba fortunae, dum te illa demulcet, dum te ut delicias suas fouet. munus quod nulli umquam priuato commodauerat abstulisti. visne igitur cum fortuna calculum ponere? nunc te primum liuenti oculo praestrinxit. si numerum modumque laetorum tristiumue consideres, adhuc te felicem negare non possis. quod si idcirco te fortunatum esse non aestimas, quoniam quae tunc laeta uidebantur abierunt, non est quod te miserum putes, quoniam quae nunc creduntur maesta praetereunt. an tu in hanc uitae scaenam nunc primum subitus hospesque uenisti? vllamne humanis rebus inesse constantiam reris, cum ipsum saepe hominem uelox hora dissoluat? nam etsi rara est fortuitis manendi fides, ultimus tamen uitae dies mors quaedam fortunae est etiam manentis. quid igitur referre putas, tune illam moriendo deseras an te illa fugiendo? iii. wherefore if fortune should plead with thee thus in her own defence, doubtless thou wouldst not have a word to answer her. but if there be anything which thou canst allege in thy own defence, thou must utter it. we will give thee full liberty to speak." then i said: "these things make a fair show and, being set out with pleasant rhetoric and music, delight only so long as they are heard. but those which are miserable have a deeper feeling of their miseries. therefore, when the sound of these things is past, hidden sorrow oppresseth the mind." "it is so indeed," quoth she, "for these be not the remedies of thy disease, but certain fomentations to assuage thy grief, which as yet resisteth all cure. but when it shall be time, i will apply that which shall pierce to the quick. and yet there is no cause why thou shouldst think thyself miserable. hast thou forgotten how many ways, and in what degree thou art happy? i pass over with silence that, having lost thy father, thou wert provided for by men of the best sort, and, being chosen to have affinity with the chiefest of the city, thou begannest sooner to be dear unto them than to be akin, which is the most excellent kind of kindred. who esteemed thee not most happy, having so noble a father-in-law, so chaste a wife, and so noble sons? i say nothing (for i will not speak of ordinary matters) of the dignities denied to others in their age, and granted to thee in thy youth. i desire to come to the singular top of thy felicity. if any fruit of mortal things hath any weight of happiness, can the remembrance of that light be destroyed with any cloud of miseries that can overcast thee? when thou sawst thy two sons being both consuls together carried from their house, the senators accompanying them, and the people rejoicing with them; when, they sitting in the senate in their chairs of state, thou making an oration in the king's praise deservedst the glory of wit and eloquence. when in public assembly, thou, standing betwixt thy two sons, didst satisfy with thy triumphant liberality the expectation of the multitudes gathered together, i suppose thou flatteredst fortune, while she fawned thus upon thee, as her dearest friend. thou obtainedst more at her hands than ever private man had before thee. wilt thou then reckon with fortune? this is the first time that ever she frowned upon thee. if thou considerest the number and measure of thy joyful and sad accidents, thou canst not choose but think thyself fortunate hitherto; and if thou esteemest not thyself fortunate because those things which seemed joyful are past, there is no cause why thou shouldst think thyself miserable, since those things which thou now takest to be sorrowful do pass. comest thou now first as a pilgrim and stranger into the theatre of this life? supposest thou to find any constancy in human affairs, since that man himself is soon gone? for although things subject to fortune seldom keep touch in staying, yet the end of life is a certain death, even of that fortune which remaineth. wherefore, what matter is it whether thou by dying leavest it, or it forsaketh thee by flying? iii. cum polo phoebus roseis quadrigis lucem spargere coeperit, pallet albentes hebetata uultus flammis stella prementibus. cum nemus flatu zephyri tepentis vernis inrubuit rosis, spiret insanum nebulosus auster: iam spinis abeat decus. saepe tranquillo radiat sereno immotis mare fluctibus, saepe feruentes aquilo procellas verso concitat aequore. rara si constat sua forma mundo, si tantas uariat uices, crede fortunis hominum caducis, bonis crede fugacibus. constat aeterna positumque lege est vt constet genitum nihil." iii. when phoebus with his rosy team showeth his lightsome beam, the dull and darkened stars retire yielding to greater fire. when zephyrus his warmth doth bring, sweet roses deck the spring; let noisome auster blow apace, plants soon will lose their grace. the sea hath often quiet stood with an unmoved flood, and often is turmoiled with waves, when boisterous boreas raves. if thus the world never long tarry the same, but often vary, on fading fortunes then rely, trust to those goods that fly. an everlasting law is made, that all things born shall fade." iv. tum ego: "vera," inquam, "commemoras, o uirtutum omnium nutrix, nec infitiari possum prosperitatis meae uelocissimum cursum. sed hoc est quod recolentem uehementius coquit. nam in omni aduersitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii fuisse felicem." "sed quod tu," inquit, "falsae opinionis supplicium luas, id rebus iure imputare non possis. nam si te hoc inane nomen fortuitae felicitatis mouet, quam pluribus maximisque abundes mecum reputes licet. igitur si quod in omni fortunae tuae censu pretiosissimum possidebas, id tibi diuinitus inlaesum adhuc inuiolatumque seruatur, poterisne meliora quaeque retinens de infortunio iure causari? atqui uiget incolumis illud pretiosissimum generis humani decus symmachus socer et quod uitae pretio non segnis emeres, uir totus ex sapientia uirtutibusque factus suarum securus tuis ingemiscit iniuriis. viuit uxor ingenio modesta, pudicitia pudore praecellens et, ut omnes eius dotes breuiter includam, patri similis. viuit inquam tibique tantum uitae huius exosa spiritum seruat quoque uno felicitatem minui tuam uel ipsa concesserim, tui desiderio lacrimis ac dolore tabescit. quid dicam liberos consulares quorum iam, ut in id aetatis pueris, uel paterni uel auiti specimen elucet ingenii? cum igitur praecipua sit mortalibus uitae cura retinendae, o te si tua bona cognoscas felicem, cui suppetunt etiam nunc quae uita nemo dubitat esse cariora! quare sicca iam lacrimas. nondum est ad unum omnes exosa fortuna nec tibi nimium ualida tempestas incubuit, quando tenaces haerent ancorae quae nec praesentis solamen nec futuri spem temporis abesse patiantur." "et haereant," inquam, "precor; illis namque manentibus, utcumque se res habeant, enatabimus. sed quantum ornamentis nostris decesserit, uides." et illa: "promouimus," inquit, "aliquantum, si te nondum totius tuae sortis piget. sed delicias tuas ferre non possum qui abesse aliquid tuae beatitudini tam luctuosus atque anxius conqueraris. quis est enim tam conpositae felicitatis ut non aliqua ex parte cum status sui qualitate rixetur? anxia enim res est humanorum condicio bonorum et quae uel numquam tota proueniat uel numquam perpetua subsistat. huic census exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis; hunc nobilitas notum facit, sed angustia rei familiaris inclusus esse mallet ignotus. ille utroque circumfluus uitam caelibem deflet; ille nuptiis felix orbus liberis alieno censum nutrit heredi. alius prole laetatus filii filiaeue delictis maestus inlacrimat. idcirco nemo facile cum fortunae suae condicione concordat; inest enim singulis quod inexpertus ignoret, expertus exhorreat. adde quod felicissimi cuiusque delicatissimus sensus est et nisi ad nutum cuncta suppetant, omnis aduersitatis insolens minimis quibusque prosternitur; adeo perexigua sunt quae fortunatissimis beatitudinis summam detrahunt. quam multos esse coniectas qui sese caelo proximos arbitrentur, si de fortunae tuae reliquiis pars eis minima contingat? hic ipse locus quem tu exilium uocas, incolentibus patria est; adeo nihil est miserum nisi cum putes contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis. quis est ille tam felix qui cum dederit inpatientiae manus, statum suum mutare non optet? quam multis amaritudinibus humanae felicitatis dulcedo respersa est! quae si etiam fruenti iucunda esse uideatur, tamen quo minus cum uelit abeat retineri non possit. liquet igitur quam sit mortalium rerum misera beatitudo quae nec apud aequanimos perpetua perdurat necanxios tota delectat. quid igitur o mortales extra petitis intra uos positam felicitatem? error uos inscitiaque confundit. ostendam breuiter tibi summae cardinem felicitatis. estne aliquid tibi te ipso pretiosius? nihil inquies. igitur si tui compos fueris, possidebis quod nec tu amittere umquam uelis nec fortuna possit auferre. atque ut agnoscas in his fortuitis rebus beatitudinem constare non posse, sic collige. si beatitudo est summum naturae bonum ratione degentis nec est summum bonum quod eripi ullo modo potest, quoniam praecellit id quod nequeat auferri, manifestum est quoniam[ ] ad beatitudinem percipiendam fortunae instabilitas adspirare non possit. ad haec quem caduca ista felicitas uehit uel scit eam uel nescit esse mutabilem. si nescit, quaenam beata sors esse potest ignorantiae caecitate? si scit, metuat necesse est, ne amittat quod amitti posse non dubitat; quare continuus timor non sinit esse felicem. an uel si amiserit, neglegendum putat? sic quoque perexile bonum est quod aequo animo feratur amissum. et quoniam tu idem es cui persuasum atque insitum permultis demonstrationibus scio mentes hominum nullo modo esse mortales cumque clarum sit fortuitam felicitatem corporis morte finiri, dubitari nequit, si haec afferre beatitudinem potest, quin omne mortalium genus in miseriam mortis fine labatur. quod si multos scimus beatitudinis fructum non morte solum uerum etiam doloribus suppliciisque quaesisse, quonam modo praesens facere beatos potest quae miseros transacta non efficit? [ ] quin _codices_. iv. to which i answered: "the things which thou reportest are true, o nurse of all virtues, and i cannot deny the most speedy course of my prosperity. but this is that which vexeth me most, when i remember it. for in all adversity of fortune it is the most unhappy kind of misfortune to have been happy." "but," quoth she, "thou canst not justly impute to the things themselves that thou art punished for thy false opinion. for if this vain name of casual felicity moveth thee, let us make accompt with how many and how great things thou aboundest. wherefore, if that which in all thy revenues of fortune thou esteemest most precious doth still by god's providence remain safe and untouched, canst thou, retaining the best, justly complain of misfortune? but thy father-in-law, symmachus (that most excellent ornament of mankind) liveth in safety, and for the obtaining of which thou wouldst willingly spend thy life, that man wholly framed to wisdom and virtues, being secure of his own, mourneth for thy injuries. thy wife liveth, modest in disposition, eminent in chastity, and, to rehearse briefly all her excellent gifts, like her father. she liveth, i say, and weary of her life reserveth her breath only for thee. in which alone even i must grant that thy felicity is diminished, she consumeth herself with tears and grief for thy sake. what should i speak of thy children, which have been consuls, in whom already, as in children of that age, their father's or grandfather's good disposition appeareth? wherefore, since the greatest care that mortal men have is to save their lives, o happy man that thou art, if thou knowest thine own wealth, who still hast remaining those things which no man doubteth to be dearer than life itself? and therefore cease weeping. fortune hath not hitherto showed her hatred against you all, neither art thou assailed with too boisterous a storm, since those anchors hold fast which permit neither the comfort of the time present nor the hope of the time to come to be wanting." "and i pray god," quoth i, "that they may hold fast, for so long as they remain, howsoever the world goeth we shall escape drowning. but thou seest how great a part of our ornaments is lost." "we have gotten a little ground," quoth she, "if thy whole estate be not irksome unto thee. but i cannot suffer thy daintiness, who with such lamentation and anxiety complaineth that something is wanting to thy happiness. for who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate? the nature of human felicity is doubtful and uncertain, and is neither ever wholly obtained, or never lasteth always. one man hath great revenues, but is contemned for his base lineage. another's nobility maketh him known, but, oppressed with penury, had rather be unknown. some, abounding with both, bewail their life without marriage. some other, well married but wanting children, provideth riches for strangers to inherit. others, finally, having children, mournfully bewail the vices which their sons or daughters are given to. so that scarce any man is pleased with the condition of his fortune. for there is something in every estate, which without experience is not known, and being experienced doth molest and trouble. besides that, those which are most happy are most sensible,[ ] and unless all things fall out to their liking, impatient of all adversity, every little cross overthrows them, so small are the occasions which take from the most fortunate the height of their happiness. how many are there, thinkest thou, which would think themselves almost in heaven if they had but the least part of the remains of thy fortune? this very place, which thou callest banishment, is to the inhabitants thereof their native land. so true it is that nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content. who is so happy that if he yieldeth to discontent, desireth not to change his estate? how much bitterness is mingled with the sweetness of man's felicity, which, though it seemeth so pleasant while it is enjoyed, yet can it not be retained from going away when it will. and by this it appeareth how miserable is the blessedness of mortal things, which neither endureth alway with the contented, nor wholly delighteth the pensive. wherefore, o mortal men, why seek you for your felicity abroad, which is placed within yourselves? error and ignorance do confound you. i will briefly show thee the centre of thy chiefest happiness. is there anything more precious to thee than thyself? i am sure thou wilt say, nothing. wherefore, if thou enjoyest thyself, thou shalt possess that which neither thou wilt ever wish to lose nor fortune can take away. and that thou mayst acknowledge that blessedness cannot consist in these casual things, gather it thus. if blessedness be the chiefest good of nature endued with reason, and that is not the chiefest good which may by any means be taken away, because that which cannot be taken away is better, it is manifest that the instability of fortune cannot aspire to the obtaining of blessedness. moreover, he that now enjoyeth this brittle felicity, either knoweth it to be mutable or no. if not, what estate can be blessed by ignorant blindness? and if he knoweth it, he must needs fear lest he lose that which he doubteth not may be lost, wherefore continual fear permitteth him not to be happy. or though he should lose it, doth he think that a thing of no moment? but so it were a very small good which he would be content to lose. and because thou art one whom i know to be fully persuaded and convinced by innumerable demonstrations that the souls of men are in no wise mortal, and since it is clear that casual felicity is ended by the body's death, there is no doubt, if this can cause blessedness, but that all mankind falleth into misery by death. but if we know many who have sought to reap the fruit of blessedness, not only by death, but also by affliction and torments, how can present happiness make men happy, the loss of which causeth not misery? [ ] _i.e._ sensitive. iv. quisquis uolet perennem cautus ponere sedem stabilisque nec sonori sterni flatibus euri et fluctibus minantem curat spernere pontum, montis cacumen alti, bibulas uitet harenas. illud proteruus auster totis uiribus urget, hae pendulum solutae pondus ferre recusant. fugiens periculosam sortem sedis amoenae humili domum memento certus figere saxo. quamuis tonet ruinis miscens aequora uentus, tu conditus quieti felix robore ualli duces serenus aeuum ridens aetheris iras. iv. who with an heedful care will an eternal seat prepare, which cannot be down cast by force of windy blast, and will the floods despise, when threatening billows do arise, he not on hills must stand, nor on the dangerous sinking sand. for there the winds will threat, and him with furious tempests beat, and here the ground too weak will with the heavy burden break.[ ] fly then the dangerous case of an untried delightful place, and thy poor house bestow in stony places firm and low. for though the winds do sound, and waves of troubled seas confound: yet thou to rest disposed in thy safe lowly vale inclosed, mayst live a quiet age, scorning the air's distempered rage. [ ] literally, "these shifting sands refuse to bear the weight laid upon them." v. sed quoniam rationum iam in te mearum fomenta descendunt, paulo ualidioribus utendum puto. age enim si iam caduca et momentaria fortunae dona non essent, quid in eis est quod aut uestrum umquam fieri queat aut non perspectum consideratumque uilescat? diuitiaene uel uestra uel sui natura pretiosae sunt? quid earum potius, aurumne an uis congesta pecuniae? atqui haec effundendo magis quam coaceruando melius nitent, si quidem auaritia semper odiosos, claros largitas facit. quod si manere apud quemque non potest quod transfertur in alterum, tunc est pretiosa pecunia cum translata in alios largiendi usu desinit possideri. at eadem si apud unum quanta est ubique gentium congeratur, ceteros sui inopes fecerit. et uox quidem tota pariter multorum replet auditum; uestrae uero diuitiae nisi comminutae in plures transire non possunt. quod cum factum est, pauperes necesse est faciant quos relinquunt. o igitur angustas inopesque diuitias quas nec habere totas pluribus licet et ad quemlibet sine ceterorum paupertate non ueniunt! an gemmarum fulgor oculos trahit? sed si quid est in hoc splendore praecipui, gemmarum est lux illa non hominum, quas quidem mirari homines uehementer admiror. quid est enim carens animae motu atque compage quod animatae rationabilique naturae pulchrum esse iure uideatur? quae tametsi conditoris opera suique distinctione postremae aliquid pulchritudinis trahunt, infra uestram tamen excellentiam conlocatae admirationem uestram nullo modo merebantur. an uos agrorum pulchritudo delectat? quidni? est enim pulcherrimi operis pulchra portio. sic quondam sereni maris facie gaudemus; sic caelum sidera lunam solemque miramur. num te horum aliquid attingit? num audes alicuius talium splendore gloriari? an uernis floribus ipse distingueris aut tua in aestiuos fructus intumescit ubertas? quid inanibus gaudiis raperis? quid externa bona pro tuis amplexaris? numquam tua faciet esse fortuna quae a te natura rerum fecit aliena. terrarum quidem fructus animantium procul dubio debentur alimentis. sed si, quod naturae satis est, replere indigentiam uelis, nihil est quod fortunae affluentiam petas. paucis enim minimisque natura contenta est, cuius satietatem si superfluis urgere uelis, aut iniucundum quod infuderis fiet aut noxium. iam uero pulchrum uariis fulgere uestibus putas, quarum si grata intuitu species est, aut materiae naturam aut ingenium mirabor artificis. an uero te longus ordo famulorum facit esse felicem? qui si uitiosi moribus sint, perniciosa domus sarcina et ipsi domino uehementer inimica; sin uero probi, quonam modo in tuis opibus aliena probitas numerabitur? ex quibus omnibus nihil horum quae tu in tuis conputas bonis tuum esse bonum liquido monstratur. quibus si nihil inest appetendae pulchritudinis, quid est quod uel amissis doleas uel laeteris retentis? quod si natura pulchra sunt, quid id tua refert? nam haec per se a tuis quoque opibus sequestrata placuissent. neque enim idcirco sunt pretiosa quod in tuas uenere diuitias, sed quoniam pretiosa uidebantur, tuis ea diuitiis adnumerare maluisti. quid autem tanto fortunae strepitu desideratis? fugare credo indigentiam copia quaeritis. atqui hoc uobis in contrarium cedit. pluribus quippe adminiculis opus est ad tuendam pretiosae supellectilis uarietatem, uerumque illud est permultis eos indigere qui permulta possideant contraque minimum qui abundantiam suam naturae necessitate non ambitus superfluitate metiantur. itane autem nullum est proprium uobis atque insitum bonum ut in externis ac sepositis rebus bona uestra quaeratis? sic rerum uersa condicio est ut diuinum merito rationis animal non aliter sibi splendere nisi inanimatae supellectilis possessione uideatur? et alia quidem suis contenta sunt; uos autem deo mente consimiles ab rebus infimis excellentis naturae ornamenta captatis nec intellegitis quantam conditori uestro faciatis iniuriam. ille genus humanum terrenis omnibus praestare uoluit; uos dignitatem uestram infra infima quaeque detruditis. nam si omne cuiusque bonum eo cuius est constat esse pretiosius, cum uilissima rerum uestra bona esse iudicatis, eisdem uosmet ipsos uestra existimatione submittitis; quod quidem haud inmerito cadit. humanae quippe naturae ista condicio est ut tum tantum ceteris rebus cum se cognoscit excellat, eadem tamen infra bestias redigatur, si se nosse desierit. nam ceteris animantibus sese ignorare naturae est; hominibus uitio uenit. quam uero late patet uester hic error qui ornari posse aliquid ornamentis existimatis alienis? at id fieri nequit. nam si quid ex appositis luceat, ipsa quidem quae sunt apposita laudantur; illud uero his tectum atque uelatum in sua nihilo minus foeditate perdurat. ego uero nego ullum esse bonum quod noceat habenti. num id mentior? 'minime,' inquis. atqui diuitiae possidentibus persaepe nocuerunt, cum pessimus quisque eoque alieni magis auidus quidquid usquam auri gemmarumque est se solum qui habeat dignissimum putat. tu igitur qui nunc contum gladiumque sollicitus pertimescis, si uitae huius callem uacuus uiator intrasses, coram latrone cantares. o praeclara opum mortalium beatitudo quam cum adeptus fueris securus esse desistis! v. but since the soothing of my reasons begins to sink into thee, i will use those which are somewhat more forcible. go to the*n, if the gifts of fortune were not brittle and momentary, what is there in them which can either ever be made your own, or, well weighed and considered, seemeth not vile and of no accompt? are riches precious in virtue either of their own nature or of yours? what part of them can be so esteemed of? the gold or the heaps of money? but these make a fairer show when they are spent than when they are kept. for covetousness alway maketh men odious, as liberality famous. and if a man cannot have that which is given to another, then money is precious when, bestowed upon others, by the use of liberality it is not possessed any longer. but if all the money in the whole world were gathered into one man's custody, all other men should be poor. the voice at the same time wholly filleth the ears of many, but your riches cannot pass to many, except they be diminished, which being done, they must needs make them poor whom they leave. o scant and poor riches, which neither can be wholly possessed of many, and come to none without the impoverishment of others! doth the glittering of jewels draw thy eyes after them? but if there be any great matter in this show, not men but the jewels shine, which i exceedingly marvel that men admire. for what is there wanting life and members that may justly seem beautiful to a nature not only endued with life but also with reason? which, though by their maker's workmanship and their own variety they have some part of basest beauty, yet it is so far inferior to your excellency that it did in no sort deserve your admiration. doth the pleasant prospect of the fields delight you? why not? for it is a fair portion of a most fair work. so we are delighted with a calm sea, so we admire the sky, the stars, the sun, and the moon. do any of these belong to thee? darest thou boast of the beauty which any of them have? art thou thyself adorned with may flowers? or doth thy fertility teem with the fruits of summer? why rejoicest thou vainly? why embracest thou outward goods as if they were thine own? fortune will never make those things thine which by the appointment of nature belong not to thee. the fruits of the earth are doubtless appointed for the sustenance of living creatures. but if thou wilt only satisfy want, which sufficeth nature, there is no cause to require the superfluities of fortune. for nature is contented with little and with the smallest things, and, if, being satisfied, thou wilt overlay it with more than needs, that which thou addest will either become unpleasant or hurtful. but perhaps thou thinkest it a fine thing to go decked in gay apparel, which, if they make a fair show, i will admire either the goodness of the stuff or the invention of the workman. or doth the multitude of servants make thee happy? who, if they be vicious, they are a pernicious burden to thy house, and exceedingly troublesome to their master; and if they be honest, how shall other men's honesty be counted amongst thy treasures? by all which is manifestly proved that none of these goods which thou accountest thine, are thine indeed. and if there is nothing in these worthy to be desired, why art thou either glad when thou hast them or sorry when thou losest them? or what is it to thee, if they be precious by nature? for in this respect they would have pleased thee, though they had belonged to others. for they are not precious because they are come to be thine, but because they seemed precious thou wert desirous to have them. now, what desire you with such loud praise of fortune? perhaps you seek to drive away penury with plenty. but this falleth out quite contrary, for you stand in need of many supplies, to protect all this variety of precious ornaments. and it is true that they which have much, need much; and contrariwise, that they need little which measure not their wealth by the superfluity of ambition, but by the necessity of nature. have you no proper and inward good, that you seek your goods in those things which are outward and separated from you? is the condition of things so changed that a living creature, deservedly accounted divine for the gift of reason, seemeth to have no other excellency than the possession of a little household stuff without life? all other creatures are content with that they have of their own; and you, who in your mind carry the likeness of god, are content to take the ornaments of your excellent nature from the most base and vile things, neither understand you what injury you do your creator. he would have mankind to excel all earthly things; you debase your dignity under every meanest creature. for if it be manifest that the good of everything is more precious than that whose good it is, since you judge the vilest things that can be to be your goods, you deject yourselves under them in your own estimation, which questionless cometh not undeservedly to pass; for this is the condition of man's nature, that then only it surpasseth other things when it knoweth itself, and it is worse than beasts when it is without that knowledge. for in other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is vice. and how far doth this error of yours extend, who think that any can be adorned with the ornaments of another? which can in no wise be. for if any adjoined thing seem precious, it is that which is praised, but that which is covered and enwrapped in it remaineth, notwithstanding, with the foul baseness which it hath of itself. moreover, i deny that to be good which hurteth the possessor. am i deceived in this? i am sure thou wilt say no. but riches have often hurt their possessors, since every lewdest companion, who are consequently most desirous of that which is not their own, think themselves most worthy to possess alone all the gold and jewels in the world. wherefore thou, who with much perturbation fearest now to be assailed and slain, if thou hadst entered the path of this life like a poor passenger, needest not be afraid, but mightest rejoice and sing even in the sight of most ravenous thieves.[ ] o excellent happiness of mortal riches, which, when thou hast gotten, thou hast lost thy safety! [ ] cf. juvenal, _sat._ x. - . v. felix nimium prior aetas contenta fidelibus aruis nec inerti perdita luxu, facili quae sera solebat ieiunia soluere glande. non bacchica munera norant liquido confundere melle nec lucida uellera serum tyrio miscere ueneno. somnos dabat herba salubres, potum quoque lubricus amnis, vmbras altissima pinus. nondum maris alta secabat nec mercibus undique lectis noua litora uiderat hospes. tunc classica saeua tacebant, odiis neque fusus acerbis cruor horrida tinxerat arua. quid enim furor hosticus ulla vellet prior arma mouere, cum uulnera saeua uiderent nec praemia sanguinis ulla? vtinam modo nostra redirent in mores tempora priscos! sed saeuior ignibus aetnae feruens amor ardet habendi. heu primus quis fuit ille auri qui pondera tecti gemmasque latere uolentes pretiosa pericula fodit? v. too much the former age was blest, when fields their pleaséd owners failéd not, who, with no slothful lust opprest, broke their long fasts with acorns eas'ly got. no wine with honey mixéd was, nor did they silk in purple colours steep; they slept upon the wholesome grass, and their cool drink did fetch from rivers deep. the pines did hide them with their shade, no merchants through the dangerous billows went, nor with desire of gainful trade their traffic into foreign countries sent. then no shrill trumpets did amate the minds of soldiers with their daunting sounds, nor weapons were with deadly hate dyed with the dreadful blood of gaping wounds. for how could any fury draw the mind of man to stir up war in vain, when nothing but fierce wounds he saw, and for his blood no recompense should gain? o that the ancient manners would in these our latter hapless times return! now the desire of having gold doth like the flaming fires of aetna burn. ah, who was he that first did show the heaps of treasure which the earth did hide, and jewels which lay close below, by which he costly dangers did provide? vi. quid autem de dignitatibus potentiaque disseram quae uos uerae dignitatis ac potestatis inscii caelo exaequatis? quae si in improbissimum quemque ceciderunt, quae flammis aetnae eructuantibus, quod diluuium tantas strages dederint? certe, uti meminisse te arbitror, consulare imperium, quod libertatis principium fuerat, ob superbiam consulum uestri ueteres abolere cupiuerunt, qui ob eandem superbiam prius regium de ciuitate nomen abstulerant. at si quando, quod perrarum est, probis deferantur, quid in eis aliud quam probitas utentium placet? ita fit ut non uirtutibus ex dignitate sed ex uirtute dignitatibus honor accedat. quae uero est ista uestra expetibilis ac praeclara potentia? nonne, o terrena animalia, consideratis quibus qui praesidere uideamini? nunc si inter mures uideres unum aliquem ius sibi ac potestatem prae ceteris uindicantem, quanto mouereris cachinno! quid uero, si corpus spectes, inbecillius homine reperire queas quos saepe muscularum quoque uel morsus uel in secreta quaeque reptantium necat introitus? quo uero quisquam ius aliquod in quempiam nisi in solum corpus et quod infra corpus est, fortunam loquor, possit exserere? num quidquam libero imperabis animo? num mentem firma sibi ratione cohaerentem de statu propriae quietis amouebis? cum liberum quendam uirum suppliciis se tyrannus adacturum putaret, ut aduersum se factae coniurationis conscios proderet, linguam ille momordit atque abscidit et in os tyranni saeuientis abiecit; ita cruciatus, quos putabat tyrannus materiam crudelitatis, uir sapiens fecit esse uirtutis. quid autem est quod in alium facere quisquam[ ] possit, quod sustinere ab alio ipse non possit? busiridem accipimus necare hospites solitum ab hercule hospite fuisse mactatum. regulus plures poenorum bello captos in uincla coniecerat, sed mox ipse uictorum catenis manus praebuit. vllamne igitur eius hominis potentiam putas, qui quod ipse in alio potest, ne id in se alter ualeat efficere non possit? ad haec si ipsis dignitatibus ac potestatibus inesset aliquid naturalis ac proprii boni, numquam pessimis prouenirent. neque enim sibi solent aduersa sociari; natura respuit ut contraria quaeque iungantur. ita cum pessimos plerumque dignitatibus fungi dubium non sit, illud etiam liquet natura sui bona non esse quae se pessimis haerere patiantur. quod quidem de cunctis fortunae muneribus dignius existimari potest, quae ad improbissimum quemque uberiora perueniunt. de quibus illud etiam considerandum puto, quod nemo dubitat esse fortem, cui fortitudinem inesse conspexerit, et cuicumque uelocitas adest manifestum est esse uelocem. sic musica quidem musicos medicina medicos rhetorice rhetores facit. agit enim cuiusque rei natura quod proprium est nec contrariarum rerum miscetur effectibus et ultro quae sunt auersa depellit. atqui nec opes inexpletam restinguere auaritiam queunt nec potestas sui compotem fecerit quem uitiosae libidines insolubilibus adstrictum retinent catenis, et collata improbis dignitas non modo non efficit dignos, sed prodit potius et ostentat indignos. cur ita prouenit? gaudetis enim res sese aliter habentes falsis compellare nominibus quae facile ipsarum rerum redarguuntur effectu; itaque nec illae diuitiae nec illa potentia nec haec dignitas iure appellari potest. postremo idem de tota concludere fortuna licet in qua nihil expetendum, nihil natiuae bonitatis inesse manifestum est, quae nec se bonis semper adiungit et bonos quibus fuerit adiuncta non efficit. [ ] quisque _codd. optimi_. vi. now, why should i discourse of dignities and power which you, not knowing what true dignity and power meaneth, exalt to the skies? and if they light upon wicked men, what aetnas, belching flames, or what deluge can cause so great harms? i suppose thou rememberest how your ancestors, by reason of the consuls' arrogancy, desired to abolish that government which had been the beginning of their freedom, who before, for the same cause, had removed the government of kings from their city. and if sometime, which is very seldom, good men be preferred to honours,[ ] what other thing can give contentment in them but the honesty of those which have them? so that virtues are not honoured by dignities, but dignities by virtue. but what is this excellent power which you esteemed so desirable? consider you not, o earthly wights, whom you seem to excel? for if among mice thou shouldst see one claim jurisdiction and power to himself over the rest, to what a laughter it would move thee! and what, if thou respectest the body, canst thou find more weak than man, whom even the biting of little flies or the entering of creeping worms doth often kill? now, how can any man exercise jurisdiction upon anybody except upon their bodies, and that which is inferior to their bodies, i mean their fortunes? canst thou ever imperiously impose anything upon a free mind? canst thou remove a soul settled in firm reason from the quiet state which it possesseth? when a tyrant thought to compel a certain free man by torments to bewray his confederates of a conspiracy attempted against him, he bit off his tongue, and spit it out upon the cruel tyrant's face,[ ] by that means wisely making those tortures, which the tyrant thought matter of cruelty, to be to him occasion of virtue. now, what is there that any can enforce upon another which he may not himself be enforced to sustain by another? we read that busiris, wont to kill his guests, was himself slain by his guest hercules.[ ] regulus had laid fetters upon many africans taken in war, but ere long he found his own hands environed with his conqueror's chains.[ ] wherefore thinkest thou the power of that man to be anything worth, who cannot hinder another from doing that to him which he can do to another? moreover, if dignities and power had any natural and proper good in them, they would never be bestowed upon the worst men, for one opposite useth not to accompany another; nature refuseth to have contraries joined. so that, since there is no doubt but that men of the worst sort often enjoy dignities, it is also manifest that they are not naturally good which may follow most naughty men. which may more worthily be thought of all fortune's gifts which are more plentifully bestowed upon every lewd companion. concerning which, i take that also to be worthy consideration, that no man doubteth him to be a valiant man in whom he seeth valour, and it is manifest that he which hath swiftness is swift. so, likewise, music maketh musicians, physic physicians, and rhetoric rhetoricians. for the nature of everything doth that which is proper unto it, and is not mixed with contrary effects but repelleth all opposites. but neither can riches extinguish unsatiable avarice, nor power make him master of himself whom vicious lusts keep chained in strongest fetters. and dignity bestowed upon wicked men doth not only not make them worthy but rather bewrayeth and discovereth their unworthiness. how cometh this to pass? because in miscalling things that are otherwise, you take a pleasure which is easily refuted by the effect of the things themselves. wherefore, by right, these things are not to be called riches, this is not to be called power, that is not to be called dignity. lastly, we may conclude the same of all fortunes in which it is manifest there is nothing to be desired, nothing naturally good, which neither are always bestowed upon good men, nor do make them good whom they are bestowed upon. [ ] the subject of _deferantur_ is _dignitates potentiaque_. [ ] the free man was the philosopher anaxarchus: the tyrant, nicocreon the cypriote. for the story see diogenes laertius ix. . [ ] cf. apollod. ii. . ; claudian xviii. ; virg. _georg._ iii. . [ ] cf. cicero, _de off._ iii. . vi. nouimus quantas dederit ruinas vrbe flammata patribusque caesis fratre qui quondam ferus interempto matris effuso maduit cruore corpus et uisu gelidum pererrans ora non tinxit lacrimis, sed esse censor extincti potuit decoris. hic tamen sceptro populos regebat quos uidet condens radios sub undas phoebus extremo ueniens ab ortu, quos premunt septem gelidi triones, quos notus sicco uiolentus aestu torret ardentes recoquens harenas. celsa num tandem ualuit potestas vertere praui rabiem neronis? heu grauem sortem, quotiens iniquus additur saeuo gladius ueneno!" vi. we know what stirs he made who did the senate slay and rome with fire invade, who did his brother kill, and with his mother's blood his moistened hand did fill; who looked on that cold face tearless, and nicely marked her members' several grace.[ ] yet his dread power controlled those people whom the sun doth in the east behold, and those who do remain in western lands or dwell under boötes' wain and those whose skins are tanned with southern winds, which roast and burn the parched sand. what? could this glorious might restrain the furious rage of wicked nero's spite? but oh! mishap most bad, which doth the wicked sword to cruel poison add!" [ ] literally, "but could be the critic of her dead beauty." cf. suet. _nero_ ; tac. _ann._ xiv. . vii. tum ego: "scis," inquam, "ipsa minimum nobis ambitionem mortalium rerum fuisse dominatam. sed materiam gerendis rebus optauimus quo ne uirtus tacita consenesceret." et illa: "atqui hoc unum est quod praestantes quidem natura mentes sed nondum ad extremam manum uirtutum perfectione perductas allicere possit, gloriae scilicet cupido et optimorum in rem publicam fama meritorum; quae quam sit exilis et totius uacua ponderis, sic considera. omnem terrae ambitum, sicuti astrologicis demonstrationibus accepisti, ad caeli spatium puncti constat obtinere rationem, id est ut, si ad caelestis globi magnitudinem conferatur, nihil spatii prorsus habere iudicetur. huius igitur tam exiguae in mundo regionis quarta fere portio est, sicut ptolomaeo probante didicisti, quae nobis cognitis animantibus incolatur. huic quartae, si quantum maria paludesque premunt quantumque siti uasta regio distenditur cogitatione subtraxeris, uix angustissima inhabitandi hominibus area relinquetur. in hoc igitur minimo puncti quodam puncto circumsaepti atque conclusi de peruulganda fama, de proferendo nomine cogitatis? aut quid habeat amplum magnificumque gloria tam angustis exiguisque limitibus artata? adde quod hoc ipsum breuis habitaculi saeptum plures incolunt nationes lingua, moribus, totius uitae ratione distantes, ad quas tum difficultate itinerum tum loquendi diuersitate tum commercii insolentia non modo fama hominum singulorum sed ne urbium quidem peruenire queat. aetate denique marci tullii, sicut ipse quodam loco significat, nondum caucasum montem romanae rei publicae fama transcenderat, et erat tunc adulta parthis etiam ceterisque id locorum gentibus formidolosa. videsne igitur quam sit angusta, quam compressa gloria quam dilatare ac propagare laboratis? an ubi romani nominis transire fama nequit, romani hominis gloria progredietur? quid quod diuersarum gentium mores inter se atque instituta discordant, ut quod apud alios laude apud alios supplicio dignum iudicetur. quo fit ut si quem famae praedicatio delectat, huic in plurimos populos nomen proferre nullo modo conducat. erit igitur peruagata inter suos gloria quisque contentus et intra unius gentis terminos praeclara illa famae inmortalitas coartabitur. sed quam multos clarissimos suis temporibus uiros scriptorum inops deleuit obliuio! quamquam quid ipsa scripta proficiant, quae cum suis auctoribus premit longior atque obscura uetustas? vos uero inmortalitatem uobis propagare uidemini, cum futuri famam temporis cogitatis. quod si aeternitatis infinita spatia pertractes, quid habes quod de nominis tui diuturnitate laeteris? vnius etenim mora momenti, si decem milibus conferatur annis, quoniam utrumque spatium definitum est, minimam, licet, habet tamen aliquam portionem. at hic ipse numerus annorum eiusque quamlibet multiplex ad interminabilem diuturnitatem ne comparari quidem potest. etenim finitis ad se inuicem fuerit quaedam, infiniti uero atque finiti nulla umquam poterit esse collatio. ita fit ut quamlibet prolixi temporis fama, si cum inexhausta aeternitate cogitetur, non parua sed plane nulla esse uideatur. vos autem nisi ad populares auras inanesque rumores recte facere nescitis et relicta conscientiae uirtutisque praestantia de alienis praemia sermunculis postulatis. accipe in huiusmodi arrogantiae leuitate quam festiue aliquis inluserit. nam cum quidam adortus esset hominem contumeliis, qui non ad uerae uirtutis usum sed ad superbam gloriam falsum sibi philosophi nomen induerat, adiecissetque iam se sciturum, an ille philosophus esset, si quidem illatas iniurias leniter patienterque tolerasset, ille patientiam paulisper adsumpsit acceptaque contumelia uelut insultans: 'iam tandem,' inquit, 'intellegis me esse philosophum?' tum ille nimium mordaciter: 'intellexeram,' inquit, 'si tacuisses.' quid autem est quod ad praecipuos uiros, de his enim sermo est, qui uirtute gloriam petunt, quid, inquam, est quod ad hos de fama post resolutum morte suprema corpus attineat? nam si, quod nostrae rationes credi uetant, toti moriuntur homines, nulla est omnino gloria, cum is cuius ea esse dicitur non exstet omnino. sin uero bene sibi mens conscia terreno carcere resoluta caelum libera petit, nonne omne terrenum negotium spernat quae se caelo fruens terrenis gaudet exemptam? vii. then i said: "thou thyself knowest that the ambition of mortal things hath borne as little sway with me as with any, but i desired matter of action, lest old age should come upon me ere i had done anything." to which she answered: "this is the only thing which is able to entice such minds as, being well qualified by nature, are not yet fully brought to full excellence by the perfecting of virtues, i mean desire of glory, and fame of best deserts towards their commonwealth, which how slender it is, and void of all weight, consider this: thou hast learnt by astronomical demonstrations that the compass of the whole earth compared to the scope of heaven is no bigger than a pin's point, which is as much as to say that, if it be conferred with the greatness of the celestial sphere, it hath no bigness at all. and of this so small a region in the world only the fourth part is known to be inhabited by living creatures known to us, as ptolemy[ ] proveth. from which fourth part, if thou takest away in imagination the seas, the marsh grounds, and all other desert places, there will scarcely be left any room at all for men to inhabit. wherefore, enclosed and shut up in this smallest point of that other point, do you think of extending your fame and enlarging your name? but what great or heroical matter can that glory have, which is pent up in so small and narrow bounds? besides that the little compass of this small habitation is inhabited by many nations, different in language, fashions, and conversation, to which by reason of the difficulties in travelling, the diversity of speech, and the scarcity of traffic, not only the fame of particular men but even of cities can hardly come. finally, in the age of marcus tullius, as he himself writeth,[ ] the fame of the roman commonwealth had not passed the mountain caucasus, and yet it was then in the most flourishing estate, fearful even to the parthians and to the rest of the nations about. seest thou therefore how strait and narrow that glory is which you labour to enlarge and increase? where the fame of the roman name could not pass, can the glory of a roman man penetrate? moreover, the customs and laws of diverse nations do so much differ the one from the other, that the same thing which some commend as laudable, others condemn as deserving punishment. so that if a man be delighted with the praise of fame, it is no way convenient for him to be named in many countries. wherefore, every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home, and that noble immortality of fame must be comprehended within the compass of one nation. now, how many, most famous while they lived, are altogether forgotten for want of writers! though what do writings themselves avail which perish, as well as their authors, by continuance and obscurity of time? but you imagine that you make yourselves immortal when you cast your eyes upon future fame. whereas, if thou weighest attentively the infinite spaces of eternity, what cause hast thou to rejoice at the prolonging of thy name? for if we compare the stay of one moment with ten thousand years, since both be limited, they have some proportion, though it be but very small. but this number of years, how oft so ever it be multiplied, is no way comparable to endless eternity. for limited things may in some sort be compared among themselves, but that which is infinite admitteth no comparison at all with the limited. so that the fame of never so long time, if it be compared with everlasting eternity, seemeth not little but none at all. but without popular blasts and vain rumours you know not how to do well, and, rejecting the excellency of a good conscience and of virtue, you choose to be rewarded with others' tattling. hear how pleasantly one jested at this vain and contemptible arrogancy. for having assaulted with reproachful speeches a certain fellow who had falsely taken upon him the name of a philosopher, not for the use of virtue but for vainglory, and having added that now he would know whether he were a philosopher or no by his gentle and patient bearing of injuries, the other took all patiently for a while, and having borne his contumely, as it were, triumphing, said: 'dost thou now at length think me a philosopher?' to which he bitingly replied: 'i would have thought thee one if thou hadst holden thy peace.' but what have excellent men (for of these i speak) who seek for glory by virtue, what have we, i say, to expect for these by fame after final death hath dissolved the body? for if, contrary to our belief, men wholly perish, there is no glory at all, since he to whom it is said to belong is nowhere extant. but if a guiltless mind freed from earthly imprisonment goeth forthwith to heaven, will she not despise all earthly traffic who, enjoying heaven, rejoiceth to see herself exempted from earthly affairs? [ ] claudius ptolemaeus, mathematician, astronomer, geographer, fl. a.d. - . [ ] cf. _somn. scip._ . ap. macr. _comment._ ii. . vii. quicumque solam mente praecipiti petit summumque credit gloriam, late patentes aetheris cernat plagas artumque terrarum situm. breuem replere non ualentis ambitum pudebit aucti nominis. quid o superbi colla mortali iugo frustra leuare gestiunt? licet remotos fama per populos means diffusa linguas explicet et magna titulis fulgeat claris domus, mors spernit altam gloriam, inuoluit humile pariter et celsum caput aequatque summis infima. vbi nunc fidelis ossa fabricii manent, quid brutus aut rigidus cato? signat superstes fama tenuis pauculis inane nomen litteris. sed quod decora nouimus uocabula, num scire consumptos datur? iacetis ergo prorsus ignorabiles nec fama notos efficit. quod si putatis longius uitam trahi mortalis aura nominis, cum sera uobis rapiet hoc etiam dies, iam uos secunda mors manet. vii. he that to honour only seeks to mount and that his chiefest end doth count, let him behold the largeness of the skies and on the strait earth cast his eyes; he will despise the glory of his name, which cannot fill so small a frame. why do proud men scorn that their necks should bear that yoke which every man must wear? though fame through many nations fly along and should be blazed by every tongue, and houses shine with our forefathers' stories, yet death contemns these stately glories, and, summoning both rich and poor to die, makes the low equal with the high. who knows where faithful fabrice' bones are pressed, where brutus and strict cato rest?[ ] a slender fame consigns their titles vain in some few letters to remain. because their famous names in books we read, come we by them to know the dead? you dying, then, remembered are by none, nor any fame can make you known. but if you think that life outstrippeth death, your names borne up with mortal breath, when length of time takes this away likewise, a second death shall you surprise. [ ] caius luscinus fabricius, consul b.c., opponent of pyrrhus; lucius iunius brutus, consul b.c., founder of the republic; marcus porcius cato (cato maior). consul b.c., great-grandfather of m. porcius cato (uticensis). viii. sed ne me inexorabile contra fortunam gerere bellum putes, est aliquando cum de hominibus illa, fallax illa nihil, bene mereatur, tum scilicet cum se aperit, cum frontem detegit moresque profitetur. nondum forte quid loquar intellegis. mirum est quod dicere gestio, eoque sententiam uerbis explicare uix queo. etenim plus hominibus reor aduersam quam prosperam prodesse fortunam. illa enim semper specie felicitatis cum uidetur blanda, mentitur; haec semper uera est, cum se instabilem mutatione demonstrat. illa fallit, haec instruit, illa mendacium specie bonorum mentes fruentium ligat, haec cognitione fragilis felicitatis absoluit. itaque illam uideas uentosam, fluentem suique semper ignaram, hanc sobriam succinctamque et ipsius aduersitatis exercitatione prudentem. postremo felix a uero bono deuios blanditiis trahit, aduersa plerumque ad uera bona reduces unco retrahit. an hoc inter minima aestimandum putas quod amicorum tibi fidelium mentes haec aspera, haec horribilis fortuna detexit, haec tibi certos sodalium uultus ambiguosque secreuit, discedens suos abstulit, tuos reliquit? quanti hoc integer, ut uidebaris tibi fortunatus, emisses! nunc et amissas opes querere; quod pretiosissimum diuitiarum genus est amicos inuenisti. viii. but lest thou shouldst think that i am at implacable war with fortune, there is a time when this thy goddess ceasing to deceive deserveth of men, to wit, when she declareth herself, when she discovereth her face and showeth herself in her own colours. perhaps thou understandest not yet what i say. i would utter a wonderful thing, insomuch as i can scarcely explicate my mind in words. for i think that fortune, when she is opposite, is more profitable to men than when she is favourable. for in prosperity, by a show of happiness and seeming to caress, she is ever false, but in adversity when she showeth herself inconstant by changing, she is ever true. in that she deceiveth, in this she instructeth; in that she imprisoneth the minds of men with falsely seeming goods, which they enjoy, in this she setteth them at liberty by discovering the uncertainty of them. wherefore, in that thou shalt alway see her puffed up, and wavering, and blinded with a self-conceit of herself, in this thou shalt find her sober, settled, and, with the very exercise of adversity, wise. finally, prosperity with her flatterings withdraweth men from true goodness, adversity recalleth and reclaimeth them many times by force[ ] to true happiness. dost thou esteem it a small benefit that this rough and harsh fortune hath made known unto thee the minds of thy faithful friends? she hath severed thy assured from thy doubtful friends; prosperity at her departure took away with her those which were hers, and left thee thine. how dearly wouldst thou have bought this before thy fall, and when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate! now thou dost even lament thy lost riches; thou hast found friends, the most precious treasure in the world. [ ] literally, "pulleth them back with a hook." viii. quod mundus stabili fide concordes uariat uices, quod pugnantia semina foedus perpetuum tenent, quod phoebus roseum diem curru prouehit aureo, vt quas duxerit hesperos phoebe noctibus imperet, vt fluctus auidum mare certo fine coerceat, ne terris liceat uagis latos tendere terminos, hanc rerum seriem ligat terras ac pelagus regens et caelo imperitans amor. hic si frena remiserit, quidquid nunc amat inuicem bellum continuo geret et quam nunc socia fide pulchris motibus incitant*, certent soluere machinam. hic sancto populos quoque iunctos foedere continet, hic et coniugii sacrum castis nectit amoribus, hic fidis etiam sua dictat iura sodalibus. o felix hominum genus, si uestros animos amor quo caelum regitur regat." viii. that this fair world in settled course her several forms should vary, that a perpetual law should tame the fighting seeds of things, that phoebus should the rosy day in his bright chariot carry, that phoebe should govern the nights which hesperus forth brings, that to the floods of greedy seas are certain bounds assigned, which them, lest they usurp too much upon the earth, debar, love ruling heaven, and earth, and seas, them in this course doth bind. and if it once let loose their reins, their friendship turns to war, tearing the world whose ordered form their quiet motions bear. by it all holy laws are made and marriage rites are tied, by it is faithful friendship joined. how happy mortals were, if that pure love did guide their minds, which heavenly spheres doth guide!" anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii philosophiae consolationis liber secvndvs explicit incipit liber iii. i. iam cantum illa finiuerat, cum me audiendi auidum stupentemque arrectis adhuc auribus carminis mulcedo defixerat. itaque paulo post: "o," inquam, "summum lassorum solamen animorum quam tu me uel sententiarum pondere uel canendi etiam iucunditate refouisti! adeo ut iam me post haec inparem fortunae ictibus esse non arbitrer. itaque remedia quae paulo acriora esse dicebas, non modo non perhorresco, sed audiendi auidus uehementer efflagito." tum illa "sensi," inquit, "cum uerba nostra tacitus attentusque rapiebas, eumque tuae mentis habitum uel exspectaui uel, quod est uerius, ipsa perfeci. talia sunt quippe quae restant, ut degustata quidem mordeant, interius autem recepta dulcescant. sed quod tu te audiendi cupidum dicis, quanto ardore flagrares, si quonam te ducere aggrediamur agnosceres!" "quonam?" inquam. "ad ueram," inquit, "felicitatem, quam tuus quoque somniat animus, sed occupato ad imagines uisu ipsam illam non potest intueri." tum ego: "fac obsecro et quae illa uera sit, sine cunctatione demonstra." "faciam," inquit illa, "tui causa libenter. sed quae tibi causa notior est, eam prius designare uerbis atque informare conabor ut ea perspecta cum in contrariam partem flexeris oculos, uerae beatitudinis speciem possis agnoscere. the third book of boethius i. though she had ended her verse, yet the sweetness of it made me remain astonished, attentive, and desirous to hear her longer. wherefore, after a while, i said: "o most effectual refreshment of wearied minds, how have i been comforted with thy weighty sentences and pleasing music! insomuch that i begin to think myself not unable to encounter the assaults of fortune. wherefore, i am not now afraid, but rather earnestly desire to know those remedies, which before thou toldest me were too sharp." to which she answered: "i perceived as much as thou sayest, when i saw thee hearken to my speeches with so great silence and attention, and i expected this disposition of thy mind, or rather more truly caused it myself. for the remedies which remain are of that sort that they are bitter to the taste, but being inwardly received wax sweet. and whereas thou sayest that thou art desirous to hear; how much would this desire increase if thou knewest whither we go about to bring thee!" "whither?" quoth i. "to true felicity," quoth she, "which thy mind also dreameth of, but thy sight is so dimmed with phantasies that thou canst not behold it as it is." then i beseeched her to explicate without delay wherein true happiness consisteth. to which she answered: "i will willingly do so for thy sake, but first i will endeavour to declare in words and to give shape to that which is better known unto thee, that, having thoroughly understood it, by reflecting of the contrary thou mayest discover the type of perfect blessedness. i. qui serere ingenuum uolet agrum, liberat arua prius fruticibus, falce rubos filicemque resecat, vt noua fruge grauis ceres eat. dulcior est apium mage labor, si malus ora prius sapor edat. gratius astra nitent ubi notus desinit imbriferos dare sonos. lucifer ut tenebras pepulerit pulchra dies roseos agit equos. tu quoque falsa tuens bona prius incipe colla iugo retrahere. vera dehinc animum subierint." i. he that a fruitful field will sow, doth first the ground from bushes free, all fern and briars likewise mow, that he his harvest great may see. honey seems sweeter to our taste, if cloyed with noisome food it be. stars clearer shine when notus' blast hath ceased the rainy storms to breed. when lucifer hath night defaced, the day's bright horses then succeed. so thou, whom seeming goods do feed, first shake off yokes which so thee press that truth may then thy mind possess." ii. tum defixo paululum uisu et uelut in augustam suae mentis sedem recepta sic coepit: "omnis mortalium cura quam multiplicium studiorum labor exercet, diuerso quidem calle procedit, sed ad unum tamen beatitudinis finem nititur peruenire. id autem est bonum quo quis adepto nihil ulterius desiderare queat. quod quidem est omnium summum bonorum cunctaque intra se bona continens, cui si quid aforet summum esse non posset, quoniam relinqueretur extrinsecus quod posset optari. liquet igitur esse beatitudinem statum bonorum omnium congregatione perfectum. hunc, uti diximus, diuerso tramite mortales omnes conantur adipisci. est enim mentibus hominum ueri boni naturaliter inserta cupiditas, sed ad falsa deuius error abducit. quorum quidem alii summum bonum esse nihilo indigere credentes ut diuitiis affluant elaborant; alii uero bonum quod sit dignissimum ueneratione iudicantes adeptis honoribus reuerendi ciuibus suis esse nituntur. sunt qui summum bonum in summa potentia esse constituant; hi uel regnare ipsi uolunt uel regnantibus adhaerere conantur. at quibus optimum quiddam claritas uidetur, hi uel belli uel pacis artibus gloriosum nomen propagare festinant. plurimi uero boni fructum gaudio laetitiaque metiuntur; hi felicissimum putant uoluptate diffluere. sunt etiam qui horum fines causasque alterutro permutent, ut qui diuitias ob potentiam uoluptatesque desiderant uel qui potentiam seu pecuniae causa seu proferendi nominis appetunt. in his igitur ceterisque talibus humanorum actuum uotorumque uersatur intentio, ueluti nobilitas fauorque popularis quae uidentur quandam claritudinem comparare, uxor ac liberi quae iucunditatis gratia petuntur; amicorum uero quod sanctissimum quidem genus est, non in fortuna sed in uirtute numeratur, reliquum uero uel potentiae causa uel delectationis assumitur. iam uero corporis bona promptum est ut ad superiora referantur. robur enim magnitudoque uidetur praestare ualentiam, pulchritudo atque uelocitas celebritatem, salubritas uoluptatem; quibus omnibus solam beatitudinem desiderari liquet. nam quod quisque prae ceteris petit, id summum esse iudicat bonum. sed summum bonum beatitudinem esse definiuimus; quare beatum esse iudicat statum quem prae ceteris quisque desiderat. habes igitur ante oculos propositam fere formam felicitatis humanae--opes, honores, potentiam, gloriam, uoluptates. quae quidem sola considerans epicurus consequenter sibi summum bonum uoluptatem esse constituit, quod cetera omnia iucunditatem animo uideantur afferre. sed ad hominum studia reuertor, quorum animus etsi caligante memoria tamen bonum suum repetit, sed uelut ebrius domum quo tramite reuertatur ignorat. num enim uidentur errare hi qui nihilo indigere nituntur? atqui non est aliud quod aeque perficere beatitudinem possit quam copiosus bonorum omnium status nec alieni egens sed sibi ipse sufficiens. num uero labuntur hi qui quod sit optimum, id etiam reuerentiae cultu dignissimum putent? minime. neque enim uile quiddam contemnendumque est quod adipisci omnium fere mortalium laborat intentio. an in bonis non est numeranda potentia? quid igitur? num imbecillum ac sine uiribus aestimandum est, quod omnibus rebus constat esse praestantius? an claritudo nihili pendenda est? sed sequestrari nequit quin omne quod excellentissimum sit id etiam uideatur esse clarissimum. nam non esse anxiam tristemque beatitudinem nec doloribus molestiisque subiectam quid attinet dicere, quando in minimis quoque rebus id appetitur quod habere fruique delectet? atqui haec sunt quae adipisci homines uolunt eaque de causa diuitias, dignitates, regna, gloriam uoluptatesque desiderant quod per haec sibi sufficientiam, reuerentiam, potentiam, celebritatem, laetitiam credunt esse uenturam. bonum est igitur quod tam diuersis studiis homines petunt; in quo quanta sit naturae uis facile monstratur, cum licet uariae dissidentesque sententiae tamen in diligendo boni fine consentiunt. ii. then, for a while looking steadfastly upon the ground, and, as it were, retiring herself to the most secret seat of her soul, she began in this manner: "all men's thoughts, which are turmoiled with manifold cares, take indeed divers courses, but yet endeavour to attain the same end of happiness, which is that good which, being once obtained, nothing can be further desired. which is the chiefest of all goods, and containeth in itself whatsoever is good, and if it wanted anything it could not be the chiefest, because there would something remain besides it which might be wished for. wherefore, it is manifest that blessedness is an estate replenished with all that is good. this, as we said, all men endeavour to obtain by divers ways. for there is naturally ingrafted in men's minds an earnest desire of that which is truly good; but deceitful error withdraweth it to that which falsely seemeth such. so that some, esteeming it their greatest good to want nothing, labour by all means to abound with riches; others, deeming that to be good which is most deserving of honour, hunt after preferments, to be respected by their fellow-citizens. others think it the greatest felicity to have great power and authority, and these will either reign themselves or at least procure to be great with princes. but they who think fame better than all these, make all speed possible to spread their names far and near, by achieving some worthy enterprise either in war or peace. many measure good by joy and mirth, and their chiefest care is how they may abound with pleasure. some interchange the ends and means of these things one with the other, wanting now riches for the sake of power and pleasure, now power for the sake of wealth and fame. at these and such other do men's actions and desires aim, as nobility and popularity, which make men esteemed; wife and children, which bring pleasure and delight. but friendship, that most sacred thing, is rather to be attributed to virtue than to fortune. other things for the most part are desired either for power or pleasure. and it is an easy matter to reduce all corporal goods to the former heads. for strength and greatness give ability; beauty and swiftness, fame; and health yieldeth pleasure. by all which we manifestly seek for nothing else but happiness. for that which every man seeketh most after, is by him esteemed his greatest good. which is all one with happiness. wherefore he esteemeth that estate happy which he preferreth before all other. and thus thou hast in a manner seen the form of human felicity--riches, honour, power, glory, pleasure. which epicurus only considering, consequently took pleasure for his chiefest good, because all the rest seemed to delight the mind. but i return to the careful thoughts of men, whose minds, though obscured, yet seek after the greatest good, but like a drunken man know not the way home. for seem they to err who endeavour to want nothing? but nothing can cause happiness so much as the plentiful possession of all that is good, needing the help of none, but is sufficient of itself. or do they err who take that which is best to be likewise most worthy of respect? no. for it is no vile or contemptible thing which almost all men labour to obtain. or is not power to be esteemed good? why, then, is that to be accounted feeble and of no force, which manifestly surpasses all other things? or is fame to be contemned? but it cannot be ignored that the most excellent is also most famous. for to what purpose should i say that happiness is not sad or melancholy, or subject to grief and trouble, when even in smallest matters we desire that which we delight to have and enjoy? and these be the things which men desire to obtain, and to this end procure riches, dignities, kingdoms, glory, and pleasures, because by them they think to have sufficiency, respect, power, fame, delight, and joy. wherefore, that is good which men seek after by divers desires, in which the force of nature is easily descried, since though there be many and different opinions, yet they agree in choosing for their end that which is good. ii. quantas rerum flectat habenas natura potens, quibus inmensum legibus orbem prouida seruet stringatque ligans inresoluto singula nexu, placet arguto fidibus lentis promere cantu. quamuis poeni pulchra leones vincula gestent manibusque datas captent escas metuantque trucem soliti uerbera ferre magistrum, si cruor horrida tinxerit ora, resides olim redeunt animi fremituque graui meminere sui; laxant nodis colla solutis primusque lacer dente cruento domitor rabidas imbuit iras. quae canit altis garrula ramis ales caueae clauditur antro; huic licet inlita pocula melle largasque dapes dulci studio ludens hominum cura ministret, si tamen arto saliens texto nemorum gratas uiderit umbras, sparsas pedibus proterit escas, siluas tantum maesta requirit, siluas dulci uoce susurrat. validis quondam uiribus acta pronum flectit uirga cacumen; hanc si curuans dextra remisit, recto spectat uertice caelum. cadit hesperias phoebus in undas, sed secreto tramite rursus currum solitos uertit ad ortus. repetunt proprios quaeque recursus redituque suo singula gaudent nec manet ulli traditus ordo nisi quod fini iunxerit ortum stabilemque sui fecerit orbem. ii. how the first reins of all things guided are by powerful nature as the chiefest cause, and how she keeps, with a foreseeing care, the spacious world in order by her laws, and to sure knots which nothing can untie, by her strong hand all earthly motions draws-- to show all this we purpose now to try our pliant string, our musick's thrilling sound. although the libyan lions often lie gentle and tame in splendid fetters bound,[ ] and fearing their incensed master's wrath, with patient looks endure each blow and wound, yet if their jaws they once in blood do bathe, they, gaining courage,[ ] with fierce noise awake the force which nature in them seated hath, and from their necks the broken chains do shake; then he that tamed them first doth feel their rage, and torn in pieces doth their fury slake. the bird shut up in an unpleasing cage, which on the lofty trees did lately sing, though men, her want of freedom to assuage, should unto her with careful labour bring the sweetest meats which they can best devise, yet when within her prison fluttering the pleasing shadows of the groves she spies, her hated food she scatters with her feet, in yearning spirit to the woods she flies, the woods' delights do tune her accents sweet. when some strong hand doth tender plant constrain with his debased top the ground to meet, if it let go, the crooked twig again up toward heaven itself it straight doth raise. phoebus doth fall into the western main, yet doth he back return by secret ways, and to the earth doth guide his chariot's race. each thing a certain course and laws obeys, striving to turn back to his proper place; nor any settled order can be found, but that which doth within itself embrace the births and ends of all things in a round. [ ] literally, "and take food offered by the hand." [ ] literally, "their spirits, hitherto sluggish, return." iii. vos quoque, o terrena animalia, tenui licet imagine uestrum tamen principium somniatis uerumque illum beatitudinis finem licet minime perspicaci qualicumque tamen cogitatione prospicitis eoque uos et ad uerum bonum naturalis ducit intentio et ab eodem multiplex error abducit. considera namque an per ea quibus se homines adepturos beatitudinem putant ad destinatum finem ualeant peruenire. si enim uel pecuniae uel honores ceteraque tale quid afferunt cui nihil bonorum abesse uideatur, nos quoque fateamur fieri aliquos horum adeptione felices. quod si neque id ualent efficere quod promittunt bonisque pluribus carent, nonne liquido falsa in eis beatitudinis species deprehenditur? primum igitur te ipsum qui paulo ante diuitiis affluebas, interrogo: inter illas abundantissimas opes numquamne animum tuum concepta ex qualibet iniuria confudit anxietas?" "atqui," inquam, "libero me fuisse animo quin aliquid semper angerer reminisci non queo." "nonne quia uel aberat quod abesse non uelles uel aderat quod adesse noluisses?" "ita est," inquam. "illius igitur praesentiam huius absentiam desiderabas?" "confiteor," inquam. "eget uero," inquit, "eo quod quisque desiderat?" "eget," inquam. "qui uero eget aliquo, non est usquequaque sibi ipse sufficiens?" "minime," inquam. "tu itaque hanc insufficientiam plenus," inquit, "opibus sustinebas?" "quidni?" inquam. "opes igitur nihilo indigentem sufficientemque sibi facere nequeunt et hoc erat quod promittere uidebantur. atqui hoc quoque maxime considerandum puto quod nihil habeat suapte natura pecunia ut his a quibus possidetur inuitis nequeat auferri." "fateor," inquam. "quidni fateare, cum eam cotidie ualentior aliquis eripiat inuito? vnde enim forenses querimoniae nisi quod uel ui uel fraude nolentibus pecuniae repetuntur ereptae?" "ita est," inquam. "egebit igitur," inquit, "extrinsecus petito praesidio quo suam pecuniam quisque tueatur?" "quis id," inquam, "neget?" "atqui non egeret eo, nisi possideret pecuniam quam posset amittere?" "dubitari," inquam, "nequit." "in contrarium igitur relapsa res est; nam quae sufficientes sibi facere putabantur opes, alieno potius praesidio faciunt indigentes. quis autem modus est quo pellatur diuitiis indigentia? num enim diuites esurire nequeunt? num sitire non possunt? num frigus hibernum pecuniosorum membra non sentiunt? sed adest, inquies, opulentis quo famem satient, quo sitim frigusque depellant. sed hoc modo consolari quidem diuitiis indigentia potest, auferri penitus non potest. nam si haec hians semper atque aliquid poscens opibus expletur, maneat necesse est quae possit expleri. taceo quod naturae minimum, quod auaritiae nihil satis est. quare si opes nec submouere possunt indigentiam et ipsae suam faciunt, quid est quod eas sufficientiam praestare credatis? iii. you also, o earthly creatures, though slightly and as it were in a dream acknowledge your beginning, and though not perspicuously yet in some sort behold that true end of happiness, so that the intention of nature leadeth you to the true good, and manifold error withdraweth you from it. for consider whether those things, by which men think to obtain happiness, can bring them to their desired end. for if either money, or honour, or any of the rest be of that quality that they want nothing which is good, we will also confess that they are able to make men happy. but if they neither be able to perform that they promise, and want many things which are good, are they not manifestly discovered to have a false appearance of happiness? first then, i ask thee thyself, who not long since didst abound with wealth; in that plenty of riches, was thy mind never troubled with any injuries?" "i cannot remember," quoth i, "that ever my mind was so free from trouble but that something or other still vexed me." "was it not because thou either wantedst something which thou wouldst have had, or else hadst something which thou wouldst have wanted?" "it is true," quoth i. "then thou desiredst the presence of that, and the absence of this?" "i confess i did," quoth i. "and doth not a man want that," quoth she, "which he desireth?" "he doth," quoth i. "but he that wanteth anything is not altogether sufficient of himself?" "he is not," quoth i. "so that thou feltest this insufficiency, even the height of thy wealth?" "why not?" quoth i. "then riches cannot make a man wanting nothing nor sufficient of himself, and this was that they seemed to promise. but this is most of all to be considered, that money hath nothing of itself which can keep it from being taken from them which possess it, against their will." "i grant it," quoth i. "why shouldst thou not grant it, since that every day those which are more potent take it from others perforce? for from whence proceed so many complaints in law, but that money gotten either by violence or deceit is sought to be recovered by that means?" "it is so indeed," quoth i. "so that every man needeth some other help to defend his money?" "who denies that?" quoth i. "but he should not need that help, unless he had money which he might lose?" "there is no doubt of that," quoth i. "now then the matter is fallen out quite contrary; for riches, which are thought to suffice of themselves, rather make men stand in need of other helps. and after what manner do riches expel penury? for are not rich men hungry? are they not thirsty? or doth much money make the owners senseless of cold in winter? but thou wilt say, wealthy men have wherewithal to satisfy their hunger, slake their thirst, and defend themselves from cold. but in this sort, though want may be somewhat relieved by wealth, yet it cannot altogether be taken away. for if ever gaping and craving it be satiated by riches, there must needs always remain something to be satiated. i omit, that to nature very little, to covetousness nothing is sufficient. wherefore if riches can neither remove wants, and cause some themselves, why imagine you that they can cause sufficiency? iii. quamuis fluente diues auri gurgite non expleturas cogat auarus opes oneretque bacis colla rubri litoris ruraque centeno scindat opima boue, nec cura mordax deseret superstitem, defunctumque leues non comitantur opes. iii. although the rich man from his mines of gold dig treasure which his mind can never fill, and lofty neck with precious pearls enfold, and his fat fields with many oxen till, yet biting cares will never leave his head, nor will his wealth attend him being dead. iv. sed dignitates honorabilem reuerendumque cui prouenerint reddunt. num uis ea est magistratibus ut utentium mentibus uirtutes inserant uitia depellant? atqui non fugare sed illustrare potius nequitiam solent; quo fit ut indignemur eas saepe nequissimis hominibus contigisse, unde catullus licet in curuli nonium sedentem strumam tamen appellat. videsne quantum malis dedecus adiciant dignitates? atqui minus eorum patebit indignitas, si nullis honoribus inclarescant. tu quoque num tandem tot periculis adduci potuisti ut cum decorato gerere magistratum putares, cum in eo mentem nequissimi scurrae delatorisque respiceres? non enim possumus ob honores reuerentia dignos iudicare quos ipsis honoribus iudicamus indignos. at si quem sapientia praeditum uideres, num posses eum uel reuerentia uel ea qua est praeditus sapientia non dignum putare? minime. inest enim dignitas propria uirtuti, quam protinus in eos quibus fuerit adiuncta transfundit. quod quia populares facere nequeunt honores, liquet eos propriam dignitatis pulchritudinem non habere. in quo illud est animaduertendum magis. nam si eo abiectior est quo magis a pluribus quisque contemnitur, cum reuerendos facere nequeat quos pluribus ostentat, despectiores potius improbos dignitas facit. verum non impune; reddunt namque improbi parem dignitatibus uicem quas sua contagione commaculant. atque ut agnoscas ueram illam reuerentiam per has umbratiles dignitates non posse contingere; si qui multiplici consulatu functus in barbaras nationes forte deuenerit, uenerandumne barbaris honor faciet? atqui si hoc naturale munus dignitatibus foret, ab officio suo quoquo gentium nullo modo cessarent, sicut ignis ubique terrarum numquam tamen calere desistit, sed quoniam id eis non propria uis sed hominum fallax adnectit opinio, uanescunt ilico, cum ad eos uenerint qui dignitates eas esse non aestimant. sed hoc apud exteras nationes. inter eos uero apud quos ortae sunt, num perpetuo perdurant? atqui praetura magna olim potestas nunc inane nomen et senatorii census grauis sarcina; si quis populi quondam curasset annonam, magnus habebatur, nunc ea praefectura quid abiectius? vt enim paulo ante diximus, quod nihil habet proprii decoris, opinione utentium nunc splendorem accipit nunc amittit. si igitur reuerendos facere nequeunt dignitates, si ultro improborum contagione sordescunt, si mutatione temporum splendere desinunt, si gentium aestimatione uilescunt, quid est quod in se expetendae pulchritudinis habeant, nedum aliis praestent? iv. but dignities make him honourable and reverend on whom they light. have offices that force to plant virtues and expel vices in the minds of those who have them? but they are not wont to banish, but rather to make wickedness splendid. so that we many times complain because most wicked men obtain them. whereupon catullus called nonius a scab or impostume though he sat in his chair of estate.[ ] seest thou what great ignominy dignities heap upon evil men? for their unworthiness would less appear if they were never advanced to any honours. could so many dangers ever make thee think to bear office with decoratus,[ ] having discovered him to be a very varlet and spy? for we cannot for their honours account them worthy of respect whom we judge unworthy of the honours themselves. but if thou seest any man endued with wisdom, canst thou esteem him unworthy of that respect or wisdom which he hath? no, truly. for virtue hath a proper dignity of her own, which she presently endueth her possessors withal. which since popular preferments cannot do, it is manifest that they have not the beauty which is proper to true dignity. in which we are farther to consider that, if to be contemned of many make men abject, dignities make the wicked to be despised the more by laying them open to the view of the world. but the dignities go not scot-free, for wicked men do as much for them, defiling them with their own infection. and that thou mayst plainly see that true respect cannot be gotten by these painted dignities, let one that hath been often consul go among barbarous nations; will that honour make those barbarous people respect him? and yet, if this were natural to dignities, they would never forsake their function in any nation whatsoever; as fire, wheresoever it be, always remaineth hot. but because not their own nature, but the deceitful opinion of men attributeth that to them, they forthwith come to nothing, being brought to them who esteem them not to be dignities. and this for foreign nations. but do they always last among them where they had their beginning? the praetorship, a great dignity in time past, is now an idle name, and an heavy burden of the senate's fortune. if heretofore one had care of the people's provision, he was accounted a great man; now what is more abject than that office? for as we said before, that which hath no proper dignity belonging unto it sometime receiveth and sometime loseth his value at the users' discretion. wherefore if dignities cannot make us respected, if they be easily defiled with the infection of the wicked, if their worth decays by change of times, if diversities of nations make them contemptible, what beauty have they in themselves, or can they afford to others, worth the desiring? [ ] cf. catull. lii. [ ] decoratus was quaestor _circa_ ; cf. cassiod. _ep_. v. and . iv. quamuis se tyrio superbus ostro comeret et niueis lapillis, inuisus tamen omnibus uigebat luxuriae nero saeuientis. sed quondam dabat improbus uerendis patribus indecores curules. quis illos igitur putet beatos quos miseri tribuunt honores? iv. though fierce and lustful nero did adorn himself with purple robes, which pearls did grace, he did but gain a general hate and scorn. yet wickedly he officers most base over the reverend senators did place. who would esteem of fading honours then which may be given thus by the wickedest men? v. an uero regna regumque familiaritas efficere potentem ualet? quidni, quando eorum felicitas perpetuo perdurat? atqui plena est exemplorum uetustas, plena etiam praesens aetas, qui reges felicitatem calamitate mutauerint. o praeclara potentia quae ne ad conseruationem quidem sui satis efficax inuenitur! quod si haec regnorum potestas beatitudinis auctor est, nonne si qua parte defuerit, felicitatem minuat, miseriam inportet? sed quamuis late humana tendantur imperia, plures necesse est gentes relinqui quibus regum quisque non imperet. qua uero parte beatos faciens desinit potestas, hac inpotentia subintrat quae miseros facit; hoc igitur modo maiorem regibus inesse necesse est miseriae portionem. expertus sortis suae periculorum tyrannus regni metus pendentis supra uerticem gladii terrore simulauit. quae est igitur haec potestas quae sollicitudinum morsus expellere, quae formidinum aculeos uitare nequit? atqui uellent ipsi uixisse securi, sed nequeunt; dehinc de potestate gloriantur. an tu potentem censes quem uideas uelle quod non possit efficere? potentem censes qui satellite latus ambit, qui quos terret ipse plus metuit, qui ut potens esse uideatur, in seruientium manu situm est? nam quid ego de regum familiaribus disseram, cum regna ipsa tantae inbecillitatis plena demonstrem? quos quidem regia potestas saepe incolumis saepe autem lapsa prosternit. nero senecam familiarem praeceptoremque suum ad eligendae mortis coegit arbitrium. papinianum diu inter aulicos potentem militum gladiis antoninus obiecit. atqui uterque potentiae suae renuntiare uoluerunt, quorum seneca opes etiam suas tradere neroni seque in otium conferre conatus est; sed dum ruituros moles ipsa trahit, neuter quod uoluit effecit. quae est igitur ista potentia quam pertimescunt habentes, quam nec cum habere uelis tutus sis et cum deponere cupias uitare non possis? an praesidio sunt amici quos non uirtus sed fortuna conciliat? sed quem felicitas amicum fecit, infortunium faciet inimicum. quae uero pestis efficacior ad nocendum quam familiaris inimicus? v. but can kingdoms and the familiarity of kings make a man mighty? why not, when their felicity lasteth always? but both former and present times are full of examples that many kings have changed their happiness with misery. o excellent power, which is not sufficient to uphold itself! and if this strength of kingdoms be the author of blessedness, doth it not diminish happiness and bring misery, when it is in any way defective? but though some empires extend themselves far, there will still remain many nations out of their dominions. now, where the power endeth which maketh them happy, there entereth the contrary which maketh them miserable, so that all kings must needs have less happiness than misery. that tyrant, knowing by experience the dangers of his estate, signified the fears incident to a kingdom, by the hanging of a drawn sword over a man's head.[ ] what power is this, then, which cannot expel nor avoid biting cares and pricking fears? they would willingly have lived securely, but could not, and yet they brag of their power. thinkest thou him mighty whom thou seest desire that which he cannot do? thinkest thou him mighty who dareth not go without his guard; who feareth others more than they fear him; who cannot seem mighty, except his servants please? for what should i speak of kings' followers, since i show that kingdoms themselves are so full of weakness? whom the power of kings often standing, but many times falling, doth overthrow. nero compelled seneca, his familiar friend and master, to make choice of his own death.[ ] antoninus called papinianus, who had been long a gallant courtier, to be cut in pieces with his soldiers' swords.[ ] yet they would both have renounced their power, yea seneca endeavoured to deliver up his riches also to nero, and to give himself to a contemplative life. but their very greatness drawing them to their destruction, neither of them could compass that which they desired. wherefore what power is this that the possessors fear, which when thou wilt have, thou art not secure, and when thou wilt leave, thou canst not avoid? are we the better for those friends which love us not for our virtue but for our prosperity? but whom prosperity maketh our friend, adversity will make our enemy. and what plague is able to hurt us more than a familiar enemy? [ ] cic. _tusc. disp._ v. . . [ ] cf. tac. _ann._ xiv. , . [ ] cf. spartian. _caracallus_ . v. qui se uolet esse potentem animos domet ille feroces nec uicta libidine colla foedis submittat habenis. etenim licet indica longe tellus tua iura tremescat et seruiat ultima thyle, tamen atras pellere curas miserasque fugare querelas non posse potentia non est. v. who would be powerful, must his own affections check, nor let foul reins of lust subdue his conquered neck. for though the indian land should tremble at thy beck, and though thy dread command far thule's isle obey, unless thou canst withstand and boldly drive away black care and wretched moan, thy might is small or none. vi. gloria uero quam fallax saepe, quam turpis est! vnde non iniuria tragicus exclamat: [greek: o doxa doxa murioisi dae broton ouden gegosi bioton onkosas megan.] plures enim magnum saepe nomen falsis uulgi opinionibus abstulerunt; quo quid turpius excogitari potest? nam qui falso praedicantur, suis ipsi necesse est laudibus erubescant. quae si etiam meritis conquisita sit, quid tamen sapientis adiecerit conscientiae qui bonum suum non populari rumore, sed conscientiae ueritate metitur? quod si hoc ipsum propagasse nomen pulchrum uidetur, consequens est ut foedum non extendisse iudicetur. sed cum, uti paulo ante disserui, plures gentes esse necesse sit ad quas unius fama hominis nequeat peruenire, fit ut quem tu aestimas esse gloriosum, pro maxima parte terrarum uideatur inglorius. inter haec uero popularem gratiam ne commemoratione quidem dignam puto, quae nec iudicio prouenit nec umquam firma perdurat. iam uero quam sit inane quam futtile nobilitatis nomen, quis non uideat? quae si ad claritudinem refertur, aliena est. videtur namque esse nobilitas quaedam de meritis ueniens laus parentum. quod si claritudinem praedicatio facit, illi sint clari necesse est qui praedicantur. quare splendidum te, si tuam non habes, aliena claritudo non efficit. quod si quid est in nobilitate bonum, id esse arbitror solum, ut inposita nobilibus necessitudo uideatur ne a maiorum uirtute degeneret. vi. as for glory, how deceitful it is oftentimes, and dishonest! for which cause the tragical poet deservedly exclaimeth: "o glory, glory, thou hast raised to honour and dignity myriads of worthless mortals!"[ ] for many have often been much spoken of through the false opinions of the common people. than which what can be imagined more vile? for those who are falsely commended must needs blush at their own praises. which glory though it be gotten by deserts, yet what adds it to a wise man's conscience who measureth his own good, not by popular rumours, but by his own certain knowledge? and if it seemeth a fair thing to have dilated our fame, consequently we must judge it a foul thing not to have it extended. but since, as i showed a little before, there must needs be many nations to which the fame of one man cannot arrive, it cometh to pass that he whom thou esteemeth glorious, in the greater part of the world seemeth to have no glory at all. and here now i think popular glory not worth the speaking of, which neither proceedeth from judgment, nor ever hath any firmness. likewise, who seeth not what a vain and idle thing it is to be called noble? which insofar as it concerneth fame, is not our own. for nobility seemeth to be a certain praise proceeding from our parents' deserts. but if praising causeth fame, they must necessarily be famous who are praised. wherefore the fame of others, if thou hast none of thine own, maketh not thee renowned. but if there be anything good in nobility, i judge it only to be this, that it imposeth a necessity upon those which are noble, not to suffer their nobility to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors. [ ] eurip. _androm._ . vi. omne hominum genus in terris simili surgit ab ortu. vnus enim rerum pater est, unus cuncta ministrat. ille dedit phoebo radios dedit et cornua lunae, ille homines etiam terris dedit ut sidera caelo, hic clausit membris animos celsa sede petitos. mortales igitur cunctos edit nobile germen. quid genus et proauos strepitis? si primordia uestra auctoremque deum spectes, nullus degener exstat, ni uitiis peiora fouens proprium deserat ortum. vi. the general race of men from a like birth is born. all things one father have, who doth them all adorn, who gave the sun his rays, and the pale moon her horn, the lofty heaven for stars, low earth for mortals chose; he souls fetched down from high in bodies did enclose; and thus from noble seed all men did first compose. why brag you of your stock? since none is counted base, if you consider god the author of your race, but he that with foul vice doth his own birth deface. vii. quid autem de corporis uoluptatibus loquar, quarum appetentia quidem plena est anxietatis; satietas uero poenitentiae? quantos illae morbos, quam intolerabiles dolores quasi quendam fructum nequitiae fruentium solent referre corporibus! quarum motus quid habeat iucunditatis, ignoro. tristes uero esse uoluptatum exitus, quisquis reminisci libidinum suarum uolet, intelleget. quae si beatos explicare possunt, nihil causae est quin pecudes quoque beatae esse dicantur quarum omnis ad explendam corporalem lacunam festinat intentio. honestissima quidem coniugis foret liberorumque iucunditas, sed nimis e natura dictum est nescio quem filios inuenisse tortorem; quorum quam sit mordax quaecumque condicio, neque alias expertum te neque nunc anxium necesse est admonere. in quo euripidis mei sententiam probo, qui carentem liberis infortunio dixit esse felicem. vii. now what should i speak of bodily pleasures, the desire of which is full of anxiety, and the enjoying of them breeds repentance? how many diseases, how intolerable griefs bring they forth in the bodies of their possessors, as it were the fruits of their own wickedness! i know not what sweetness their beginnings have, but whosoever will remember his lusts shall understand that the end of pleasure is sadness. which if it be able to cause happiness, there is no reason why beasts should not be thought blessed, whose whole intention is bent to supply their corporal wants. that pleasure which proceedeth from wife and children should be most honest; but it was too naturally spoken, that some tormentor invented children, whose condition, whatsoever it be, how biting it is, i need not tell thee, who hast had experience heretofore, and art not now free from care. in which i approve the opinion of euripides, who said that they which had no children are happy by being unfortunate.[ ] [ ] cf. _androm._ . vii. habet hoc uoluptas omnis, stimulis agit fruentes apiumque par uolantum vbi grata mella fudit, fugit et nimis tenaci ferit icta corda morsu. vii. all pleasure hath this property, she woundeth those who have her most. and, like unto the angry bee who hath her pleasant honey lost, she flies away with nimble wing and in our hearts doth leave her sting. viii. nihil igitur dubium est quin hae ad beatitudinem uiae deuia quaedam sint nec perducere quemquam eo ualeant ad quod se perducturas esse promittunt. quantis uero implicitae malis sint, breuissime monstrabo. quid enim? pecuniamne congregare conaberis? sed eripies habenti. dignitatibus fulgere uelis? danti supplicabis et qui praeire ceteros honore cupis, poscendi humilitate uilesces. potentiamne desideras? subiectorum insidiis obnoxius periculis subiacebis. gloriam petas? sed per aspera quaeque distractus securus esse desistis. voluptariam uitam degas? sed quis non spernat atque abiciat uilissimae fragilissimaeque rei corporis seruum? iam uero qui bona prae se corporis ferunt, quam exigua, quam fragili possessione nituntur! num enim elephantos mole, tauros robore superare poteritis, num tigres uelocitate praeibitis? respicite caeli spatium, firmitudinem, celeritatem et aliquando desinite uilia mirari. quod quidem caelum non his potius est quam sua qua regitur ratione mirandum. formae uero nitor ut rapidus est, ut uelox et uernalium florum mutabilitate fugacior! quod si, ut aristoteles[ ] ait, lynceis oculis homines uterentur, ut eorum uisus obstantia penetraret, nonne introspectis uisceribus illud alcibiadis superficie pulcherrimum corpus turpissimum uideretur? igitur te pulchrum uideri non tua natura sed oculorum spectantium reddit infirmitas. sed aestimate quam uultis nimio corporis bona, dum sciatis hoc quodcumque miramini triduanae febris igniculo posse dissolui! ex quibus omnibus illud redigere in summam licet, quod haec quae nec praestare quae pollicentur bona possunt nec omnium bonorum congregatione perfecta sunt, ea nec ad beatitudinem quasi quidam calles ferunt nec beatos ipsa perficiunt. [ ] probably from the lost _protrepticus_ of aristotle. see bywater, _journal of philology_, ii. ( ), , and hartlich, _leipz. stud._ xi. ( ), . viii. wherefore there is no doubt but that these ways to happiness are only certain by-paths, which can never bring any man thither whither they promise to lead him. and with how great evils they are beset, i will briefly show. for what? wilt thou endeavour to gather money? but thou shalt take it away from him who hath it. wilt thou excel in dignities? thou shalt crouch to the giver, and thou who desirest to surpass others in honour shalt become vile by thy baseness in begging. wishest thou for power? thou shalt be in danger of thy subjects' treacheries. seekest thou for glory? but, drawn into many dangers, thou shalt lose thy safety. wilt thou live a voluptuous life? but who would not despise and neglect the service of so vile and frail a thing as his body? now they who boast of the habilities of their body, upon how unsteadfast a possession do they ground themselves! for can you be bigger than elephants, or stronger than bulls? or swifter than tigers? look upon the space, firmness, and speedy motion of the heavens, and cease at length to have in admiration these base things. which heavens are not more to be admired for these qualities than for the manner of their government. as for the glittering of beauty, how soon and swiftly doth it vanish away! as suddenly decaying and changing as the frail flowers in the spring. and if, as aristotle saith, men had lynceus's eyes, that they could see through stone walls, would not they judge that body of alcibiades, seeming outwardly most fair, to be most foul and ugly by discovering his entrails? wherefore not thy nature but the weakness of the beholders' eyes maketh thee seem fair. but esteem the goods of the body as much as you will, so that you acknowledge this, that whatsoever you admire may be dissolved with the burning of an ague of three days. out of which we may briefly collect this sum; that these goods, which can neither perform that they promise, nor are perfect by having all that is good, do neither, as so many paths, lead men to happiness, nor make men happy of themselves. viii. eheu quae miseros tramite deuios abducit ignorantia! non aurum in uiridi quaeritis arbore nec uite gemmas carpitis, non altis laqueos montibus abditis vt pisce ditetis dapes nec uobis capreas si libeat sequi, tyrrhena captatis uada. ipsos quin etiam fluctibus abditos norunt recessus aequoris, quae gemmis niueis unda feracior vel quae rubentis purpurae nec non quae tenero pisce uel asperis praestent echinis litora. sed quonam lateat quod cupiunt bonum, nescire caeci sustinent, et quod stelliferum trans abiit polum, tellure demersi petunt. quid dignum stolidis mentibus inprecer? opes honores ambiant; et cum falsa graui mole parauerint, tum uera cognoscant bona. viii. alas, how ignorance makes wretches stray out of the way! you from green trees expect no golden mines nor pearls from vines, nor use you on mountains to lay your net fishes to get, nor, if the pleasant sport of hunting please, run you to seas. men will be skilful in the hidden caves of the ocean waves, and in what coasts the orient pearls are bred, or purple red, also, what different sorts of fishes store each several shore. but when they come their chiefest good to find, then are they blind, and search for that under the earth, which lies above the skies. how should i curse these fools? let thirst them hold of fame and gold, that, having got false goods with pain, they learn true to discern. ix. "hactenus mendacis formam felicitatis ostendisse suffecerit, quam si perspicaciter intueris, ordo est deinceps quae sit uera monstrare." "atqui uideo," inquam, "nec opibus sufficientiam nec regnis potentiam nec reuerentiam dignitatibus nec celebritatem gloria nec laetitiam uoluptatibus posse contingere." "an etiam causas, cur id ita sit, deprehendisti?" "tenui quidem ueluti rimula mihi uideor intueri, sed ex te apertius cognoscere malim." "atqui promptissima ratio est. quod enim simplex est indiuisumque natura, id error humanus separat et a uero atque perfecto ad falsum imperfectumque traducit. an tu arbitraris quod nihilo indigeat egere potentia?" "minime," inquam. "recte tu quidem. nam si quid est quod in ulla re inbecillioris ualentiae sit, in hac praesidio necesse est egeat alieno." "ita est," inquam. "igitur sufficientiae potentiaeque una est eademque natura." "sic uidetur." "quod uero huiusmodi sit, spernendumne esse censes an contra rerum omnium ueneratione dignissimum?" "at hoc," inquam, "ne dubitari quidem potest." "addamus igitur sufficientiae potentiaeque reuerentiam, ut haec tria unum esse iudicemus." "addamus, si quidem uera uolumus confiteri." "quid uero," inquit, "obscurumne hoc atque ignobile censes esse an omni celebritate clarissimum? considera uero, ne quod nihilo indigere, quod potentissimum, quod honore dignissimum esse concessum est, egere claritudine quam sibi praestare non possit atque ob id aliqua ex parte uideatur abiectius." "non possum," inquam, "quin hoc uti est ita etiam celeberrimum esse confitear." "consequens igitur est ut claritudinem superioribus tribus nihil differre fateamur." "consequitur," inquam. "quod igitur nullius egeat alieni, quod suis cuncta uiribus possit, quod sit clarum atque reuerendum, nonne hoc etiam constat esse laetissimum?" "sed unde huic," inquam, "tali maeror ullus obrepat ne cogitare quidem possum; quare plenum esse laetitiae, si quidem superiora manebunt, necesse est confiteri." "atqui illud quoque per eadem necessarium est sufficientiae, potentiae, claritudinis, reuerentiae, iucunditatis nomina quidem esse diuersa, nullo modo uero discrepare substantiam." "necesse est," inquam. "hoc igitur quod est unum simplexque natura, prauitas humana dispertit et dum rei quae partibus caret partem conatur adipisci, nec portionem quae nulla est nec ipsam quam minime affectat assequitur." "quonam," inquam, "modo?" "qui diuitias," inquit, "petit penuriae fuga, de potentia nihil laborat, uilis obscurusque esse mauult, multas etiam sibi naturales quoque subtrahit uoluptates, ne pecuniam quam parauit amittat. sed hoc modo ne sufficientia quidem contingit ei quem ualentia deserit, quem molestia pungit, quem uilitas abicit, quem recondit obscuritas. qui uero solum posse desiderat, profligat opes, despicit uoluptates honoremque potentia carentem gloriam quoque nihili pendit. sed hunc quoque quam multa deficiant uides. fit enim ut aliquando necessariis egeat, ut anxietatibus mordeatur cumque haec depellere nequeat, etiam id quod maxime petebat potens esse desistat. similiter ratiocinari de honoribus, gloria, uoluptatibus licet. nam cum unumquodque horum idem quod cetera sit, quisquis horum aliquid sine ceteris petit, ne illud quidem quod desiderat apprehendit." "quid igitur?" inquam. "si qui cuncta simul cupiat adipisci, summam quidem ille beatitudinis uelit. sed num in his eam reperiet, quae demonstrauimus id quod pollicentur non posse conferre?" "minime," inquam. "in his igitur quae singula quaedam expetendorum praestare creduntur, beatitudo nullo modo uestiganda est." "fateor," inquam, "et hoc nihil dici uerius potest." "habes igitur," inquit, "et formam falsae felicitatis et causas. deflecte nunc in aduersum mentis intuitum; ibi enim ueram quam promisimus statim uidebis." "atqui haec," inquam, "uel caeco perspicua est eamque tu paulo ante monstrasti, dum falsae causas aperire conaris. nam nisi fallor ea uera est et perfecta felicitas quae sufficientem, potentem, reuerendum, celebrem laetumque perficiat. atque ut me interius animaduertisse cognoscas, quae unum horum, quoniam idem cuncta sunt, ueraciter praestare potest hanc esse plenam beatitudinem sine ambiguitate cognosco." "o te alumne hac opinione felicem, si quidem hoc," inquit, "adieceris...." "quidnam?" inquam. "essene aliquid in his mortalibus caducisque rebus putas quod huiusmodi statum possit afferre?" "minime," inquam, "puto idque a te, nihil ut amplius desideretur, ostensum est." "haec igitur uel imagines ueri boni uel inperfecta quaedam bona dare mortalibus uidentur, uerum autem atque perfectum bonum conferre non possunt." "assentior," inquam. "quoniam igitur agnouisti quae uera illa sit, quae autem beatitudinem mentiantur, nunc superest ut unde ueram hanc petere possis agnoscas." "id quidem," inquam, "iam dudum uehementer exspecto." "sed cum, ut in timaeo[ ] platoni," inquit, "nostro placet, in minimis quoque rebus diuinum praesidium debeat implorari, quid nunc faciendum censes, ut illius summi boni sedem reperire mereamur?" "inuocandum," inquam, "rerum omnium patrem, quo praetermisso nullum rite fundatur exordium." "recte," inquit, ac simul ita modulata est. [ ] uti timaeo _codd. optimi._ ix. "let it suffice that we have hitherto discovered the form of false felicity, which if thou hast plainly seen, order now requireth that we show thee in what true happiness consisteth." "i see," quoth i, "that neither sufficiency by riches, nor power by kingdoms, nor respect by dignities, nor renown by glory, nor joy can be gotten by pleasures." "hast thou also understood the causes why it is so?" "methink i have a little glimpse of them, but i had rather thou wouldst declare them more plainly." "the reason is manifest, for that which is simple and undivided of itself, is divided by men's error, and is translated from true and perfect to false and unperfect. thinkest thou that which needeth nothing, to stand in need of power?" "no," quoth i. "thou sayest well, for if any power in any respect be weak, in this it must necessarily stand in need of the help of others." "it is true," quoth i. "wherefore sufficiency and power have one and the same nature." "so it seemeth." "now thinkest thou, that which is of this sort ought to be despised, or rather that it is worthy to be respected above all other things?" "there can be no doubt of this," quoth i. "let us add respect then to sufficiency and power, so that we judge these three to be one." "we must add it if we confess the truth." "what now," quoth she, "thinkest thou this to be obscure and base, or rather most excellent and famous? consider whether that which thou hast granted to want nothing, to be most potent, and most worthy of honour, may seem to want fame, which it cannot yield itself, and for that cause be in some respect more abject." "i must needs confess," quoth i, "that, being what it is, this is also most famous." "consequently then we must acknowledge that fame differeth nothing from the former three." "we must so," quoth i. "wherefore that which wanteth nothing, which can perform all things by its own power, which is famous and respected, is it not manifest that it is also most pleasant?" to which i answered: "how such a man should fall into any grief, i can by no means imagine. wherefore if that which we have said hitherto be true, we must needs confess that he is most joyful and content." "and by the same reason it followeth that sufficiency, power, fame, respect, pleasure have indeed divers names, but differ not in substance." "it followeth indeed," quoth i. "this then, which is one and simple by nature, man's wickedness divideth, and while he endeavoureth to obtain part of that which hath no parts, he neither getteth a part, which is none, nor the whole, which he seeketh not after." "how is this?" quoth i. "he who seeketh after riches," quoth she, "to avoid want, taketh no thought for power, he had rather be base and obscure, he depriveth himself even of many natural pleasures that he may not lose the money which he hath gotten. but by this means he attaineth not to sufficiency, whom power forsaketh, whom trouble molesteth, whom baseness maketh abject, whom obscurity overwhelmeth. again, he that only desireth power, consumeth wealth, despiseth pleasures, and setteth light by honour or glory, which is not potent. but thou seest how many things are wanting to this man also. for sometimes he wanteth necessaries, and is perplexed with anxieties, and being not able to rid himself, ceaseth to be powerful, which was the only thing he aimed at. the like discourse may be made of honours, glory, pleasures. for since every one of these things is the same with the rest, whosoever seeketh for any of them without the rest obtaineth not that which he desireth." "what then?" quoth i. "if one should desire to have them all together, he should wish for the sum of happiness, but shall he find it in these things which we have showed cannot perform what they promise?" "no," quoth i. "wherefore we must by no means seek for happiness in these things which are thought to afford the several portions of that which is to be desired." "i confess it," quoth i, "and nothing can be more true than this." "now then," quoth she, "thou hast both the form and causes of false felicity; cast but the eyes of thy mind on the contrary, and thou shalt presently espy true happiness, which we promised to show thee." "this," quoth i, "is evident, even to him that is blind, and thou showedst it a little before, while thou endeavouredst to lay open the causes of the false. for, if i be not deceived, that is true and perfect happiness which maketh a man sufficient, potent, respected, famous, joyful. and that thou mayest know that i understood thee aright, that which can truly perform any one of these because they are all one, i acknowledge to be full and perfect happiness." "o my scholar, i think thee happy by having this opinion, if thou addest this also." "what?" quoth i. "dost thou imagine that there is any mortal or frail thing which can cause this happy estate?" "i do not," quoth i, "and that hath been so proved by thee, that more cannot be desired." "wherefore these things seem to afford men the images of the true good, or certain unperfect goods, but they cannot give them the true and perfect good itself." "i am of the same mind," quoth i. "now then, since thou knowest wherein true happiness consisteth, and what have only a false show of it, it remaineth that thou shouldst learn where thou mayest seek for this which is true." "this is that," quoth i, "which i have long earnestly expected." "but since, as plato teacheth (in timaeus),[ ] we must implore god's assistance even in our least affairs, what, thinkest thou, must we do now, that we may deserve to find the seat of that sovereign good?" "we must," quoth i, "invocate the father of all things, without whose remembrance no beginning hath a good foundation." "thou sayest rightly," quoth she, and withal sung in this sort. [ ] cf. _tim._ . ix. "o qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas terrarum caelique sator qui tempus ab aeuo ire iubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moueri. quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae materiae fluitantis opus, uerum insita summi forma boni liuore carens, tu cuncta superno ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse mundum mente gerens similique in imagine formans perfectasque iubens perfectum absoluere partes. tu numeris elementa ligas ut frigora flammis arida conueniant liquidis, ne purior ignis euolet aut mersas deducant pondera terras. tu triplicis mediam naturae cuncta mouentem conectens animam per consona membra resoluis. quae cum secta duos motum glomerauit in orbes, in semet reditura meat mentemque profundam circuit et simili conuertit imagine caelum. tu causis animas paribus uitasque minores prouehis et leuibus sublimes curribus aptans in caelum terramque seris quas lege benigna ad te conuersas reduci facis igne reuerti. da pater augustam menti conscendere sedem, da fontem lustrare boni, da luce reperta in te conspicuos animi defigere uisus. dissice terrenae nebulas et pondera molis atque tuo splendore mica! tu namque serenum, tu requies tranquilla piis, te cernere finis, principium, uector, dux, semita, terminus idem. ix.[ ] "o thou, that dost the world in lasting order guide, father of heaven and earth, who makest time swiftly slide, and, standing still thyself, yet fram'st all moving laws, who to thy work wert moved by no external cause: but by a sweet desire, where envy hath no place, thy goodness moving thee to give each thing his grace, thou dost all creatures' forms from highest patterns take, from thy fair mind the world fair like thyself doth make. thus thou perfect the whole perfect each part dost frame. thou temp'rest elements, making cold mixed with flame and dry things join with moist, lest fire away should fly, or earth, opprest with weight, buried too low should lie. thou in consenting parts fitly disposed hast th'all-moving soul in midst of threefold nature placed, which, cut in several parts that run a different race, into itself returns, and circling doth embrace the highest mind, and heaven with like proportion drives. thou with like cause dost make the souls and lesser lives, fix them in chariots swift, and widely scatterest o'er heaven and earth; then at thy fatherly behest they stream, like fire returning, back to thee, their god. dear father, let my mind thy hallowed seat ascend, let me behold the spring of grace and find thy light, that i on thee may fix my soul's well clearéd sight. cast off the earthly weight wherewith i am opprest, shine as thou art most bright, thou only calm and rest to pious men whose end is to behold thy ray, who their beginning art, their guide, their bound, and way.[ ] [ ] this poem is a masterly abridgment of the first part of the _timaeus_, and was eagerly fastened on by commentators of the early middle ages whose direct knowledge of plato was confined to the translation of that dialogue by chalcidius. [ ] cf. the string of nouns in _tr._ iv. (_supra_, p. _ad fin._). x. quoniam igitur quae sit imperfecti, quae etiam perfecti boni forma uidisti, nunc demonstrandum reor quonam haec felicitatis perfectio constituta sit. in quo illud primum arbitror inquirendum, an aliquod huiusmodi bonum quale paulo ante definisti in rerum natura possit exsistere, ne nos praeter rei subiectae ueritatem cassa cogitationis imago decipiat. sed quin exsistat sitque hoc ueluti quidam omnium fons bonorum negari nequit. omne enim quod inperfectum esse dicitur, id inminutione perfecti inperfectum esse perhibetur. quo fit, ut si in quolibet genere inperfectum quid esse uideatur, in eo perfectum quoque aliquid esse necesse sit. etenim perfectione sublata, unde illud quod inperfectum perhibetur exstiterit ne fingi quidem potest. neque enim ab deminutis inconsummatisque natura rerum coepit exordium, sed ab integris absolutisque procedens in haec extrema atque effeta dilabitur. quod si, uti paulo ante monstrauimus, est quaedam boni fragilis inperfecta felicitas, esse aliquam solidam perfectamque non potest dubitari." "firmissime," inquam, "uerissimeque conclusum est." "quo uero," inquit, "habitet, ita considera. deum rerum omnium principem bonum esse communis humanorum conceptio probat animorum. nam cum nihil deo melius excogitari queat, id quo melius nihil est bonum esse quis dubitet? ita uero bonum esse deum ratio demonstrat, ut perfectum quoque in eo bonum esse conuincat. nam ni tale sit, rerum omnium princeps esse non poterit. erit enim eo praestantius aliquid perfectum possidens bonum, quod hoc prius atque antiquius esse uideatur; omnia namque perfecta minus integris priora esse claruerunt. quare ne in infinitum ratio prodeat, confitendum est summum deum summi perfectique boni esse plenissimum. sed perfectum bonum ueram esse beatitudinem constituimus; ueram igitur beatitudinem in summo deo sitam esse necesse est." "accipio," inquam, "nec est quod contradici ullo modo queat." "sed quaeso," inquit, "te uide quam id sancte atque inuiolabiliter probes quod boni summi summum deum diximus esse plenissimum." "quonam," inquam, "modo?" "ne hunc rerum omnium patrem illud summum bonum quo plenus esse perhibetur uel extrinsecus accepisse uel ita naturaliter habere praesumas, quasi habentis dei habitaeque beatitudinis diuersam cogites esse substantiam. nam si extrinsecus acceptum putes, praestantius id quod dederit ab eo quod acceperit existimare possis. sed hunc esse rerum omnium praecellentissimum dignissime confitemur. quod si natura quidem inest, sed est ratione diuersum, cum de rerum principe loquamur deo, fingat qui potest: quis haec diuersa coniunxerit? postremo quod a qualibet re diuersum est, id non est illud a quo intellegitur esse diuersum. quare quod a summo bono diuersum est sui natura, id summum bonum non est--quod nefas est de eo cogitare quo nihil constat esse praestantius. omnino enim nullius rei natura suo principio melior poterit exsistere, quare quod omnium principium sit, id etiam sui substantia summum esse bonum uerissima ratione concluserim." "rectissime," inquam. "sed summum bonum beatitudinem esse concessum est." "ita est," inquam. "igitur," inquit, "deum esse ipsam beatitudinem necesse est confiteri." "nec propositis," inquam, "prioribus refragari queo et illis hoc inlatum consequens esse perspicio." "respice," inquit, "an hinc quoque idem firmius approbetur, quod duo summa bona quae a se diuersa sint esse non possunt. etenim quae discrepant bona, non esse alterum quod sit alterum liquet; quare neutrum poterit esse perfectum, cum alterutri alterum deest. sed quod perfectum non sit, id summum non esse manifestum est; nullo modo igitur quae summa sunt bona ea possunt esse diuersa. atqui et beatitudinem et deum summum bonum esse collegimus; quare ipsam necesse est summam esse beatitudinem quae sit summa diuinitas." "nihil," inquam, "nec reapse uerius[ ] nec ratiocinatione firmius nec deo dignius concludi potest." "super haec," inquit, "igitur ueluti geometrae solent demonstratis propositis aliquid inferre quae porismata ipsi uocant, ita ego quoque tibi ueluti corollarium dabo. nam quoniam beatitudinis adeptione fiunt homines beati, beatitudo uero est ipsa diuinitas, diuinitatis adeptione beatos fieri manifestum est: sed uti iustitiae adeptione iusti, sapientiae sapientes fiunt, ita diuinitatem adeptos deos fieri simili ratione necesse est. omnis igitur beatus deus, sed natura quidem unus; participatione uero nihil prohibet esse quam plurimos." "et pulchrum," inquam, "hoc atque pretiosum, siue porisma siue corollarium uocari mauis." "atqui hoc quoque pulchrius nihil est, quod his annectendum esse ratio persuadet." "quid?" inquam. "cum multa," inquit, "beatitudo continere uideatur, utrumne haec omnia unum ueluti corpus beatitudinis quadam partium uarietate coniungant an sit eorum aliquid quod beatitudinis substantiam compleat, ad hoc uero cetera referantur?" "vellem," inquam, "id ipsarum rerum commemoratione patefaceres." "nonne," inquit, "beatitudinem bonum esse censemus?" "ac summum quidem," inquam. "addas," inquit, "hoc omnibus licet. nam eadem sufficientia summa est, eadem summa potentia, reuerentia quoque, claritas ac uoluptas beatitudo esse iudicatur. quid igitur? haecine omnia bonum--sufficientia potentia ceteraque--ueluti quaedam beatitudinis membra sunt an ad bonum ueluti ad uerticem cuncta referuntur?" "intellego," inquam, "quid inuestigandum proponas, sed quid constituas audire desidero." "cuius discretionem rei sic accipe. si haec omnia beatitudinis membra forent, a se quoque inuicem discreparent. haec est enim partium natura ut unum corpus diuersa componant. atqui haec omnia idem esse monstrata sunt; minime igitur membra sunt. alioquin ex uno membro beatitudo uidebitur esse coniuncta--quod fieri nequit." "id quidem," inquam, "dubium non est, sed id quod restat exspecto." "ad bonum uero cetera referri palam est. idcirco enim sufficientia petitur quoniam bonum esse iudicatur, idcirco potentia quoniam id quoque esse creditur bonum; idem de reuerentia, claritudine, iucunditate coniectare licet. omnium igitur expetendorum summa atque causa bonum est. quod enim neque re neque similitudine ullum in se retinet bonum, id expeti nullo modo potest. contraque etiam quae natura bona non sunt, tamen si esse uideantur, quasi uere bona sint appetuntur. quo fit uti summa, cardo atque causa expetendorum omnium bonitas esse iure credatur. cuius uero causa quid expetitur, id maxime uidetur optari, ueluti si salutis causa quispiam uelit equitare, non tam equitandi motum desiderat quam salutis effectum. cum igitur omnia boni gratia petantur, non illa potius quam bonum ipsum desideratur ab omnibus. sed propter quod cetera optantur, beatitudinem esse concessimus; quare sic quoque sola quaeritur beatitudo. ex quo liquido apparet ipsius boni et beatitudinis unam atque eandem esse substantiam." "nihil uideo cur dissentire quispiam possit." "sed deum ueramque beatitudinem unum atque idem esse monstrauimus." "ita," inquam. "securo igitur concludere licet dei quoque in ipso bono nec usquam alio sitam esse substantiam. [ ] reapse uerius _schepss_: re ab seuerius _uel_ re ipsa uerius _codd. opt._ x. wherefore since thou hast seen what is the form of perfect and imperfect good, now i think we must show in what this perfection of happiness is placed. and inquire first whether there can be any such good extant in the world, as thou hast defined; lest, contrary to truth, we be deceived with an empty show of thought. but it cannot be denied that there is some such thing extant which is as it were the fountain of all goodness. for all that is said to be imperfect is so termed for the want it hath of perfection. whence it followeth that if in any kind we find something imperfect, there must needs be something perfect also in the same kind. for if we take away perfection we cannot so much as devise how there should be any imperfection. for the nature of things began not from that which is defective and not complete, but, proceeding from entire and absolute, falleth into that which is extreme and enfeebled. but if, as we showed before, there be a certain imperfect felicity of frail goods, it cannot be doubted but that there is some solid and perfect happiness also." "thou hast," quoth i, "concluded most firmly and most truly." "now where this good dwelleth," quoth she, "consider this. the common conceit of men's minds proveth that god the prince of all things is good. for, since nothing can be imagined better than god, who doubteth but that is good than which is nothing better? and reason doth in such sort demonstrate god to be good that it convinceth him to be perfectly good. for unless he were so, he could not be the chief of all things. for there would be something better than he, having perfect goodness, which could seem to be of greater antiquity and eminence than he. for it is already manifest that perfect things were before the imperfect. wherefore, lest our reasoning should have no end, we must confess that the sovereign god is most full of sovereign and perfect goodness. but we have concluded that perfect goodness is true happiness, wherefore true blessedness must necessarily be placed in the most high god." "i agree," quoth i, "neither can this be any way contradicted." "but i pray thee," quoth she, "see how boldly and inviolably thou approvest that which we said, that the sovereign god is most full of sovereign goodness." "how?" quoth i. "that thou presumest not that this father of all things hath either received from others that sovereign good with which he is said to be replenished, or hath it naturally in such sort that thou shouldst think that the substance of the blessedness which is had, and of god who hath it, were diverse. for if thou thinkest that he had it from others, thou mayest also infer that he who gave it was better than the receiver. but we most worthily confess that he is the most excellent of all things. and if he hath it by nature, but as a diverse thing, since we speak of god the prince of all things, let him that can, invent who united these diverse things. finally, that which is different from anything, is not that from which it is understood to differ. wherefore that which is naturally different from the sovereign good, is not the sovereign good itself. which it were impious to think of god, than whom, we know certainly, nothing is better. for doubtless the nature of nothing can be better than the beginning of it. wherefore i may most truly conclude that which is the beginning of all things to be also in his own substance the chiefest good." "most rightly," quoth i. "but it is granted that the chiefest good is blessedness?" "it is," quoth i. "wherefore," quoth she, "we must needs confess that blessedness itself is god." "i can neither contradict," quoth i, "thy former propositions, and i see this illation followeth from them." "consider," saith she, "if the same be not more firmly proved hence, because there cannot be two chief goods, the one different from the other. for it is manifest that of those goods which differ, the one is not the other, wherefore neither of them can be perfect, wanting the other. but manifestly that which is not perfect, is not the chiefest, wherefore the chief goods cannot be diverse. now we have proved that both blessedness and god are the chiefest good, wherefore that must needs be the highest blessedness which is the highest divinity." "there can be nothing," quoth i, "concluded more truly than this, nor more firmly in arguing, nor more worthy god himself." "upon this then," quoth she, "as the geometricians[ ] are wont, out of their propositions which they have demonstrated, to infer something which they call _porismata_ (deductions) so will i give thee as it were a _corollarium_. for since that men are made blessed by the obtaining of blessedness, and blessedness is nothing else but divinity, it is manifest that men are made blessed by the obtaining of divinity. and as men are made just by the obtaining of justice, and wise by the obtaining of wisdom, so they who obtain divinity must needs in like manner become gods. wherefore everyone that is blessed is a god, but by nature there is only one god; but there may be many by participation." "this is," quoth i, "an excellent and precious _porisma_ or _corollarium_." "but there is nothing more excellent than that which reason persuadeth us to add." "what?" quoth i. "since," quoth she, "blessedness seemeth to contain many things, whether do they all concur as divers parts to the composition of one entire body of blessedness, or doth some one of them form the substance of blessedness to which the rest are to be referred?" "i desire," quoth i, "that thou wouldst declare this point, by the enumeration of the particulars." "do we not think," quoth she, "that blessedness is good?" "yea, the chiefest good," quoth i. "thou mayest," quoth she, "add this to them all. for blessedness is accounted the chiefest sufficiency, the chiefest power, respect, fame, and pleasure. what then? are all these-- sufficiency, power, and the rest--the good, in the sense that they are members of it, or rather are they referred to good as to the head?" "i understand," quoth i, "what thou proposest, but i desire to hear what thou concludest." "this is the decision of this matter. if all these were members of blessedness, they should differ one from another. for this is the nature of parts, that being divers they compose one body. but we have proved that all these are one and the same thing. wherefore they are no members, otherwise blessedness should be compacted of one member, which cannot be." "there is no doubt of this," quoth i, "but i expect that which is behind." "it is manifest that the rest are to be referred to goodness; for sufficiency is desired, because it is esteemed good, and likewise power, because that likewise is thought to be good. and we may conjecture the same of respect, fame, and pleasure. wherefore goodness is the sum and cause of all that is desired. for that which is neither good indeed, nor beareth any show of goodness, can by no means be sought after. and contrariwise those things which are not good of their own nature, yet, if they seem such, are desired as if they were truly good. so that the sum, origin, and cause of all that is sought after is rightly thought to be goodness. and that on account of which a thing is sought, seemeth to be the chief object of desire. as if one would ride for his health, he doth not so much desire the motion of riding, as the effect of health. wherefore, since all things are desired in respect of goodness, they are not so much wished for as goodness itself. but we granted that to be blessedness for which other things are desired, wherefore in like manner only blessedness is sought after; by which it plainly appeareth, that goodness and blessedness have one and the self-same substance." "i see not how any man can dissent." "but we have showed that god and true blessedness are one and the self-same thing." "it is so," quoth i. "we may then securely conclude that the substance of god consisteth in nothing else but in goodness. [ ] _vide supra_, _tr_. iii. p. . x. huc omnes pariter uenite capti quos fallax ligat improbis catenis terrenas habitans libido mentes, haec erit uobis requies laborum, hic portus placida manens quiete, hoc patens unum miseris asylum, non quidquid tagus aureis harenis donat aut hermus rutilante ripa aut indus calido propinquus orbi candidis miscens uirides lapillos, inlustrent aciem magisque caecos in suas condunt animos tenebras. hoc quidquid placet excitatque mentes, infimis tellus aluit cauernis; splendor quo regitur uigetque caelum, vitat obscuras animae ruinas. hanc quisquis poterit notare lucem, candidos phoebi radios negabit." x.[ ] come hither, all you that are bound, whose base and earthly minds are drowned by lust which doth them tie in cruel chains: here is a seat for men opprest, here is a port of pleasant rest; here may a wretch have refuge from his pains. no gold, which tagus' sands bestow, nor which on hermus' banks doth flow, nor precious stones which scorched indians get[ ], can clear the sharpness of the mind, but rather make it far more blind, and in the farther depth of darkness set. for this that sets our souls on work buried in caves of earth doth lurk. but heaven is guided by another light, which causeth us to shun the dark[ ], and who this light doth truly mark, must needs deny that phoebus' beams are bright." [ ] for the discussion on the nature of good in this poem and the next piece of prose cf. _supra_, pp. ff. [ ] literally, "nor indus, neighbour of the torrid zone, blending its green and white pebbles." [ ] literally, "the light which gives guidance and vigour to the sky shuns the darkness of ruined minds." xi. "assentior," inquam, "cuncta enim firmissimis nexa rationibus constant." tum illa, "quanti," inquit, "aestimabis, si bonum ipsum quid sit agnoueris?" "infinito," inquam, "si quidem mihi pariter deum quoque qui bonum est continget agnoscere." "atqui hoc uerissima," inquit, "ratione patefaciam, maneant modo quae paulo ante conclusa sunt." "manebunt." "nonne," inquit, "monstrauimus ea quae appetuntur pluribus idcirco uera perfectaque bona non esse quoniam a se inuicem discreparent cumque alteri abesset alterum, plenum absolutumque bonum afferre non posse? tum autem uerum bonum fieri cum in unam ueluti formam atque efficientiam colliguntur, ut quae sufficientia est, eadem sit potentia, reuerentia, claritas atque iucunditas, nisi uero unum atque idem omnia sint, nihil habere quo inter expetenda numerentur?" "demonstratum," inquam, "nec dubitari ullo modo potest." "quae igitur cum discrepant minime bona sunt, cum uero unum esse coeperint, bona fiunt; nonne haec ut bona sint, unitatis fieri adeptione contingit?" "ita," inquam, "uidetur." "sed omne quod bonum est boni participatione bonum esse concedis an minime?" "ita est." "oportet igitur idem esse unum atque bonum simili ratione concedas; eadem namque substantia est eorum quorum naturaliter non est diuersus effectus." "negare," inquam, "nequeo." "nostine igitur," inquit, "omne quod est tam diu manere atque subsistere quam diu sit unum, sed interire atque dissolui pariter atque unum destiterit?" "quonam modo?" "vt in animalibus," inquit, "cum in unum coeunt ac permanent anima corpusque, id animal uocatur; cum uero haec unitas utriusque separatione dissoluitur, interire nec iam esse animal liquet. ipsum quoque corpus cum in una forma membrorum coniunctione permanet, humana uisitur species; at si distributae segregataeque partes corporis distraxerint unitatem, desinit esse quod fuerat. eoque modo percurrenti cetera procul dubio patebit subsistere unumquodque, dum unum est, cum uero unum esse desinit, interire." "consideranti," inquam, "mihi plura minime aliud uidetur." "estne igitur," inquit, "quod in quantum naturaliter agat relicta subsistendi appetentia uenire ad interitum corruptionemque desideret?" "si animalia," inquam, "considerem quae habent aliquam uolendi nolendique naturam, nihil inuenio quod nullis extra cogentibus abiciant manendi intentionem et ad interitum sponte festinent. omne namque animal tueri salutem laborat, mortem uero perniciemque deuitat. sed quid de herbis arboribusque, quid de inanimatis omnino consentiam rebus prorsus dubito." "atqui non est quod de hoc quoque possis ambigere, cum herbas atque arbores intuearis primum sibi conuenientibus innasci locis, ubi quantum earum natura queat cito exarescere atque interire non possint. nam aliae quidem campis aliae montibus oriuntur, alias ferunt paludes, aliae saxis haerent, aliarum fecundae sunt steriles harenae, quas si in alia quispiam loca transferre conetur, arescant. sed dat cuique natura quod conuenit et ne, dum manere possunt, intereant, elaborat. quid quod omnes uelut in terras ore demerso trahunt alimenta radicibus ac per medullas robur corticemque diffundunt? quid quod mollissimum quidque, sicuti medulla est, interiore semper sede reconditur, extra uero quadam ligni firmitate, ultimus autem cortex aduersum caeli intemperiem quasi mali patiens defensor opponitur? iam uero quanta est naturae diligentia, ut cuncta semine multiplicato propagentur! quae omnia non modo ad tempus manendi uerum generatim quoque quasi in perpetuum permanendi ueluti quasdam machinas esse quis nesciat? ea etiam quae inanimata esse creduntur nonne quod suum est quaeque simili ratione desiderant? cur enim flammas quidem sursum leuitas uehit, terras uero deorsum pondus deprimit, nisi quod haec singulis loca motionesque conueniunt? porro autem quod cuique consentaneum est, id unumquodque conseruat, sicuti ea quae sunt inimica corrumpunt. iam uero quae dura sunt ut lapides, adhaerent tenacissime partibus suis et ne facile dissoluantur resistunt. quae uero liquentia ut aer atque aqua, facile quidem diuidentibus cedunt, sed cito in ea rursus a quibus sunt abscisa relabuntur, ignis uero omnem refugit sectionem. neque nunc nos de uoluntariis animae cognoscentis motibus, sed de naturali intentione tractamus, sicuti est quod acceptas escas sine cogitatione transigimus, quod in somno spiritum ducimus nescientes; nam ne in animalibus quidem manendi amor ex animae uoluntatibus, uerum ex naturae principiis uenit. nam saepe mortem cogentibus causis quam natura reformidat uoluntas amplectitur, contraque illud quo solo mortalium rerum durat diuturnitas gignendi opus, quod natura semper appetit, interdum coercet uoluntas. adeo haec sui caritas non ex animali motione sed ex naturali intentione procedit. dedit enim prouidentia creatis a se rebus hanc uel maximam manendi causam ut quoad possunt naturaliter manere desiderent; quare nihil est quod ullo modo queas dubitare cuncta quae sunt appetere naturaliter constantiam permanendi, deuitare perniciem." "confiteor," inquam, "nunc me indubitato cernere quae dudum incerta uidebantur." "quod autem," inquit, "subsistere ac permanere petit, id unum esse desiderat; hoc enim sublato ne esse quidem cuiquam permanebit." "verum est," inquam. "omnia igitur," inquit, "unum desiderant." consensi. "sed unum id ipsum monstrauimus esse quod bonum." "ita quidem." "cuncta igitur bonum petunt, quod quidem ita describas licet: ipsum bonum esse quod desideretur ab omnibus." "nihil," inquam, "uerius excogitari potest. nam uel ad nihil unum cuncta referuntur et uno ueluti uertice destituta sine rectore fluitabunt, aut si quid est ad quod uniuersa festinent, id erit omnium summum bonorum." et illa: "nimium," inquit, "o alumne laetor, ipsam enim mediae ueritatis notam mente fixisti. sed in hoc patuit tibi quod ignorare te paulo ante dicebas." "quid?" inquam. "quis esset," inquit, "rerum omnium finis. is est enim profecto, quod desideratur ab omnibus, quod quia bonum esse collegimus, oportet rerum omnium finem bonum esse fateamur. xi. "i consent," quoth i, "for all is grounded upon most firm reasons." "but what account wilt thou make," quoth she, "to know what goodness itself is?" "i will esteem it infinitely," quoth i, "because by this means i shall come to know god also, who is nothing else but goodness." "i will conclude this," quoth she, "most certainly, if those things be not denied which i have already proved." "they shall not," quoth i. "have we not proved," quoth she, "that those things which are desired of many, are not true and perfect goods, because they differ one from another and, being separated, cannot cause complete and absolute goodness, which is only found when they are united as it were into one form and causality, that the same may be sufficiency, power, respect, fame, and pleasure? and except they be all one and the same thing, that they have nothing worth the desiring?" "it hath been proved," quoth i, "neither can it be any way doubted of." "those things, then, which, when they differ, are not good and when they are one, become good, are they not made good by obtaining unity?" "so methink," quoth i. "but dost thou grant that all that is good is good by partaking goodness?" "it is so." "thou must grant then likewise that unity and goodness are the same. for those things have the same substance, which naturally have not diverse effects." "i cannot deny it," quoth i. "knowest thou then," quoth she, "that everything that is doth so long remain and subsist as it is one, and perisheth and is dissolved so soon as it ceaseth to be one?" "how?" "as in living creatures," quoth she, "so long as the body and soul remain united, the living creature remaineth. but when this unity is dissolved by their separation, it is manifest that it perisheth, and is no longer a living creature. the body also itself, so long as it remaineth in one form by the conjunction of the parts, appeareth the likeness of a man. but if the members of the body, being separated and sundered, have lost their unity, it is no longer the same. and in like manner it will be manifest to him that will descend to other particulars, that everything continueth so long as it is one, and perisheth when it loseth unity." "considering more particulars, i find it to be no otherwise." "is there anything," quoth she, "that in the course of nature, leaving the desire of being, seeketh to come to destruction and corruption?" "if," quoth i, "i consider living creatures which have any nature to will and nill, i find nothing that without extern compulsion forsake the intention to remain, and of their own accord hasten to destruction. for every living creature laboureth to preserve his health, and escheweth death and detriment. but what i should think of herbs, and trees, and of all things without life, i am altogether doubtful." "but there is no cause why thou shouldst doubt of this, if thou considerest first that herbs and trees grow in places agreeable to their nature, where, so much as their constitution permitteth, they cannot soon wither and perish. for some grow in fields, other upon hills, some in fenny, other in stony places, and the barren sands are fertile for some, which if thou wouldst transplant into other places they die. but nature giveth every one that which is fitting, and striveth to keep them from decaying so long as they can remain. what should i tell thee, if all of them, thrusting as it were their lips into the ground, draw nourishment by their roots, and convey substance and bark by the inward pith? what, that always the softest, as the pith, is placed within, and is covered without by the strength of the wood, and last of all the bark is exposed to the weather, as being best able to bear it off? and how great is the diligence of nature that all things may continue by the multiplication of seed; all which who knoweth not to be, as it were, certain engines, not only to remain for a time, but successively in a manner to endure for ever? those things also which are thought to be without all life, doth not every one in like manner desire that which appertaineth to their own good? for why doth levity lift up flames, or heaviness weigh down the earth, but because these places and motions are convenient for them? and that which is agreeable to everything conserveth it, as that which is opposite causeth corruption. likewise those things which are hard, as stones, stick most firmly to their parts, and make great resistance to any dissolution. and liquid things, as air and water, are indeed easily divided, but do easily also join again. and fire flieth all division. neither do we now treat of the voluntary motions of the understanding soul, but only of natural operations. of which sort is, to digest that which we have eaten, without thinking of it, to breathe in our sleep not thinking what we do. for even in living creatures the love of life proceedeth not from the will of the soul, but from the principles of nature. for the will many times embraceth death upon urgent occasions, which nature abhorreth; and contrariwise the act of generation, by which alone the continuance of mortal things is maintained, is sometimes bridled by the will, though nature doth always desire it. so true it is that this self-love proceedeth not from any voluntary motion, but from natural intention. for providence gave to her creatures this as the greatest cause of continuance, that they naturally desire to continue so long as they may, wherefore there is no cause why thou shouldst any way doubt that all things which are desire naturally stability of remaining, and eschew corruption." "i confess," quoth i, "that i now see undoubtedly that which before seemed very doubtful." "now that," quoth she, "which desireth to continue and remain seeketh to have unity. for if this be taken away, being itself cannot remain." "it is true," quoth i. "all things then," quoth she, "desire unity." i granted it to be so. "but we have showed that unity is the same as goodness." "you have indeed." "all things then desire goodness, which thou mayest define thus: goodness is that which is desired of all things." "there can be nothing imagined more true. for either all things have reference to no one principle and, being destitute as it were of one head, shall be in confusion without any ruler: or if there be anything to which all things hasten, that must be the chiefest of all goods." "i rejoice greatly o scholar," quoth she, "for thou hast fixed in thy mind the very mark of verity. but in this thou hast discovered that which a little before thou saidest thou wert ignorant of." "what is that?" quoth i. "what the end of all things is," quoth she. "for certainly it is that which is desired of all things, which since we have concluded to be goodness, we must also confess that goodness is the end of all things. xi. quisquis profunda mente uestigat uerum cupitque nullis ille deuiis falli, in se reuoluat intimi lucem uisus longosque in orbem cogat inflectens motus animumque doceat quidquid extra molitur suis retrusum possidere thesauris. dudum quod atra texit erroris nubes lucebit ipso perspicacius phoebo. non omne namque mente depulit lumen obliuiosam corpus inuehens molem. haeret profecto semen introrsum ueri quod excitatur uentilante doctrina. nam cur rogati sponte recta censetis, ni mersus alto uiueret fomes corde? quod si platonis musa personat uerum, quod quisque discit immemor recordatur." xi. he that would seek the truth with thoughts profound and would not stray in ways that are not right, he to himself must turn his inward sight, and guide his motions in a circled round, teaching his mind that ever she design herself in her own treasures to possess: so that which late lay hidden in cloudiness more bright and clear than phoebus' beams shall shine. flesh hath not quenched all the spirit's light, though this oblivion's lump holds her opprest. some seed of truth remaineth in our breast, which skilful learning eas'ly doth excite. for being askt how can we answer true unless that grace within our hearts did dwell? if plato's heavenly muse the truth us tell, we learning things remember them anew."[ ] [ ] for plato's doctrine of reminiscence cf. _meno_ - , and _phaedo_ - . xii. tum ego: "platoni," inquam, "uehementer assentior, nam me horum iam secundo commemoras, primum quod memoriam corporea contagione, dehinc cum maeroris mole pressus amisi." tum illa: "si priora," inquit, "concessa respicias, ne illud quidem longius aberit quin recorderis quod te dudum nescire confessus es." "quid?" inquam. "quibus," ait illa, "gubernaculis mundus regatur." "memini," inquam, "me inscitiam meam fuisse confessum, sed quid afferas, licet iam prospiciam, planius tamen ex te audire desidero." "mundum," inquit, "hunc deo regi paulo ante minime dubitandum putabas." "ne nunc quidem arbitror," inquam, "nec umquam dubitandum putabo quibusque in hoc rationibus accedam breuiter exponam. mundus hic ex tam diuersis contrariisque partibus in unam formam minime conuenisset, nisi unus esset qui tam diuersa coniungeret. coniuncta uero naturarum ipsa diuersitas inuicem discors dissociaret atque diuelleret, nisi unus esset qui quod nexuit contineret. non tam uero certus naturae ordo procederet nec tam dispositos motus locis, temporibus, efficientia, spatiis, qualitatibus explicarent, nisi unus esset qui has mutationum uarietates manens ipse disponeret. hoc quidquid est quo condita manent atque agitantur, usitato cunctis uocabulo deum nomino." tum illa: "cum haec," inquit, "ita sentias, paruam mihi restare operam puto ut felicitatis compos patriam sospes reuisas. sed quae proposuimus intueamur. nonne in beatitudine sufficientiam numerauimus deumque beatitudinem ipsam esse consensimus?" "ita quidem." "et ad mundum igitur," inquit, "regendum nullis extrinsecus adminiculis indigebit; alioquin si quo egeat, plenam sufficientiam non habebit." "id," inquam, "ita est necessarium." "per se igitur solum cuncta disponit." "negari," inquam, "nequit." "atqui deus ipsum bonum esse monstratus est." "memini," inquam. "per bonum igitur cuncta disponit, si quidem per se regit omnia quem bonum esse consensimus et hic est ueluti quidam clauus atque gubernaculum quo mundana machina stabilis atque incorrupta seruatur." "vehementer assentior," inquam, "et id te paulo ante dicturam tenui licet suspicione prospexi." "credo;" inquit, "iam enim ut arbitror uigilantius ad cernenda uera oculos deducis. sed quod dicam non minus ad contuendum patet." "quid?" inquam. "cum deus," inquit, "omnia bonitatis clauo gubernare iure credatur eademque omnia sicuti docui ad bonum naturali intentione festinent, num dubitari potest quin uoluntaria regantur seque ad disponentis nutum ueluti conuenientia contemperataque rectori sponte conuertant?" "ita," inquam, "necesse est; nec beatum regimen esse uideretur, si quidem detrectantium iugum foret, non obtemperantium salus." "nihil est igitur quod naturam seruans deo contraire conetur." "nihil," inquam. "quod si conetur," ait, "num tandem proficiet quidquam aduersus eum quem iure beatitudinis potentissimum esse concessimus?" "prorsus," inquam, "nihil ualeret." "non est igitur aliquid quod summo huic bono uel uelit uel possit obsistere." "non," inquam, "arbitror." "est igitur summum," inquit, "bonum quod regit cuncta fortiter suauiterque disponit." tum ego: "quam," inquam, "me non modo ea quae conclusa est summa rationum, uerum multo magis haec ipsa quibus uteris uerba delectant, ut tandem aliquando stultitiam magna lacerantem sui pudeat." "accepisti," inquit, "in fabulis lacessentes caelum gigantas; sed illos quoque, uti condignum fuit, benigna fortitudo disposuit. sed uisne rationes ipsas inuicem collidamus? forsitan ex huiusmodi conflictatione pulchra quaedam ueritatis scintilla dissiliat." "tuo," inquam, "arbitratu." "deum," inquit, "esse omnium potentem nemo dubitauerit." "qui quidem," inquam, "mente consistat, nullus prorsus ambigat." "qui uero est," inquit, "omnium potens, nihil est quod ille non possit." "nihil," inquam. "num igitur deus facere malum potest?" "minime," inquam. "malum igitur," inquit, "nihil est, cum id facere ille non possit, qui nihil non potest." "ludisne," inquam, "me inextricabilem labyrinthum rationibus texens, quae nunc quidem qua egrediaris introeas, nunc uero quo introieris egrediare, an mirabilem quendam diuinae simplicitatis orbem complicas? etenim paulo ante beatitudine incipiens eam summum bonum esse dicebas quam in summo deo sitam loquebare. ipsum quoque deum summum esse bonum plenamque beatitudinem disserebas; ex quo neminem beatum fore nisi qui pariter deus esset quasi munusculum dabas. rursus ipsam boni formam dei ac beatitudinis loquebaris esse substantiam ipsumque unum id ipsum esse bonum docebas quod ab omni rerum natura peteretur. deum quoque bonitatis gubernaculis uniuersitatem regere disputabas uolentiaque cuncta parere nec ullam mali esse naturam. atque haec nullis extrinsecus sumptis sed ex altero altero fidem trahente insitis domesticisque probationibus explicabas." tum illa: "minime," inquit, "ludimus remque omnium maximam dei munere quem dudum deprecabamur exegimus. ea est enim diuinae forma substantiae ut neque in externa dilabatur nec in se externum aliquid ipsa suscipiat, sed, sicut de ea parmenides ait: [greek: pantothen eukuklou sphairaes enalinkion onkoi], rerum orbem mobilem rotat, dum se immobilem ipsa conseruat. quod si rationes quoque non extra petitas sed intra rei quam tractabamus ambitum collocatas agitauimus, nihil est quod admirere, cum platone sanciente didiceris cognatos de quibus loquuntur rebus oportere esse sermones. xii. then i said that i did very well like of plato's doctrine, for thou dost bring these things to my remembrance now the second time, first, because i lost their memory by the contagion of my body, and after when i was oppressed with the burden of grief. "if," quoth she, "thou reflectest upon that which heretofore hath been granted, thou wilt not be far from remembering that which in the beginning thou confessedst thyself to be ignorant of." "what?" quoth i. "by what government," quoth she, "the world is ruled." "i remember," quoth i, "that i did confess my ignorance, but though i foresee what thou wilt say, yet i desire to hear it more plainly from thyself." "thou thoughtest a little before that it was not to be doubted that this world is governed by god." "neither do i think now," quoth i, "neither will i ever think, that it is to be doubted of, and i will briefly explicate the reasons which move me to think so. this world could never have been compacted of so many divers and contrary parts, unless there were one that doth unite these so different things; and this disagreeing diversity of natures being united would separate and divide this concord, unless there were one that holdeth together that which he united. neither would the course of nature continue so certain, nor would the different parts hold so well- ordered motions in due places, times, causality, spaces and qualities, unless there were one who, himself remaining quiet, disposeth and ordereth this variety of motions. this, whatsoever it be, by which things created continue and are moved, i call god, a name which all men use."[ ] "since," quoth she, "thou art of this mind, i think with little labour thou mayest be capable of felicity, and return to thy country in safety. but let us consider what we proposed. have we not placed sufficiency in happiness, and granted that god is blessedness itself?" "yes truly." "wherefore," quoth she, "he will need no outward helps to govern the world, otherwise, if he needed anything, he had not full sufficiency." "that," quoth i, "must necessarily be so." "wherefore he disposeth all things by himself." "no doubt he doth," quoth i. "but it hath been proved that god is goodness itself." "i remember it very well," quoth i. "then he disposeth all things by goodness: since he governeth all things by himself, whom we have granted to be goodness. and this is as it were the helm and rudder by which the frame of the world is kept steadfast and uncorrupted." "i most willingly agree," quoth i, "and i foresaw a little before, though only with a slender guess, that thou wouldst conclude this." "i believe thee," quoth she, "for now i suppose thou lookest more watchfully about thee to discern the truth. but that which i shall say is no less manifest." "what?" quoth i. "since that god is deservedly thought to govern all things with the helm of goodness, and all these things likewise, as i have showed, hasten to goodness with their natural contention, can there be any doubt made but that they are governed willingly, and that they frame themselves of their own accord to their disposer's beck, as agreeable and conformable to their ruler?" "it must needs be so," quoth i, "neither would it seem an happy government, if it were an imposed yoke, not a desired health." "there is nothing then which, following nature, endeavoureth to resist god." "nothing," quoth i. "what if anything doth endeavour," quoth she, "can anything prevail against him, whom we have granted to be most powerful by reason of his blessedness?" "no doubt," quoth i, "nothing could prevail." "wherefore there is nothing which either will or can resist this sovereign goodness." "i think not," quoth i. "it is then the sovereign goodness which governeth all things strongly, and disposeth them sweetly." "how much," quoth i, "doth not only the reason which thou allegest, but much more the very words which thou usest, delight me, that folly which so much vexed me may at length be ashamed of herself." "thou hast heard in the poets' fables," quoth she, "how the giants provoked heaven, but this benign fortitude put them also down, as they deserved. but wilt thou have our arguments contend together? perhaps by this clash there will fly out some beautiful spark of truth." "as it pleaseth thee," quoth i. "no man can doubt," quoth she, "but that god is almighty." "no man," quoth i, "that is well in his wits." "but," quoth she, "there is nothing that he who is almighty cannot do." "nothing," quoth i. "can god do evil?" "no," quoth i, "wherefore," quoth she, "evil is nothing, since he cannot do it who can do anything." "dost thou mock me," quoth i, "making with thy reasons an inextricable labyrinth, because thou dost now go in where thou meanest to go out again, and after go out, where thou camest in, or dost thou frame a wonderful circle of the simplicity of god? for a little before taking thy beginning from blessedness, thou affirmedst that to be the chiefest good which thou saidst was placed in god, and likewise thou provedst, that god himself is the chiefest good and full happiness, out of which thou madest me a present of that inference, that no man shall be happy unless he be also a god. again thou toldest me that the form of goodness is the substance of god and of blessedness, and that unity is the same with goodness, because it is desired by the nature of all things; thou didst also dispute that god governeth the whole world with the helm of goodness, and that all things obey willingly, and that there is no nature of evil, and thou didst explicate all these things with no foreign or far-fetched proofs, but with those which were proper and drawn from inward principles, the one confirming the other." "we neither play nor mock," quoth she, "and we have finished the greatest matter that can be by the assistance of god, whose aid we implored in the beginning. for such is the form of the divine substance that it is neither divided into outward things, nor receiveth any such into itself, but as parmenides saith of it: in body like a sphere well-rounded on all sides,[ ] it doth roll about the moving orb of things, while it keepeth itself unmovable. and if we have used no far-fetched reasons, but such as were placed within the compass of the matter we handled, thou hast no cause to marvel, since thou hast learned in plato's school that our speeches must be like and as it were akin to the things we speak of. [ ] _vide supra, tr._ iv. (pp. ff.). [ ] cf. _frag._ . (diels, _vorsokratiker_, i. p. ). xii. felix qui potuit boni fontem uisere lucidum, felix qui potuit grauis terrae soluere uincula. quondam funera coniugis vates threicius gemens postquam flebilibus modis siluas currere mobiles, amnes stare coegerat, iunxitque intrepidum latus saeuis cerua leonibus, nec uisum timuit lepus iam cantu placidum canem, cum flagrantior intima feruor pectoris ureret, nec qui cuncta subegerant mulcerent dominum modi, inmites superos querens infernas adiit domos. illic blanda sonantibus chordis carmina temperans quidquid praecipuis deae matris fontibus hauserat, quod luctus dabat impotens, quod luctum geminans amor, deflet taenara commouens et dulci ueniam prece vmbrarum dominos rogat. stupet tergeminus nouo captus carmine ianitor, quae sontes agitant metu vltrices scelerum deae iam maestae lacrimis madent. non ixionium caput velox praecipitat rota et longa site perditus spernit flumina tantalus. vultur dum satur est modis, non traxit tityi iecur. tandem, 'vincimur,' arbiter vmbrarum miserans ait, 'donamus comitem uiro emptam carmine coniugem. sed lex dona coerceat, ne, dum tartara liquerit, fas sit lumina flectere.' quis legem det amantibus? maior lex amor est sibi. heu, noctis prope terminos orpheus eurydicen suam vidit, perdidit, occidit. vos haec fabula respicit quicumque in superum diem mentem ducere quaeritis. nam qui tartareum in specus victus lumina flexerit, quidquid praecipuum trahit perdit, dum uidet inferos." xii. happy is he that can behold the well-spring whence all good doth rise, happy is he that can unfold the bands with which the earth him ties. the thracian poet whose sweet song performed his wife's sad obsequies, and forced the woods to run along when he his mournful tunes did play, whose powerful music was so strong that it could make the rivers stay; the fearful hinds not daunted were, but with the lions took their way, nor did the hare behold with fear the dog whom these sweet notes appease. when force of grief drew yet more near, and on his heart did burning seize, nor tunes which all in quiet bound could any jot their master ease, the gods above too hard he found, and pluto's palace visiting. he mixed sweet verses with the sound of his loud harp's delightful string, all that he drank with thirsty draught from his high mother's chiefest spring, all that his restless grief him taught, and love which gives grief double aid, with this even hell itself was caught, whither he went, and pardon prayed for his dear spouse (unheard request). the three-head porter was dismayed, ravished with his unwonted guest, the furies, which in tortures keep the guilty souls with pains opprest, moved with his song began to weep. ixion's wheel now standing still turns not his head with motions steep. though tantalus might drink at will, to quench his thirst he would forbear. the vulture full with music shrill doth not poor tityus' liver tear. 'we by his verses conquered are,' saith the great king whom spirits fear. 'let us not then from him debar his wife whom he with songs doth gain. yet lest our gift should stretch too far, we will it with this law restrain, that when from hell he takes his flight, he shall from looking back refrain.' who can for lovers laws indite? love hath no law but her own will. orpheus, seeing on the verge of night eurydice, doth lose and kill her and himself with foolish love. but you this feigned tale fulfil, who think unto the day above to bring with speed your darksome mind. for if, your eye conquered, you move backward to pluto left behind, all the rich prey which thence you took, you lose while back to hell you look." anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. patricii philosophiae consolationis liber tertivs explicit incipit liber iv i. haec cum philosophia dignitate uultus et oris grauitate seruata leniter suauiterque cecinisset, tum ego nondum penitus insiti maeroris oblitus intentionem dicere adhuc aliquid parantis abrupi. et: "o," inquam, "ueri praeuia luminis quae usque adhuc tua fudit oratio, cum sui speculatione diuina tum tuis rationibus inuicta patuerunt, eaque mihi etsi ob iniuriae dolorem nuper oblita non tamen antehac prorsus ignorata dixisti. sed ea ipsa est uel maxima nostri causa maeroris, quod, cum rerum bonus rector exsistat, uel esse omnino mala possint uel impunita praetereant; quod solum quanta dignum sit admiratione profecto consideras. at huic aliud maius adiungitur. nam imperante florenteque nequitia uirtus non solum praemiis caret, uerum etiam sceleratorum pedibus subiecta calcatur et in locum facinorum supplicia luit. quae fieri in regno scientis omnia, potentis omnia sed bona tantummodo uolentis dei nemo satis potest nec admirari nec conqueri." tum illa: "et esset," inquit, "infiniti stuporis omnibusque horribilius monstris, si, uti tu aestimas, in tanti uelut patrisfamilias dispositissima domo uilia uasa colerentur, pretiosa sordescerent. sed non ita est. nam si ea quae paulo ante conclusa sunt inconuulsa seruantur, ipso de cuius nunc regno loquimur auctore cognosces semper quidem potentes esse bonos, malos uero abiectos semper atque inbecillos nec sine poena umquam esse uitia nec sine praemio uirtutes, bonis felicia, malis semper infortunata contingere multaque id genus quae sopitis querelis firma te soliditate corroborent. et quoniam uerae formam beatitudinis me dudum monstrante uidisti, quo etiam sita sit agnouisti, decursis omnibus quae praemittere necessarium puto, uiam tibi quae te domum reuehat ostendam. pennas etiam tuae menti quibus se in altum tollere possit adfigam, ut perturbatione depulsa sospes in patriam meo ductu, mea semita, meis etiam uehiculis reuertaris. the fourth book of boethius i. when philosophy had sung these verses with a soft and sweet voice, observing due dignity and gravity in her countenance and gesture, i, not having altogether forgotten my inward grief, interrupted her speech which she was about to continue, and said: "o thou who bringest us to see true light, those things which hitherto thou hast treated of have manifestly appeared both to be divine when contemplated apart, and invincible when supported by thy reasons, and what thou hast uttered, though the force of grief had made me forget it of late, yet heretofore i was not altogether ignorant of it. but this is the chiefest cause of my sorrow, that since the governor of all things is so good, there can either be any evil at all, or that it pass unpunished. which alone i beseech thee consider, how much admiration it deserveth. but there is another greater than this; for wickedness bearing rule and sway, virtue is not only without reward, but lieth also trodden under the wicked's feet, and is punished instead of vice. that which things should be done in the kingdom of god, who knoweth all things, can do all things, but will do only that which is good, no man can sufficiently admire nor complain." to which she answered: "it were indeed infinitely strange, and surpassing all monsters, if, as thou conceivest, in the best-ordered house of so great an householder the vilest vessels were made account of and the precious neglected; but it is not so. for if those things which were a little before concluded be kept unviolated, thou shalt by his help, of whose kingdom we speak, know that the good are always powerful, and the evil always abject and weak, and that vices are never without punishment, nor virtue without reward, and that the good are always prosperous, and the evil unfortunate, and many things of that sort, which will take away all cause of complaint, and give thee firm and solid strength. and since by my means thou hast already seen the form of true blessedness, and known where it is placed, running over all those things which i think necessary to rehearse, i will show thee the way which will carry thee home. and i will also fasten wings upon thy mind, with which she may rouse herself, that, all perturbation being driven away, thou mayest return safely into thy country by my direction, by my path, and with my wings. i. sunt etenim pennae uolucres mihi quae celsa conscendant poli. quas sibi cum uelox mens induit, terras perosa despicit, aeris inmensi superat globum, nubesque postergum uidet, quique agili motu calet aetheris, transcendit ignis uerticem, donec in astriferas surgat domos phoeboque coniungat uias aut comitetur iter gelidi senis miles corusci sideris, vel quocumque micans nox pingitur, recurrat astri circulum atque ubi iam exhausti fuerit satis, polum relinquat extimum dorsaque uelocis premat aetheris compos uerendi luminis. hic regum sceptrum dominus tenet orbisque habenas temperat et uolucrem currum stabilis regit rerum coruscus arbiter. huc te si reducem referat uia, quam nunc requiris immemor: 'haec,' dices, 'memini, patria est mihi, hinc ortus; hic sistam gradum." quod si terrarum placeat tibi noctem relictam uisere, quos miseri toruos populi timent cernes tyrannos exules." i. for i have swift and nimble wings which will ascend the lofty skies, with which when thy quick mind is clad, it will the loathéd earth despise, and go beyond the airy globe, and watery clouds behind thee leave, passing the fire which scorching heat doth from the heavens' swift course receive, until it reach the starry house, and get to tread bright phoebus' ways, following the chilly sire's path,[ ] companion of his flashing rays, and trace the circle of the stars which in the night to us appear, and having stayed there long enough go on beyond the farthest sphere, sitting upon the highest orb partaker of the glorious light, where the great king his sceptre holds, and the world's reins doth guide aright, and, firm in his swift chariot, doth everything in order set. unto this seat when thou art brought, thy country, which thou didst forget, thou then wilt challenge to thyself, saying: 'this is the glorious land where i was born, and in this soil my feet for evermore shall stand. whence if thou pleasest to behold the earthly night which thou hast left, those tyrants which the people fear will seem of their true home bereft.'" [ ] cf. "frigida saturni sese quo stella receptet," virg. _georg._ i. . ii. tum ego: "papae," inquam, "ut magna promittis! nec dubito quin possis efficere; tu modo quem excitaueris ne moreris." "primum igitur," inquit, "bonis semper adesse potentiam, malos cunctis uiribus esse desertos agnoscas licebit, quorum quidem alterum demonstratur ex altero. nam cum bonum malumque contraria sint, si bonum potens esse constiterit, liquet inbecillitas mali; at si fragilitas clarescat mali, boni firmitas nota est. sed uti nostrae sententiae fides abundantior sit, alterutro calle procedam nunc hinc nunc inde proposita confirmans. duo sunt quibus omnis humanorum actuum constat effectus, uoluntas scilicet ac potestas, quorum si alterutrum desit, nihil est quod explicari queat. deficiente etenim uoluntate ne aggreditur quidem quisque quod non uult; at si potestas absit, uoluntas frustra sit. quo fit ut si quem uideas adipisci uelle quod minime adipiscatur, huic obtinendi quod uoluerit defuisse ualentiam dubitare non possis." "perspicuum est," inquam, "nec ullo modo negari potest." "quem uero effecisse quod uoluerit uideas, num etiam potuisse dubitabis?" "minime." "quod uero quisque potest, in eo ualidus, quod uero non potest, in hoc imbecillis esse censendus est." "fateor," inquam. "meministine igitur," inquit, "superioribus rationibus esse collectum intentionem omnem uoluntatis humanae quae diuersis studiis agitur ad beatitudinem festinare?" "memini," inquam, "illud quoque esse demonstratum." "num recordaris beatitudinem ipsum esse bonum eoque modo, cum beatitudo petitur, ab omnibus desiderari bonum?" "minime," inquam, "recordor, quoniam id memoriae fixum teneo." "omnes igitur homines boni pariter ac mali indiscreta intentione ad bonum peruenire nituntur?" "ita," inquam, "consequens est." "sed certum est adeptione boni bonos fieri." "certum." "adipiscuntur igitur boni quod appetunt?" "sic uidetur." "mali uero si adipiscerentur quod appetunt bonum, mali esse non possent." "ita est." "cum igitur utrique bonum petant, sed hi quidem adipiscantur, illi uero minime, num dubium est bonos quidem potentes esse, qui uero mali sunt imbecillos?" "quisquis," inquam, "dubitat, nec rerum naturam nec consequentiam potest considerare rationum." "rursus," inquit, "si duo sint quibus idem secundum naturam propositum sit eorumque unus naturali officio id ipsum agat atque perficiat, alter uero naturale illud officium minime administrare queat, alio uero modo quam naturae conuenit non quidem impleat propositum suum sed imitetur implentem, quemnam horum ualentiorem esse decernis?" "etsi coniecto," inquam, "quid uelis, planius tamen audire desidero." "ambulandi," inquit, "motum secundum naturam esse hominibus num negabis?" "minime," inquam. "eiusque rei pedum officium esse naturale num dubitas?" "ne hoc quidem," inquam. "si quis igitur pedibus incedere ualens ambulet aliusque cui hoc naturale pedum desit officium, manibus nitens ambulare conetur, quis horum iure ualentior existimari potest?" "contexe," inquam, "cetera; nam quin naturalis officii potens eo qui idem nequeat ualentior sit, nullus ambigat." "sed summum bonum, quod aeque malis bonisque propositum, boni quidem naturali officio uirtutum petunt, mali uero uariam per cupiditatem, quod adipiscendi boni naturale officium non est, idem ipsum conantur adipisci. an tu aliter existimas?" "minime," inquam, "nam etiam quod est consequens patet. ex his enim quae concesserim, bonos quidem potentes, malos uero esse necesse est imbecillos." "recte," inquit, "praecurris idque, uti medici sperare solent, indicium est erectae iam resistentisque naturae. sed quoniam te ad intellegendum promptissimum esse conspicio, crebras coaceruabo rationes. vide enim quanta uitiosorum hominum pateat infirmitas qui ne ad hoc quidem peruenire queunt ad quod eos naturalis ducit ac paene compellit intentio. et quid si hoc tam magno ac paene inuicto praeeuntis naturae desererentur auxilio? considera uero quanta sceleratos homines habeat impotentia. neque enim leuia aut ludicra praemia petunt, quae consequi atque obtinere non possunt, sed circa ipsam rerum summam uerticemque deficiunt nec in eo miseris contingit effectus quod solum dies noctesque moliuntur; in qua re bonorum uires eminent. sicut enim eum qui pedibus incedens ad eum locum usque peruenire potuisset, quo nihil ulterius peruium iaceret incessui, ambulandi potentissimum esse censeres, ita eum qui expetendorum finem quo nihil ultra est apprehendit, potentissimum necesse est iudices. ex quo fit quod huic obiacet, ut idem scelesti, idem uiribus omnibus uideantur esse deserti. cur enim relicta uirtute uitia sectantur? inscitiane bonorum? sed quid eneruatius ignorantiae caecitate? an sectanda nouerunt? sed transuersos eos libido praecipitat. sic quoque intemperantia fragiles qui obluctari uitio nequeunt. an scientes uolentesque bonum deserunt, ad uitia deflectunt? sed hoc modo non solum potentes esse sed omnino esse desinunt. nam qui communem omnium quae sunt finem relinquunt, pariter quoque esse desistunt. quod quidem cuipiam mirum forte uideatur, ut malos, qui plures hominum sunt, eosdem non esse dicamus; sed ita sese res habet. nam qui mali sunt eos malos esse non abnuo; sed eosdem esse pure atque simpliciter nego. nam uti cadauer hominem mortuum dixeris, simpliciter uero hominem appellare non possis, ita uitiosos malos quidem esse concesserim, sed esse absolute nequeam confiteri. est enim quod ordinem retinet seruatque naturam; quod uero ab hac deficit, esse etiam quod in sua natura situm est derelinquit. 'sed possunt,' inquies, 'mali.' ne ego quidem negauerim, sed haec eorum potentia non a uiribus sed ab imbecillitate descendit. possunt enim mala quae minime ualerent, si in bonorum efficientia manere potuissent. quae possibilitas eos euidentius nihil posse demonstrat. nam si, uti paulo ante collegimus, malum nihil est, cum mala tantummodo possint, nihil posse improbos liquet." "perspicuum est." "atque ut intellegas quaenam sit huius potentiae uis, summo bono nihil potentius esse paulo ante definiuimus." "ita est," inquam. "sed idem," inquit, "facere malum nequit." "minime." "est igitur," inquit, "aliquis qui omnia posse homines putet?" "nisi quis insaniat, nemo." "atqui idem possunt mala." "vtinam quidem," inquam, "non possent." "cum igitur bonorum tantummodo potens possit omnia, non uero queant omnia potentes etiam malorum, eosdem qui mala possunt minus posse manifestum est. huc accedit quod omnem potentiam inter expetenda numerandam omniaque expetenda referri ad bonum uelut ad quoddam naturae suae cacumen ostendimus. sed patrandi sceleris possibilitas referri ad bonum non potest; expetenda igitur non est. atqui omnis potentia expetenda est; liquet igitur malorum possibilitatem non esse potentiam. ex quibus omnibus bonorum quidem potentia, malorum uero minime dubitabilis apparet infirmitas ueramque illam platonis esse sententiam liquet solos quod desiderent facere posse sapientes, improbos uero exercere quidem quod libeat, quod uero desiderent explere non posse. faciunt enim quaelibet, dum per ea quibus delectantur id bonum quod desiderant se adepturos putant; sed minime adipiscuntur, quoniam ad beatitudinem probra non ueniunt. ii.[ ] "oh!" quoth i. "how great things dost thou promise! and i doubt not but thou canst perform them, wherefore stay me not now that thou hast stirred up my desires." "first then," quoth she, "that good men are always powerful, and evil men of no strength, thou mayest easily know, the one is proved by the other. for since that good and evil are contraries, if it be convinced that goodness is potent, the weakness of evil will be also manifest; and contrariwise if we discern the frailty of evil, we must needs acknowledge the firmness of goodness. but that our opinions may be more certainly embraced, i will take both ways, confirming my propositions, sometime from one part, sometime from another. there be two things by which all human actions are effected, will and power, of which if either be wanting, there can nothing be performed. for if there want will, no man taketh anything in hand against his will, and if there be not power, the will is in vain. so that, if thou seest any willing to obtain that which he doth not obtain, thou canst not doubt but that he wanted power to obtain what he would." "it is manifest," quoth i, "and can by no means be denied." "and wilt thou doubt that he could, whom thou seest bring to pass what he desired?" "no." "but every man is mighty in that which he can do, and weak in that which he cannot do." "i confess it," quoth i. "dost thou remember then," quoth she, "that it was inferred by our former discourses that all the intentions of man's will doth hasten to happiness, though their courses be divers?" "i remember," quoth i, "that that also was proved." "dost thou also call to mind that blessedness is goodness itself, and consequently when blessedness is sought after, goodness must of course be desired?" "i call it not to mind, for i have it already fixed in my memory." "wherefore all men both good and bad without difference of intentions endeavour to obtain goodness." "it followeth," quoth i. "but it is certain that men are made good by the obtaining of goodness." "it is so." "wherefore good men obtain what they desire." "so it seemeth." "and if evil men did obtain the goodness they desire, they could not be evil." "it is true." "wherefore since they both desire goodness, but the one obtaineth it and the other not, there is no doubt but that good men are powerful, and the evil weak." "whosoever doubteth of this," quoth i, "he neither considereth the nature of things, nor the consequence of thy reasons." "again," quoth she, "if there be two to whom the same thing is proposed according to nature, and the one of them bringeth it perfectly to pass with his natural function, but the other cannot exercise that natural function but after another manner than is agreeable to nature, and doth not perform that which he had proposed, but imitateth the other who performeth it: which of these two wilt thou judge to be more powerful?" "though i conjecture," quoth i, "at thy meaning, yet i desire to hear it more plainly." "wilt thou deny," quoth she, "that the motion of walking is agreeable to the nature of men?" "no," quoth i. "and makest thou any doubt that the function of it doth naturally belong to the feet?" "there is no doubt of this neither," quoth i. "wherefore if one that can go upon his feet doth walk, and another who hath not this natural function of his feet endeavoureth to walk by creeping upon his hands, which of these two is deservedly to be esteemed the stronger?" "infer the rest," quoth i, "for no man doubteth but that he which can use that natural function is stronger than he which cannot." "but," quoth she, "the good seek to obtain the chiefest good, which is equally proposed to bad and good, by the natural function of virtues, but the evil endeavour to obtain the same by divers concupiscences, which are not the natural function of obtaining goodness. thinkest thou otherwise?" "no," quoth i, "for it is manifest what followeth. for by the force of that which i have already granted, it is necessary that good men are powerful and evil men weak." "thou runnest before rightly," quoth she, "and it is (as physicians are wont to hope) a token of an erected and resisting nature. wherefore, since i see thee most apt and willing to comprehend, i will therefore heap up many reasons together. for consider the great weakness of vicious men, who cannot come so far as their natural intention leadeth and almost compelleth them. and what if they were destitute of this so great and almost invincible help of the direction of nature? ponder likewise the immense impotency of wicked men. for they are no light or trifling rewards[ ] which they desire, and cannot obtain: but they fail in the very sum and top of things: neither can the poor wretches compass that which they only labour for nights and days: in which thing the forces of the good eminently appear. for as thou wouldst judge him to be most able to walk who going on foot could come as far as there were any place to go in: so must thou of force judge him most powerful who obtaineth the end of all that can be desired, beyond which there is nothing. hence that which is opposite also followeth, that the same men are wicked and destitute of all forces. for why do they follow vices, forsaking virtues? by ignorance of that which is good? but what is more devoid of strength than blind ignorance? or do they know what they should embrace, but passion driveth them headlong the contrary way? so also intemperance makes them frail, since they cannot strive against vice. or do they wittingly and willingly forsake goodness, and decline to vices? but in this sort they leave not only to be powerful, but even to be at all. for they which leave the common end of all things which are, leave also being. which may perhaps seem strange to some, that we should say that evil men are not at all, who are the greatest part of men: but yet it is so. for i deny not that evil men are evil, but withal i say that purely and simply they are not. for as thou mayest call a carcase a dead man, but not simply a man, so i confess that the vicious are evil, but i cannot grant that they are absolutely. for that is which retaineth order, and keepeth nature, but that which faileth from this leaveth also to be that which is in his own nature. but thou wilt say that evil men can do many things, neither will i deny it, but this their power proceedeth not from forces but from weakness. for they can do evil, which they could not do if they could have remained in the performance of that which is good. which possibility declareth more evidently that they can do nothing. for if, as we concluded a little before, evil is nothing, since they can only do evil, it is manifest that the wicked can do nothing." "it is most manifest." "and that thou mayest understand what the force of this power is; we determined a little before that there is nothing more powerful than the sovereign goodness." "it is true," quoth i. "but he cannot do evil." "no." "is there any then," quoth she, "that think that men can do all things?" "no man, except he be mad, thinketh so." "but yet men can do evil." "i would to god they could not," quoth i. "since therefore he that can only do good, can do all things, and they who can do evil, cannot do all things, it is manifest that they which can do evil are less potent. moreover, we have proved that all power is to be accounted among those things which are to be wished for, and that all such things have reference to goodness, as to the very height of their nature. but the possibility of committing wickedness cannot have reference to goodness. wherefore it is not to be wished for. yet all power is to be wished for; and consequently it is manifest, possibility of evil is no power. by all which the power of the good and the undoubted infirmity of evil appeareth. and it is manifest that the sentence of plato is true: that only wise men can do that which they desire, and that the wicked men practise indeed what they list, but cannot perform what they would. for they do what they list, thinking to obtain the good which they desire by those things which cause them delight; but they obtain it not, because shameful action cannot arrive to happiness.[ ] [ ] the whole of this and of the following chapter is a paraphrase of plato's _gorgias_. [ ] cf. virgil, _aen._ xii. . [ ] cf. plato, _gorgias_, , ; _alcibiades i._ c. ii. quos uides sedere celsos solii culmine reges purpura claros nitente saeptos tristibus armis ore toruo comminantes rabie cordis anhelos, detrahat si quis superbis uani tegmina cultus, iam uidebit intus artas dominos ferre catenas. hinc enim libido uersat auidis corda uenenis, hinc flagellat ira mentem fluctus turbida tollens maeror aut captos fatigat aut spes lubrica torquet ergo cum caput tot unum cernas ferre tyrannos, non facit quod optat ipse dominis pressus iniquis. ii. the kings whom we behold in highest glory placed, and with rich purple graced, compassed with soldiers bold; whose countenance shows fierce threats, who with rash fury chide, if any strip the pride from their vainglorious feats; he'll see them close oppressed within by galling chains for filthy lust there reigns and poisoneth their breast, wrath often them perplexeth raising their minds like waves, sorrow their power enslaves and sliding hope them vexeth. so many tyrants still dwelling in one poor heart, except they first depart she cannot have her will. iii. videsne igitur quanto in caeno probra uoluantur, qua probitas luce resplendeat? in quo perspicuum est numquam bonis praemia numquam sua sceleribus deesse supplicia. rerum etenim quae geruntur illud propter quod unaquaeque res geritur, eiusdem rei praemium esse non iniuria uideri potest, uti currendi in stadio propter quam curritur iacet praemium corona. sed beatitudinem esse idem ipsum bonum propter quod omnia geruntur ostendimus. est igitur humanis actibus ipsum bonum ueluti praemium commune propositum. atqui hoc a bonis non potest separari neque enim bonus ultra iure uocabitur qui careat bono; quare probos mores sua praemia non relinquunt. quantumlibet igitur saeuiant mali, sapienti tamen corona non decidet, non arescet. neque enim probis animis proprium decus aliena decerpit improbitas. quod si extrinsecus accepto laetaretur, poterat hoc uel alius quispiam uel ipse etiam qui contulisset auferre; sed quoniam id sua cuique probitas confert, tum suo praemio carebit, cum probus esse desierit. postremo cum omne praemium idcirco appetatur quoniam bonum esse creditur, quis boni compotem praemii iudicet expertem? at cuius praemii? omnium pulcherrimi maximique. memento etenim corollarii illius quod paulo ante praecipuum dedi ac sic collige: cum ipsum bonum beatitudo sit, bonos omnes eo ipso quod boni sint fieri beatos liquet. sed qui beati sint deos esse conuenit. est igitur praemium bonorum quod nullus. deterat dies, nullius minuat potestas, nullius fuscet improbitas, deos fieri. quae cum ita sint, de malorum quoque inseparabili poena dubitare sapiens nequeat. nam cum bonum malumque item poenae atque praemium aduersa fronte dissideant, quae in boni praemio uidemus accedere eadem necesse est in mali poena contraria parte respondeant. sicut igitur probis probitas ipsa fit praemium, ita improbis nequitia ipsa supplicium est. iam uero quisquis afficitur poena, malo se affectum esse non dubitat. si igitur sese ipsi aestimare uelint, possuntne sibi supplicii expertes uideri quos omnium malorum extrema nequitia non affecit modo uerum etiam uehementer infecit? vide autem ex aduersa parte bonorum, quae improbos poena comitetur. omne namque quod sit unum esse ipsumque unum bonum esse paulo ante didicisti, cui consequens est ut omne quod sit id etiam bonum esse uideatur. hoc igitur modo quidquid a bono deficit esse desistit; quo fit ut mali desinant esse quod fuerant, sed fuisse homines adhuc ipsa humani corporis reliqua species ostentat. quare uersi in malitiam humanam quoque amisere naturam. sed cum ultra homines quemque prouehere sola probitas possit, necesse est ut quos ab humana condicione deiecit, infra hominis meritum detrudat improbitas. euenit igitur, ut quem transformatum uitiis uideas hominem aestimare non possis. auaritia feruet alienarum opum uiolentus ereptor? lupi similem dixeris. ferox atque inquies linguam litigiis exercet? cani comparabis. insidiator occultus subripuisse fraudibus gaudet? vulpeculis exaequetur. irae intemperans fremit? leonis animum gestare credatur. pauidus ac fugax non metuenda formidat? ceruis similis habeatur. segnis ac stupidus torpit? asinum uiuit. leuis atque inconstans studia permutat? nihil auibus differt. foedis inmundisque libidinibus immergitur? sordidae suis uoluptate detinetur. ita fit ut qui probitate deserta homo esse desierit, cum in diuinam condicionem transire non possit, uertatur in beluam. iii. seest thou then in what mire wickedness wallows, and how clearly honesty shineth? by which it is manifest that the good are never without rewards, nor the evil without punishments. for in all things that are done that for which anything is done may deservedly seem the reward of that action, as to him that runneth a race, the crown for which he runneth is proposed as a reward. but we have showed that blessedness is the selfsame goodness for which all things are done. wherefore this goodness is proposed as a common reward for all human actions, and this cannot be separated from those who are good. for he shall not rightly be any longer called good, who wanteth goodness; wherefore virtuous manners are not left without their due rewards. and how much so ever the evil do rage, yet the wise man's crown will not fade nor wither. for others' wickedness depriveth not virtuous minds of their proper glory. but if he should rejoice at anything which he hath from others, either he who gave it, or any other might take it away. but because every man's virtue is the cause of it, then only he shall want his reward when he leaveth to be virtuous. lastly, since every reward is therefore desired because it is thought to be good, who can judge him to be devoid of reward, which hath goodness for his possession? but what reward hath he? the most beautiful and the greatest that can be. for remember that _corollarium_ [ ] which i presented thee with a little before, as with a rare and precious jewel, and infer thus: since that goodness itself is happiness, it is manifest that all good men even by being good are made happy. but we agreed that happy men are gods. wherefore the reward of good men, which no time can waste, no man's power diminish, no man's wickedness obscure, is to become gods. which things being so, no wise man can any way doubt of the inseparable punishment of the evil. for since goodness and evil, punishment and reward, are opposite the one to the other, those things which we see fall out in the reward of goodness must needs be answerable in a contrary manner in the punishment of evil. wherefore as to honest men honesty itself is a reward, so to the wicked their very wickedness is a punishment. and he that is punished doubteth not but that he is afflicted with the evil. wherefore if they would truly consider their own estate, can they think themselves free from punishment, whom wickedness, the worst of all evils, doth not only touch but strongly infect? but weigh the punishment which accompanieth the wicked, by comparing it to the reward of the virtuous. for thou learnedst not long before that whatsoever is at all is one, and that unity is goodness, by which it followeth that whatsoever is must also be good. and in this manner, whatsoever falleth from goodness ceaseth to be, by which it followeth that evil men leave to be that which they were, but the shape of men, which they still retain, showeth them to have been men: wherefore by embracing wickedness they have lost the nature of men. but since virtue alone can exalt us above men, wickedness must needs cast those under the desert of men, which it hath bereaved of that condition. wherefore thou canst not account him a man whom thou seest transformed by vices. is the violent extorter of other men's goods carried away with his covetous desire? thou mayest liken him to a wolf. is the angry and unquiet man always contending and brawling? thou mayest compare him to a dog. doth the treacherous fellow rejoice that he hath deceived others with his hidden frauds? let him be accounted no better than a fox. doth the outrageous fret and fume? let him be thought to have a lion's mind. is the fearful and timorous afraid without cause? let him be esteemed like to hares and deer. is the slow and stupid always idle? he liveth an ass's life. doth the light and unconstant change his courses? he is nothing different from the birds. is he drowned in filthy and unclean lusts? he is entangled in the pleasure of a stinking sow. so that he who, leaving virtue, ceaseth to be a man, since he cannot be partaker of the divine condition, is turned into a beast. [ ] _vide supra, p. ._ iii. vela neritii ducis et uagas pelago rates eurus appulit insulae, pulchra qua residens dea solis edita semine miscet hospitibus nouis tacta carmine pocula. quos ut in uarios modos vertit herbipotens manus, hunc apri facies tegit, ille marmaricus leo dente crescit et unguibus. hic lupis nuper additus, flere dum parat, ululat. ille tigris ut indica tecta mitis obambulat. sed licet uariis malis numen arcadis alitis obsitum miserans ducem peste soluerit hospitis, iam tamen mala remiges ore pocula traxerant, iam sues cerealia glande pabula uerterant et nihil manet integrum voce corpore perditis. sola mens stabilis super monstra quae patitur gemit. o leuem nimium manum nec potentia gramina, membra quae ualeant licet, corda uertere non ualent! intus est hominum uigor arce conditus abdita. haec uenena potentius detrahunt hominem sibi dira quae penitus meant nec nocentia corpori mentis uulnere saeuiunt." iii. the sails which wise ulysses bore, and ships which in the seas long time did stray the eastern wind drave to that shore where the fair goddess lady circe lay, daughter by birth to phoebus bright, who with enchanted cups and charms did stay her guests, deceived with their delight and into sundry figures them did change, being most skilful in the might and secret force of herbs and simples strange; some like to savage boars, and some like lions fierce, which daily use to range through libya,[ ] in tooth and claw become. others are changed to the shape and guise of ravenous wolves, and waxing dumb use howling in the stead of manly cries. others like to the tiger rove[ ] which in the scorched indian desert lies. and though the winged son of jove[ ] from these bewitchéd cups' delightful taste to keep the famous captain strove, yet them the greedy mariners embraced with much desire, till turned to swine instead of bread they fed on oaken mast. ruined in voice and form, no sign remains to them of any human grace; only their minds unchanged repine to see their bodies in such ugly case. o feeble hand and idle art which, though it could the outward limbs deface, yet had no force to change the heart. for all the force of men given by god's arm lies hidden in their inmost part. the poisons therefore which within them swarm more deeply pierce, and with more might, for to the body though they do no harm, yet on the soul they work their spite." [ ] literally "marmaric," i.e. properly, the region between egypt and the great syrtis; generally, african, cf. lucan iii. . [ ] literally, "rove tame round the house." [ ] i.e. mercury who was born in arcadia; cf. virg. _aen._ viii. - . iv. tum ego: "fateor," inquam, "nec iniuria dici uideo uitiosos, tametsi humani corporis speciem seruent, in beluas tamen animorum qualitate mutari; sed quorum atrox scelerataque mens bonorum pernicie saeuit, id ipsum eis licere noluissem." "nec licet," inquit, "uti conuenienti monstrabitur loco. sed tamen si id ipsum quod eis licere creditur auferatur, magna ex parte sceleratorum hominum poena releuetur. etenim quod incredibile cuiquam forte uideatur, infeliciores esse necesse est malos, cum cupita perfecerint, quam si ea quae cupiunt implere non possint. nam si miserum est uoluisse praua, potuisse miserius est, sine quo uoluntatis miserae langueret effectus. itaque cum sua singulis miseria sit, triplici infortunio necesse est urgeantur quos uideas scelus uelle, posse, perficere." "accedo," inquam, "sed uti hoc infortunio cito careant patrandi sceleris possibilitate deserti uehementer exopto." "carebunt," inquit, "ocius quam uel tu forsitan uelis uel illi sese aestiment esse carituros. neque enim est aliquid in tam breuibus uitae metis ita serum quod exspectare longum immortalis praesertim animus putet: quorum magna spes et excelsa facinorum machina repentino atque insperato saepe fine destruitur, quod quidem illis miseriae modum statuit. nam si nequitia miseros facit, miserior sit necesse est diuturnior nequam; quos infelicissimos esse iudicarem, si non eorum malitiam saltem mors extrema finiret. etenim si de prauitatis infortunio uera conclusimus, infinitam liquet esse miseriam quam esse constat aeternam." tum ego: "mira quidem," inquam, "et concessu difficilis inlatio, sed his eam quae prius concessa sunt nimium conuenire cognosco." "recte," inquit, "aestimas. sed qui conclusioni accedere durum putat, aequum est uel falsum aliquid praecessisse demonstret uel collocationem propositionum non esse efficacem necessariae conclusionis ostendat; alioquin concessis praecedentibus nihil prorsus est quod de inlatione causetur. nam hoc quoque quod dicam non minus mirum uideatur, sed ex his quae sumpta sunt aeque est necessarium." "quidnam?" inquam. "feliciores," inquit, "esse improbos supplicia luentes quam si eos nulla iustitiae poena coerceat. neque id nunc molior quod cuiuis ueniat in mentem, corrigi ultione prauos mores et ad rectum supplicii terrore deduci, ceteris quoque exemplum esse culpanda fugiendi, sed alio quodam modo infeliciores esse improbos arbitror impunitos, tametsi nulla ratio correctionis, nullus respectus habeatur exempli." "et quis erit," inquam, "praeter hos alius modus?" et illa: "bonos," inquit, "esse felices, malos uero miseros nonne concessimus?" "ita est," inquam. "si igitur," inquit, "miseriae cuiuspiam bonum aliquid addatur, nonne felicior est eo cuius pura ac solitaria sine cuiusquam boni admixtione miseria est?" "sic," inquam, "uidetur." "quid si eidem misero qui cunctis careat bonis, praeter ea quibus miser est malum aliud fuerit adnexum, nonne multo infelicior eo censendus est cuius infortunium boni participatione releuatur?" "quidni?" inquam. "sed puniri improbos iustum, impunitos uero elabi iniquum esse manifestum est." "quis id neget?" "sed ne illud quidem," ait, "quisquam negabit bonum esse omne quod iustum est contraque quod iniustum est malum." liquere, respondi.[ ] "habent igitur improbi, cum puniuntur, quidem boni aliquid adnexum poenam ipsam scilicet quae ratione iustitiae bona est, idemque cum supplicio carent, inest eis aliquid ulterius mali ipsa impunitas quam iniquitatis merito malum esse confessus es." "negare non possum." "multo igitur infeliciores improbi sunt iniusta impunitate donati quam iusta ultione puniti." tum ego: "ista quidem consequentia sunt eis quae paulo ante conclusa sunt. sed quaeso," inquam, "te, nullane animarum supplicia post defunctum morte corpus relinquis?" "et magna quidem," inquit, "quorum alia poenali acerbitate, alia uero purgatoria clementia exerceri puto. sed nunc de his disserere consilium non est. id uero hactenus egimus, ut quae indignissima tibi uidebatur malorum potestas eam nullam esse cognosceres quosque impunitos querebare, uideres numquam improbitatis suae carere suppliciis, licentiam quam cito finiri precabaris nec longam esse disceres infelicioremque fore, si diuturnior, infelicissimam uero, si esset aeterna; post haec miseriores esse improbos iniusta impunitate dimissos quam iusta ultione punitos. cui sententiae consequens est ut tum demum grauioribus suppliciis urgeantur, cum impuniti esse creduntur." tum ego: "cum tuas," inquam, "rationes considero, nihil dici uerius puto. at si ad hominum iudicia reuertar, quis ille est cui haec non credenda modo sed saltem audienda uideantur?" "ita est," inquit illa. "nequeunt enim oculos tenebris assuetos ad lucem perspicuae ueritatis attollere, similesque auibus sunt quarum intuitum nox inluminat dies caecat. dum enim non rerum ordinem, sed suos intuentur affectus, uel licentiam uel impunitatem scelerum putant esse felicem. vide autem quid aeterna lex sanciat. melioribus animum conformaueris, nihil opus est iudice praemium deferente tu te ipse excellentioribus addidisti. studium ad peiora deflexeris, extra ne quaesieris ultorem. tu te ipse in deteriora trusisti, ueluti si uicibus sordidam humum caelumque respicias, cunctis extra cessantibus ipsa cernendi ratione nunc caeno nunc sideribus interesse uidearis. at uulgus ista non respicit. quid igitur? hisne accedamus quos beluis similes esse monstrauimus? quid si quis amisso penitus uisu ipsum etiam se habuisse obliuisceretur intuitum nihilque sibi ad humanam perfectionem deesse arbitraretur, num uidentes eadem caecos putaremus? nam ne illud quidem adquiescent quod aeque ualidis rationum nititur firmamentis: infeliciores eos esse qui faciant quam qui patiantur iniuriam." "vellem," inquam, "has ipsas audire rationes." "omnem," inquit, "improbum num supplicio dignum negas?" "minime." "infelices uero esse qui sint improbi multipliciter liquet." "ita," inquam. "qui igitur supplicio digni sunt miseros esse non dubitas?" "conuenit," inquam. "si igitur cognitor," ait, "resideres, cui supplicium inferendum putares, eine qui fecisset an qui pertulisset iniuriam?" "nec ambigo," inquam, "quin perpesso satisfacerem dolore facientis." "miserior igitur tibi iniuriae inlator quam acceptor esse uideretur." "consequitur," inquam. "hinc igitur aliis de causis ea radice nitentibus, quod turpitudo suapte natura miseros faciat, apparet inlatam cuilibet iniuriam non accipientis sed inferentis esse miseriam." "atqui nunc," ait, "contra faciunt oratores. pro his enim qui graue quid acerbumque perpessi sunt miserationem iudicum excitare conantur, cum magis admittentibus iustior miseratio debeatur; quos non ab iratis sed a propitiis potius miserantibusque accusatoribus ad iudicium ueluti aegros ad medicum duci oportebat, ut culpae morbos supplicio resecarent. quo pacto defensorum opera uel tota frigeret, uel si prodesse hominibus mallet, in accusationis habitum uerteretur, ipsi quoque improbi, si eis aliqua rimula uirtutem relictam fas esset aspicere uitiorumque sordes poenarum cruciatibus se deposituros uiderent compensatione adipiscendae probitatis, nec hos cruciatus esse ducerent defensorumque operam repudiarent ac se totos accusatoribus iudicibusque permitterent. quo fit ut apud sapientes nullus prorsus odio locus relinquatur. nam bonos quis nisi stultissimus oderit? malos uero odisse ratione caret. nam si, uti corporum languor, ita uitiositas quidam est quasi morbus animorum, cum aegros corpore minime dignos odio sed potius miseratione iudicemus, multo magis non insequendi sed miserandi sunt quorum mentes omni languore atrocior urget improbitas. [ ] sed puniri ... respondi _quae infra_ (_in pag. l. _) _post_ ultioni puniti _in codicibus habentur huc transponenda esse censuit p. langenus, demonstrauit a. engelbrecht._ iv. then said i, "i confess and perceive that thou affirmest not without cause that the vicious, though they keep the outward shape of men, are in their inward state of mind changed into brute beasts. but i would have had them whose cruel and wicked heart rageth to the harm of the good, restrained from executing their malice." "they are restrained," quoth she, "as shall be proved in convenient place. but yet if this liberty which they seem to have be taken away, their punishment also is in great part released. for (which perhaps to some may seem incredible) evil men must necessarily be more unhappy when they have brought to pass their purposes than if they could not obtain what they desire. for if it be a miserable thing to desire that which is evil, it is more miserable to be able to perform it, without which the miserable will could not have any effect. wherefore since everyone of these hath their peculiar misery, they must of force be oppressed with a threefold wretchedness, whom thou seest desire, be able, and perform wickedness." "i grant it," quoth i, "but earnestly wish that they may soon be delivered from this misery, having lost the power to perform their malice." "they will lose it," quoth she, "sooner than perhaps either thou wouldst, or they themselves suppose. for in the short compass of this life there is nothing so late that any one, least of all an immortal soul, should think it long in coming; so that the great hope and highest attempts of the wicked are many times made frustrate with a sudden and unexpected end, which in truth setteth some end to their misery. for if wickedness make men miserable, the longer one is wicked, the more miserable he must needs be; and i should judge them the most unhappy men that may be, if death at least did not end their malice. for if we have concluded truly of the misery of wickedness, it is manifest that the wretchedness which is everlasting must of force be infinite." "a strange illation," quoth i, "and hard to be granted; but i see that those things which were granted before agree very well with these." "thou thinkest aright," quoth she, "but he that findeth difficulty to yield to the conclusion must either show that something which is presupposed is false, or that the combination of the propositions makes not a necessary conclusion; otherwise, granting that which went before, he hath no reason to doubt of the inference. for this also which i will conclude now will seem no less strange, and yet followeth as necessarily out of those things which are already assumed." "what?" quoth i. "that wicked men," quoth she, "are more happy being punished than if they escaped the hands of justice. neither do i now go about to show that which may come into every man's mind, that evil customs are corrected by chastisement, and are reduced to virtue by the terror of punishment, and that others may take example to avoid evil, but in another manner also i think vicious men that go unpunished to be more miserable, although we take no account of correction and pay no regard to example." "and what other manner shall this be," quoth i, "besides these?" "have we not granted," quoth she, "that the good are happy, and the evil miserable?" "we have," quoth i. "if then," quoth she, "something that is good be added to one's misery, is he not happier than another whose misery is desolate and solitary, without any participation of goodness?" "so it seemeth," quoth i. "what if there be some other evil annexed to this miserable man who is deprived of all goodness, besides those which make him miserable, is he not to be accounted much more unhappy than he whose misery is lightened by partaking of goodness?" "why not?" quoth i. "but it is manifest that it is just that the wicked be punished, and unjust that they should go unpunished." "who can deny that?" "but neither will any man deny this," quoth she, "that whatsoever is just, is good, and contrariwise, that whatsoever is unjust, is evil." "certainly," i answered. "then the wicked have some good annexed when they are punished, to wit, the punishment itself, which by reason of justice is good, and when they are not punished, they have a further evil, the very impunity which thou hast deservedly granted to be an evil because of its injustice." "i cannot deny it." "wherefore the vicious are far more unhappy by escaping punishment unjustly, than by being justly punished." "this followeth," quoth i, "out of that which hath been concluded before. but i pray thee, leavest thou no punishments for the souls after the death of the body?" "and those great too," quoth she. "some of which i think to be executed as sharp punishments, and others as merciful purgations.[ ] but i purpose not now to treat of those. but we have hitherto laboured that thou shouldest perceive the power of the wicked, which to thee seemed intolerable, to be none at all, and that thou shouldest see, that those whom thou complainedst went unpunished, do never escape without punishment for their wickedness. and that thou shouldest learn that the licence which thou wishedst might soon end, is not long, and yet the longer the more miserable, and most unhappy if it were everlasting. besides, that the wicked are more wretched being permitted to escape with unjust impunity, than being punished with just severity. out of which it followeth that they are then more grievously punished, when they are thought to go scot-free." "when i consider thy reasons," quoth i, "i think nothing can be said more truly. but if i return to the judgments of men, who is there that will think them worthy to be believed or so much as heard?" "it is true," quoth she, "for they cannot lift up their eyes accustomed to darkness, to behold the light of manifest truth, and they are like those birds whose sight is quickened by the night, and dimmed by the day. for while they look upon, not the order of things, but their own affections, they think that licence and impunity to sin is happy. but see what the eternal law establisheth. if thou apply thy mind to the better, thou needest no judge to reward thee: thou hast joined thyself to the more excellent things. if thou declinest to that which is worse, never expect any other to punish thee: thou hast put thyself in a miserable estate; as if by turns thou lookest down to the miry ground, and up to heaven, setting aside all outward causes, by the very law of sight thou seemest sometime to be in the dirt, and sometime present to the stars. but the common sort considereth not these things. what then? shall we join ourselves to them whom we have proved to be like beasts? what if one having altogether lost his sight should likewise forget that he ever had any, and should think that he wanted nothing which belongeth to human perfection: should we likewise think them blind, that see as well as they saw before? for they will not grant that neither, which may be proved by as forcible reasons, that they are more unhappy that do injury than they which suffer it." "i would," quoth i, "hear these reasons." "deniest thou," quoth she, "that every wicked man deserveth punishment?" "no." "and it is many ways clear that the vicious are miserable?" "yes," quoth i. "then you do not doubt that those who deserve punishment are wretched?" "it is true," quoth i. "if then," quoth she, "thou wert to examine this cause, whom wouldest thou appoint to be punished, him that did or that suffered wrong?" "i doubt not," quoth i, "but that i would satisfy him that suffered with the sorrow of him that did it." "the offerer of the injury then would seem to thee more miserable than the receiver?" "it followeth," quoth i. "hence therefore, and for other causes grounded upon that principle that dishonesty of itself maketh men miserable, it appeareth that the injury which is offered any man is not the receiver's but the doer's misery." "but now-a-days," quoth she, "orators take the contrary course. for they endeavour to draw the judges to commiseration of them who have suffered any grievous afflictions; whereas pity is more justly due to the causers thereof, who should be brought, not by angry, but rather by favourable and compassionate accusers to judgment, as it were sick men to a physician, that their diseases and faults might be taken away by punishments; by which means the defenders' labour would either wholly cease, or if they had rather do their clients some good, they would change their defence into accusations. and the wicked themselves, if they could behold virtue abandoned by them, through some little rift, and perceive that they might be delivered from the filth of sin by the affliction of punishments, obtaining virtue in exchange, they would not esteem of torments, and would refuse the assistance of their defenders, and wholly resign themselves to their accusers and judges. by which means it cometh to pass, that in wise men there is no place for hatred. for who but a very fool would hate the good? and to hate the wicked were against reason. for as faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness of the mind. wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than of hatred, much more are they to be pitied, and not abhorred, whose minds are oppressed with wickedness, the greatest malady that may be. [ ] see discussion of this passage in _boethius, an essay,_ h. f. stewart ( ), pp. ff. iv. quod tantos iuuat excitare motus et propria fatum sollicitare manu? si mortem petitis, propinquat ipsa sponte sua uolucres nec remoratur equos. quos serpens leo tigris ursus aper dente petunt, idem se tamen ense petunt. an distant quia dissidentque mores, iniustas acies et fera bella mouent alternisque uolunt perire telis? non est iusta satis saeuitiae ratio. vis aptam meritis uicem referre? dilige iure bonos et miseresce malis." iv. why should we strive to die so many ways, and slay ourselves with our own hands? if we seek death, she ready stands, she willing comes, her chariot never stays. those against whom the wild beasts arméd be, against themselves with weapons rage.[ ] do they such wars unjustly wage, because their lives and manners disagree, and so themselves with mutual weapons kill? alas, but this revenge is small. wouldst thou give due desert to all? love then the good, and pity thou the ill." [ ] literally, "men whom serpent, lion, tiger, bear, and boar attack with tooth, yet attack each other with the sword." v. hic ego: "video," inquam, "quae sit uel felicitas uel miseria in ipsis proborum atque improborum meritis constituta. sed in hac ipsa fortuna populari non nihil boni maliue inesse perpendo. neque enim sapientum quisquam exul inops ignominiosusque esse malit, potius quam pollens opibus, honore reuerendus, potentia ualidus, in sua permanens urbe florere. sic enim clarius testatiusque sapientiae tractatur officium, cum in contingentes populos regentium quodam modo beatitudo transfunditur, cum praesertim carcer, nex[ ] ceteraque legalium tormenta poenarum perniciosis potius ciuibus propter quos etiam constituta sunt debeantur. cur haec igitur uersa uice mutentur scelerumque supplicia bonos premant, praemia uirtutum mali rapiant, uehementer admiror, quaeque tam iniustae confusionis ratio uideatur ex te scire desidero. minus etenim mirarer, si misceri omnia fortuitis casibus crederem. nunc stuporem meum deus rector exaggerat. qui cum saepe bonis iucunda, malis aspera contraque bonis dura tribuat, malis optata concedat, nisi causa deprehenditur, quid est quod a fortuitis casibus differre uideatur?" "nec mirum," inquit, "si quid ordinis ignorata ratione temerarium confusumque credatur. sed tu quamuis causam tantae dispositionis ignores, tamen quoniam bonus mundum rector temperat, recte fieri cuncta ne dubites. [ ] lex _plerique codd._ v. "i see," quoth i, "what felicity or misery is placed in the deserts of honest and dishonest men. but i consider that there is somewhat good or evil even in this popular fortune. for no wise man had rather live in banishment, poverty, and ignominy, than prosper in his own country, being rich, respected, and powerful. for in this manner is the office of wisdom performed with more credit and renown, when the governors' happiness is participated by the people about them; so chiefly because prisons, death, and other torments of legal punishments are rather due to pernicious subjects, for whom they were also ordained. wherefore i much marvel why these things are thus turned upside down, and the punishments of wickedness oppress the good, while evil men obtain the rewards of the good. and i desire to know of thee what may seem to be the reason of so unjust confusion. for i would marvel less if i thought that all things were disordered by casual events. now god being the governor, my astonishment is increased. for since that he distributeth oftentimes that which is pleasant to the good, and that which is distasteful to the bad, and contrariwise adversity to the good, and prosperity to the evil, unless we find out the cause hereof, what difference may there seem to be betwixt this and accidental chances?" "it is no marvel," quoth she, "if anything be thought temerarious and confused, when we know not the order it hath. but although thou beest ignorant of the causes why things be so disposed, yet because the world hath a governor, doubt not but all things are well done. v. si quis arcturi sidera nescit propinqua summo cardine labi, cur legat tardus plaustra bootes mergatque seras aequore flammas, cum nimis celeres explicet ortus, legem stupebit aetheris alti. palleant plenae cornua lunae infecta metis noctis opacae quaeque fulgenti texerat ore confusa phoebe detegat astra, commouet gentes publicus error lassantque crebris pulsibus aera. nemo miratur flamina cori litus frementi tundere fluctu nec niuis duram frigore molem feruente phoebi soluier aestu. hic enim causas cernere promptum est, illic latentes pectora turbant. cuncta quae rara prouehit aetas stupetque subitis mobile uulgus, cedat inscitiae nubilus error, cessent profecto mira uideri." v. who knows not how the stars near to the poles do slide, and how boötes his slow wain doth guide, and why he sets so late, and doth so early rise, may wonder at the courses of the skies. if when the moon is full her horns seem pale to sight, infested with the darkness of the night, and stars from which all grace she with her brightness took, now show themselves, while she doth dimly look, a public error straight through vulgar minds doth pass, and they with many strokes beat upon brass.[ ] none wonders why the winds upon the waters blow. nor why hot phoebus' beams dissolve the snow. these easy are to know, the other hidden lie, and therefore more our hearts they terrify. all strange events which time to light more seldom brings, and the vain people count as sudden things, if we our clouded minds from ignorance could free, no longer would by us admired be." [ ] see tylor's _primitive culture_, pp. ff. cf "carmina uel caelo possunt deducere lunam," virg. _ecl._ viii. , and juvenal, _sat._ vi. sq. vi "ita est," inquam; "sed cum tui muneris sit latentium rerum causas euoluere uelatasque caligine explicare rationes, quaeso uti quae hinc decernas. quoniam hoc me miraculum maxime perturbat, edisseras." tum illa paulisper arridens: "ad rem me," inquit, "omnium quaesitu maximam uocas, cui uix exhausti quicquam satis sit. talis namque materia est ut una dubitatione succisa innumerabiles aliae uelut hydrae capita succrescant, nec ullus fuerit modus, nisi quis eas uiuacissimo mentis igne coerceat. in hac enim de prouidentiae simplicitate, de fati serie, de repentinis casibus, de cognitione ac praedestinatione diuina, de arbitrii libertate quaeri solet, quae quanti oneris sint ipse perpendis. sed quoniam haec quoque te nosse quaedam medicinae tuae portio est, quamquam angusto limite temporis saepti tamen aliquid delibare[ ] conabimur. quod si te musici carminis oblectamenta delectant, hanc oportet paulisper differas uoluptatem, dum nexas sibi ordine contexo rationes." "vt libet," inquam. tunc uelut ab alio orsa principio ita disseruit: "omnium generatio rerum cunctusque mutabilium naturarum progressus et quidquid aliquo mouetur modo, causas, ordinem, formas ex diuinae mentis stabilitate sortitur. haec in suae simplicitatis arce composita multiplicem rebus regendis modum statuit. qui modus cum in ipsa diuinae intellegentiae puritate conspicitur, prouidentia nominatur; cum uero ad ea quae mouet atque disponit refertur, fatum a ueteribus appellatum est. quae diuersa esse facile liquebit, si quis utriusque uim mente conspexerit. nam prouidentia est ipsa illa diuina ratio in summo omnium principe constituta quae cuncta disponit; fatum uero inhaerens rebus mobilibus dispositio per quam prouidentia suis quaeque nectit ordinibus. prouidentia namque cuncta pariter quamuis diuersa quamuis infinita complectitur; fatum uero singula digerit in motum locis formis ac temporibus distributa, ut haec temporalis ordinis explicatio in diuinae mentis adunata prospectum prouidentia sit, eadem uero adunatio digesta atque explicata temporibus fatum uocetur. quae licet diuersa sint, alterum tamen pendet ex altero. ordo namque fatalis ex prouidentiae simplicitate procedit. sicut enim artifex faciendae rei formam mente praecipiens mouet operis effectum, et quod simpliciter praesentarieque prospexerat, per temporales ordines ducit, ita deus prouidentia quidem singulariter stabiliterque facienda disponit, fato uero haec ipsa quae disposuit multipliciter ac temporaliter administrat. siue igitur famulantibus quibusdam prouidentiae diuinis spiritibus fatum exercetur seu anima seu tota inseruiente natura seu caelestibus siderum motibus seu angelica uirtute seu daemonum uaria sollertia seu aliquibus horum seu omnibus fatalis series texitur, illud certe manifestum est immobilem simplicemque gerendarum formam rerum esse prouidentiam, fatum uero eorum quae diuina simplicitas gerenda disposuit mobilem nexum atque ordinem temporalem. quo fit ut omnia quae fato subsunt prouidentiae quoque subiecta sint cui ipsum etiam subiacet fatum, quaedam uero quae sub prouidentia locata sunt fati seriem superent. ea uero sunt quae primae propinqua diuinitati stabiliter fixa fatalis ordinem mobilitatis excedunt. nam ut orbium circa eundem cardinem sese uertentium qui est intimus ad simplicitatem medietatis accedit ceterorumque extra locatorum ueluti cardo quidam circa quem uersentur exsistit, extimus uero maiore ambitu rotatus quanto a puncti media indiuiduitate discedit tanto amplioribus spatiis explicatur, si quid uero illi se medio conectat et societ, in simplicitatem cogitur diffundique ac diffluere cessat, simili ratione quod longius a prima mente discedit maioribus fati nexibus implicatur ac tanto aliquid fato liberum est quanto illum rerum cardinem uicinius petit. quod si supernae mentis haeserit firmitati, motu carens fati quoque supergreditur necessitatem. igitur uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus, ad punctum medium circulus, ita est fati series mobilis ad prouidentiae stabilem simplicitatem. ea series caelum ac sidera mouet, elementa in se inuicem temperat et alterna commutatione transformat; eadem nascentia occidentiaque omnia per similes fetuum seminumque renouat progressus. haec actus etiam fortunasque hominum indissolubili causarum conexione constringit, quae cum ab immobilis prouidentiae proficiscatur exordiis, ipsas quoque immutabiles esse necesse est. ita enim res optime reguntur, si manens in diuina mente simplicitas indeclinabilem causarum ordinem promat. hic uero ordo res mutabiles et alioquin temere fluituras propria incommutabilitate coerceat. quo fit ut tametsi uobis hunc ordinem minime considerare ualentibus confusa omnia perturbataque uideantur, nihilo minus tamen suus modus ad bonum dirigens cuncta disponat. nihil est enim quod mali causa ne ab ipsis quidem improbis fiat; quos, ut uberrime demonstratum est, bonum quaerentes prauus error auertit, nedum ordo de summi boni cardine proficiscens a suo quoquam deflectat exordio. quae uero, inquies, potest ulla iniquior esse confusio, quam ut bonis tum aduersa tum prospera, malis etiam tum optata tum odiosa contingant? num igitur ea mentis integritate homines degunt, ut quos probos improbosue censuerunt eos quoque uti existimant esse necesse sit? atqui in hoc hominum iudicia depugnant, et quos alii praemio alii supplicio dignos arbitrantur. sed concedamus ut aliquis possit bonos malosque discernere; num igitur potent intueri illam intimam temperiem, uelut in corporibus dici solet, animorum? non enim dissimile est miraculum nescienti cur sanis corporibus his quidem dulcia illis uero amara conueniant, cur aegri etiam quidam lenibus quidam uero acribus adiuuentur? at hoc medicus, qui sanitatis ipsius atque aegritudinis modum temperamentumque dinoscit, minime miratur. quid uero aliud animorum salus uidetur esse quam probitas? quid aegritudo quam uitia? quis autem alius uel seruator bonorum uel malorum depulsor quam rector ac medicator mentium deus? qui cum ex alta prouidentiae specula respexit, quid unicuique conueniat agnoscit et quod conuenire nouit accommodat. hic iam fit illud fatalis ordinis insigne miraculum, cum ab sciente geritur quod stupeant ignorantes. nam ut pauca quae ratio ualet humana de diuina profunditate perstringam, de hoc quem tu iustissimum et aequi seruantissimum putas omnia scienti prouidentiae diuersum uidetur; et uictricem quidem causam dis, uictam uero catoni placuisse familiaris noster lucanus admonuit. hic igitur quidquid citra spem uideas geri, rebus quidem rectus ordo est, opinioni uero tuae peruersa confusio. sed sit aliquis ita bene moratus ut de eo diuinum iudicium pariter et humanum consentiat, sed est animi uiribus infirmus; cui si quid eueniat aduersi, desinet colere forsitan innocentiam per quam non potuit retinere fortunam. parcit itaque sapiens dispensatio ei quem deteriorem facere possit aduersitas, ne cui non conuenit laborare patiatur. est alius cunctis uirtutibus absolutus sanctusque ac deo proximus; hunc contingi quibuslibet aduersis nefas prouidentia iudicat adeo ut ne corporeis quidem morbis agitari sinat. nam ut quidam me quoque excellentior: [greek: andros dae ierou demas aitheres oikodomaesan.] fit autem saepe, uti bonis summa rerum regenda deferatur, ut exuberans retundatur improbitas. aliis mixta quaedam pro animorum qualitate distribuit; quosdam remordet ne longa felicitate luxurient, alios duris[ ] agitari ut uirtutes animi patientiae usu atque exercitatione confirment. alii plus aequo metuunt quod ferre possunt, alii plus aequo despiciunt quod ferre non possunt; hos in experimentum sui tristibus ducit. nonnulli uenerandum saeculi nomen gloriosae pretio mortis emerunt: quidam suppliciis inexpugnabiles exemplum ceteris praetulerunt inuictam malis esse uirtutem. quae quam recte atque disposite et ex eorum bono quibus accedere uidentur fiant, nulla dubitatio est. nam illud quoque, quod improbis nunc tristia nunc optata proueniunt, ex eisdem ducitur causis; ac de tristibus quidem nemo miratur, quod eos male meritos omnes existimant. quorum quidem supplicia tum ceteros ab sceleribus deterrent, tum ipsos quibus inuehuntur emendant; laeta uero magnum bonis argumentum loquuntur, quid de huiusmodi felicitate debeant iudicare quam famulari saepe improbis cernant. in qua re illud etiam dispensari credo, quod est forsitan alicuius tam praeceps atque inportuna natura ut eum in scelera potius exacerbare possit rei familiaris inopia; huius morbo prouidentia collatae pecuniae remedio medetur. hic foedatam probris conscientiam exspectans et se cum fortuna sua comparans, forsitan pertimescit ne cuius ei iucundus usus est, sit tristis amissio. mutabit igitur mores ac dum fortunam metuit amittere; nequitiam derelinquit. alios in cladem meritam praecipitauit indigne acta felicitas; quibusdam permissum puniendi ius, ut exercitii bonis et malis esset causa supplicii. nam ut probis atque improbis nullum foedus est, ita ipsi inter se improbi nequeunt conuenire. quidni, cum a semet ipsis discerpentibus conscientiam uitiis quisque dissentiat faciantque saepe, quae cum gesserint non fuisse gerenda decernant? ex quo saepe summa illa prouidentia protulit insigne miraculum, ut malos mali bonos facerent. nam dum iniqua sibi a pessimis quidam perpeti uidentur, noxiorum odio flagrantes ad uirtutis frugem rediere, dum se eis dissimiles student esse quos oderant. sola est enim diuina uis cui mala quoque bona sint, cum eis competenter utendo alicuius boni elicit effectum. ordo enim quidam cuncta complectitur, ut quod adsignata ordinis ratione decesserit, hoc licet in alium, tamen ordinem relabatur, ne quid in regno prouidentiae liceat temeritati. [greek: argaleon de me tauta theon hos pant agoreuein.] neque enim fas est homini cunctas diuinae operae machinas uel ingenio comprehendere uel explicare sermone. hoc tantum perspexisse sufficiat, quod naturarum omnium proditor deus idem ad bonum dirigens cuncta disponat, dumque ea quae protulit in sui similitudinem retinere festinat, malum omne de reipublicae suae terminis per fatalis seriem necessitatis eliminet. quo fit ut quae in terris abundare creduntur, si disponentem prouidentiam spectes, nihil usquam mali esse perpendas. sed uideo te iam dudum et pondere quaestionis oneratum et rationis prolixitate fatigatum aliquam carminis exspectare dulcedinem. accipe igitur haustum quo refectus firmior in ulteriora contendas. [ ] deliberare _codd._; delibare _coni._ pulmannus. [ ] _fortasse_ sinit _post_ duris _addendum est_. vi. "it is true," quoth i, "but since it is thy profession to explicate the causes of hidden things, and to unfold the reasons which are covered with darkness, i beseech thee vouchsafe to declare what conclusion thou drawest from these things, for this miracle troubleth me above all others." then she smiling a little said: "thou invitest me to a matter which is most hardly found out, and can scarcely be sufficiently declared; for it is such that, one doubt being taken away, innumerable others, like the heads of hydra, succeed, neither will they have any end unless a man repress them with the most lively fire of his mind. for in this matter are wont to be handled these questions: of the simplicity of providence; of the course of fate; of sudden chances; of god's knowledge and predestination, and of free will; which how weighty they are, thou thyself discerneth. but because it is part of thy cure to know these things also, though the time be short, yet we will endeavour to touch them briefly. but if the sweetness of verse delight thee, thou must forbear this pleasure for a while, until i propose unto thee some few arguments." "as it pleaseth thee," quoth i. then taking as it were a new beginning, she discoursed in this manner: "the generation of all things, and all the proceedings of mutable natures, and whatsoever is moved in any sort, take their causes, order, and forms from the stability of the divine mind. this, placed in the castle of its own simplicity, hath determined manifold ways for doing things; which ways being considered in the purity of god's understanding, are named providence, but being referred to those things which he moveth and disposeth, they are by the ancients called fate. the diversity of which will easily appear if we weigh the force of both. for providence is the very divine reason itself, seated in the highest prince, which disposeth all things. but fate is a disposition inherent in changeable things, by which providence connecteth all things in their due order. for providence embraceth all things together, though diverse, though infinite; but fate putteth every particular thing into motion being distributed by places, forms, and time; so that this unfolding of temporal order being united into the foresight of god's mind is providence, and the same uniting, being digested and unfolded in time, is called fate. which although they be diverse yet the one dependeth on the other. for fatal order proceedeth from the simplicity of providence. for as a workman conceiving the form of anything in his mind taketh his work in hand, and executeth by order of time that which he had simply and in a moment foreseen, so god by his providence disposeth whatsoever is to be done with simplicity and stability, and by fate effecteth by manifold ways and in the order of time those very things which he disposeth. wherefore, whether fate be exercised by the subordination of certain divine spirits to providence, or this fatal web be woven by a soul or by the service of all nature, or by the heavenly motions of the stars, by angelical virtue, or by diabolical industry, or by some or all of these, that certainly is manifest that providence is an immoveable and simple form of those things which are to be done, and fate a moveable connexion and temporal order of those things which the divine simplicity hath disposed to be done. so that all that is under fate is also subject to providence, to which also fate itself obeyeth. but some things which are placed under providence are above the course of fate. and they are those things which nigh to the first divinity, being stable and fixed, exceed the order of fatal mobility. for as of orbs which turn about the same centre, the inmost draweth nigh to the simplicity of the midst, and is as it were the hinge of the rest, which are placed without it, about which they are turned, and the outmost, wheeled with a greater compass, by how much it departeth from the middle indivisibility of the centre, is so much the more extended into larger spaces, but that which is joined and coupled to that middle approacheth to simplicity, and ceaseth to spread and flow abroad, in like manner that which departeth farthest from the first mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of fate, and everything is so much the freer from fate, by how much it draweth nigh to the hinge of all things. and if it sticketh to the stability of the sovereign mind, free from motion, it surpasseth also the necessity of fate. wherefore in what sort discourse of reason is compared to pure understanding, that which is produced to that which is, time to eternity, a circle to the centre, such is the course of moveable fate to the stable simplicity of providence. that course moveth the heaven and stars, tempereth the elements one with another, and transformeth them by mutual changing. the same reneweth all rising and dying things by like proceeding of fruits and seeds. this comprehendeth also the actions and fortunes of men by an unloosable connexion of causes, which since it proceeds from the principles of unmovable providence, the causes also must needs be immutable. for in this manner things are best governed, if the simplicity which remaineth in the divine mind produceth an inflexible order of causes, and this order restraineth with its own immutability things otherwise mutable, and which would have a confused course. whereof it ensueth that though all things seem confused and disordered to you, who are not able to consider this order, notwithstanding all things are disposed by their own proper measure directing them to good. for there is nothing which is done for the love of evil, even by the wicked themselves: whom, as hath been abundantly proved, lewd error carrieth away while they are seeking after that which is good, so far is it that order proceeding from the hinge of the sovereign goodness should avert any from his first beginning. but, thou wilt say, what more unjust confusion can there be than that both adversity and prosperity should happen to the good, and in like manner both desired and hateful things to the wicked? but are men so completely wise that whomsoever they judge wicked or honest must needs be so? how then are their censures contrary one to another, so that to divers the same men seem worthy of reward and punishment! but let us grant that some are able to discern the good from the evil. can they therefore behold, as is wont to be said of bodies, that inward complexion of souls? for he that knoweth not the cause may marvel in like manner why some sound bodies agree better with sweet things and other with tart; and why some sick men are healed with gentle and some with sharper physic. but to a physician who knoweth the manner and temper both of health and sickness this is nothing strange. now, what is the health of souls but virtue? what sickness have they but vices? and who either conserveth goodness or expelleth evils, but god the ruler and governor of men's minds? who beholding from his high turret of providence seeth what is fitting for everyone, and applieth that which he knoweth to be most convenient. here ariseth that strange wonder of fatal order, to wit that he that knoweth what is best, doth that which the ignorant admire. for to touch briefly some few things of the divine depth, which human reason is able to attain, he whom thou thinketh most just and most observant of equity, seemeth otherwise in the eyes of providence which knoweth all. and our disciple lucan noteth that the cause of conquerers pleased the gods, and that of the conquered, cato.[ ] wherefore whatsoever thou seest done here against thy expectation is right order in the things themselves, but a perverse confusion in thy opinion. but let there be one so well conditioned that god and men approve and praise him; yet perhaps he is so weak a minded man, that if he falleth into adversity, he will forsake his innocency, which was not able to keep him in prosperity. wherefore god's wise dispensation spareth him that adversity might make worse, lest he should suffer to whom difficulties are dangerous. there is another complete in all virtues, a saint and high to god; providence judgeth it a sacrilege to lay affliction on him, insomuch that she permitteth him not to be troubled so much as with corporal sickness. for as one that excelleth me saith 'the body of an holy man is builded of pure ether.'[ ] it happeneth often also that the chief command is given to good men, that wickedness, which otherwise would overflow all, may be kept down. she mixeth for others sour and sweet according to the disposition of their souls; she troubles some lest they should fall to dissolution by long prosperity, others are vexed with hardships, that they may confirm the forces of their mind with the use and exercise of patience. some are too much afraid of that which they are able to bear. others make less account than there is cause of that which they cannot endure. all these she affrayeth with afflictions that they make trial of themselves. many have bought the renown of this world with a glorious death. some, overcoming all torments, have showed by their example that virtues cannot be conquered by miseries, which things how well and orderly they are done, and how much to their good upon whom they are seen to fall, there can be no doubt. for that sometime grievous, sometime pleasant things befall in like manner the wicked, proceedeth from the same causes. and as for adversity no man marvelleth because all think they deserve ill. whose punishments do both terrify others from the like courses, and move them to amend themselves. and their prosperity is a great argument to the good, what they ought to judge of this happiness which they see oftentimes bestowed upon the wicked. in which thing also is to be considered that peradventure some have so headlong and untoward a disposition, that poverty would rather make him worse; whose disease is cured by providence, with giving him store of money. another, knowing his own guilty conscience, and comparing his character with his own estate, is afraid lest the loss of that should be grievous unto him, the use of which is pleasant. wherefore he resolveth to change his customs, and whiles he feareth to lose his prosperity, he forsaketh wickedness. the increase of honour undeservedly obtained hath thrown some headlong into their deserved destruction. others are permitted to have authority to punish others, that they may exercise the good and punish the bad. for as there is no league between virtuous and wicked men, so neither can the wicked agree among themselves. why not? since they disagree within themselves by reason of their vices which tear their conscience, so that they many times do that which afterwards they wish undone. from whence that highest providence often worketh that wonderful miracle, that evil men make those which are evil good. for some, considering the injustice done them by most wicked men, inflamed with hatred of evildoers have returned to the practice of virtue, procuring to be contrary to them whom they hate. for it is only a divine strength to which even evil things are good, when, by using them in due sort, it draweth some good effect out of them. for a certain order embraceth all things, so that even that which departeth from the order appointed to it, though it falleth into another, yet that is order also, lest confused rashness should bear any sway in the kingdom of providence. 'but it is hard for me to rehearse all this as if i were a god.'[ ] for it is impossible for any man either to comprehend by his wit or to explicate in speech all the frame of god's work. be it sufficient that we have seen thus much, that god, the author of all natures, directeth and disposeth all things to goodness, and while he endeavoureth to retain in his own likeness those things which he hath produced, he banisheth all evil from the bounds of his commonwealth, by the course of fatal necessity. so that if thou considerest the disposition of providence, thou wilt perceive that evil, which is thought so to abound upon earth, hath no place left for it at all. but i see that long since burdened with so weighty a question, and wearied with my long discourse, thou expectest the delight of verses; wherefore take a draught, that, being refreshed, thou mayest be able to go forward. [ ] _pharsal_. i. . [ ] source unknown. [ ] homer, _il._ xii. . vi. si uis celsi iura tonantis pura sollers cernere mente, aspice summi culmina caeli. illic iusto foedere rerum veterem seruant sidera pacem. non sol rutilo concitus igne gelidum phoebes impedit axem nec quae summo uertice mundi flectit rapidos vrsa meatus. numquam occiduo lota profundo cetera cernens sidera mergi cupit oceano tingere flammas. semper uicibus temporis aequis vesper seras nuntiat umbras reuehitque diem lucifer almum. sic aeternos reficit cursus alternus amor, sic astrigeris bellum discors exulat oris. haec concordia temperat aequis elementa modis, ut pugnantia vicibus cedant umida siccis iungantque fidem frigora flammis pendulus ignis surgat in altum terraeque graues pondere sidant. isdem causis uere tepenti spirat florifer annus odores, aestas cererem feruida siccat, remeat pomis grauis autumnus, hiemem defluus inrigat imber. haec temperies alit ac profert quidquid uitam spirat in orbe. eadem rapiens condit et aufert obitu mergens orta supremo. sedet interea conditor altus rerumque regens flectit habenas rex et dominus fons et origo lex et sapiens arbiter aequi et quae motu concitat ire, sistit retrahens ac uaga firmat. nam nisi rectos reuocans itus flexos iterum cogat in orbes, quae nunc stabilis continet ordo dissaepta suo fonte fatiscant. hic est cunctis communis amor repetuntque boni fine teneri, quia non aliter durare queant, nisi conuerso rursus amore refluant causae quae dedit esse. vi. if thou would'st see god's laws with purest mind, thy sight on heaven must fixéd be, whose settled course the stars in peace doth bind. the sun's bright fire stops not his sister's team, nor doth the northern bear desire within the ocean's wave to hide her beam. though she behold the other stars there couching, yet she uncessantly is rolled about high heaven, the ocean never touching. the evening light with certain course doth show the coming of the shady night, and lucifer before the day doth go. this mutual love courses eternal makes, and from the starry spheres above all cause of war and dangerous discord takes. this sweet consent in equal bands doth tie the nature of each element, so that the moist things yield unto the dry, the piercing cold with flames doth friendship keep, the trembling fire the highest place doth hold, and the gross earth sinks down into the deep. the flowery year breathes odours in the spring the scorching summer corn doth bear, the autumn fruit from laden trees doth bring. the falling rain doth winter's moisture give. these rules thus nourish and maintain all creatures which we see on earth to live. and when they die, these bring them to their end, while their creator sits on high, whose hand the reins of the whole world doth bend. he as their king rules them with lordly might. from him they rise, flourish, and spring, he as their law and judge decides their right. those things whose course most swiftly glides away his might doth often backward force, and suddenly their wandering motion stay. unless his strength their violence should bound, and them which else would run at length, should bring within the compass of a round, that firm decree which now doth all adorn would soon destroyed and broken be, things being far from their beginning borne. this powerful love is common unto all, which for desire of good do move back to the springs from whence they first did fall. no worldly thing can a continuance have unless love back again it bring unto the cause which first the essence gave. vii. iamne igitur uides quid haec omnia quae diximus consequatur?" "quidnam?" inquam. "omnem," inquit, "bonam prorsus esse fortunam." "et qui id," inquam, "fieri potest?" "attende," inquit. "cum omnis fortuna uel iucunda uel aspera tum remunerandi exercendiue bonos tum puniendi corrigendiue improbos causa deferatur, omnis bona quam uel iustam constat esse uel utilem." "nimis quidem," inquam, "uera ratio et si quam paulo ante docuisti prouidentiam fatumue considerem, firmis uiribus nixa sententia. sed eam si placet inter eas quas inopinabiles paulo ante posuisti numeremus." "qui?" inquit. "quia id hominum sermo communis usurpat et quidem crebro quorundam malam esse fortunam." "visne igitur," inquit, "paulisper uulgi sermonibus accedamus, ne nimium uelut ab humanitatis usu recessisse uideamur?" "vt placet," inquam. "nonne igitur bonum censes esse quod prodest?" "ita est," inquam, "quae uero aut exercet aut corrigit, prodest?" "fateor," inquam. "bona igitur?" "quidni?" "sed haec eorum est qui uel in uirtute positi contra aspera bellum gerunt, uel a uitiis declinantes uirtutis iter arripiunt." "negare," inquam, "nequeo." "quid uero iucunda, quae in praemium tribuitur bonis, num uulgus malam esse decernit?" "nequaquam; uerum uti est ita quoque esse optimam censet." "quid reliqua, quae cum sit aspera, iusto supplicio malos coercet, num bonam populus putat?" "immo omnium," inquam, "quae excogitari possunt, iudicat esse miserrimam." "vide igitur ne opinionem populi sequentes quiddam ualde inopinabile confecerimus." "quid?" inquam. "ex his enim," ait, "quae concessa sunt, euenit eorum quidem qui uel sunt uel in possessione uel in prouectu uel in adeptione uirtutis, omnem quaecumque sit bonam, in improbitate uero manentibus omnem pessimam esse fortunam." "hoc," inquam, "uerum est, tametsi nemo audeat confiteri." "quare," inquit, "ita uir sapiens moleste ferre non debet, quotiens in fortunae certamen adducitur, ut uirum fortem non decet indignari, quotiens increpuit bellicus tumultus; utrique enim, huic quidem gloriae propagandae illi uero conformandae sapientiae, difficultas ipsa materia est. ex quo etiam uirtus uocatur quod suis uiribus nitens non superetur aduersis. neque enim uos in prouectu positi uirtutis diffluere deliciis et emarcescere uoluptate uenistis. proelium cum omni fortuna nimis[ ] acre conseritis, ne uos aut tristis opprimat aut iucunda corrumpat. firmis medium uiribus occupate! quidquid aut infra subsistit aut ultra progreditur, habet contemptum felicitatis, non habet praemium laboris. in uestra enim situm manu qualem uobis fortunam formare malitis; omnis enim quae uidetur aspera nisi aut exercet aut corrigit punit. [ ] animis _codd. meliores._ vii. perceivest thou now what followeth of all that we have hitherto said?" "what?" quoth i. "that," quoth she, "all manner of fortune is good." "how can that be?" quoth i. "be attentive," quoth she; "since that all fortune, be it pleasing or unpleasing, is directed to the reward or exercise of the good, and to the punishment and direction of the wicked, it is manifest it is all good, since all is just or profitable." "thy reason is very true," quoth i, "and if i consider providence and fate, which thou didst explicate a little before, thy opinion is well grounded. but if thou pleasest let us account it among those which thou not long since supposest incredible." "why?" quoth she. "because men commonly use to say and repeat that some have ill fortune." "shall we," quoth she, "frame our speech to the vulgar phrase, lest we seem to have as it were forsaken the use of human conversation?" "as it pleaseth thee," quoth i. "dost thou not think then that that is good which is profitable?" "yes," quoth i. "but that fortune which either exerciseth or correcteth is profitable?" "it is true," quoth i. "it is good then?" "why not?" "but this is the estate of them who being either virtuous strive with adversity, or forsaking vices betake themselves to the way of virtue." "i cannot deny it," quoth i. "now, what sayest thou to that pleasing fortune which is given in reward to the good, doth the common people account it bad?" "no, but judgeth it exceeding good, as it is indeed." "and what of the other which, being unpleasing, restraineth the evil with just punishment, doth not the people think it good?" "nay," quoth i, "they think it the most miserable that can be." "look then," quoth she, "how, following the people's opinion, we have concluded a very incredible matter." "what?" quoth i. "for it followeth," quoth she, "out of that which is granted, that all their fortune, whatsoever it be, who are either in the possession or increase or entrance of virtue, is good: and theirs, which remain in vices, the worst that may be." "this," quoth i, "is true, though none dare say so." "wherefore," quoth she, "a wise man must be no more troubled when he is assaulted with adversity, than a valiant captain dismayed at the sound of an alarum. for difficulties are the matter by which the one must extend his glory, and the other increase his wisdom. for which cause virtue is so called, because it hath sufficient strength to overcome adversity.[ ] for you, that are proficients in virtue, are not come hither to be dissolute with dainties or to languish in pleasures. you skirmish fiercely with any fortune, lest either affliction oppress you or prosperity corrupt you. stay yourselves strongly in the mean! for whatsoever cometh either short, or goeth beyond, may well contemn felicity, but will never obtain any reward of labour. for it is placed in your power to frame to yourselves what fortune you please. for all that seemeth unsavoury either exerciseth or correcteth or punisheth. [ ] boethius shows his independence in adopting for _uirtus_ a different etymology from that given by cicero, viz. _uir_ (of. _tusoul._ xviii.). vii. bella bis quinis operatus annis vltor atrides phrygiae ruinis fratris amissos thalamos piauit; ille dum graiae dare uela classi optat et uentos redimit cruore, exuit patrem miserumque tristis foederat natae iugulum sacerdos. fleuit amissos ithacus sodales quos ferus uasto recubans in antro mersit inmani polyphemus aluo; sed tamen caeco furibundus ore gaudium maestis lacrimis rependit. herculem duri celebrant labores. ille centauros domuit superbos, abstulit saeuo spolium leoni fixit et certis uolucres sagittis, poma cernenti rapuit draconi aureo laeuam grauior metallo, cerberum traxit triplici catena. victor immitem posuisse fertur pabulum saeuis dominum quadrigis. hydra combusto periit ueneno, fronte turpatus achelous amnis ora demersit pudibunda ripis. strauit antaeum libycis harenis, cacus euandri satiauit iras quosque pressurus foret altus orbis saetiger spumis umeros notauit. vltimus caelum[ ] labor inreflexo sustulit collo pretiumque rursus vltimi caelum meruit laboris. ite nunc fortes ubi celsa magni ducit exempli uia! cur inertes terga nudatis? superata tellus sidera donat." [ ] caelo _codd. mellores._ vii. revengeful atreus' son did ten whole years employ in wars, till he his brother's loss repaid with ransacked troy. he setting forth the fleet of greece upon the seas, and knowing well that only blood the angry winds would please, forgot a father's part, and with his cruel knife unto the gods did sacrifice his dearest daughter's life. ulysses wailed the loss of his most faithful men, whom polyphemus did devour enclosed in his den but when his hands by sleight had made the cyclops blind, most pleasant joy instead of former tears possessed his mind. hercules famous is for his laborious toil, who tamed the centaurs and did take the dreadful lion's spoil. he the stymphalian birds with piercing arrows strook, and from the watchful dragon's care the golden apples took.[ ] he in a threefold chain the hellish porter led, and with their cruel master's flesh the savage horses fed. he did th' increasing heads of poisonous hydra burn, and breaking achelous' horns, did make him back return.[ ]* he on the libyan sands did proud antaeus kill, and with the mighty cacus' blood euander's wrath fulfil. that world-uplifting back the boar's white foam did fleck. to hold on high the sphere of heaven with never bending neck of all his many toils the last was, and most hard, and for this last and greatest toil the heaven was his reward. you gallant men pursue this way of high renown, why yield you? overcome the earth, and you the stars shall crown," [ ] literally, "his left hand weighted with the golden metal." [ ] lit. "the river achelous dishonoured in his brow (by the loss of his horns) buried his shame-stricken face in his banks." anicii manlii severini boethii v.c. et inl. excons. ord. ex mag. off. patricii philosophiae consolationis liber qvartvs explicit incipit liber v. i. dixerat orationisque cursum ad alia quaedam tractanda atque expedienda uertebat. tum ego: "recta quidem," inquam, "exhortatio tuaque prorsus auctoritate dignissima, sed quod tu dudum de prouidentia quaestionem pluribus aliis implicitam esse dixisti, re experior. quaero enim an esse aliquid omnino et quidnam esse casum arbitrere." tum illa: "festino," inquit; "debitum promissionis absoluere uiamque tibi qua patriam reueharis aperire. haec autem etsi perutilia cognitu tamen a propositi nostri tramite paulisper auersa sunt, uerendumque est ne deuiis fatigatus ad emetiendum rectum iter sufficere non possis." "ne id," inquam, "prorsus uereare. nam quietis mihi loco fuerit ea quibus maxime delector agnoscere, simul cum omne disputationis tuae latus indubitata fide constiterit, nihil de sequentibus ambigatur." tum illa: "morem," inquit, "geram tibi," simulque sic orsa est: "si quidem," inquit, "aliquis euentum temerario motu nullaque causarum conexione productum casum esse definiat, nihil omnino casum esse confirmo et praeter subiectae rei significationem inanem prorsus uocem esse decerno. quis enim coercente in ordinem cuncta deo locus esse ullus temeritati reliquus potest? nam nihil ex nihilo exsistere uera sententia est cui nemo umquam ueterum refragatus est, quamquam id illi non de operante principio, sed de materiali subiecto hoc omnium de natura rationum quasi quoddam iecerint fundamentum. at si nullis ex causis aliquid oriatur, id de nihilo ortum esse uidebitur. quod si hoc fieri nequit, ne casum quidem huiusmodi esse possibile est qualem paulo ante definiuimus." "quid igitur," inquam, "nihilne est quod uel casus uel fortuitum iure appellari queat? an est aliquid, tametsi uulgus lateat, cui uocabula ista conueniant?" "aristoteles meus id," inquit, "in physicis et breui et ueri propinqua ratione definiuit." "quonam," inquam "modo?" "quotiens," ait, "aliquid cuiuspiam rei gratia geritur aliudque quibusdam de causis quam quod intendebatur obtingit, casus uocatur, ut si quis colendi agri causa fodiens humum defossi auri pondus inueniat. hoc igitur fortuito quidem creditur accidisse, uerum non de nihilo est; nam proprias causas habet quarum inprouisus inopinatusque concursus casum uidetur operatus. nam nisi cultor agri humum foderet, nisi eo loci pecuniam suam depositor obruisset, aurum non esset inuentum. haec sunt igitur fortuiti causa compendii, quod ex obuiis sibi et confluentibus causis, non ex gerentis intentione prouenit. neque enim uel qui aurum obruit uel qui agrum exercuit ut ea pecunia reperiretur intendit; sed uti dixi, quo ille obruit hunc fodisse conuenit atque concurrit. licet igitur definire casum esse inopinatum ex confluentibus causis in his quae ob aliquid geruntur euentum; concurrere uero atque confluere causas facit ordo ille ineuitabili conexione procedens; qui de prouidentiae fonte descendens cuncta suis locis temporibusque disponit. the fifth book of boethius i. having said thus, she began to turn her speech to treat and explicate certain other questions, when i interrupted her, saying: "thy exhortation is very good, and well-seeming thy authority. but i find it true by experience, as thou affirmedst, that the question of providence is entangled with many other. for i desire to know whether thou thinkest chance to be anything at all, and what it is." "i make haste," quoth she, "to perform my promise, and to show thee the way by which thou mayest return to thy country. but these other questions, though they be very profitable, yet they are somewhat from our purpose, and it is to be feared lest being wearied with digressions thou beest not able to finish thy direct journey." "there is no fear of that," quoth i, "for it will be a great ease to me to understand those things in which i take great delight, and withal, when thy disputation is fenced in on every side with sure conviction, there can be no doubt made of anything thou shalt infer." "i will," quoth she, "do as thou wouldst me have," and withal began in this manner. "if any shall define chance to be an event produced by a confused motion, and without connexion of causes, i affirm that there is no such thing, and that chance is only an empty voice that hath beneath it no real signification. for what place can confusion have, since god disposeth all things in due order? for it is a true sentence that of nothing cometh nothing, which none of the ancients denied, though they held not that principle of the efficient cause, but of the material subject, laying it down as in a manner the ground of all their reasonings concerning nature. but if anything proceedeth from no causes, that will seem to have come from nothing, which if it cannot be, neither is it possible there should be any such chance as is defined a little before." "what then," quoth i, "is there nothing that can rightly be called chance or fortune? or is there something, though unknown to the common sort, to which these names agree?" "my aristotle," quoth she, "in his _books of nature_[ ] declared this point briefly and very near the truth." "how?" quoth i. "when," quoth she, "anything is done for some certain cause, and some other thing happeneth for other reasons than that which was intended, this is called chance; as if one digging his ground with intention to till it, findeth an hidden treasure. this is thought to have fallen thus out by fortune, but it is not of nothing, for it hath peculiar causes whose unexpected and not foreseen concourse seemeth to have brought forth a chance. for unless the husbandman had digged up his ground, and unless the other had hidden his money in that place, the treasure had not been found. these are therefore the causes of this fortunate accident, which proceedeth from the meeting and concourse of causes, and not from the intention of the doer. for neither he that hid the gold nor he that tilled his ground had any intention that the money should be found, but, as i said, it followed and concurred that this man should dig up in the place where the other hid. wherefore, we may define chance thus: that it is an unexpected event of concurring causes in those things which are done to some end and purpose. now the cause why causes so concur and meet so together, is that order proceeding with inevitable connexion, which, descending from the fountain of providence, disposeth all things in their places and times. [ ] _phys._ ii. . i. rupis achaemeniae scopulis ubi uersa sequentum pectoribus figit spicula pugna fugax, tigris et euphrates uno se fonte resoluunt et mox abiunctis dissociantur aquis. si coeant cursumque iterum reuocentur in unum, confluat alterni quod trahit unda uadi; conuenient puppes et uulsi flumine trunci mixtaque fortuitos implicet unda modos, quos tamen ipsa uagos terrae decliuia casus gurgitis et lapsi defluus ordo regit. sic quae permissis fluitare uidetur habenis fors patitur frenos ipsaque lege meat." i. in the achaemenian rocks, where parthians with their darts in their dissembled flight do wound their enemies, tigris from the same head doth with euphrates rise, and forthwith they themselves divide in several parts; but if they join again, and them one channel bound, bringing together all that both their waves do bear; the ships and trees, whose roots they from the bank do tear, will meet, and they their floods will mingle and confound, yet run this wandering course in places which are low, and in these sliding streams a settled law remains.[ ] so fortune, though it seems to run with careless reins, yet hath it certain rule, and doth in order flow." [ ] lit. "yet all these (apparently) random happenings are governed by the shelving ground and the flowing course of the stream as it runs." ii. "animaduerto," inquam, "idque, uti tu dicis, ita esse consentio. sed in hac haerentium sibi serie causarum estne ulla nostri arbitrii libertas an ipsos quoque humanorum motus animorum fatalis catena constringit?" "est," inquit, "neque enim fuerit ulla rationalis natura quin eidem libertas adsit arbitrii. nam quod ratione uti naturaliter potest id habet iudicium quo quidque discernat; per se igitur fugienda optandaue dinoscit. quod uero quis optandum esse iudicat petit; refugit uero quod aestimat esse fugiendum. quare quibus in ipsis inest ratio, inest etiam uolendi nolendique libertas. sed hanc non in omnibus aequam esse constituo. nam supernis diuinisque substantiis et perspicax iudicium et incorrupta uoluntas et efficax optatorum praesto est potestas. humanas uero animas liberiores quidem esse necesse est cum se in mentis diuinae speculatione conseruant, minus uero cum dilabuntur ad corpora, minusque etiam, cum terrenis artubus colligantur. extrema uero est seruitus, cum uitiis deditae rationis propriae possessione ceciderunt. nam ubi oculos a summae luce ueritatis ad inferiora et tenebrosa deiecerint, mox inscitiae nube caligant, perniciosis turbantur affectibus quibus accedendo consentiendoque quam inuexere sibi adiuuant seruitutem et sunt quodam modo propria libertate captiuae. quae tamen ille ab aeterno cuncta prospiciens prouidentiae cernit intuitus et suis quaeque meritis praedestinata disponit. ii. "i observe it," quoth i, "and i acknowledge it to be as thou sayest. but in this rank of coherent causes, have we any free-will, or doth the fatal chain fasten also the motions of men's minds?" "we have," quoth she, "for there can be no reasonable nature, unless it be endued with free-will. for that which naturally hath the use of reason hath also judgment by which it can discern of everything by itself, wherefore of itself it distinguished betwixt those things which are to be avoided, and those which are to be desired. now every one seeketh for that which he thinketh is to be desired, and escheweth that which in his judgment is to be avoided. wherefore, they which have reason in themselves have freedom to will and nill. but yet i consider not this equal in all. for the supreme and divine substances have both a perspicuous judgment and an uncorrupted will, and an effectual power to obtain their desires. but the minds of men must needs be more free when they conserve themselves in the contemplation of god, and less when they come to their bodies, and yet less when they are bound with earthly fetters. but their greatest bondage is when, giving themselves to vices, they lose possession of their own reason. for, having cast their eyes from the light of the sovereign truth to inferior obscurities, forthwith they are blinded with the cloud of ignorance, molested with hurtful affections, by yielding and consenting to which they increase the bondage which they laid upon themselves, and are, after a certain manner, captives by their own freedom. which notwithstanding that foresight of providence which beholdeth all things from eternity, foreseeth, and by predestination disposeth of everything by their merits. ii. [greek: pant' ephoran kai pant' epakouein][ ] puro clarum lumine phoebum melliflui canit oris homerus: qui tamen intima uiscera terrae non ualet aut pelagi radiorum infirma perrumpere luce. haud sic magni conditor orbis; huic ex alto cuncta tuenti nulla terrae mole resistunt, non nox atris nubibus obstat. quae sint, quae fuerint ueniantque vno mentis cernit in ictu; quem, quia respicit omnia solus, verum possis dicere solem." [ ] disponit [greek: pant' ephoron kai pant' epakogon] _sic peiper et similiter editores priores. versum in rectum locum engelbrecht restituit, quam quidem emendationem noster interpres uidetur praesensisse._ ii. sweet homer[ ] sings the praise of phoebus clear and bright, and yet his strongest rays cannot with feeble light cast through the secret ways of earth and seas his sight, though 'all lies open to his eyes.'[ ] but he who did this world devise-- the earth's vast depths unseen from his sight are not free, no clouds can stand between, he at one time doth see what are, and what have been, and what shall after be. whom, since he only vieweth all, you rightly the true sun may call." [ ] cf. _il._ iv. , _od._ xii. . [ ] this line renders the greek with which boethius begins the poem, adapting homer's phrase "all surveying, all o'erhearing." see the critical note on p. . iii. tum ego: "en," inquam, "difficiliore rursus ambiguitate confundor." "quaenam," inquit, "ista est? iam enim quibus perturbere coniecto." "nimium," inquam, "aduersari ac repugnare uidetur praenoscere uniuersa deum et esse ullum libertatis arbitrium. nam si cuncta prospicit deus neque falli ullo modo potest, euenire necesse est quod prouidentia futurum esse praeuiderit. quare si ab aeterno non facta hominum modo sed etiam consilia uoluntatesque praenoscit, nulla erit arbitrii libertas; neque enim uel factum aliud ullum uel quaelibet exsistere poterit uoluntas nisi quam nescia falli prouidentia diuina praesenserit. nam si aliorsum quam prouisae sunt detorqueri ualent, non iam erit futuri firma praescientia, sed opinio potius incerta, quod de deo credere nefas iudico. neque enim illam probo rationem qua se quidam credunt hunc quaestionis nodum posse dissoluere. aiunt enim non ideo quid esse euenturum, quoniam id prouidentia futurum esse prospexerit, sed e contrario potius, quoniam quid futurum est, id diuinam prouidentiam latere non posse eoque modo necessarium hoc in contrariam relabi partem, neque enim necesse esse contingere quae prouidentur, sed necesse esse quae futura sunt prouideri--quasi uero quae cuius rei causa sit praescientiane futurorum necessitatis an futurorum necessitas prouidentiae laboretur, ac non illud demonstrare nitamur, quoquo modo sese habeat ordo causarum, necessarium esse euentum praescitarum rerum, etiam si praescientia futuris rebus eueniendi necessitatem non uideatur inferre. etenim si quispiam sedeat, opinionem quae eum sedere coniectat ueram esse necesse est; atque e conuerso rursus, si de quopiam uera sit opinio quoniam sedet, eum sedere necesse est. in utroque igitur necessitas inest, in hoc quidem sedendi, at uero in altero ueritatis. sed non idcirco quisque sedet quoniam uera est opinio, sed haec potius uera est quoniam quempiam sedere praecessit. ita cum causa ueritatis ex altera parte procedat, inest tamen communis in utraque necessitas. similia de prouidentia futurisque rebus ratiocinari patet. nam etiam si idcirco quoniam futura sunt, prouidentur, non uero ideo quoniam prouidentur eueniunt, nihilo minus tamen ab deo uel uentura prouideri uel prouisa necesse est euenire,[ ] quod ad perimendam arbitrii libertatem solum satis est. iam uero quam praeposterum est ut aeternae praescientiae temporalium rerum euentus causa esse dicatur! quid est autem aliud arbitrari ideo deum futura quoniam sunt euentura prouidere, quam putare quae olim acciderunt causam summae illius esse prouidentiae? ad haec sicuti cum quid esse scio, id ipsum esse necesse est, ita cum quid futurum noui, id ipsum futurum esse necesse est. sic fit igitur ut euentus praescitae rei nequeat euitari. postremo si quid aliquis aliorsum atque sese res habet existimet, id non modo scientia non est, sed est opinio fallax ab scientiae ueritate longe diuersa. quare si quid ita futurum est ut eius certus ac necessarius non sit euentus, id euenturum esse praesciri qui poterit? sicut enim scientia ipsa impermixta est falsitati, ita id quod ab ea concipitur esse aliter atque concipitur nequit. ea namque causa est cur mendacio scientia careat, quod se ita rem quamque habere necesse est uti eam sese habere scientia comprehendit. quid igitur? quonam modo deus haec incerta futura praenoscit? nam si ineuitabiliter euentura censet quae etiam non euenire possibile est, fallitur; quod non sentire modo nefas est, sed etiam uoce proferre. at si ita uti sunt, ita ea futura esse decernit, ut aeque uel fieri ea uel non fieri posse cognoscat, quae est haec praescientia quae nihil certum nihil stabile comprehendit? aut quid hoc refert uaticinio illo ridiculo tiresiae? quidquid dicam, aut erit aut non. quid etiam diuina prouidentia humana opinione praestiterit; si uti homines incerta iudicat quorum est incertus euentus? quod si apud illum rerum omnium certissimum fontem nihil incerti esse potest, certus eorum est euentus quae futura firmiter ille praescierit. quare nulla est humanis consiliis actionibusque libertas quas diuina mens sine falsitatis errore cuncta prospiciens ad unum alligat et constringit euentum. quo semel recepto quantus occasus humanarum rerum consequatur liquet. frustra enim bonis malisque praemia poenaeue proponuntur quae nullus meruit liber ac uoluntarius motus animorum. idque omnium uidebitur iniquissimum quod nunc aequissimum iudicatur uel puniri improbos uel remunerari probos quos ad alterutrum non propria mittit uoluntas, sed futuri cogit certa necessitas. nec uitia igitur nec uirtutes quidquam fuerint, sed omnium meritorum potius mixta atque indiscreta confusio. quoque nihil sceleratius excogitari potest, cum ex prouidentia rerum omnis ordo ducatur nihilque consiliis liceat humanis, fit ut uitia quoque nostra ad bonorum omnium referantur auctorem. igitur nec sperandi aliquid nec deprecandi ulla ratio est. quid enim uel speret quisque uel etiam deprecetur, quando optanda omnia series indeflexa conectit? auferetur igitur unicum illud inter homines deumque commercium sperandi scilicet ac deprecandi. si quidem iustae humilitatis pretio inaestimabilem uicem diuinae gratiae promeremur, qui solus modus est quo cum deo colloqui homines posse uideantur illique inaccessae luci prius quoque quam impetrent ipsa supplicandi ratione coniungi. quae si recepta futurorum necessitate nihil uirium habere credantur, quid erit quo summo illi rerum principi conecti atque adhaerere possimus? quare necesse erit humanum genus, uti paulo ante cantabas, dissaeptum atque disiunctum suo fonte fatiscere. [ ] euenire prouisa _codd. meliores._ iii. then i complained that i was now in a greater confusion and more doubtful difficulty than before. "what is that?" quoth she, "for i already conjecture what it is that troubleth thee." "it seemeth," quoth i, "to be altogether impossible and repugnant that god foreseeth all things, and that there should be any free-will. for if god beholdeth all things and cannot be deceived, that must of necessity follow which his providence foreseeth to be to come. wherefore, if from eternity he doth not only foreknow the deeds of men, but also their counsels and wills, there can be no free-will; for there is not any other deed or will, but those which the divine providence, that cannot be deceived, hath foreseen. for if things can be drawn aside to any other end than was foreknown, there will not be any firm knowledge of that which is to come, but rather an uncertain opinion, which in my opinion were impious to believe of god. neither do i allow of that reason with which some suppose that they can dissolve the difficulty of this question. for they say that nothing is therefore to come to pass because providence did foresee it, but rather contrariwise, because it shall be, it could not be unknown to providence, and in this manner the necessity passes over to the other side. for it is not necessary, they argue, that those things should happen which are foreseen, but it is necessary that those things should be foreseen that are to come--as though our problem were this, which of them is the cause of a thing, the foreknowledge of the necessity of things to come, or the necessity of the foreknowledge of things to come, and we were not trying to prove that, howsoever these causes be ordered, the event of the things which are foreknown is necessary, even though the foreknowledge seemeth not to confer necessity of being upon the things themselves. for if any man sitteth the opinion which thinketh so must needs be true, and again on the other side, if the opinion that one sitteth be true, he must needs sit. wherefore, there is necessity in both, in the one of sitting and in the other of truth. but one sitteth not because the opinion is true, but rather this is true because one hath taken his seat. so that though the cause of truth proceedeth from one part, yet there is a common necessity in both. and the like is to be inferred of providence and future things. for even though they be foreseen because they shall be, yet they do not come to pass because they are foreseen, notwithstanding it is necessary that either things to come be foreseen by god, or that things foreseen do fall out, which alone is sufficient to overthrow free-will. but see how preposterous it is that the event of temporal things should be said to be the cause of the everlasting foreknowledge! and what else is it to think that god doth therefore foresee future things, because they are to happen, than to affirm that those things which happened long since, are the cause of that sovereign providence? furthermore, as when i know anything to be, it must needs be; so when i know that anything shall be, it must needs be to come. and so it followeth that the event of a thing foreknown cannot be avoided. finally, if any man thinketh otherwise than the thing is, that is not only no knowledge, but it is a deceitful opinion far from the truth of knowledge; wherefore, if anything is to be in such sort that the event of it is not certain or necessary, how can that be foreknown that it shall happen? for as knowledge is without mixture of falsity, so that which is conceived by it cannot be otherwise than it is conceived. for this is the cause why knowledge is without deceit, because everything must needs be so as the knowledge apprehendeth it to be. what then? how doth god foreknow that these uncertain things shall be? for if he judgeth that those things shall happen inevitably, which it is possible shall not happen, he is deceived, which is not only impious to think, but also to speak. but if he supposeth that they shall happen in such sort as they are, so that he knoweth that they may equally be done and not be done, what foreknowledge is this which comprehendeth no certain or stable thing? or in what is this better than that ridiculous prophecy of tiresias "whatsoever i say shall either be or not be"[ ]? or in what shall the divine providence exceed human opinion, if, as men, god judgeth those things to be uncertain the event of which is doubtful? but if nothing can be uncertain to that most certain fountain of all things, the occurrence of those things is certain, which he doth certainly know shall be. wherefore there is no freedom in human counsels and actions, which the divine mind, foreseeing all things without error or falsehood, tieth and bindeth to one event. which once admitted, it is evident what ruin of human affairs will ensue. for in vain are rewards and punishments proposed to good and evil, which no free and voluntary motion of their minds hath deserved. and that will seem most unjust which is now judged most just, that either the wicked should be punished or the good rewarded, since their own will leadeth them to neither, but they are compelled by the certain necessity of that which is to come. by which means virtues and vices shall be nothing, but rather there will follow a mixed confusion of all deserts. and--than which there can be nothing invented more impious--since that all order of things proceedeth from providence, and human counsels can do nothing, it followeth that our vices also shall be referred to the author of goodness. wherefore there is no means left to hope or pray for anything, since an unflexible course connecteth all things that can be desired! wherefore that only traffic betwixt god and men of hope and prayer shall be taken away: if indeed by the price of just humility we deserve the unestimable benefit of god's grace; for this is the only manner by which it seemeth that men may talk with god, and by the very manner of supplication be joined to that inaccessible light before they obtain anything; which if by the admitting the necessity of future things, they be thought to have no force, by what shall we be united and cleave to that sovereign prince of all things? wherefore mankind must needs (as thou saidest in thy verse a little before), being separated and severed from its source, fail and fall away. [ ] hor. _sat._ ii. . . iii. quaenam discors foedera rerum causa resoluit? quis tanta deus veris statuit bella duobus, vt quae carptim singula constent eadem nolint mixta iugari? an nulla est discordia ueris semperque sibi certa cohaerent? sed mens caecis obruta membris nequit oppressi luminis igne rerum tenues noscere nexus. sed cur tanto flagrat amore veri tectas reperire notas? scitne quod appetit anxia nosse? sed quis nota scire laborat? at si nescit, quid caeca petit? quis enim quidquam nescius optet aut quis ualeat nescita sequi? quoue inueniat, quisque[ ] repertam queat ignarus noscere formam? an cum mentem cerneret altam, pariter summam et singula norat? nunc membrorum condita nube non in totum est oblita sui summamque tenet singula perdens. igitur quisquis uera requirit, neutro est habitu; nam neque nouit nec penitus tamen omnia nescit, sed quam retinens meminit summam consulit alte uisa retractans, vt seruatis queat oblitas addere partes." [ ] quisque _codex bambergensis_ s. xi.: quis _codd. meliores._ iii. what cause of discord breaks the bands of love? what god between two truths such wars doth move? that things which severally well settled be yet joined in one will never friendly prove? or in true things can we no discord see, because all certainties do still agree? but our dull soul, covered with members blind, knows not the secret laws which things do bind, by the drowned light of her oppressed fire. why then, the hidden notes of things to find, doth she with such a love of truth desire? if she knows that which she doth so require, why wisheth she known things to know again? if she knows not, why strives she with blind pain? who after things unknown will strive to go? or will such ignorant pursuit maintain? how shall she find them out? or having so, how shall she then their forms and natures know? because this soul the highest mind did view, must we needs say that it all nature knew? now she, though clouds of flesh do her debar, forgets not all that was her ancient due, but in her mind some general motions are, though not the skill of things particular. he that seeks truth in neither course doth fall; not knowing all, nor ignorant of all, he marketh general things which he retains, and matters seen on high doth back recall, and things forgotten to his mind regains, and joins them to that part which there remains." iv. tum illa: "vetus," inquit, "haec est de prouidentia querela marcoque tullio, cum diuinationem distribuit, uehementer agitata tibique ipsi res diu prorsus multumque quaesita, sed haud quaquam ab ullo uestrum hactenus satis diligenter ac firmiter expedita. cuius caliginis causa est, quod humanae ratiocinationis motus ad diuinae praescientiae simplicitatem non potest admoueri, quae si ullo modo cogitari queat, nihil prorsus relinquetur ambigui. quod ita demum patefacere atque expedire temptabo, si prius ea quibus moueris expendero. quaero enim, cur illam soluentium rationem minus efficacem putes, quae quia praescientiam non esse futuris rebus causam necessitatis existimat, nihil impediri praescientia arbitrii libertatem putat. num enim tu aliunde argumentum futurorum necessitatis trahis, nisi quod ea quae praesciuntur non euenire non possunt? si igitur praenotio nullam futuris rebus adicit necessitatem, quod tu etiam paulo ante fatebare, quid est quod uoluntarii exitus rerum ad certum cogantur euentum? etenim positionis gratia, ut quid consequatur aduertas, statuamus nullam esse praescientiam. num igitur quantum ad hoc attinet, quae ex arbitrio eueniunt ad necessitatem cogantur?" "minime." "statuamus iterum esse, sed nihil rebus necessitatis iniungere; manebit ut opinor eadem uoluntatis integra atque absoluta libertas. sed praescientia, inquies, tametsi futuris eueniendi necessitas non est, signum tamen est necessario ea esse uentura. hoc igitur modo, etiam si praecognitio non fuisset, necessarios futurorum exitus esse constaret. omne etenim signum tantum quid sit ostendit, non uero efficit quod designat. quare demonstrandum prius est nihil non ex necessitate contingere, ut praenotionem signum esse huius necessitatis appareat. alioquin si haec nulla est, ne illa quidem eius rei signum poterit esse quae non est. iam uero probationem firma ratione subnixam constat non ex signis neque petitis extrinsecus argumentis sed ex conuenientibus necessariisque causis esse ducendam. sed qui fieri potest ut ea non proueniant quae futura esse prouidentur? quasi uero nos ea quae prouidentia futura esse praenoscit non esse euentura credamus ac non illud potius arbitremur, licet eueniant, nihil tamen ut euenirent sui natura necessitatis habuisse; quod hinc facile perpendas licebit. plura etenim dum fiunt subiecta oculis intuemur, ut ea quae in quadrigis moderandis atque flectendis facere spectantur aurigae atque ad hunc modum cetera. num igitur quidquam illorum ita fieri necessitas ulla compellit?" "minime. frustra enim esset artis effectus, si omnia coacta mouerentur." "quae igitur cum fiunt carent exsistendi necessitate, eadem prius quam fiant sine necessitate futura sunt. quare sunt quaedam euentura quorum exitus ab omni necessitate sit absolutus. nam illud quidem nullum arbitror esse dicturum, quod quae nunc fiunt, prius quam fierent, euentura non fuerint. haec igitur etiam praecognita liberos habent euentus. nam sicut scientia praesentium rerum nihil his quae fiunt, ita praescientia futurorum nihil his quae uentura sunt necessitatis importat. sed hoc, inquis, ipsum dubitatur, an earum rerum quae necessarios exitus non habent ulla possit esse praenotio. dissonare etenim uidentur putasque si praeuideantur consequi necessitatem, si necessitas desit minime praesciri nihilque scientia comprehendi posse nisi certum; quod si quae incerti sunt exitus ea quasi certa prouidentur, opinionis id esse caliginem non scientiae ueritatem. aliter enim ac sese res habeat arbitrari ab integritate scientiae credis esse diuersum. cuius erroris causa est, quod omnia quae quisque nouit ex ipsorum tantum ui atque natura cognosci aestimat quae sciuntur; quod totum contra est omne enim quod cognoscitur non secundum sui uim sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem. nam ut hoc breui liqueat exemplo, eandem corporis rotunditatem aliter uisus aliter tactus agnoscit. ille eminus manens totum simul iactis radiis intuetur; hic uero cohaerens orbi atque coniunctus circa ipsum motus ambitum rotunditatem partibus comprehendit. ipsum quoque hominem aliter sensus, aliter imaginatio, aliter ratio, aliter intellegentia contuetur. sensus enim figuram in subiecta materia constitutam, imaginatio uero solam sine materia iudicat figuram. ratio uero hanc quoque transcendit speciemque ipsam quae singularibus inest uniuersali consideratione perpendit. intellegentiae uero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque uniuersitatis ambitum ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur. in quo illud maxime considerandum est: nam superior comprehendendi uis amplectitur inferiorem, inferior uero ad superiorem nullo modo consurgit. neque enim sensus aliquid extra materiam ualet uel uniuersales species imaginatio contuetur uel ratio capit simplicem formam, sed intellegentia quasi desuper spectans concepta forma quae subsunt etiam cuncta diiudicat, sed eo modo quo formam ipsam, quae nulli alii nota esse poterat, comprehendit. nam et rationis uniuersum et imaginationis figuram et materiale sensibile cognoscit nec ratione utens nec imaginatione nec sensibus, sed illo uno ictu mentis formaliter, ut ita dicam, cuncta prospiciens. ratio quoque cum quid uniuersale respicit, nec imaginatione nec sensibus utens imaginabilia uel sensibilia comprehendit. haec est enim quae conceptionis suae uniuersale ita definiuit: homo est animal bipes rationale. quae cum uniuersalis notio sit, tum imaginabilem sensibilemque esse rem nullus ignorat, quod illa non imaginatione uel sensu sed in rationali conceptione considerat. imaginatio quoque tametsi ex sensibus uisendi formandique figuras sumpsit exordium, sensu tamen absente sensibilia quaeque conlustrat non sensibili sed imaginaria ratione iudicandi. videsne igitur ut in cognoscendo cuncta sua potius facultate quam eorum quae cognoscuntur utantur? neque id iniuria; nam cum omne iudicium iudicantis actus exsistat, necesse est ut suam quisque operam non ex aliena sed ex propria potestate perficiat. iv. "this," quoth she, "is an ancient complaint of providence, vehemently pursued by marcus tullius in his _distribution of divination_,[ ] and a thing which thou thyself hast made great and long search after. but hitherto none of you have used sufficient diligence and vigour in the explication thereof. the cause of which obscurity is for that the motion of human discourse cannot attain to the simplicity of the divine knowledge, which if by any means we could conceive, there would not remain any doubt at all; which i will endeavour to make manifest and plain when i have first explicated that which moveth thee. for i demand why thou thinkest their solution unsufficient, who think that free-will is not hindered by foreknowledge, because they suppose that foreknowledge is not the cause of any necessity in things to come. for fetchest thou any proof for the necessity of future things from any other principle, but only from this, that those things which are foreknown cannot choose but happen? wherefore if foreknowledge imposeth no necessity upon future events, which thou didst grant not long before, why should voluntary actions be tied to any certain success? for example's sake, that thou mayest see what will follow, let us suppose that there were no providence or foresight at all. would those things which proceed from free-will be compelled to any necessity by this means?" "no." "again, let us grant it to be, but that it imposeth no necessity upon anything; no doubt the same freedom of will will remain whole and absolute. but thou wilt say, even though foreknowledge be not a necessity for things to happen, yet it is a sign that they shall necessarily come to pass. wherefore now, even if there had been no foreknowledge, the events of future things would have been necessary. for all signs only show what is, but cause not that which they design. and consequently it must first be proved that all things fall out by necessity, that it may appear that foreknowledge is a sign of this necessity. for otherwise, if there be no necessity, neither can foreknowledge be the sign of that which is not. besides it is manifest that every firm proof must be drawn from intrinsical and necessary causes and not from signs and other farfetched arguments. but how is it possible those things should not happen which are foreseen to be to come? as though we did believe that those things will not be which providence hath foreknown and do not rather judge that although they happen, yet by their own nature they had no necessity of being, which thou mayest easily gather hence. for we see many things with our eyes while they are in doing, as those things which the coachmen do while they drive and turn their coaches and in like manner other things. now doth necessity compel any of these things to be done in this sort?" "no. for in vain should art labour if all things were moved by compulsion." "wherefore, as these things are without necessity when they are in doing, so likewise they are to come without necessity before they be done. and consequently there are some things to come whose event is free from all necessity. for i suppose no man will say that those things which are done now were not to come before they were done. wherefore these things even being foreseen come freely to effect. for as the knowledge of things present causeth no necessity in things which are in doing, so neither the foreknowledge in things to come. but thou wilt say: this is the question, whether there can be any foreknowledge of those things whose events are not necessary. for these things seem opposite, and thou thinkest that, if future things be foreseen, there followeth necessity, if there be no necessity, that they that are not foreknown, and that nothing can be perfectly known unless it be certain. but if uncertain events be foreseen as certain, it is manifest that this is the obscurity of opinion and not the truth of knowledge. for thou thinkest it to be far from the integrity of knowledge to judge otherwise than the thing is. the cause of which error is because thou thinkest that all that is known is known only by the force and nature of the things themselves, which is altogether otherwise. for all that is known is not comprehended according to the force which it hath in itself, but rather according to the faculty of them which know it. for to explicate it with a brief example: the sight and the feeling do diversely discern the same roundness of a die. the sight standing aloof beholdeth it altogether by his beams; but the feeling united and joined to the orb, being moved about the compass of it, comprehendeth the roundness by parts. likewise sense, imagination, reason and understanding do diversely behold a man. for sense looketh upon his form as it is placed in matter or subject, the imagination discerneth it alone without matter, reason passeth beyond this also and considereth universally the species or kind which is in particulars. the eye of the understanding is higher yet. for surpassing the compass of the whole world it beholdeth with the clear eye of the mind that simple form in itself. in which that is chiefly to be considered, that the superior force of comprehending embraceth the inferior; but the inferior can by no means attain to the superior; for the sense hath no force out of matter, neither doth the imagination conceive universal species, nor is reason capable of the simple form, but the understanding, as it were looking downward, having conceived that form, discerneth of all things which are under it, but in that sort in which it apprehendeth that form which can be known by none of the other. for it knoweth the universality of reason, and the figure of imagination, and the materiality of sense, neither using reason, nor imagination, nor senses, but as it were formally beholding all things with that one twinkling of the mind. likewise reason, when it considereth any universality, comprehendeth both imagination and sensible things without the use of either imagination or senses. for she defineth the universality of her conceit thus: man is a reasonable, two-footed, living creature, which being an universal knowledge, no man is ignorant that it is an imaginable and sensible thing, which she considereth by a reasonable conceiving and not by imagination or sense. imagination also, although it began by the senses of seeing and forming figures, yet when sense is absent it beholdeth sensible things, not after a sensible, but after an imaginary manner of knowledge. seest thou now how all these in knowing do rather use their own force and faculty than the force of those things which are known? nor undeservedly; for since all judgment is the act of him who judgeth, it is necessary that every one should perfect his operation by his own power and not by the force of any other. [ ] _de diuin_, ii. iv. quondam porticus attulit obscuros nimium senes qui sensus et imagines e corporibus extimis credant mentibus imprimi, vt quondam celeri stilo mos est aequore paginae, quae nullas habeat notas, pressas figere litteras. sed mens si propriis uigens nihil motibus explicat, sed tantum patiens iacet notis subdita corporum cassasque in speculi uicem rerum reddit imagines, vnde haec sic animis uiget cernens omnia notio? quae uis singula perspicit aut quae cognita diuidit? quae diuisa recolligit alternumque legens iter nunc summis caput inserit, nunc decedit in infima, tum sese referens sibi veris falsa redarguit? haec est efficiens magis longe causa potentior quam quae materiae modo impressas patitur notas. praecedit tamen excitans ac uires animi mouens viuo in corpore passio. cum uel lux oculos ferit vel uox auribus instrepit, tum mentis uigor excitus quas intus species tenet ad motus similes uocans notis applicat exteris introrsumque reconditis formis miscet imagines. iv. cloudy old prophets of the porch[ ] once taught that sense and shape presented to the thought from outward objects their impression take, as when upon a paper smooth and plain on which as yet no marks of ink have lain we with a nimble pen do letters make. but if our minds to nothing can apply their proper motions, but do patient lie subject to forms which do from bodies flow, as a glass renders empty[ ] shapes of things, who then can show from whence that motion springs by force of which the mind all things doth know? or by what skill are several things espied? and being known what power doth them divide, and thus divided doth again unite, and with a various journey oft aspires to highest things, and oft again retires to basest, nothing being out of sight, and when she back unto herself doth move, doth all the falsehoods by the truth reprove? this vigour needs must be an active cause, and with more powerful forces must be deckt, than that which from those forms, that do reflect from outward matter, all her virtue draws. and yet in living bodies passion's might doth go before, whose office is to incite, and the first motions in the mind to make. as when the light unto our eyes appears, or some loud voice is sounded in our ears, then doth the strength of the dull mind awake those phantasies which she retains within; she stirreth up such notions to begin, whose objects with their natures best agree, and thus applying them to outward things, she joins the external shapes which thence she brings with forms which in herself included be. [ ] the porch, _i.e._ the painted porch ([greek: stoa poikilae]) at athens, the great hall adorned with frescoes of the battle of marathon, which served as lecture-room to zeno, the founder of the stoic sect. [ ] cf. quin potius noscas rerum simulacra uagari multa modis multis nulla ui cassaque sensu. "but rather you are to know that idols or things wander about many in number in many ways, of no force, powerless to excite sense."--lucr. iv. , (trans. munro). v. quod si in corporibus sentiendis, quamuis afficiant instrumenta sensuum forinsecus obiectae qualitates animique agentis uigorem passio corporis antecedat quae in se actum mentis prouocet excitetque interim quiescentes intrinsecus formas, si in sentiendis, inquam, corporibus animus non passione insignitur, sed ex sua ui subiectam corpori iudicat passionem, quanto magis ea quae cunctis corporum affectionibus absoluta sunt, in discernendo non obiecta extrinsecus sequuntur, sed actum suae mentis expediunt? hac itaque ratione multiplices cognitiones diuersis ac differentibus cessere substantiis. sensus enim solus cunctis aliis cognitionibus destitutus immobilibus animantibus cessit quales sunt conchae maris quaeque alia saxis haerentia nutriuntur, imaginatio uero mobilibus beluis quibus iam inesse fugiendi appetendiue aliquis uidetur affectus, ratio uero humani tantum generis est sicut intellegentia sola diuini. quo fit ut ea notitia ceteris praestet quae suapte natura non modo proprium sed ceterarum quoque notitiarum subiecta cognoscit. quid igitur, si ratiocinationi sensus imaginatioque refragentur, nihil esse illud uniuersale dicentes quod sese intueri ratio putet? quod enim sensibile uel imaginabile est, id uniuersum esse non posse; aut igitur rationis uerum esse iudicium nec quidquam esse sensibile, aut quoniam sibi notum sit plura sensibus et imaginationi esse subiecta, inanem conceptionem esse rationis quae quod sensibile sit ac singulare quasi quiddam uniuersale consideret. ad haec, si ratio contra respondeat se quidem et quod sensibile et quod imaginabile sit in uniuersitatis ratione conspicere, illa uero ad uniuersitatis cognitionem adspirare non posse, quoniam eorum notio corporales figuras non possit excedere, de rerum uero cognitione firmiori potius perfectiorique iudicio esse credendum, in huiusmodi igitur lite nos quibus tam ratiocinandi quam imaginandi etiam sentiendique uis inest nonne rationis potius causam probaremus? simile est quod humana ratio diuinam intellegentiam futura, nisi ut ipsa cognoscit, non putat intueri. nam ita disseris: si qua certos ac necessarios habere non uideantur euentus, ea certo euentura praesciri nequeunt. harum igitur rerum nulla est praescientia, quam si etiam in his esse credamus, nihil erit quod non ex necessitate proueniat. si igitur uti rationis participes sumus ita diuinae iudicium mentis habere possemus, sicut imaginationem sensumque rationi cedere oportere iudicauimus, sic diuinae sese menti humanam submittere rationem iustissimum censeremus. quare in illius summae intellegentiae cacumen, si possumus, erigamur; illic enim ratio uidebit quod in se non potest intueri, id autem est, quonam modo etiam quae certos exitus non habent, certa tamen uideat ac definita praenotio neque id sit opinio sed summae potius scientiae nullis terminis inclusa simplicitas. v. and if in sentient bodies, although the qualities of outward objects do move the organs of sense, and the passion of the body goeth before the vigour of the active mind, provoking her action to itself and exciting the inward forms which before lay quiet; if, i say, in perceiving these corporal objects the mind taketh not her impression from passion, but by her own force judgeth of the passion itself, which is objected to the body; how much more do those powers exercise the action of their mind and not only follow the outward objects in their judgment, which are free from all affections of the body? wherefore in this sort have diverse and different substances knowledges of many kinds. for only sense destitute of all other means of knowledge is in those living creatures which are unmovable, as some shell-fish and other which stick to stones and so are nourished; and imagination in movable beasts who seem to have some power to covet and fly. but reason belongeth only to mankind, as understanding to things divine. so that that knowledge is most excellent which of itself doth not only know her own object, but also those which belong to others. what then, if sense and imagination repugn to discourse and reason, affirming that universality to be nothing which reason thinketh herself to see? for that cannot be universal, they argue, which is either sensible or imaginable; wherefore either the judgment of reason must be true and nothing at all sensible, or because they know that many things are subject to the senses and imagination, the conceit of reason is vain, which considereth that which is sensible and singular as if it were universal. moreover if reason should answer that she beholdeth in her universality all that which is sensible or imaginable, but they cannot aspire to the knowledge of universality, because their knowledge cannot surpass corporal figures and shapes, and that we must give more credit to the firmer and more perfect judgment about the knowledge of things, in this contention should not we, who have the power of discoursing as well as of imagination and sense, rather take reason's part? the very like happeneth when human reason doth not think that the divine understanding doth behold future things otherwise than she herself doth. for thus thou arguest: if any things seem not to have certain and necessary events, they cannot be certainly foreknown to be to come. wherefore there is no foreknowledge of these things, and if we think that there is any, there shall be nothing which happeneth not of necessity. if, therefore, as we are endued with reason, we could likewise have the judgment proper to the divine mind, as we have judged that imagination and sense must yield to reason, so likewise we would think it most reasonable and just that human reason should submit herself to the divine mind. wherefore let us be lifted up as much as we can to that height of the highest mind; for there reason shall see that which she cannot behold in herself. and that is, how a certain and definite foreknowledge seeth even those things which have no certain issue, and that this is no opinion, but rather the simplicity of the highest knowledge enclosed within no bounds. v. quam uariis terras animalia permeant figuris! namque alia extento sunt corpore pulueremque uerrunt continuumque trahunt ui pectoris incitata sulcum sunt quibus alarum leuitas uaga uerberetque uentos et liquido longi spatia aetheris enatet uolatu, haec pressisse solo uestigia gressibusque gaudent vel uirides campos transmittere uel subire siluas. quae uariis uideas licet omnia discrepare formis, prona tamen facies hebetes ualet ingrauare sensus. vnica gens hominum celsum leuat altius cacumen atque leuis recto stat corpore despicitque terras. haec nisi terrenus male desipis, admonet figura, qui recto caelum uultu petis exserisque frontem, in sublime feras animum quoque, ne grauata pessum inferior sidat mens corpore celsius leuata. v. what several figures things that live upon the earth do keep! some have their bodies stretched in length by which the dust they sweep and do continual furrows make while on their breasts they creep. some lightly soaring up on high with wings the wind do smite and through the longest airy space pass with an easy flight. some by their paces to imprint the ground with steps delight, which through the pleasant fields do pass or to the woods do go, whose several forms though to our eyes they do a difference show, yet by their looks cast down on earth their senses heavy grow. men only with more stately shape to higher objects rise, who with erected bodies stand and do the earth despise. these figures warn (if baser thoughts blind not thine earthly eyes) that thou who with an upright face dost look upon the sky, shouldst also raise thy mind aloft, lest while thou bearest high thine earthly head, thy soul opprest beneath thy body lie. vi. quoniam igitur, uti paulo ante monstratum est, omne quod scitur non ex sua sed ex conprehendentium natura cognoscitur, intueamur nunc quantum fas est, quis sit diuinae substantiae status, ut quaenam etiam scientia eius sit, possimus agnoscere. deum igitur aeternum esse cunctorum ratione degentium commune iudicium est. quid sit igitur aeternitas consideremus; haec enim nobis naturam pariter diuinam scientiamque patefacit. aeternitas igitur est interminabilis uitae tota simul et perfecta possessio, quod ex collatione temporalium clarius liquet. nam quidquid uiuit in tempore id praesens a praeteritis in futura procedit nihilque est in tempore constitutum quod totum uitae suae spatium pariter possit amplecti. sed crastinum quidem nondum adprehendit; hesternum uero iam perdidit; in hodierna quoque uita non amplius uiuitis quam in illo mobili transitorioque momento. quod igitur temporis patitur condicionem, licet illud, sicuti de mundo censuit aristoteles, nec coeperit umquam esse nec desinat uitaque eius cum temporis infinitate tendatur, nondum tamen tale est ut aeternum esse iure credatur. non enim totum simul infinitae licet uitae spatium comprehendit atque complectitur, sed futura nondum transacta iam non habet. quod igitur interminabilis uitae plenitudinem totam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quidquam absit nec praeteriti fluxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur, idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper adsistere et infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem. vnde non recte quidam, qui cum audiunt uisum platoni mundum hunc nec habuisse initium temporis nec habiturum esse defectum, hoc modo conditori conditum mundum fieri coaeternum putant. aliud est enim per interminabilem duci uitam, quod mundo plato tribuit, aliud interminabilis uitae totam pariter complexum esse praesentiam, quod diuinae mentis proprium esse manifestum est. neque deus conditis rebus antiquior uideri debet temporis quantitate sed simplicis potius proprietate naturae. hunc enim uitae immobilis praesentarium statum infinitus ille temporalium rerum motus imitatur cumque eum effingere atque aequare non possit, ex immobilitate deficit in motum, ex simplicitate praesentiae decrescit in infinitam futuri ac praeteriti quantitatem; et cum totam pariter uitae suae plenitudinem nequeat possidere, hoc ipso quod aliquo modo numquam esse desinit; illud quod implere atque exprimere non potest, aliquatenus uidetur aemulari alligans se ad qualemcumque praesentiam huius exigui uolucrisque momenti, quae, quoniam manentis illius praesentiae quandam gestat imaginem, quibuscumque contigerit id praestat ut esse uideantur. quoniam uero manere non potuit, infinitum temporis iter arripuit eoque modo factum est ut continuaret eundo uitam cuius plenitudinem complecti non ualuit permanendo. itaque si digna rebus nomina uelimus imponere, platonem sequentes deum quidem aeternum, mundum uero dicamus esse perpetuum. quoniam igitur omne iudicium secundum sui naturam quae sibi subiecta sunt comprehendit, est autem deo semper aeternus ac praesentarius status; scientia quoque eius omnem temporis supergressa motionem in suae manet simplicitate praesentiae infinitaque praeteriti ac futuri spatia complectens omnia quasi iam gerantur in sua simplici cognitione considerat. itaque si praesentiam pensare uelis qua cuncta dinoscit, non esse praescientiam quasi futuri sed scientiam numquam deficientis instantiae rectius aestimabis; unde non praeuidentia sed prouidentia potius dicitur, quod porro ab rebus infimis constituta quasi ab excelso rerum cacumine cuncta prospiciat. quid igitur postulas ut necessaria fiant quae diuino lumine lustrentur, cum ne homines quidem necessaria faciant esse quae uideant? num enim quae praesentia cernis, aliquam eis necessitatem tuus addit intuitus?" "minime." "atqui si est diuini humanique praesentis digna collatio, uti uos uestro hoc temporario praesenti quaedam uidetis, ita ille omnia suo cernit aeterno. quare haec diuina praenotio naturam rerum proprietatemque non mutat taliaque apud se praesentia spectat qualia in tempore olim futura prouenient. nec rerum iudicia confundit unoque suae mentis intuitu tam necessarie quam non necessarie uentura dinoscit; sicuti uos cum pariter ambulare in terra hominem et oriri in caelo solem uidetis, quamquam simul utrumque conspectum tamen discernitis et hoc uoluntarium illud esse necessarium iudicatis, ita igitur cuncta despiciens diuinus intuitus qualitatem rerum minime perturbat apud se quidem praesentium, ad condicionem uero temporis futurarum. quo fit ut hoc non sit opinio sed ueritate potius nixa cognitio, cum exstaturum quid esse cognoscit quod idem exsistendi necessitate carere non nesciat. hic si dicas quod euenturum deus uidet id non euenire non posse, quod autem non potest non euenire id ex necessitate contingere, meque ad hoc nomen necessitatis adstringas; fatebor rem quidem solidissimae ueritatis sed cui uix aliquis nisi diuini speculator accesserit. respondebo namque idem futurum, cum ad diuinam notionem refertur, necessarium, cum uero in sua natura perpenditur, liberum prorsus atque absolutum uideri. duae sunt etenim necessitates, simplex una, ueluti quod necesse est omnes homines esse mortales, altera condicionis, ut si aliquem ambulare scias, eum ambulare necesse est; quod enim quisque nouit, id esse aliter ac notum est nequit, sed haec condicio minime secum illam simplicem trahit. hanc enim necessitatem non propria facit natura sed condicionis adiectio; nulla enim necessitas cogit incedere uoluntate gradientem, quamuis eum tum cum graditur incedere necessarium sit. eodem igitur modo, si quid prouidentia praesens uidet, id esse necesse est, tametsi nullam naturae habeat necessitatem. atqui deus ea futura quae ex arbitrii libertate proueniunt praesentia contuetur. haec igitur ad intuitum relata diuinum necessaria fiant per condicionem diuinae notionis; per se uero considerata ab absoluta naturae suae libertate non desinunt. fient igitur procul dubio cuncta quae futura deus esse praenoscit, sed eorum quaedam de libero proficiscuntur arbitrio; quae quamuis eueniant, exsistendo tamen naturam propriam non amittunt, qua priusquam fierent etiam non euenire potuissent. quid igitur refert non esse necessaria, cum propter diuinae scientiae condicionem modis omnibus necessitatis instar eueniet? hoc scilicet quod ea quae paulo ante proposui, sol oriens et gradiens homo. quae dum fiunt, non fieri non possunt; eorum tamen unum prius quoque quam fieret, necesse erat exsistere, alterum uero minime. ita etiam quae praesentia deus habet, dubio procul exsistent, sed eorum hoc quidem de rerum necessitate descendit, illud uero de potestate facientium. haud igitur iniuria diximus haec si ad diuinam notitiam referantur necessaria, si per se considerentur necessitatis esse nexibus absoluta; sicuti omne quod sensibus patet, si ad rationem referas, uniuersale est, si ad se ipsa respicias, singulare. 'sed si in mea,' inquies, 'potestate situm est mutare propositum, euacuabo prouidentiam, cum quae illa praenoscit forte mutauero.' respondebo: propositum te quidem tuum posse deflectere, sed quoniam et id te posse et an facias quoue conuertas praesens prouidentiae ueritas intuetur, diuinam te praescientiam non posse uitare, sicuti praesentis oculi effugere non possis intuitum, quamuis te in uarias actiones libera uoluntate conuerteris. quid igitur inquies? ex meane dispositione scientia diuina mutabitur, ut cum ego nunc hoc nunc aliud uelim, illa quoque noscendi uices alternare uideatur? minime. omne namque futurum diuinus praecurrit intuitus et ad praesentiam propriae cognitionis retorquet ac reuocat nec alternat, ut aestimas, nunc hoc nunc illud praenoscendi uice, sed uno ictu mutationes tuas manens praeuenit atque complectitur. quam comprehendendi omnia uisendique praesentiam non ex futurarum prouentu rerum, sed ex propria deus simplicitate sortitus est. ex quo illud quoque resoluitur quod paulo ante posuisti indignum esse, si scientiae dei causam futura nostra praestare dicantur. haec enim scientiae uis praesentaria notione cuncta complectens rebus modum omnibus ipsa constituit, nihil uero posterioribus debet. quae cum ita sint, manet intemerata mortalibus arbitrii libertas nec iniquae leges solutis omni necessitate uoluntatibus praemia poenasque proponunt. manet etiam spectator desuper cunctorum praescius deus uisionisque eius praesens semper aeternitas cum nostrorum actuum futura qualitate concurrit bonis praemia malis supplicia dispensans. nec frustra sunt in deo positae spes precesque; quae cum rectae sunt, inefficaces esse non possunt. auersamini igitur uitia, colite uirtutes, ad rectas spes animum subleuate, humiles preces in excelsa porrigite. magna uobis est, si dissimulare non uultis, necessitas indicta probitatis, cum ante oculos agitis iudicis cuncta cernentis." vi. seeing, therefore, as hath been showed, all that is known is not comprehended by its own nature but by the power of him which comprehendeth it, let us see now, as much as we may, what is the state of the divine substance that we may also know what his knowledge is. wherefore it is the common judgment of all that live by reason that god is everlasting, and therefore let us consider what eternity is. for this declareth unto us both the divine nature and knowledge. eternity therefore is a perfect possession altogether of an endless life, which is more manifest by the comparison of temporal things, for whatsoever liveth in time, that being present proceedeth from times past to times to come, and there is nothing placed in time which can embrace all the space of its life at once. but it hath not yet attained to-morrow and hath lost yesterday. and you live no more in this day's life than in that movable and transitory moment. wherefore, whatsoever suffereth the condition of time, although, as aristotle thought of the world, it never began nor were ever to end, and its life did endure with infinite time, yet it is not such that it ought to be called everlasting. for it doth not comprehend and embrace all the space of its life together, though that life be infinite, but it hath not the future time which is yet to come. that then which comprehendeth and possesseth the whole fulness of an endless life together, to which neither any part to come is absent, nor of that which is past hath escaped, is worthy to be accounted everlasting, and this is necessary, that being no possession in itself, it may always be present to itself, and have an infinity of movable time present to it. wherefore they are deceived who, hearing that plato thought that this world had neither beginning of time nor should ever have any end, think that by this means the created world should be coeternal with the creator. for it is one thing to be carried through an endless life, which plato attributed to the world, another thing to embrace the whole presence of an endless life together, which is manifestly proper to the divine mind. neither ought god to seem more ancient than the things created, by the quantity of time, but rather by the simplicity of his divine nature. for that infinite motion of temporal things imitateth the present state of the unmovable life, and since it cannot express nor equal it, it falleth from immobility to motion, and from the simplicity of presence, it decreaseth to an infinite quantity of future and past, and since it cannot possess together all the fulness of its life, by never leaving to be in some sort, it seemeth to emulate in part that which it cannot fully obtain and express, tying itself to this small presence of this short and swift moment, which because it carrieth a certain image of that abiding presence, whosoever hath it, seemeth to be. but because it could not stay it undertook an infinite journey of time, and so it came to pass that it continued that life by going whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying. wherefore, if we will give things their right names, following plato, let us say that god is everlasting and the world perpetual. wherefore, since every judgment comprehendeth those things which are subject unto it, according to its own nature, and god hath always an everlasting and present state, his knowledge also surpassing all motions of time, remaineth in the simplicity of his presence, and comprehending the infinite spaces of that which is past and to come, considereth all things in his simple knowledge as though they were now in doing. so that, if thou wilt weigh his foreknowledge with which he discerneth all things, thou wilt more rightly esteem it to be the knowledge of a never fading instant than a foreknowledge as of a thing to come. for which cause it is not called praevidence or foresight, but rather providence, because, placed far from inferior things, it overlooketh all things, as it were, from the highest top of things. why, therefore, wilt thou have those things necessary which are illustrated by the divine light, since that not even men make not those things necessary which they see? for doth thy sight impose any necessity upon those things which thou seest present?" "no." "but the present instant of men may well be compared to that of god in this: that as you see some things in your temporal instant, so he beholdeth all things in his eternal present. wherefore this divine foreknowledge doth not change the nature and propriety of things, and it beholdeth them such in his presence as they will after come to be, neither doth he confound the judgment of things, and with one sight of his mind he discerneth as well those things which shall happen necessarily as otherwise. as you, when at one time you see a man walking upon the earth and the sun rising in heaven, although they be both seen at once, yet you discern and judge that the one is voluntary, and the other necessary, so likewise the divine sight beholding all things disturbeth not the quality of things which to him are present, but in respect of time are yet to come. and so this is not an opinion but rather a knowledge grounded upon truth, when he knoweth that such a thing shall be, which likewise he is not ignorant that it hath no necessity of being. here if thou sayest that cannot choose but happen which god seeth shall happen, and that which cannot choose but happen, must be of necessity, and so tiest me to this name of necessity, i will grant that it is a most solid truth, but whereof scarce any but a contemplator of divinity is capable. for i will answer that the same thing is necessary when it is referred to the divine knowledge; but when it is weighed in its own nature that it seemeth altogether free and absolute. for there be two necessities: the one simple, as that it is necessary for all men to be mortal; the other conditional, as if thou knowest that any man walketh, he must needs walk. for what a man knoweth cannot be otherwise than it is known. but this conditional draweth not with it that simple or absolute necessity. for this is not caused by the nature of the thing, but by the adding a condition. for no necessity maketh him to go that goeth of his own accord, although it be necessary that he goeth while he goeth. in like manner, if providence seeth anything present, that must needs be, although it hath no necessity of nature. but god beholdeth those future things, which proceed from free-will, present. these things, therefore, being referred to the divine sight are necessary by the condition of the divine knowledge, and, considered by themselves, they lose not absolute freedom of their own nature. wherefore doubtless all those things come to pass which god foreknoweth shall come, but some of them proceed from free-will, which though they come to pass, yet do not, by coining into being, lose, since before they came to pass, they might also not have happened. but what importeth it that they are not necessary, since that by reason of the condition of the divine knowledge they come to pass in all respects as if they were necessary? it hath the same import as those things which i proposed a little before--the sun rising and the man going. while they are in doing, they cannot choose but be in doing; yet one of them was necessarily to be before it was, and the other not. likewise those things which god hath present, will have doubtless a being, but some of them proceed from the necessity of things, other from the power of the doers. and therefore we said not without cause that these, if they be referred to god's knowledge, are necessary; and if they be considered by themselves, they are free from the bonds of necessity. as whatsoever is manifest to senses, if thou referrest it to reason, is universal; if thou considerest the things themselves, it is singular or particular. but thou wilt say, 'if it is in my power to change my purpose, shall i frustrate providence if i chance to alter those things which she foreknoweth?' i answer that thou mayest indeed change thy purpose, but because the truth of providence, being present, seeth that thou canst do so, and whether thou wilt do so or no, and what thou purposest anew, thou canst not avoid the divine foreknowledge, even as thou canst not avoid the sight of an eye which is present, although thou turnest thyself to divers actions by thy free-will. but yet thou wilt inquire whether god's knowledge shall be changed by thy disposition, so that when thou wilt now one thing, and now another, it should also seem to have divers knowledges. no. for god's sight preventeth all that is to come and recalleth and draweth it to the presence of his own knowledge; neither doth he vary, as thou imaginest, now knowing one thing and now another, but in one instant without moving preventeth and comprehendeth thy mutations. which presence of comprehending and seeing all things, god hath not by the event of future things but by his own simplicity. by which that doubt is also resolved which thou didst put a little before, that it is an unworthy thing that our future actions should be said to cause the knowledge of god. for this force of the divine knowledge comprehending all things with a present notion appointeth to everything its measure and receiveth nothing from ensuing accidents. all which being so, the free-will of mortal men remaineth unviolated, neither are the laws unjust which propose punishments and rewards to our wills, which are free from all necessity. there remaineth also a beholder of all things which is god, who foreseeth all things, and the eternity of his vision, which is always present, concurreth with the future quality of our actions, distributing rewards to the good and punishments to the evil. neither do we in vain put our hope in god or pray to him; for if we do this well and as we ought, we shall not lose our labour or be without effect. wherefore fly vices, embrace virtues, possess your minds with worthy hopes, offer up humble prayers to your highest prince. there is, if you will not dissemble, a great necessity of doing well imposed upon you, since you live in the sight of your judge, who beholdeth all things." symmachi versvs fortunae et uirtutis opus, seuerine boethi, e patria pulsus non tua per scelera, tandem ignotus habes qui te colat, ut tua uirtus vt tua fortuna promeruitque [greek: sophos]. post obitum dant fata locum, post fata superstes vxoris propriae te quoque fama colit. epigram by symmachus[ ] boethius! model of all weal and worth, unjustly from thy country driven forth, thy fame, unfamed at last, yet one shall praise, one voice the cry of approbation raise; what life denied, through death kind heaven giveth; thine honour in thy wife's for ever liveth. [ ] this epigram was found by barth in a merseburg codex, and first printed in his _adversaria_ ( ). if genuine (and the faithful reproduction the error symmachivs for symmachi vs or vr, i.e. versvs, is in its favour), the author may be either the son or the father-in-law of boethius. some readers may prefer to rank this poem with the epitaph on elpis, the supposititious first wife of boethius, on whom see obbarius, _de cons._ p. xii. at any rate it is as old as the times of hrabanus maurus, who imitated it in a poem also first published by barth. see peiper, _cons._ p. xxxviiii. index aaron. abel. abraham. abstraction. academical studies. achaemenian rocks. achelous. achilles, statue of. adam. [greek: aeides, to]. aemilius paulus. _aequiuocus_. _aeternitas_. agamemnon, _see_ atrides. age, the former. agrippina. albinus. alcibiades. alexander aphrod.. allegorical method. anaxagoras. anaxarchus. angels. antaeus. antoninus (caracalla). apollodorus. apuleius. arcturus. arians aristotle, on nature; _de physicis_; _protrepticus_; arius. atrides. augustine, st. auster. bacchus. baptism. basil, informer. being. boethius, life; the first scholastic; an independent philosopher; his philosophic ambition; his achievement; a christian; perhaps a martyr; son-in-law of symmachus; his wife; his sons; early training; youthful poetry; premature old age; his learning; his library; his lofty position; his principles; the champion of the oppressed; of the senate; his accusers; his accusation; sentence. boötes. boreas. brutus. busiris. cacus. caesar, _see_ gaius. campania. canius. cassiodorus. categories, the ten. catholic church, faith; religion. catholics. cato. catullus. caucasus. centaurs. cerberus. ceres. chremes. christ, advent of; baptism; life and death; resurrection and ascension; nature; person; divinity; humanity; perfect man and perfect god. christian faith, religion. cicero, _de diuinatione_; _tusc_. circe. claudian. claudianus, mamertus, _coemptio_. conigastus, _consistere_, _consolation of philosophy_, method and object. consulate. corollary, see _porisma_. corus. crab. croesus. cyclops. cynthia. cyprian, informer. cyrus. dante. david. decoratus. demons. devil. dialectic. difference. diogenes laertius. dionysius. divine nature, eternal, substance. divinity of christ, _see_ christ, _diuisio_. dorset, countess of. [greek: eisagogae], porphyry's. eleatic studies. elements. elpis. _enneades_. epicureans. epicurus. _esse_. _essentia_. eternity. etna. euphrates. euripides. euripus. eurus. eutyches. eutychian error. eutychians. evander. eve. evil is nothing. fabricius. fame. fatal order. fate. fire, nature of. flood. form. fortune. free-will. furies. gaius caesar (caligula). gaudentius. geometricians. germanicus. giants. gilbert de la porrée. glory. god, categories applied to, without difference; is what he is; is pure form; is [greek: ousia, ousiosis, huphistasthai]; one; triune; is good; goodness; happiness; everlasting; omnipresent; just; omnipotent; incomprehensible; one father; true sun; creator; ruler; mover; judge; sees all things; foresees all things; his knowledge; his providence; cannot do evil; wills only good; prayer to him not vain. good, the prime. good, all seek. goodness is happiness, is god. grace. greek. happiness is god. hauréau. _hebdomads_. hecuba. hercules. heresy, see arius, eutyches, nestorius, sabellians. hermus. herodotus. hesperus. holder. homer. horace. human nature, humanity of christ, _see_ christ. humanity. iamblichus. _id quod est_. _id quod est esse_. indus. _instrumentum_. isaac. ishmael. ixion. jacob. jerusalem. jesus. jews. iohannes scottus. john the deacon. jordan. joshua. judah. kanius, _see_ canius. [greek: kata parathesin]. latin. lethargy. livy. lucan. lucifer. lucretius. lybia. lybian lions. lydians. lynceus. macedonius. _see_ aemilius paulus. macrobius. mary, the blessed virgin,. mathematical method. mathematics. matter. medea. mercury. moses. muses. music, boethius on. nature, phenomenal; nature; nature of plants. neoplatonism. neritius, son of, _see_ ulysses. nero. nestorius. nicocreon. nicomachus. _nihilo, ex_.. noah. nonius. notus. number. [greek: oion epei]. [greek: onos luras]. opilio. orpheus. [greek: ousia]. [greek: ousiosis]. [greek: ousiosthai]. [greek: pi]. _palatini canes_. papinianus. parmenides. parthiaus. paulinus. paulus, see aemilius paulus. pelagius. perses. _persona_. person defined. pharaoh. philosophy, appearance of; character; function; power. phoebe. phoebus. physics. plato, and boethius; and s. thomas; and the academy; his muse; reminiscence; quoted or referred to, _gorg._; _tim_; _meno_; _phaedo_; _rep_. plotinus. plurality. pluto. polyphemus. porch. _porisma_. porphyry. praetorship. praevidence. predicaments, _see_ categories. providence. ptolemy. purgation. pythagoras. ravenna. realism. red sea. _reductio ad absurdum_. regulus. relation, category of. religion, the christian. resurrection. rhetoric. roman liberty, republic. rusticiana. sabellians. sackville, thomas. _sacrilegium_. saints. saturn. saul. scripture. _sempiternitas_. senate. seneca. simon. sinai. sirius. socrates. son, the, _see_ trinity. soranus. spartianus. spirit, holy, _see_ trinity, procession of; a substance. statue of achilles. stoics. stymphalian birds. _subsisistentia, subsistere_. substance, divine. _substantia, substare_. suetonius. sun, _see_ phoebus. symmachus, q. aurel., q. aur. memmius; boethius; pope. syrtes. tacitus. tantalus. tertullian. testament, old and new. [greek: theta]. theodoric. theology. thomas, st. thorie, j. thrace. thule. tigris. _timaeus_, see plato. tiresias. tityus. triangie. triguilla. trinity, the unity of; cannot be substantially predicated of god. [greek: ulae, apoios]. ulysses. unity. unity of trinity. [greek: upostasis]. [greek: upostaenai]. usener. _ut quia_. [greek: uphistasthai]. _uel = et_. verona. vesuvius. _uia media_. virgil. _uirtus_. will, _see_ free-will. wulf, h. de. zeno. zephyrus. the end ludicrous aspects of christianity: a response to the challenge of the bishop of manchester. by austin holyoak the bishop of manchester, in a speech delivered by him in oldham in august, , is reported to have said that "he could defy anyone to try to caricature the work, the character, or the person of the lord jesus christ." he no doubt felt confident in throwing out such a challenge, as the attempt would be considered so atrociously impious that few men could be found with courage enough to incur the odium of such an act. we confess that we have not the temerity to wound the sensitiveness of the devoutly religious. what may be deemed of the nature of caricature in the following remarks the reader is requested to regard as merely the spontaneous utterance of one who is keenly alive to the ludicrous, and who is not awed by the belief that the bible is an infallible volume. we find the new testament, when read without the deceptive spectacles of _faith_ as amusing, as extravagant, and as contradictory in many places as most books. a system of religion, to be a moral guide to men, should be perfect in all its parts. it should not consist of a few precepts which might be followed under certain circumstances, the rest being made up of impossibilities and contradictions; but should be so comprehensive as to embrace all orders of men under all circumstances. and a divine exemplar to mankind, if such a being can be imagined, should possess every human virtue in perfection, and be absolutely without fault. we are told daily and hourly that jesus christ possesses these transcendent qualities, and is worthy of the homage and admiration of the world. we ask where this divine image is to be found, and are referred to the four gospels in the new testament. all that is there written was written by inspiration of god, and god therefore is the painter of the lineaments of his own son. we will take it as such, and see what aspect jesus presents when viewed in the light we are able to bring to bear upon his portrait. we shall follow a somewhat different plan to that adopted by m. rénan. that great french writer has evidently gone to his task with the intention or anticipation of finding an almost perfect man, and he ends by believing he really sees one in jesus. we have taken up the gospels with the desire of finding what is actually there; and as it appears to us, so we will present it to the reader. we know that some will view the sayings and actions in a different light; but that is inevitable. no two persons ever see in the painted portrait of a friend or relative, precisely the same expression; yet they may be equally honest. now we claim to be regarded as truthful in the following portraiture, though jesus appears to us a very different man to what he appeared to m. renan. some may say we are flippant, but that we cannot help, though we may regret it. we must express ourselves in our own way, and we most be excused if we laugh at what seems ludicrous or absurd. we may be accused of a want of reverence, but we cannot feel reverence for what does not excite that feeling in us. these pages are not critical--they do not pretend to be learned--they do not seek to explain away anything on the score of "forgeries" or "interpolations." they are based upon the supposition that the _four_ gospels are each and collectively true, and without contradiction. no attempt is made to reconcile contradictions by rejecting all that does not harmonise. the churches do not do so--they cling to all within the two covers of the "sacred book," and of course take the responsibility. nothing will be here set down that jesus did not utter; no meaning will be put upon his words that they will not legitimately bear; we have judged of him as we find him in the general actions of his life. a devout believer will exclaim, with uplifted hands and eyes--"oh, this is blasphemy; it is revolting to the moral sense; christ was the son of god, and therefore perfect. he could not be what you have represented him to be, or people long ago would have ceased to worship him. he is the one sublime character whose image fills the world, and before whom millions bow the head in reverent humility." just so; that is where the delusion arises. men have been taught that they must not think--that they must not doubt--that they must not examine the grounds of their faith--they must _believe_, and that the sin of unbelief is everlasting perdition. a halo of sanctity is thrown around this distorted image--there is a sacred mystery, a "holy of holies" into which common sense must not enter; and so devotees fall down at the threshold and worship, where they should stand erect in reliance on their own reason and judgment, and examine fearlessly for themselves into those doctrines on a belief in which their everlasting salvation is said to depend. jesus, the son of mary, but not the son of joseph, mary's husband, was, according to his biographers, an illegitimate child--at least, his birth seems to have been brought about in a most illegitimate way. one matthew, who pretends to know a great deal about this child, even before it was born, wishes his readers to infer that jesus was descended in a direct line from that worthy man and favourite of god, king david, through exactly twenty-eight generations; that is, down to joseph, who was not the father of jesus at all. he was the son of the holy ghost, but who or what that was no man knows, and no one has been able to comprehend unto this day. another biographer named luke, more sensible than matthew, like a modern welshman traces jesus's descent direct from adam, who, being the first man, _was_ probably a very distant relative of his. this extraordinary child jesus, who in his own language was simply joshua, came into the world to fulfil no end of prophecies. he was to be called jesus, that he might save his people from their sins. but he did not do it, as the jews have had amongst them since his time as great criminals as ever existed before. he was also to be named emmanuel, "which, being interpreted, is god with us." but he never was called emmanuel, so the second prophecy was fulfilled! he was born in a house in the first instance, and a star was seen to walk before certain wise men and direct them where he was. in the second instance he was born in a manger, in the stable of an inn where certain shepherds found mary, and joseph, and the babe lying. these were not wise men from the east, but poor ignorant shepherds from the neighbouring fields, and they were not led by a star, but had seen an angel of the lord by night, who terrified them very much, and departed without telling them in which particular manger the saviour was to be found. the angel appeared amid loud sounds of "glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, and good-will towards men." if those glad tidings of great joy _were_ heard then, they have never been heard since, for the advent of this child was the signal for war, and strife, and bloodshed among mankind, which have desolated every land where the christian name has been spoken. after their fright was over, the shepherds consulted together, and resolved to go into bethlehem, to look for "this thing which had come to pass." they alighted upon joseph and his family all lying in a manger, much to the surprise of mary, who evidently did not comprehend what the excitement was about, for we are told that "mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." so after all, who knows that they found the right babe at last? if such evidence as is here given were adduced in a court of law to prove the identity of a lost heir to an estate, it would never be allowed to go even to trial, but the grand jury would ignore the bill at once. however, as jesus was declared the rightful heir, we must accept that fact, and proceed to examine how far he administered the great estate to which he was born. joseph was a very drowsy man, who had to be continually warned and roused by angels as to what he should do and the dangers which threatened him. being made wide awake to the fact that herod sought to kill the child, he suddenly fled into egypt with his family, and there remained till the death of herod, that another prophecy might be fulfilled, "out of egypt have i called my son." but he did not go into egypt, but was taken back to nazareth at eight days old, and there remained till he was a man. so the third prophecy was fulfilled! jesus is familiarly known by the name of the "meek and lowly," but this is a title which scarcely seems warranted by the narratives. from his youth upwards he gave signs of the possession of an imperious disposition and a vituperative tongue, and he on several occasions manifested a want of filial affection. his parents went to jerusalem every year to the feast of the passover, and at the age of twelve jesus was taken. when the parents returned, the boy remained behind unknown to them, and they had got a day's journey on their way home before they missed him. they retraced their steps to jerusalem in much trouble, and at last, after three days' search, found the truant comfortably seated in the temple in the midst of the doctors, holding a learned argument with them. when his mother saw him she asked him why he had caused them so much sorrow. instead of showing any penitence, he pertly answered, "how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business?" and mary, though she knew he was the son of the holy ghost, had not the slightest idea what he meant. when he "began to be about thirty years of age," he met with john baptist, a strange sort of anchorite, who used to dress in camelshair and eat locusts and wild honey. from this cynic jesus learnt much, especially the habit of calling names. when people presented themselves to john to be baptised, he greeted them in this loving way--"o generation of vipers, who hath warned _you_ to flee from the wrath to come?" jesus was baptised, and afterwards retailed much that john had said, especially his abusive phrases. at this ceremony of immersion the heavens opened to jesus, and the spirit of god descended like a dove and alighted upon him. this spirit assumes as many shapes as satan himself, and altogether appears to be a very curious bird of passage. this baptism was not a happy thing to jesus, for immediately afterwards he was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and he had to fast forty days and forty nights, and afterwards, we are gravely told, "he was an hungered," which is not a remarkable fact, seeing that he was a young man of very good appetite. we shall see, as we get farther on, that his love of eating and drinking was manifested on many carious occasions. the old and new testaments teem with accounts of feasts and carouses by the chosen of the lord, and the lord himself, to such a degree, that christianity has not inaptly been termed the religion of gourmands. jesus frequently manifests great readiness and smartness in reply, which is either an answer to the question addressed to him, or a very clever evasion of it. when the devil had got jesus, he said to him, "if thou be the son of god, command that these stones be made bread." the devil evidently thought that to make something to eat would be the greatest temptation he could offer him. but jesus evaded the task by saying, "it is written that man shall not live by bread alone." the devil tried again, and took him to the pinnacle of a temple, and asked him to cast himself down, saying--"for it is written he shall give his angels charge concerning thee." jesus said unto him, "it is written again, thou shalt not tempt the lord thy god." the devil tried a third time, and took him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of this world, and the _glory_ of them, and promised him all if he would fall down and worship him. how could jesus see from one spot all the kingdoms of the world? as no one looking straight before him can see round a globe; but if it was done by supernatural power, why take the trouble to go to the top of an exceeding high mountain? the _flat_ country would have been a more suitable spot. he also saw the _glory_ of them, which must have puzzled him greatly, for what is the glory of one place, is sometimes the shame of another, jesus said, "get thee hence, satan: for it is written, thou shalt worship the lord thy god, and him only shalt thou serve." the devil deemed this conclusive, and thereupon took his departure. after john the baptist was cast into prison, jesus went to reside in capernaum, and there commenced to preach from john's text--"repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." at the outset of his public career he was a copyist, and he remained so to the end of his life. he simply repeated other men's sayings, or elaborated the traditions and prophecies which were so prevalent among the jews of his day. this kingdom of heaven did not mean something in another world somewhere in the clouds, but simply a new order of things here, and that more especially among the jews. at times, it must be confessed, it is difficult to understand what it meant if not an improved mental state, and not a material kingdom at all. jesus belonged to the working class, and his followers were of the lower orders, and he constantly preached against riches, which was very popular. his followers now appreciate his sublime example so much, that they get rich as fast as they can, especially the successors of the apostles, who are content if they can only get princely incomes, and a palace wherein to lay their heads! jesus wanted followers, so he walked out by the sea of galilee, and saw peter and andrew casting their nets. if they had been only fishing for small fry, he could not have more contemptuously addressed them. "and he said unto them, follow me, and i will make you fishers of men. and they straightway left their nets and followed him." a curious phenomenon strikes one here. peter and andrew have never seen jesus before; he does not tell them who he is; he explains no principles to them by which to enlist their sympathies and awaken conviction--he merely says, "follow me, and i will make you fishers of men," and in prospect of that delightful occupation they abandon their home and calling to accompany a stranger on a doubtful mission, whatever fish may have come to their net afterwards, they certainly could never have caught two greater flat-fish than themselves. a more striking instance of blind following is not to be found upon record. peter afterwards became the greatest fanatic of all the disciples, and caused his master some trouble through his excess of zeal. and this is the man to whom are entrusted the keys of heaven. no wonder the ignorant fanatics find a ready admission, whilst sensible people are excluded. and he too is the great predecessor of the pope of rome, the head of a church which preaches the efficacy of saints' relics, the liquefaction of blood, and the truth of winking virgins. fanaticism was at the foundation, and delusion and ignorance very naturally result. others followed jesus, forsaking their nets and their parents, and they went about all galilee, jesus preaching and curing all sorts of disease and sickness--and curious indeed were some of his cures, such as are not mentioned in any modern pharmacopoeia. having vanquished great satan himself on three occasions, the minor devils had no chance with him, and woe betide all who came before him inhabiting human beings. all these cures were performed that a prophecy might be fulfilled, "which was spoken by esaias the prophet, saying-, himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." but then he did nothing of the kind. and so that prophecy was fulfilled! to cure a disease is not to take it upon ourselves; if it were, the royal college of surgeons would soon become an institution of the past. you might love your neighbour as yourself, but to be expected to have the measles tor him, would cool the warmest friendship. one style of cure jesus had which may have been very efficacious, but it certainly was not delicate. once a deaf man, who had an impediment in his speech, was brought to him to be healed. jesus took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and spat and touched his tongue. and a blind man was brought to him, whom he took by the hand and led out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands on him, asked him if he saw aught and the man was restored to sight this kind of lubrication could scarcely be deemed pleasant. neither do we find an incentive to cleanliness in this, for we are told, "as he spake, a certain pharisee besought him to dine with him; and he went in, and sat down to meat and when the pharisee saw it, he mar-yelled that he had not first washed before dinner. and the lord said onto him, now do ye pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening wickedness. ye fools, did not he that made that which is _without_, make that which it _within_ also?" this may be very true, but it is also very dirty; and though it may satisfy the son of god, would not be an excuse for any man who wished to be considered decent. the fame of jesus spread rapidly, and great multitudes flocked to hear him. one day he went up into a mountain, and addressed the people, but his discourse was of rather an extravagant description. as we understand matters in these days, what is the amount of truth contained in the following sentences?-- "blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "blessed art they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. "blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. "blessed an the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god. "blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of god. "blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake." this kingdom of heaven is past all comprehension. the poor in spirit have it, and the persecuted for righteousness' sake have it; and if these are the penalties to be paid for its possession, it is not worth the winning. then is it possible or proper for any one to act in this way:--"if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off?" who in his senses would think of doing so? who would stand by and allow others to do it? and who lives according to this christian principle, and who follows this precept:--"resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also?" in the first place, it is grossly immoral _not_ to resist evil; and in the second, all the world repudiates the doctrine of non-resistance under such circumstances. if any one smites us on the right cheek, do we not quickly turn and hit him on the left? it is a natural instinct, and to act otherwise is cowardice. do the proceedings of our law courts furnish many instances of the adoption of this recommendation:--"and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also?" one half humanity would very soon be stripped by the other half. "and whoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." no one with any spirit or power of resistance would think of submitting to the _compulsion_ of walking a mile with a person, much less of going two in the company of one whose society might be a nuisance. and if we are to give to every one that asketh, what are our vagrancy laws but a flagrant violation of christianity? the injunction is here given without the slightest qualification, and is an encouragement to mendicancy the world over. there are one or two precepts specially binding on christians of the present day! this, for instance, is very much obeyed:--"and when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, _and in the corners of the streets_, that they may be seen of men." this, we know, is universally observed by the followers of jesus. it is obeyed by the ordained minister in his canonicals; the primitive in his whitewashed tabernacle; the methodist in his tub; the revivalists in their delirious and epileptic gatherings; the ranters in their camp meetings, and howling peregrinations through our country towns and villages; and above all, those highly gifted young men belonging to the town mission, who render the night hideous by their insane ravings at the corners of the streets and in the paths of public places. it is consoling to find the "salt of the earth" such consistent followers of their great master. it is because _they_ are the salt of the earth, that the world has got into such a precious pickle. bishops especially, and pluralists in particular, nurse in their hearts this saying: "lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." no, poor men, they think too much about their heavenly father! a few thousand! a year are quite sufficient for them. and christian bankers and millionaires equally regard the injunction. this is a christian country, and we are a christian people, and our various provident and benefit societies and savings' banks tell how we esteem this command: "take no thought for the morrow, saying, what shall we eat? or, what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed?" we don't think of the morrow merely, but of years to come, and he who is the most careful in providing for the future, is most honoured amongst men. now all these impracticable and extravagant commands are taken from the much-vaunted sermon on the mount, and jesus said, whosoever heard them, and obeyed them, he would liken unto a _wise_ man; but whosoever obeyed them not, he would liken unto a foolish man. it may be an honour to be deemed foolish in such a case; but what shall we say of the professing christian, who considers himself so much superior to the freethinker, and who boasts of his principles being the checks which keep him moral, and says that if it had not been for his blessed saviour the world would have been lost? why, out of the mouth of jesus himself he is proved to be a hypocrite and foolish, for he does what is solemnly condemned, and leaves undone what is strictly enjoined. "and it came to pass, when jesus had ended these sayings, the people _were_ astonished at his doctrine." and can any rational inquirer be astonished at that? on reading over these gospels calmly, and seeing what are attributed to jesus as his sayings and doings, one is amazed at the credulity of the world in allowing such a stupendous delusion as the christian religion to be palmed upon it as something divine derived direct from deity. after this startling sermon, great multitudes followed jesus, and wherever he went he healed the sick and performed miracles, but he generally enjoined the convalescents not to mention to any one what he had done. the reason for this is not given, but if one may make a conjecture, it was either because he had really worked no cure at all, or else he was afraid of having too many demands made upon his time. we are told that when "jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side" of the water, that he might get away from them. before he departed, a disciple said unto him, "lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. but jesus said unto him, follow me, and let the dead bury their dead." is this an instance of meekness? when on board the ship, a great storm came on, and the sailors were afraid of being wrecked. so they awoke jesus, telling him of their danger. he first chided them, and then scolded the winds and the waves, which at once subsided. when he was come to the other side, into the country of the gergesenes, he was met by two men possessed with devils, who asked him if he had come to torment them before their time? and singular to say, the devils also, from the _interior_, entered into conversation with jesus, asking as a favour, that if they were cast out, they might be allowed to go into a herd of swine which were feeding some distance off. why they should choose such an abode is not apparent; but having permission to go, they at once entered into possession, much to the astonishment of the poor porkies, who took fright and ran violently down a steep hill into the sea, and all, to the number of , , perished in the waters. o unhappy pigs! o miserable devils! the son of man, whom you had never injured, worked your speedy destruction. "and, behold, the whole city came out to meet jesus; and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of _their_ coasts." they had more desire to save their bacon than to see miracles worked at the expense of their pigs. jesus entered into a ship and came over to his own city, where a certain ruler came and worshipped him, saying that his daughter was dead, but making the request that she should be raised to life again. when jesus entered the ruler's house, he said, "give place, for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth." and they laughed him to scorn. but when the house was cleared he took the girl by the hand, and the maid arose. this was regarded as a miracle, but it could not be, because jesus said the girl only slept, and it is not possible that a perfect god could tell an untruth. after this jesus called together his twelve disciples, and gave them instructions what to do. he said:--"provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat. and into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go hence. and when ye come into a house, salute it. and if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. and whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. verily i say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of sodom and gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city." but it is doubtful if he meant the land of sodom and gomorrha, or tyre and sidon. however, though we may overlook this uncertainty, we cannot the fact, that a threat of destroying cities is held out if his disciples are not received and fed by people upon whom they have not the slightest claim. this advice would justify the order of 'mendicant friars in their lazy habit of living upon all who are willing to support them. he also added--"behold, i send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." have not the jesuits carried out this advice? and then he gave utterance to this painful truth to which the blood-stained pages of history can testify:--"think not that i am come to send peace on earth: i came _not_ to send peace, but a sword. for i am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. he that loveth father or mother more than, me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me." there has been no peace, and there can be none, in the world, so long as the contradictory and impossible doctrines of jesus of nazareth are taught as infallible truth. house has been divided against house, the father's hand lifted against the child, and the mother's loving tenderness turned to bitterest hate, because of differences of opinion upon christian dogmas. while jesus was making one of his incoherent speeches, somebody told him that his mother and brothers were without, desiring to speak with him. "but he answered and said unto him that told him, who is my mother? and who are my brethren? and he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, behold my mother and my brethren." there is here manifested a want of natural affection unbecoming any man, and which justifies m. rénan in saying, notwithstanding his great reverence for jesus, that he was more loved than loving. there is scarcely a trace of affection throughout his life, from his childhood to his death. he was mystical and fanatical, like all who seek to set themselves up as inspired teachers. one day jesus sat by the sea-side and talked to the people in parables. he is answerable for the following:--"for whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath _not_, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." he says immediately after, as a sort of apology, "therefore speak i to then in parables, because they seeing, see not; and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand." it would be a miracle greater than that worked among the pigs, if anyone did understand. this sort of talk must have been indulged in for amusement--it could not have had any serious purport, or if it had, it is too profound to be understood. when jesus learnt the execution of john the baptist, he departed into a desert place, but the multitude heard of him, and followed him out of the cities. and when evening came, the disciples asked him to send the multitude away, that they might go into the villages and buy themselves victuals. we do not usually find villages in _desert_ places; but that was quite as possible in this case as what followed. jesus said they need not go, and told the disciples to give to the people to eat. they said, we have here but five loaves and two fishes. he said, bring them hither to me. and then looking up to heaven, he blessed and brake, and distributed to the multitude. now out of this very small commissariat, about five thousand men, besides women and children, ate and were filled, and left twelve baskets full of fragments at the end of the feast. all we can deplore is, that the age of miracles is past. if anyone could do this now, what a number of attached followers be would have, no matter what his speculative opinions might be. he might believe in the eternity of punishments; in three gods in one, or one in three; in election, predestination, or transmigration of souls--in short, in anything or nothing; if he could only feed his flock by casting his eyes up to heaven, he would soon empty all the churches and chapels in the kingdom. as rénan very powerfully points out, no miracle ever yet took place under scientific conditions; and till one of this description is wrought under such conditions, we must be allowed to suspend our judgment. we do not say it did not take place, but we don't believe it. it is true it does not say what kind of fishes the two were which served to fill five thousand men, _besides_ women and children, who probably ran the number up to eight thousand. perhaps the fishes were whales, as the whole story is so "very like a whale" that any suggested solution of the astounding tale is legitimate. this miracle was once discussed by a society in chicago, and the 'cute american intellect found a key to the mystery, for they _resolved_--"that the multitude must certainly have made their repast off _multiplication tables_!" after this stupendous feat, jesus constrained his disciples to get into the ship and go across the water, whilst he remained behind to get rid of his well fed friends. and when night came, the ship was tossed by the storm. and in the fourth watch jesus went unto them walking on the sea. when his disciples saw him they said he was a spirit, and cried out for fear. but jesus said, be of good cheer; it is i; be not afraid. then the enthusiastic peter said, lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. jesus said, come; to which peter responded by stepping out of the ship; but he could not float, and began to sink rapidly, and would have perished if his master had not put out his hand and saved him. if this system of aquatic locomotion could be instituted now, it would supersede all lifeboats. but we have little _faith_ in these days of scientific facts, and it requires an immense amount of that commodity to be able to attempt even what was said to have been accomplished by the founders of our national religion. jesus did not confine his creative abilities to the solid comforts of life, but exercised them upon the liquid luxuries of existence. being invited to a wedding, and there being no wine, his mother, with a woman's natural solicitude on such an occasion, said to him, "they have no wine. jesus saith unto her, woman, what have i to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." now, what such a churlish answer had to do with the simple remark made by his mother, we leave to gentle christians to say. however, after a time he became more amiable; and, no doubt, reflecting upon the disappointment of those who had come to a marriage feast, and found nothing but water to drink, he took compassion on them, and turned the water into wine, to the extent of "six water pots, containing two or three firkins apiece." "this beginning of miracles did jesus in cana of galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him." well they might; and we fear that any man in these days who should do such things, would have many followers, in spite of all the preaching of all the teetotallers, who, strange to say, for the most part profess to be good christians, notwithstanding that christ, when he had the opportunity of rebuking wine bibbing, did not do so, but encouraged it by supplying the very beverage which teetotallers so vehemently condemn. when jesus came into the coasts of cæsarea philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, whom do men say that i the son of man am? he was anxious to know what people thought of him now that he was become so famous. "and they said, some say that thou art john the baptist; some, elias; and others, jeremias, or one of the prophets. he saith unto them, but whom say _ye_ that i am?" of course peter was ready to crown all, and he said--"thou art the christ, the son of the living god." for which jesus blessed peter, and promised him the keys of the kingdom of heaven; but they soon fell to quarrelling, when jesus said that he must go unto jerusalem, and suffer many things, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. peter rebuked him, and said it should not be; but jesus turned upon him, and said, "get thee behind me, satan: thou art an offence unto me." it was not very dignified or in good taste after peter had imparted such an important fact to him, which was done by a revelation of his father which is in heaven.. but such was the manner of jesus. when he left galilee, and came into judæa, he resolved to go to jerusalem; and when he was come to the mount of olives, he sent two of his disciples to a village on a very questionable errand. it was to perform no less an act than the appropriation of a donkey and her colt. he told them that, if any one said aught unto them, they were to say, "the lord hath need of them." that kind of answer would scarcely be deemed satisfactory in these days, especially to a policeman. he would very likely reply, if the lord hath need of the ass, the magistrate hath need of thee; and if the instigator of the deed were not the actual thief, he would be charged as an accessory before the fact, and would be provided with board and lodging at the expense of the county for at least twelve months. this was done that another prophecy might be fulfilled, which said, "tell ye the daughter of sion, behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." but this prophet must have been an ass, or he would have known that even the son of man would find it difficult to sit upon two asses of such unequal size at the same time. apart from the absurdity of the story, it is an example of very loose notions indeed of the rights of property, which, if stated of mahomet, of joseph smith the mormon, or any other founder of a religious sect, would be quoted as a proof of his obliquity of moral vision. after this successful exploit of taking unto himself other people's goods, jesus became quite daring; and when he got to jerusalem he went into the temple of god, where he found a number of people carrying on their usual business. he had no more right there than they had--in fact, not so much, as he was a stranger to the city. but, notwithstanding this, he got a rope, and thrashed every one out of the place, upsetting the tables and chairs, and creating such a consternation as only a bedlamite broken loose would be likely to produce. though this was immediately after the appropriation of the two donkeys, upon which he had actually ridden to the temple, he called all the tradespeople dishonest, and accused them of having turned the place into a den of thieves. whatever it might have been before he came, certainly one would think the designation not inappropriate after the arrival of himself and his disciples. he was not arrested on the spot for this act of assault and battery; but what should we think of the city police commissioner if he neglected to order into custody any mad enthusiast who might so conduct himself on the stock exchange? but he would not, and the enthusiast's vagaries and his visit to the police cell would be a very little time apart. it would be no use his alleging that he was about his father's business, and that he was fulfilling prophecy--that would only aggravate the offence. he would be told that if his father did not take better care of him, the county asylum would; and the prophet would very soon be "wanted" who had instigated such folly. jesus did not remain in the city during the night--it was not prudent after such an advent in the morning, but he went and lodged in bethany, a little way out of town. in returning next morning he was hungry, so, when he came to a fig-tree, he looked at it hoping to find some fruit on it, but there was none, as it was not the right season. we should forgive an excited hungry man here if he, in a moment of forgetfulness, looked for apples in winter; but if he began to curse the tree for not bearing fruit out of season, we should think he was mad past doubt. yet this is exactly what jesus did; and not only so, but he withered the tree that it should not bear fruit thenceforward forever. his disciples marvelled at what he had done, as well they might. "jesus answered and said unto them, verily i say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. and all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." no persons have ever yet had the requisite amount of faith to remove mountains; and the less they try such credulity on fruit trees, the better for our orchards. nobody does or can believe such insane talk. jesus went to the temple again, and whilst he was preaching, the chief priests and elders came and asked him by what authority he did such things. in true quaker style he answered them by asking a question, which had the merit of being impossible of solution. he said--"the baptism of john, whence was it? from heaven, or of men?" they said: "we cannot tell. and he said unto them, neither tell i you by what authority i do these things." that seemed to silence his interrogators, but it did not answer them. it was a favourite way with this messiah; and we remain as much in the dark to this hour as did the chief priests and elders. this method of evasion is also exemplified in the case of the tribute money. when asked whether it was lawful to render tribute unto cæsar, he said, looking at a coin, "whose is this image and superscription?" they said, cæsar's. "then saith he unto them, render therefore unto cæsar the things which are cæsar's, and unto god the things that are god's." rénan says on this point--"to establish as a principle that we must recognise the legitimacy of a power by the inscription on its coins, to proclaim that the perfect man pays tribute with scorn, and without question, was to destroy republicanism in the ancient form, and to favour all tyranny. christianity, in this sense, has contributed much to weaken the sense of duty of the citizen, and to deliver the world into the absolute power of existing circumstances." but we are not surprised that he should so readily teach the payment of tribute, considering how easy he found it to pay tribute himself; for the ludicrous account given in matthew, in the same chapter which describes the transfiguration, shows jesus discharging his own liability and that of peter in the most original manner imaginable. not wishing to offend the tax collectors, he said to peter--"go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: take that, and give unto them for me and thee." if fish of this description swam in rivers now, they would be preserved to the exclusion of the most delicious members of the finny tribe. every man would be an angler, and fishing-tackle making would be the most lucrative trade known. take another instance of evasion. the sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they put a question to jesus on that point. they instanced a woman who had been married to seven brothers in succession, all of whom had died. therefore, in the resurrection, they asked whose wife she would be out of the seven when they met again. this was quickly disposed of, for "jesus answered and said onto them, ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of god. for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of god in heaven." if this is so, what becomes of the hope which believers in immortality have that in heaven they will be joined again to those they have lost on earth? this great consolation of the christian is founded on a delusion. jesus also supplemented his statement with this remarkable declaration, "but as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by god, saying, i am the god of abraham, and the god of isaac, and the god of jacob? god is _not_ the god of the _dead_, but of the _living_," what then is the use of catholic prayers for the souls of those in purgatory? what is the utility of our burial service, which goes upon the supposition that god will attend to our requests as touching the dead we are about to consign to the grave? freethinkers and rational thinkers discard the whole ceremony as a mockery. when once dead, the particles which composed our bodies are dissolved, and pass into new combinations--_we_ never live again. after he had done all his preaching, and had thoroughly aroused the ire of the authorities and most of the people of jerusalem against him, he began to fear that he would have to suffer for it, and he told his disciples so. after they had supped together in the house of one of the friends, they departed to the mount of olives outside the city, and jesus said they would all be offended with him because of that night. peter the loquacious declared, that though all men might be offended because of him, he would never be. jesus had no great opinion of peter's steadfastness, and told him, notwithstanding his protestations of attachment, that before the cock crew he would deny him thrice. peter asseverated again: "though i should die with ye, yet will i not deny thee." poor peter's word, like his judgment, however, was not to be relied upon, for the very next day he denied all knowledge of jesus, and when pressed for an answer, he began to curse and to swear that he had never seen him. soon after this the garden of gethsemane, into which they had entered; was surrounded by a multitude with staves and with swords, and jesus was arrested, peter the dauntless did make some resistance, and cut off the ear of malchus, a servant of the high priest; but the loss was only temporary, for we are told that jesus immediately "touched his ear, and healed him," and if this does not mean that he stuck the ear on again, what does it mean? when jesus was arrested in the garden, all the disciples, escaped as quickly as possible, but peter followed at a distance; and when jesus was taken to the house of caiaphas the high priest, peter entered and mixed with the servants. he was soon recognised as a follower of jesus; but when accused of the fact, he stoutly denied it three times, the last with oaths, like the low-bred man he was; for though he had been consorting with jesus a long time, he had not learnt refinement of manners, which is not wonderful, as jesus certainly did not set an example of choiceness of language, his favourite mode of speech being to call people fools, and to launch curses at them. but peter had to fulfil a prophecy--namely, that he would deny his master _thrice_, before the cock crew _twice_, which he did before the cock crew _once_. and so that prophecy was fulfilled! when jesus was first examined on the charge of blasphemy he remained silent, and would not answer any questions put to him. then caiaphas said--"i adjure thee by the living god that thou tell us whether thou be christ, the son of god." jesus at last replied--"thou hast said," which may fairly be interpreted to mean, "you say i am, not i." this is in keeping with his usual evasive mode of answering, as before pointed out. especially as he continued--"nevertheless i say unto you, _hereafter_ shall ye see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." this was declared blasphemous, and we know how excited bigoted people get when that word is pronounced. so they struck the enthusiast, as he had struck others in the temple. in the morning he was bound and led before pilate the governor, who asked him, "art thou the king of the jews?" he again answered, "thou sayest" and when the chief priests and elders repeated their charges, he still refused to answer them, which surprised pilate. however, pilate saw no harm in what he had done, and was anxious to set him at liberty; but the priests, as is usual with them, persisted in their demands of vengeance against one who had offended them. then jesus was delivered over to the soldiers to be crucified, which was a very barbarous mode of execution. he was cruelly treated by the soldiers, who were incited thereto by the priests. he died the death of a malefactor, but his end was brought about by his own wild and extravagant conduct. in these days he would have been confined as a lunatic, but in that barbarous time, and under the influence of priests, he was tortured to death. no one can contemplate his fate, whatever his faults may have been, without feelings of sorrow. but if his death was to fulfil prophecy, and to save a lost and ruined world, we ought to regard it with exultation and great joy, and not only observe good friday as a national holiday, but every friday as a public festival. but who, on calmly reading the narrative, and dismissing from his mind the fables taught him in his childhood, can see anything supernatural in jesus' life and death? he displayed through life all the infirmities and littlenesses of a man, and he died like one who had brought about his own death by his own acts. when on the cross, and no doubt in mortal agony, he exclaimed, in the utterness of despair, like one who had long trusted to a delusion, and when too late had found out his mistake--"my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" the chief priests and elders, the people about, and even the two thieves who were dying with him, jeered him for his folly, saying, "he trusted in god; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, i am the son of god." but there was no deliverance from heaven for him more than for any other man. jesus had acted so extravagantly from the time he entered on public life that it is not surprising that his followers were infected by his example, and it is to them we are indebted for the re-appearance of jesus after he was dead and buried. he himself said that he was to fulfil the prophecy of jonas, for, as he was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so should the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. yet he never went into the heart of the earth, but was laid in a tomb or cave with a door to it; and he was not even there three days and three nights, but only two nights, and not two days altogether. and so that prophecy was fulfilled! jesus prophesied his own resurrection only, but the earthquake which followed his death was no respecter of persons, for when the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. no orthodox, christians doubt for a moment that jesus rose again from the dead, because he was to do so, and he was the son of god; but do they believe these unknown saints revisited the glimpses of the moon, and experienced a resurrection equal to that of jesus, for no purpose at all, and for no merit of their own? yet we have no more authority for the one than the other, and no reason to believe one more than the other. toward the end of the sabbath (that is, saturday evening) came mary magdalene, with the other mary, to see the sepulchre where jesus was laid, and another earthquake took place, and the angel of the lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment like snow. he told the women that jesus had risen, and asked them to see the place where the lord lay. but whether they looked or not we are not told, but they ran away with fear and great joy to tell the disciples. and as they went, whom should they meet but jesus himself, who said to them, "all hail." but then there is some little confusion in this infallible narrative. it was not towards the end of saturday, but very early in the morning of sunday, at the rising of the sun, that the women came, and for the purpose of anointing the body. and the stone was still against the door, and they said, who shall roll us away the stone? but when they looked again the stone was away, and on entering the sepulchre they saw a young man dressed in white sitting _inside_, and no angel with a lightning face sitting _outside_. the women fled with terror, but told no man what they had seen; and it isa mystery to this day how that which was never told to any one is known to nearly all the world. jesus did not meet the two marys, but appeared first to mary magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. she went and told the disciples about the resurrection, but they believed her not. he appeared afterwards to two of his disciples, but they did not believe in his resurrection, neither did the eleven disciples, to whom he appeared. if they who knew him intimately did not believe in it after only three days' absence from them, shall we, after a lapse of eighteen hundred years, put faith in this clumsy, impossible, and absurd fable? but perhaps the condition he attached to the belief may have something to do with the faith of so many people in these days. he said, after upbraiding his disciples for their unbelief and hardness of heart--"he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." that threat, fulminated from thousands of pulpits, has frightened timid and weak people in nearly every age of the christian era. but then again there were not two women but many who went to the sepulchre, and they found the stone away; and when they entered they saw two men in shining garments, and the women did not conceal what they had seen, but went and told all the disciples, but they were not believed. this time the lively peter ran to the tomb to look for himself, and saw nothing but the linen clothes lying by themselves. after that two of the disciples went to emmana, where jesus himself joined them, but they knew him not, and did not believe the story of his resurrection. he then rebuked them in his usual sweet and placid style, by exclaiming, "o fools, and slow of heart," and beginning at moses and all the prophets, "he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself," which must have been a tolerably long discourse for one so recently out of the grave. they asked him to stop with them and have something to eat, which, his appetite being as good as ever, he consented to do; and it was his mode of breaking bread and blessing it that convinced them that he was jesus. and he then vanished out of their sight. they went to jerusalem and told the others what they had seen, and while they were talking jesus stood in the midst of them; but they did not know him again, but took him to be a spirit. he said--"behold my hands and my feet, that it is myself; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." and while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, he said unto them, "have ye here any meat?" he was again hungry, and they gave him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb. and he took it, and did eat before them. that was enough to convince them a second time. "and he led them out as far as bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. and it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven," with the broiled fish on his stomach, where he entered into joy everlasting. the foregoing will certainly be declared "blasphemous" by all true believers, and will no doubt be pronounced a "caricature" of jesus by even unitarians. but the fault does not lie with us--it is in the text, which we did not make. we are not responsible for the representation, for we have scrupulously followed the inspired delineations of the evangelists. let us briefly sum up this biography. jesus was the son of god, and not the son of his mother's husband, and his mother remained a virgin notwithstanding his conception and birth, although she strangely offered the usual sacrifice when the days of her purification were accomplished. he was descended from the royal line of david, that is, joseph the husband of his mother was so descended; but then joseph was not his father at all. the miraculous boy was to fulfil many prophecies; but although he often purposely acted in order to fulfil them, several given as illustrations are singularly wide of the mark. at twelve years of age he was a match for learned doctors in disputation, and could pertly rebuke his mother for inquiring where he had been for three days and three nights. he was baptised at thirty by john, who taught him rudeness of manners; and though a dove descended direct from heaven, and alighted on his head, he was immediately taken by the spirit into very dangerous places, was kept a remarkably long time without food, and was very strangely tempted by the devil in person. he became a great talker, dealt largely in mystical language, and gathered followers from the poorest, most ignorant, and most credulous of his countrymen. he cured all sorts of diseases and afflictions, though there is no evidence that he ever underwent a medical training. he worked miracles, as became an eastern founder of a sect, but his achievements scarcely rank as high as the tricks of an indian juggler. he was uneducated, and never, so far as the record goes, wrote a line in his life; but as a preacher he was famous, and always succeeded in making his hearers marvel at his strange doctrines--doctrines so contradictory that no sane man can follow them. he was vituperative in his language, austere in his manners, undutiful and repelling to his mother. he appropriated other persons' property, and immediately after violently assaulted a large number of men, whom he charged with being dishonest. when asked questions touching vital points of his own doctrines, he usually gave evasive answers. he promised his disciples all sorts of wonderful powers if they would believe in him, and he promised also to come in a cloud with great glory before that generation passed away; but having risen from the grave, and ascended into heaven, he has not returned in a cloud with glory up to the time of our going to press. he ultimately met the death of a malefactor, and in the last moments of agony his fanaticism was strong upon him, for he promised to the thief who flattered him that he would meet him that day in paradise, though he did not go there himself till about six weeks afterwards. after his death he was brought to life again, thus defying all the laws of physiology. when but just out of the grave, his powers of preaching were as strong as ever, and his appetite as vigorous as though he had returned from a long journey; and after partaking of a singular repast, and before he had had time to digest it, he ascended into the clouds without the aid of a balloon, and was seen no more. all this, with much more of the same incredible nature, is taught as infallible truth by some of the best educated men the universities can produce, and belief in the whole of it is necessary to "respectability" in this life, and to salvation in a life after death. how educated men can believe it, is a mystery which we trust the school boards of the future will be able to unravel; at present we find it as insoluble as all the other sublime mysteries of christianity, for we cannot believe that a university training necessarily makes men hypocrites, and we are loth to believe that on one most important subject it necessarily makes them imbecile. there would be fewer believers if there were more inquirers. the advocates of bible reading in elementary schools must feel that there is danger to the faith lurking in the future if that "precious book" is read and not "expounded." dogmatic teaching is the stronghold of the religion of christendom. the "plain, unvarnished tale" of the four gospels would carry with it its own condemnation, for the best refutation of christianity is a true knowledge of christ. printed and published by c. watts, , johnson's court, fleet st, london, e.c. price twopence